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Tailoring Energy Use to Sustain Growth
by Nirmal Ghosh, Program Participant
The simplest but perhaps most telling observation at a seminar on the future of energy in Denmark came from former US ambassador Richard Jones.
Tailoring Energy Use to Sustain Growth
Tough choices ahead as the world caters to an expanding population
By Nirmal Ghosh
The simplest but perhaps most telling observation at a seminar on the future of energy in Denmark came from former US ambassador Richard Jones.
'We have bought ourselves a little less than a year with the recession,' he said.
The deputy director of the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) was referring to a 'savings' of 35 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2), the main driver of global warming, because of the global recession this year.
The correlation between normal economic growth and carbon emissions could not be clearer.
The conclusion is equally stark: To maintain growth as we know it, there has to be a transformational change in the key input that fires that system - energy.
Energy lies at the heart of our economy and civilisation. Just imagine how different life would be if we did not have electricity. But on current trends, this system is not sustainable because our fossil fuel dependency is pumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere.
Human civilisation is at a crossroads. There appears to be no way out of the production and consumption-based model of economic growth, and the global population continues to expand.
The question that haunts Mr Jones and thousands of other economists, policy analysts, thinkers, scientists and activists, is how to change the nature of the energy we use.
The IEA report released last month presented two scenarios. One is 'business as usual' and the other is the '450 scenario', in which economic growth produces greenhouse gas emissions up to 450 parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere. This figure is considered the maximum level permissible if the planet is to avoid dangerous climate change. Currently, scientists and most developing countries support the stricter 350ppm level.
'If you are going to have economic growth, you have to have things like more shipping, more transport, more trade,' Mr Jones told the seminar on Samsoe Island, a model for energy self-sufficiency five hours west of Copenhagen by train and ferry.
'The relationship between economic growth and energy demand is pretty solid. The problem is the population is growing.'
'This (IEA) scenario is only up to 2030. The people who need jobs in 2030 are born already. So we figure that if we don't get 3 per cent growth, that means people's lives are getting worse. It means people who have aspirations to get out of poverty are being frustrated.
'And there is going to be more of them. That is what keeps us up at night - not how hard it is going to be to get investments in renewable energy or energy efficiency, but how hard it is going to be to deal with an extra three billion angry people.'
Reducing greenhouse gases requires a mix of solutions, including carbon capture and storage, exploiting renewal energy sources like wind, solar and biofuels, nuclear energy, and more energy-efficient transport systems and buildings.
China is building nuclear power plants, and India now has a solar energy programme. Wind-turbine maker Vestas installs a turbine somewhere once every three hours. In Britain, no new coal-fired power plants are allowed unless they integrate carbon capture and storage (CCS), whereby the CO2 they produce is pumped deep into underground chambers rather than released into the atmosphere.
But the energy revolution is still in first gear. CCS - though it needs thousands of kilometres of pipelines - has great potential, but only a handful of projects actually use it today. No coal-fired power plant is among them.
Experts estimate that we need to build 30 nuclear plants, 50 CCS facilities and thousands of wind turbines a year for the next several years. All these require huge investments upfront - now.
This presents additional tough choices. For instance, nuclear energy, once a villain, is now considered a part of the solution. But it can take up to 10 years to build a single nuclear plant, and not even the world's largest corporations have the financial muscle to undertake the building of multiple nuclear plants simultaneously.
Clean development mechanisms, which transfer money to low-carbon footprint industrial projects, have so far been feeble instruments.
Solar and wind are by far the least dangerous sources of energy and have tremendous potential, but both are intermittent sources of energy, and pricing as well as connectivity to national power grids remain a challenge. Still, countries such as Germany and Denmark are showing it is possible to exploit solar and wind. Germany has created around 200,000 jobs in the solar sector. Last year, wind energy was the largest source of newly installed capacity in Europe.
Gains from energy efficiency could also be robust. Buildings account for about 40 per cent of energy use worldwide, and some experts estimate that our stock of buildings will double over the next 20 to 30 years. It is absolutely critical that buildings are retrofitted in accordance with, and all new buildings abide by, tough energy efficiency standards.
At the Samsoe seminar, alternative energy experts were largely pessimistic about the negotiations in Copenhagen, for they remained mired in controversy, with the outcome most likely a political rather than a legally binding agreement.
'People need to understand the magnitude of the challenge, particularly in the near term,' said Mr Paul Genoa, director of policy development at the United States-based Nuclear Energy Institute.
'And we have got off to a slow start.'
Written By: jmckenzie
Date Posted: 12/15/2009
Number of Views: 379
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