Throwing petrol at a house on fire

Phase out fossil fuel subsidies and reduce other perverse or trade distorting subsidies by 2020. The reduction of subsidies must be accomplished in a manner that protects the poor and eases the transition for affected groups when the products or services concerned are essential.

The report – Resilient People, Resilient Planet: A Future Worth Choosing — sets out specific recommendations to “put sustainable development into practice and to mainstream it into economic policy as quickly as possible.” The report reinforces the push to phase-out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, speed up the deployment of renewable energy, and accelerate energy efficiency efforts. The high-level report was the result of the U.N. Secretary General’s High-Level Panel on Global Sustainability.

Fossil fuel subsidies drain public resources, drive global warming, and make it harder for clean energy to compete. In fact, fossil fuel subsidies are 500% larger than the subsidies provided for clean energy which led one commentator to point out: “The house is ablaze and we are throwing bucket after bucket at it - buckets of petrol.”

Reforming subsidies without harming the poor should be within reach as the International Energy Agency estimates that the vast majority of the subsidies never reach the poor. The poorest 20 percent receive only 5-10 percent of the subsidies.

Hence, the report suggests that a large focus must be placed on the subsidies to produce more fossil fuels – known as “production subsidies” – and a targeted approach to subsidies that support consumption of fossil fuels (e.g., subsidized gasoline, etc) – so-called “consumption subsidies”. At least $100 billion per year goes to support production subsidies – such as tax breaks for oil companies – at a time when the fossil fuel industry doesn’t seem to be hurting financially.

Who will take the first step?

Singapore shows the way

If there is vision, good things simply follow! Like the 26-mile wide island Singapore. For years, Singapore has relied on imported water from Malaysia to provide 40 percent of its water supply.

To become more self-sufficient, Singapore has invested billions of dollars in membrane filtration technologies that allow wastewater to be reclaimed, filtered, and transformed into high purity potable water called NEWater. Desalination plants and rainwater-catching reservoirs have also helped reduce its reliance on imported water.

Singapore excels in building efficiency—an area with huge potential impact, given that an astounding 90 percent of the population lives in some form of high-rise condominium. Singapore has set an ambitious target of greening at least 80 percent of its buildings by 2030, including existing stock.

Using clean technology advancements Singapore has been making great strides in transportation, particularly around the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs). Since roughly 85 percent of Singapore’s power supply comes from natural gas, EVs provide a cleaner solution compared with conventional oil burning vehicles.

Singapore-based clean tech company Greenlots has been committed to designing and delivering hardware and software to enable utilities, municipalities, electric vehicle manufacturers and distributors and other private businesses to install, own and operate their own EV charging network. Already, it has established charging stations in major parking lots in the city.

One can argue that a small island can afford to change tracks which is difficult for larger nations and larger populations. But as the saying goes, where there is a will there is a way.

Shale gas - a winner?

Shale gas is one of the lowest carbon sources of natural gas. Shale gas produced using fracking may have lower life cycle greenhouse gas emissions than conventional gas. If that sounds controversial, check out a report in recent Environmental Science and Technology, that “shale gas life-cycle [greenhouse gas] emissions are 6% lower than conventional natural gas”.

It goes on to substantiate the claim by saying the lower emissions are due to the fact that multiple horizontal wells (used when tapping shale gas) can be drilled from a single well pad. In conventional vertical drilling, there is one pad per well. In horizontal drilling, there are typically six to eight wells drilled from one pad. This means less equipment, less surface disruption, and fewer opportunities for leaks on the surface. Fewer leaks mean lesser methane escaping!

The report further notes that all types of natural gas represent a huge opportunity to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Agreeing that Methane leaks and water management are two of the biggest issues, and must be addressed, it says that natural gas, with fracking, (which it claims is not the cause of water pollution) is still a clear winner. Especially when compared to coal!!

If China builds one new coal plant per week, that translates to about 450 million tons of added carbon emissions each year. If China just built natural gas plants instead of coal plants, it would reduce added emissions by between 150 and 270 million tons per year (depending on the type of coal and power plant, natural gas typically has between 30% and 60% less GHG emissions than coal). That reduction in emissions would be like taking roughly 40 million cars off the road.

Any thoughts?

Simple steps, big gains

Simple low-or no-cost actions such as regular maintenance, leak prevention, reducing pressure and switching off an electrical gadget when not in use could save a typical business in the industrial sector £1500 a year. In fact, more efficient use of compressed air systems could save UK businesses £110 million a year, according to the UK government-backed Carbon Trust.

Compressed air is widely used in many industries from aircraft manufacturing to water treatment, as well as in electronics and engineering.

“There is a misconception that compressed air is a free or low cost resource, when – in fact – the opposite is true. Just a single 3 mm hole in a compressed air system creates a leak, which can cost a business an additional £1000 a year in electricity costs,” says Richard Rugg, director of Carbon Trust Programmes.

Meanwhile, according to another report from CNT Energy and the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), energy efficiency upgrades to US apartment buildings could save owners and residents up to $3.4 billion!

Cost-effective upgrades to buildings with five or more apartment can save 15-30% on utility bills, according to the report Engaging as Partners in Energy Efficiency: Multifamily Housing and Utilities.

The report’s key finding is that utilities and building owners need to work together to identify potential savings and implement the necessary measures.

Energy efficiency is the low hanging fruit in the tree of energy security. But often the option that is ignored, due to the illusion of surplus that has been the bane of energy supply anywhere. While it may look like meagre efforts in scrimping and saving, when many hands put together, the savings can be enormous.

Put agri on the stage, say scientists

Are agricultural productivity and environmental conservation two separate issues? While that is what the big agricultural industry would claim, Britain’s chief scientist, John Beddington, along with an international group of scientists, have in their article in Science this month asked climate negotiators to stop ignoring agriculture.

Agriculture has been hovering just on the margins of climate change policy. While it is a fact that precise measurement of the climate impact of many industrial farming practices remains difficult and controversial, the overriding factor is that the indutry chooses to ignore any such consideration in the pursuit of profit. The U.S in particular has resisted any attempts to formalize the agricultural sector’s obligation to climate mitigation.

It is an irony that farming will be most affected by exacerbated climate change. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicts that the frequency of extreme weather events will increase and have disastrous on agricultural yields. Yet, the effects of unsustainable agriculture on the weather remains ignored largely.

Greenhouse gases are released by land clearing, inappropriate fertilizer use, and other practices while agricultural run-off carries nitrogen which ends up in the atmosphere as potent nitrous oxide. When forest land is cleared for farming, land which earlier acted as a sponge during rains becomes a sluice, and floods rivers and surrounding areas! How often are practices to mitigate taken? Rarely.

Surely it is time to review farming practices?

Will this be a Smart year?

This will be a year of the smart grid, or perhaps make or break year, as experts put it.

But the immediate criteria of smart grid success will be perceived benefits from advanced metering (AMI) and phasor measurement units (PMUs)--devices that precisely measure variations in voltage and current permitting their synchronization in real time.

In the US and now in the UK, there is some amount of resistance to smart meters, largely over the cost. While they radically reduce meter reading costs for the utilities, their introduction has meant rising bills only for consumers.

For success, the Advanced Metering Infrastructure will have to start yielding lower energy costs. Smart meters will have to produce their full range of expected benefits, which can be said to include demand response (enabling customers to modify electricity usage in reaction to hourly price changes), faster and more efficient service (including automated reporting of emergencies, and greater system reliability (because utilities will be getting real-time feedback from every customer's meter). They will be seen as a disappointment, according to a grid expert, if all they produce is less expensive meter reading for utilities.

As thousands of PMUs are being deployed on transmission lines to report voltage deviations in real time to utilities, significantly greater system reliability should result. If we don't start seeing measurable improvements in system reliability soon, they too will be a disappointment.

In the longer run the smart grid should involve much more than just AMI and PMU: integration of two-way communications throughout distribution systems, a more renewable-friendly grid, power systems that in their totality are much more efficient, lower carbon emissions, etc.

Glaring truth

Eliminating subsidies for coal, gas and oil could save as much as Germany's annual greenhouse gas emissions each year by 2015, according to Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency (IEA). While the G20 pledged in 2009 to phase out such fossil fuel subsidies in the "medium term", the hundreds of billions that governments spend each year rose in 2010.

Energy is significantly underpriced in many parts of the world, leading to wasteful consumption, price volatility and fuel smuggling. It's also undermining the competitiveness of renewables, Birol told The Guardian.

According to IEA research, 37 governments spent $409bn on artificially lowering the price of fossil fuels in 2010. Critics say the subsidies significantly boost oil and gas consumption and disadvantage renewable energy technologies, which received only $66bn of subsidies in the same year.

A phase-out would avoid 750m tonnes of CO2 a year by 2015, potentially rising to 2.6 gigatonnes by 2035, a level sufficient to provide half the emissions reductions needed to limit global warming to 2C, considered the limit of safety by many scientists.

That brings us back to our old question: who will bell the cat? Which government will brave it, to lose votes?

Opportunity knocks

India can be a great power, ushering in a game-changing third industrial revolution by utilising its renewable energy resources and collaborating with power producers and suppliers, says American economist and author Jeremy Rifkin.

The country can leapfrog into the third industrial revolution by creating infrastructure that allows individual buildings, houses and villages to generate energy by utilising renewable sources like solar, wind and geothermal energy. Houses could then sell the energy through internet or distribution companies, he told IANS. This will give level-playing field to the rural areas in terms of industrialisation. Else, a juvenile infrastructure for third industrial revolution would take 20 years and another 20 years for a mature infrastructure.

Rifkin was in New Delhi for the release of a report, Mega Trends of the Emerging Third Industrial Revolution in India, prepared in collaboration with FICCI Young Leaders (FYL).

The report, which identifies India's transit to a post-carbon economic era, claims that if 20 percent of all energy needs be sourced from renewable sources, it would create jobs and industries that in the long term will lower the cost of generating energy through these methods.

Makes sense. But who will take the lead? Where is the leader with vision?

The big challenge

World Future Energy Summit today saw UN secy gen Ban Ki-moon warn that we are on the point of no return regarding climate change. This is the international year of sustainable energy for all that aims to electrify dark corners of the planet without adding to climate change.

UN General Assembly’s Resolution 65/151, which was passed in 2010, sees the initiative as engaging governments, the private sector, and civil society partners globally with the goal of achieving sustainable energy for all, and to reach three major objectives by 2030, viz., Ensuring universal access to modern energy services; Doubling the rate of improvement in energy efficiency; Doubling the share of renewable energy in the global energy mix.

One in five people worldwide lack access to modern electricity. Three billion people still rely on charcoal and dung for cooking, but if those three billion people were all to get their power from coal-fired plants, the planet's climate would be doomed.

The International Energy Agency estimates that global energy demand, spurred largely by developing nations coming online, will spike 50% by mid-century. Clean energy is an imperative, but implementation will need innovation, partnership with the private sector, and above all, visionary leadership. Do we have them all?

Cut soot, save lives and cool the globe

An international team of scientists says that governments can significantly reduce global warming, and prevent millions of premature deaths, by targeting emissions of methane and soot. In a new study published in the journal Science, the researchers say simple strategies that target those emissions and use existing technologies could shave nearly 1 degree Fahrenheit off the warming projected by mid-century.

And with international efforts to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide, the main cause of climate change, largely stalled, it represents a cheaper and more attainable approach. Strategies to reduce methane emissions include improving methods of capturing gas from mines and oil- and gas-producing facilities and reducing leaks from pipelines and landfills; global levels of soot, or black carbon, can be cut by requiring more efficient filters for diesel vehicles, developing cleaner-burning cook stoves and imposing bans on burning agricultural land.

Such measures would prevent 700,000 to 4.7 million air pollution-related deaths per year, the study says. “Ultimately, we have to deal with CO2, but in the short term, dealing with these pollutants is more doable, and it brings fast benefits,” said Drew Shindell, the lead author and researcher at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and Columbia University’s Earth Institute.

In developing and developed nations, burning wastes also adds to the soot. Particularly dry garbage. This will take time to change.

Who will fix the faucet?

Often, big plans are stymied by implementation hurdles, and when talking clean energy, the biggest block often is scarcity of trained labour.

Plumbers are almost wholly unprepared for the "drastic change" to the way the UK's homes are heated as part of efforts to cut carbon emissions, according to leading engineers in UK.

The engineers were wary of government plans to upgrade homes through its much-vaunted "green deal" policy, which will come into force late this year. Under the scheme, households will be offered loans to improve their properties' energy efficiency.

In a report published on Thursday, the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE) also warned that government plans for insulation and green energy are not adequate for the changes needed for a shift to low-carbon heating. They called for a massive switch to renewable energy such as solar water heaters and wood-burning stoves to a street by street effort to upgrade insulation in Britain's draughty homes.

The lack of necessary skills among plumbers and heating installers is proving a major brake on the UK's ability to make this switch, the RAE found. The study found examples of inexperienced or underqualified installers causing serious problems. One household paid thousands more than it should have because a heat pump had been wrongly connected - instead of energy bills falling as they had expected, the bills soared from £30 to £250 a month. It cost thousands to fix. In another case cited by one of the study authors, solid wall insulation was badly installed in some old housing stock, causing condensation to collect on the walls and rot floor joists.

About a quarter of the UK's carbon emissions come from heating residential buildings, largely with gas. To meet future carbon reduction targets, the amount of fuel used must come down drastically and millions of homes will have to use new technology such as heat pumps.

Clean energy and energy efficiency measures will require a new crop of trained plumbers and electricians to work on the new system. This is what nations have to give priority to before embarking on grand schemes.

Capping coal

China tripled its solar energy generating capacity last year and notched up major increases in wind and hydropower, government figures showed this week, but officials are still struggling to cap the growth in coal burning, which comprises 79 percent of the energy pie.

After burning an extra 95m tonnes last year, China will soon account for half the coal burned on the planet. This has alarmed state planners concerned about the impact of air pollution and climate change. But can they do anything about it given the 9 percent growth imperatives?

Maybe. A meeting of China's National Energy Administration has called for energy use to be kept below 4.1bn tonnes of coal equivalent per year by 2015. In short, a cap. This will become one of the most important industrial targets in the world because it would largely determine how large a mountain of coal China burns and, as a result, how much CO2 it emits.

Its stride in renewables saw China register a rise of 47GW in wind power generating capacity, and the completion of an extra 12.6 gigawatts of hydropower, with almost twice that amount also likely to come on line this year. In comparison, the UK has 75GW of energy capacity, of all types.

The most spectacular growth, however, was in photovoltaic power generation, which rose threefold to 3GW.

Clearly that is the way ahead but not fast enough. An energy cap could help bolster such attempts. Will it go through? Will the growth soothsayers allow such a move which will decelerate their intentions? Can China become a true world leader? More important, will other nations follow suit?

Tar sands and food production

An eye-opening study shows the effects that full development of Canada's tar sands would have on global food production, and the forecast isn't good particularly for regions already vulnerable to climate change, such as Africa.

David Wheeler at the Center for Global Development put together an analysis assuming that the entire deposit will be mined and the extracted crude oil burned by 2100, which he calculated would release 209 gigatons of carbon into the atmosphere—and, in turn, raising the atmospheric CO2 concentration by 99 parts per million.

Using those calculations to project losses in agricultural productivity by 2080 around the world, it was concluded that agricultural productivity losses affect the livelihoods of over 3 billion people in the developing world. The median projected loss is 5.6 percent, with 25 percent of countries experiencing losses of 7.1 percent or greater.

Africa suffers disproportionately, with a median loss of 7 percent and impacts extending to a 12.8 percent loss in the worst case. India, with a rural population of 804 million, suffers a 7.9 percent productivity loss.

Full exploitation of the oil sands deposit by Canada, a high-income country, would have the most severe impacts on regions where the poorest countries are concentrated. Substantially smaller losses are projected for high-income, higher-latitude countries in Europe, North America, and Oceania.

As they say, everything is connected!

Where do we go from here?

Since we are in a thinking mode, let us take a relook at Mckinsey's study on Mobilising for a resource revolution.

From 1980 to 2009, the global middle class3 grew by around 700 million people, to 1.8 billion, from roughly 1.1 billion. Over the next 20 years, it is likely to grow by an additional 3 billion, to nearly 5 billion people. The world has never before witnessed income growth of this speed and magnitude: China and India are doubling their real per capita incomes at about ten times the pace England achieved during the Industrial Revolution and at around 200 times the scale.

Can business and government leaders, not to mention consumers, move with the speed and scale needed to avoid a period of dramatically higher resource prices, along with their destabilizing impact on economic growth, welfare, and political stability?

Going by the report, market forces, and the innovation they spark, could ride to the rescue in the 21st century too. Their research on the supply- and-demand outlook for energy, food, steel, and water suggests that without a step change in resource productivity and a technology-enhanced expansion of supply, the world could be entering an era of high and volatile resource prices. Nothing less than a resource revolution is needed.

The report places much confidence on technological know-how bringing on the needed supply expansion and productivity rise. However, while supply expansion is mooted, it is also noted that this will mean more deforestation, more water consumption and more emissions! So, the question is, is this a wise solution? It simply prolongs the apocalypse.

Resource productivity should be the better option. Among the 15 such points listed, are improving energy efficiency in buildings, bringing on next generation vehicles, cutting food waste and developing high-strength steel! Yes, queer as that may sound, ArcelorMittal, the world’s largest steel company, estimates that high-strength steel would reduce the weight of steel columns and steel beams by about 32 and 19 percent, respectively. Qube Design Associates has developed advanced reinforcing bars that weigh 30 percent less than conventional ones.

Government challenges will be many, including working across ministries as resources will be such that they span the range from agriculture, industries, water, energy, forestry and urban development!

The report also feels fiscal regimes in many countries provide a disincentive to the productive use of energy, land, and water resources by subsidizing them to the tune of more than $1 trillion per year. Replacing these subsidies with market-based prices would improve the attractiveness of resource productivity opportunities to private-sector investors.

Alongwith all these options it would be prudent to adopt a conservation approach to resources. If one believes in saving for the future...

Smart moves ahead

A new report predicts that 100 million new smart meters will be installed across Europe between now and the end of 2016 as nations continent-wide aim to achieve greater energy efficiency and increased reliance on renewable sources of energy.

According to GTM Research, European investment in smart grid improvements will reach €6.8 billion annually, with much of that money targeting advanced meter infrastructure, energy distribution automation, and electric vehicle technology.

Among those sectors, the report says, smart meters, which allow consumers to track their energy use in real time and relay that information to utilities, are currently the most developed technology. According to the report, many European utilities hope to use smart meter technology to improve their relationships with customers.

Meanwhile, U.S.-based Pike Research reports that 19.2 million smart meters were shipped worldwide during the third quarter of 2011, a 5.3 percent increase over the previous quarter; growth was particularly strong in North America and China, according to the Pike report.

A load off the clean energy basket

Time and again one comes up against the debate on baseload, how important is it for energy security? Not at all, say experts. The entire US grid could be powered by just wind and solar thermal, they say, challenging the very concept of baseload power, the sort provided by coal and nuclear.

Grids can work perfectly well with a mixture of inflexible supply like wind and flexible supply (solar thermal with storage). Wind is already cheaper than new-built coal in the US, and solar thermal with storage, and used as a peaking plant, will be competitive with peaking gas, they say.

PV also has the same impact as wind. As wind and PV fills up the energy stack (they go first because they have the lowest short run marginal cost), what is needed to complete the requirements is flexible generation. Not coal, they say.

This is seen in South Australia, where wind has provided more than 20 per cent of annual output last year and much higher on occasions. In Germany, where wind and PV capacity amounts to 45GW, Statkfraft has announced this week that it may close two gas-fired power stations, amounting to one gigawatt of capacity, because of this impact.

So what holds up the rest of the world, so unwilling to let go fossil fuel and come clean? Apathy largely.

Nuclear fears

After a glimpse into the future, perhaps it is not out of sync to think back on the past, especially the single-most disastrous event of 2011 - the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe.

First, its unprecedented scope--three reactor partial meltdowns, two hydrogen explosions that destroyed outer containment buildings, and a raging fire in a spent-fuel pond--all beyond human control.

Second, badly amplifying that image, was the incompetence and haplessness of the corporate and governmental response. While the CEO of TEPCO, owner and operator of the reactor complex, reportedly fell into a fugue state, unable to make decisions and issue orders for days, onsite representatives of Japan's nuclear regulator fled the stricken reactors, only to be ordered back. No single voice took responsibility as the crisis unfolded.

All that gave credence to the anti-nuclear argument that all reactors are subject to unexpected mishaps, and that those operating and regulating reactors are not as fit to react in emergencies as one would like to believe.

Nuclear energy can do more than any other technology to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions; taking all environmental ramifications of competing technologies into account, nuclear is probably the cheapest source of baseload electricity; the volume of nuclear wastes is tiny compared to all the waste products of coal combustion; per megawatt capacity, the geographic footprint of reactor complexes is small compared to those of wind or solar complexes.

And yet, the even more obvious risks of nuclear energy have come to dominate perceptions in the rich countries. Nuclear will not make a positive contribution to reducing greenhouse gas emissions in North America, Europe, or Japan. Only in fast developing countries like China and India are nuclear prospects still positive. And yet these are so densely populated countries that can ill-afford the outcome of nuclear disaster.

Opposition and fear of nuclear energy seems reasonable. How does one tackle a Kudankulam tussle?

The new way

Finally, the apocalypse year 2012 is here! Many speak of the end of the world, some say it is a major transformation coming up, some ignore all stories and plod along the beaten track. Business as usual.

Well, whatever the larger powers that rule the cosmos have in store, one thing is already evident, there is transformation bound to happen on much earthy areas. Of energy, environment,resources... of the very way we look at growth.

There is the fallacy of the law of supply and demand - you cannot demand what is simply not there. Our economic system does not inventory the depletion of natural resources, as John Michael Greer says in his new book, The Wealth of Nature: Economics as if Survival Mattered.

Greer divides up the economy into three parts. There's the Primary which encompasses all the planet's natural resources and services, the Secondary which includes the goods made by humans from these resources and the Tertiary which refers to the financial sector. It is this last category that has come to dominate, spinning a web of ever more complex derivative products that have promised the world an endless possibility of wealth pulled from thin air.

Greer is convinced that we are in the twilight of the age of investment. The growth economy simply isn't going to grow anymore to bring in a return. The promise that invested money will outperform the faltering economy of goods and services is simply a publicly accepted fantasy, a faith based system.

What about the promise of new technology and new sources of energy that will bring back the economy we assume is our birthright? No way, as Greer says. The energy required to pull this last rabbit out of the hat will be more than the energy we can gain from such efforts.

What then is the solution? We cannot live without energy, for sure. The answer is to opt for small. The Principle of Subsidiary Function says that we use only as much energy as necessary, and for that, use as local a source as possible.

This will hold true on all other fronts, not only energy. Optimise the use of resources, reuse and recycle, consume less, waste lesser. What better a transformation can we ask for? What better learning than to realise the planet has limited resources, and a burgeoning population? What better way than to live simple?

It will be tough, especially for those of us who cannot easily give up what we have taken for granted. That most over-rated term called 'comfort'! Maybe it is time to rethink on that word and reset our lives.

Do write in your thoughts.