International Roster of Speakers at Climate Institute Symposium
Express Optimism on Benign Energy Developments
Much can be done - even before the climate treaty approved at
Kyoto is signed and ratified - to further its goals, concluded
the Climate Institute Symposium on Green Energy Strategies. The
Symposium was held partway through the official international
meetings, on Saturday, December 6 at Otani University in Kyoto.
Speakers included senior officials, parliamentarians, business
leaders, and energy experts from nations including Australia,
Chile, Denmark, Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, South Africa,
the UK and the US. About 180 people attended.
Workable, cost-effective, practical measures need not wait for
government action, said Noel Brown of Jamaica, President of Friends
of the Unnited Nations. Energy efficient and healthy homes in
South Africa, private on-shore wind farms and government-sponsored
off-shore farms in Denmark, solar shingles produced in the US
but sold around the world, were some of the many emission-saving
devices described in the symposium which could be applied immediately.
We are “at the cusp of an energy revolution,“ said
Chris Flavin of Worldwatch in an overview, using a phrase which
was repeated by a number of speakers to describe the potential
of green energy technologies.
“We should make it easy to be good, by for instance changing
the technology that consumes energy while our appliances are not
in use. Our television remote control is on all the time so that
we can have instant access,” said John Gummer, Secretary
of State for the Environment under John Major. “A non-energy
consuming solution should be found.” The global economy should
work within a moral context; we should play on the world stage
with the same ethic on which we act on the national stage.
Expedient strategies already in use or showing great potential
that were described at the symposium include:
• Danish wind turbines. Small private cooperatives
in Denmark sparked the tremendous growth in wind energy which
now amounts to 7 percent of the energy produced in the country.
Environment and Energy Minister Svend Auken outlined plans for
the next 7 - 8 years which will include spending nearly $1 billion
to build 500 big windmills which together will amount to 8 percent
of total energy supply in addition to the wind turbines already
in operation. (If the US were to achieve even an 8 percent level,
it would need 56,000 wind turbines.) The target for Denmark by
2030 is to have windmills supplying 30 percent of total energy.
Energy efficiency is popular in Denmark, and the big utilities
which were originally scornful of wind power have now joined the
effort and are anxious not be be left behind. The nation has discovered,
says Mr. Auken, that it is not necessary to increase energy supply
to achieve economic growth. Energy supply, economically competitive
prices and the environment can all work together smoothly, hand
in hand. In doing so, Denmark has produced energy at the lowest
price in the European Union.
Energy 21, a Danish national energy policy, hopes to reduce CO2
emissions by 2030 while having renewables account for 35 percent
of total energy consumption. In the same period, the policy is
aimed at increasing economic wealth by 50 percent.
Denmark has the highest per capita expenditures for R&D for
renewables in the world, with all of the revenues earned in operations
plowed back into the industry. Auken advocates subsidizing renewables
and levying taxes to increase their use - on a global scale or
at the very least at the European level.
Cogeneration, which is mandatory in the country, supplies 80
percent of the heating and 50 percent of the electricity, on both
a centralized and decentralized basis. The goal is to increase
the contribution of renewables to total energy consumption at
the rate of one percent a year.
While we are often told there is a tradeoff between the environment
and jobs, Auken continued, that is not true in Denmark’s
experience. Lots of new jobs have been gained in insulation and
other energy services and the development of renewables. Wind
turbines have become the largest item for export; 60 percent of
installed wind capacity in the world is based on Danish technology.
This is not to say that there are not difficulties, said Auken,
who received a Climate Institute award the following day, as the
driving force behind Denmark’s Energy 21 program which seeks
to limit greenhouse emissions through an aggressive expansion
of wind energy and extensive reliance on combined heat and power
systems. The country has found no solution to the problem of road
traffic growth which continues to accelerate. It is also facing
a challenge from liberalization of electricity supply in Europe;
cogeneration will fall apart unless there is established a principle
of complete protection for such arrangements against short term
price pressures.
Rene Karottki, Secretary General of the Danish Forum for Energy
and Development, expanded on the decentralization theme, stating
that cogeneration started with district heating cooperatives which
were also opposed by the utilities. These decentralized units
were fueled by one-third waste and biogas and two-thirds natural
gas. Farmers are now establishing biogas plants, setting an important
example in the developing country market where decentralization
is the order of the day. In the long run, he said, centralized
units may be totally phased out and the industry will be on a
100 percent sustainable basis. This is particularly relevant to
developing countries which could encourage development of decentralized,
up to date, advanced renewable technology for the 2.5 billion
people who are off grid.
• Substantial investments in solar energy by the financial
community. Approaching the issue of green energy from a different
perspective, the large-scale provision of supporting funds rather
than the smaller scale decentralized cooperatives which led Denmark’s
renewable energy growth, Jeremy Leggett has been campaigning strenuously
for several years to gain support for solar energy.
He sees a “seismic revolution in the way the world uses
energy” and quotes a British solar task force report which
in its first sentence warns, “The driving rationale for the
solar century, the unmitigated enhancement of the greenhouse effect,
is a threat to the heart of the British economy” as well
as the rest of the world.
Leggett, who is chairman of the UK government-industry solar
task force, believes solar pv could be the single most important
long-term means of achieving the deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions
which are the ultimate objective of the climate convention. This
solar process is an outstanding candidate for meeting the needs
of the two billion people with no electricity and the many more
with inadequate supplies. Its growth rate this year is 24 percent,
Leggett says, and as it becomes an established technology with
an established market, it will take off explosively.
There are areas in the industrialized world where solar electricity
is competitive with utility prices: in Sacramento, California,
and in Japan where MITI has targeted a 70,000 solar roofs program.
The scale of the marketing opportunity is huge: if 30 percent
of the projected world electricity were pv by 2020, the market
would be worth $3 trillion which can be compared with the $2 trillion
in premiums for the present-day world insurance industry.
Leggett has been pushing for a marriage between the insurance
industry and renewable energy as the industry has faced huge insured
economic losses which are not only because people have moved into
harm’s way.
He has two missions: formation of a consumer alliance in the
North, a buyers’ club to speed adoption of solar pv projects,
and an investment forum which will set up a nonprofit revolving
loan fund to support pv projects. Already three banks, a hotel
chain and the large European insurance company, Swiss Re, have
invested in this scheme.
• Public/private cooperation in the Philippines succeeded
first in reducing lead concentrations, then sulfur and nitrous
oxides, and now in diminishing wasteful consumption of energy
and promoting geothermal. The goal is now to cut the increase
in energy requirements one percent a year for the next 12 years,
said Senator Heherson Alvarez and Antonio La Vina, Undersecretary
of Environment and Natural Resources.
• Green energy measures taken at all levels in Australia.
Tom Roper, former Environment and Planning Minister of Victoria,
tallied a long list of steps Australia is taking to further the
cause of reducing emissions: setting of building standards such
as compulsory insulation, demonstration projects, industry initiatives
to meet the greenhouse challenge, procurement at the government
level to develop and spread technology, ensuring utility consumers
have access to green energy, encouragement and advice to consumers,
appealing to accounting and finance committees to demonstrate
the benefits of successful energy management.
• Ingenuity at US firm. “We need to promote
economic growth, address environmental issues, and advance economic
choices,” said Nancy Bacon, vice president at Energy Conversion
Devices of Troy, Michigan. The company is engaged in many-faceted
technology responses.
1. It has strong patents and is working with commercial development
partners on thin-film photovoltaics which are particularly appropriate
for decentralized uses not dependent on an electric grid. Part
of this technology includes solar roof shingles and a solar lighting
kit (which can change lives and make money as well, Bacon said).
2. It is working on a nickel metal hydride battery which will
last the life of the vehicle, and which is capable of driving
a Solectria 240 miles on a single charge (an 130 mpg equivalent).
3. Electric scooters which offer an enormous market opportunity
to supply low cost, speed, battery lifetime, and cheap fuel expense.
The company is trying to bring together economic prosperity and
an improved life style.
• South African housing. The Province of Northern
Cape is a region of abject poverty, according to Pakes Dikgets,
the Province’s Minister of Housing and Local Government.
People live in squalor with no access to clean water, shelter,
or education. They need jobs, affordable health care, roads and
infrastructure development. Although resources are limited, the
Province is trying to achieve an energy efficient concept.
The area offers a perfect opportunity to leapfrog over the traditional
technologies and build “wholistic communities,” said
Lilia Abron which will improve health, create jobs and reduce
emissions. (South Africa is the largest CO2 emitter in Africa,
she said.) The Province is building steel frame houses, designed
by the people, using passive solar concepts. The houses are wrapped
in polystyrene for insulation so no heat is needed. (Most of the
time poor people in the region are cold, says Abron.) The newly
built houses are ventilated to reduce levels of carbon monoxide
which tends to leave the people comatose from burning low grade
coal.
The houses are being built to meet government cost targets, save
50 - 70 percent on energy bills and produce net CO2 savings while
requiring no heat except for cooking.
• Small and medium-sized industries in Chile have
united in an association to attain quality control and energy
efficiency, using new technologies to combat the high cost of
energy and at the same time improve their productivity and competitiveness,
stated Mario Marcel, Director of CEPRI.
• Phasing out fossil fuel subsidies will make the
economy more efficient and reduce environmental damage, argues
John Ashton, Visiting Fellow at Green College, Oxford. He acknowledged
that it was difficult to calculate the amount of damage avoided.
• Reduce the barriers to purchasing energy from independent
producers in Japan, Kazuo Aichi, former environment secretary,
urged, to encourage more production of renewables. The obstruction
by utilities was a phenomenon familiar to the Danes who recounted
similar reluctance during the early phases of their efforts to
gain acceptance of wind energy.
• A price signal is needed to encourage development of
photovoltaics and wind energy, argued John Palmisano, director
of environment of Enron, which has embarked on substantial investments
in both sun and wind energy. A tax or some other “high and
steady” signal would provide a needed rise in demand for
pv’s and wind energy and give much more of a boost than further
R&D, according to Palmisano. Enron is the leading producer
of renewable energy in the US. The “5 labs” study by
the US Energy Research Labs has predicted that power from wind
could range in the 5 to 20 gigawatt range in the US by 2020, he
stated. He argued for no emissions borrowing (a recommendation
by the Clinton Administration in the pre-Kyoto plan because it
“erodes credibility. ” He agreed with John Ashton that
subsidies for fossil fuels should be phased out.
• Joint implementation: what is efficient and what
incentives should be used to encourage it, asked Mikihiko Watanabe
of Japan.
• Unknown breakthroughs will be needed or the world
will not be able to solve its CO2 problem, contended Katsuo Seiki,
executive director of Japan’s GISPRI. He foresees a big use
of nuclear energy by 2050, with renewables running “a bit
behind.”
In a summation of the symposium, John Topping, President of the
Climate Institute, said benign energy development for both the
North and the South is something for 1998, not 2010. The South
will not be helped by an extension of the present system. We need
to harness public policy to make things happen, build a base of
public support, as in Denmark, or “think smart,” as
in South Africa, integrating human considerations. Then we will
have an array of measures which countries could choose from.
