Safety vs Security

Even as the Japanese government took a decision to restart two of its nuclear reactors bowing in to the need of the day, elsewhere the Rio+20 summit saw the launch of an online campaign against fossil fuels. Both address growing demand for energy in the world today. After months of shutdown of its reactors, Japan which has been suffering major power shortages decided to fall back on its reactors despite the public outcry seen there. Does this mean safety comes only after energy security??

Climate activists would have us think otherwise. The 24-hour "Twitter storm" launched at Rio summit against the hundreds of billions of dollars of government subsidies paid each year to the petroleum and coal industry was making a case for the planet’s safety/health. While the campaign saw a record breaking number of participants, the moot point is whether such twitters are more than a glitch on the graph. Can online organising work any real wonders or do they serve as mere gimmicks? Does reaching out to youth serve a purpose on the grand scale of things? Do they remain in public memory for more than a twitter of a second?!

International Energy Agency figures show that government subsidies for fossil fuels are 12 times greater than those for renewable energy. The G20 promised action three years ago to phase out inefficient fossil fuel subsidies, but a new report suggests they have not yet eliminated any because the definition of "inefficient" is vague.

A piece of hope from the summit is what the United Nations Environment Program is offering as an alternative to GDP - called the Inclusive Wealth Index, it adds natural capital to the list of economic measurements in a bid to assess the sustainability of a country's growth. For example, China's growth drops from more than 400 percent since 1990 as measured by GDP to just 45 percent in the IWI, thanks to the decline in that country's natural resources. GDP, it has been argued, isn't a very good measure of whether people are benefiting from growth. A rise in cancer diagnoses registers as growth!

 

Access more important

When energy is being discussed, it is either security or mix that is discussed, not the energy access, or energy poverty. Is it because the poor have no voice?

Indoor smoke inhalation kills more people ever year (around 1.4 million people) than malaria does. Also, while the mortality incidence from AIDS and malaria are projected to decrease in coming years, deaths from indoor smoke inhalation are expected to rise.

If the aim is to improve access, decentralised power must play a large role, one in which communities have a stake. Yet, when it comes to research, it is most always the advanced combustion systems, or commercial fuels, and large centralized power facilities that are discussed. This, even though more than 3 billion people rely on wood, charcoal, and other biomass fuels for the bulk of their energy needs.

Do we need as much "cutting edge" research as socially relevant solutions? Or what experts refer to as mundane science.

Driving down the cost of clean energy, so that industrial nations can replace their incumbent carbon infrastructure with renewables, is inextricably linked to closing the global energy gap and expanding energy access to the world's poor, as many see it. Delivering the energy poor the means to control their own destiny through expanded access to clean and affordable electricity must be an explicit element in efforts towards decarbonization. Do you agree?

Access must be an integral part of security.

The energy war

Will it be an energy war we see next, or a water war? Any guesses?

A professor and author of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy, Michael Klare predicts an energy war lasting 30 years. He sees it as a succeed-or-perish contest among the major forms of energy, the corporations which supply them, and the countries that run on them. The question will be: Which will dominate the world's energy supply in the second half of the 21st century?

Why 30 years?? Because he believes that's how long it will take for experimental energy systems like hydrogen power, cellulosic ethanol, wave power, algae fuel, and advanced nuclear reactors to make it from the laboratory to full-scale industrial development.

This will be a war because the future profitability, or even survival, of many of the world's most powerful and wealthy corporations will be at risk and because the acquisition of adequate supplies of energy is as basic a matter of national security as can be imagined, struggles over oil and natural gas, will trigger armed violence.

The existing energy portfolio will just not suffice as demands increase. Meeting the 40 percent increase required given the demand from new and old quarters will only trigger the energy war.

According to BP, the world consumed 13.2 billion tons of oil-equivalent from all sources in 2010: 33.6 percent from oil, 29.6 percent from coal, 23.8 percent from natural gas, 6.5 percent from hydroelectricity, 5.2 percent from nuclear energy, and a mere 1.3 percent from all renewable forms of energy. Together, fossil fuels -- oil, coal, and gas -- supplied 10.4 billion tons, or 87 percent of the total.

Whether natural gas can be the transition fuel or more, whether renewables will go up beyond 4-5 percent globally, many things will decide how the 'war' will turn out. Whether we can appease our fuel thirst, or tweak technology further more, whether we can turn to local, distributed generation, all these will decide the winners and losers.

A bit of both

The Brazilian government plans to overhaul the country's energy basket with more emphasis on renewable resources, while continuing to plan for future expansion of local production of traditional fossil fuels.

Seventy-five percent of Brazil's energy comes from hydroelectric power, and the government plans to build more such stations, but without causing further deforestation. This will be done by siting more carefully, as also by using underwater river turbines. The government expects to produce 50 million megawatts from this kind of hydroelectric plant in the next two years. The Environment Ministry now requires new thermoelectric plants fuelled by coal or diesel to compensate for their greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees.

The government will invest more in renewable energy. Already 46 percent of the Brazilian energy mix is based on renewable sources, while ethanol accounts for 16 percent. Use of flex-fuel motors in new vehicles is claimed to have cut Brazil's emissions of carbon dioxide by 50 million tonnes since 2003.

The criticism against biofuels and how the process of farming crops like sugarcane in Brazil and maize in the United States releases amounts of nitrous oxide, another greenhouse gas, that more than counteract the benefit of lowering emissions of carbon dioxide generated by burning ethanol instead of gasoline is countered by an argument that it is degraded and arid land that is being used.

According to the government, only one percent of the land suitable for agriculture in Brazil is used to grow sugarcane. Ethanol production notwithstanding, neither the government nor Petrobras are willing to stop producing oil and natural gas, or even to increase output. Petrobras currently produces 1.9 million barrels of crude per day.

Studies may keep calling attention to the hard facts of fossil fuels and climate change, is it going to make any change to nations that see independent reserves as their lifeline to rapid growth?

Securing energy independence

New technologies will move the world economy away from coal and other fossil fuels very rapidly, according to a new study by the Worldwatch Institute. Most of the technology needed for this is available. This contradicts the opinion of the coal industry advocates who see carbon capture playing a big role.

Full scale commercial systems for carbon capture and storage are a way off, it says in its 49 page report. This pace will not be adequate to keep up with climate change mitigation plans.
The steps it advocates for a quick transition to a low carbon economy are making buildings and power plants more efficient, expanding wind energy, etc.

Given the relative abundance of coal and the plants in place, it is obvious why the coal industry does not want to let go. But coal not only releases globe warming carbon dioxide, but other pollutants like arsenic, mercury, etc with health impacts for populations. Sometimes, accidents can impact habitations severely. Like the one last week.

A retention pond holding toxic coal ash slurry in Roane County, Tennessee, burst from its confines and released over half a billion gallons of potentially toxic sludge that swept into the nearby town of Harriman and contaminated tributaries of the Tennessee River. The resulting flood damaged 15 homes, injured one man as it knocked his house of its foundations, and has left over 400 acres of land covered by several feet of coal ash, mud and contaminated water.

Whether it is coal, oil or gas, it is clear from recent indications that energy security will play a big role in the future of nations.

Britain was given a sharp reminder of the dangers to its energy supplies last week when Gazprom warned that western Europe could be hit by gas shortages. The Russian gas provider blamed it on a long-running row with Ukraine that could disrupt supplies. Russia will be hosting a meeting of the world's major gas suppliers to set up an Opec-style production cartel that could push up the price of energy. While there are two arguments to this, it is proof of how energy dependency is not a very advisable policy.

Oil and gas producers are already debating on the wisdom behind exports as against using surplus energy at home to spur development!

Renewable energy and energy efficiency could play crucial roles for nations thinking seriously about self-reliance. But for renewable energy to gather steam, subsidies on fossil fuels will have to go. This is not happening. Even in the US, the oil price crash is seeing sales of SUVs picking up! Never matter the recession, the oil is cheap, right?

Is it any different here in India? When grid power is cheap, so cheap that discoms can hardly hope to break even, will renewable energy be able to compete?

Save $600 bn or spend $360 bn?

The output from the world’s oilfields is declining faster than believed to be. With a natural annual rate of oil output decline of 9.1 percent, India, China and other developing countries’ demand for oil will require investments of $ 360 bn each year until 2030. Even with investment, the annual rate of oil output decline is 6.4 per cent.

That is the gist of a leaked version of the International Energy Agency’s annual report.

The Financial Times that obtained a copy of the report said the watchdog's annual World Energy Outlook report, which studied the biggest fields, showed that without extra investment to raise production, the natural annual rate of output decline was 9.1 percent.

It goes on to acknowledge that current energy trends are not sustainable and that a better balance must be found between the three Es – energy security, economic development and protection of the environment. Energy, it says, must be part of the solution.

In a closely related report, the WWF warns that our global footprint now exceeds the world’s capacity to regenerate by about 30%. If our demands on the planet continue at the same rate, by the mid-2030s we will need the equivalent of two planets to maintain our lifestyles.

As to how we can return to sustainability, WWF advises that we need to reduce natural resource demand by reducing population levels, individual consumption, and lowering the resources used and waste products emitted by producing goods and services.

Sustainable and efficient are clearly the keywords ringing everywhere. Mckinsey Global Institute finds that, under current policies, energy demand in developing countries will increase by 65 percent in the period to 2020, representing 80 percent of global energy demand growth. These countries currently account for 51 percent of global energy demand, and this share will rise to 60 percent in 2020 without further action.

By choosing more energy-efficient cars and appliances, improving insulation in buildings, and selecting lower-energy-consuming lighting and production technologies, developing countries could cut their annual energy demand growth by more than half from 3.4 to 1.4 percent over the next 12 years. This would leave energy consumption some 22 percent lower than otherwise, says MGI.

All this can be achieved by using solely existing technologies. Consumers and businesses in developing countries could secure savings of an estimated $600 billion a year by 2020. Far from costing money, investing in energy productivity generates energy savings that could ramp up to $600 billion annually by 2020 across all developing regions.

Is there any reason why there are no takers? Are there hidden issues?