Global IssuesOn the Road to Green Energy for All
Like our cave-dwelling ancestors of 200,000 years ago, nearly three billion people still use fire for cooking and heating. Of those, some 1.5 billion people have no access to electricity. For a billion more, their only access is to sporadic and unreliable electricity networks.
Now an <a href='http://www.sustainableenergyforall.org/' target='_blank' class='notalink'>ambitious global effort</a> is being launched by the United Nations to bring electricity to everyone on the planet by 2030.
'Energy is the issue for the next decade,' said Kandeh Yumkella, director-general of the <a href='http://www.unido.org/index.php' target='_blank' class='notalink'>United Nations Industrial Development Organization</a> (UNIDO).
'Achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is impossible without energy,' Yumkella said at the opening of the <a href='2011 Vienna Energy Forum' target='_blank' class='notalink'>2011 Vienna Energy Forum</a> last week.
The MDGs include reducing by half the proportion of people living in poverty by 2015, and ensuring environmental sustainability.
Some 1,200 delegates from 100 countries participated in the forum, along with 40 government ministers, to discuss how to bring clean, efficient, reliable and affordable energy services for the long-term prosperity of all people.
'The 791 million people in sub-Saharan Africa use as much electricity as the 19 million in metropolitan New York City,' Yumkella told delegates.
Indoor air pollution from burning dung, charcoal, and wood for heating and cooking leads to nearly two million premature deaths of women and children every year, more than all the deaths from malaria and tuberculosis, he said. 'We're here to prepare an action plan to be launched later this year to change all this.'
Extending electrical services to the 1.5 billion who have no access will cost between 30 and 40 billion dollars a year for the next 20 years, according to various estimates by the International Energy Agency and others. That represents just three percent of current annual expenditures on energy. And it is just eight percent of what is currently spent on subsidies for fossil fuels, said Carsten Staur, the permanent representative of Denmark to the United Nations.
'The goal of energy for all is ambitious but doable,' Staur said.
That goal is one of three energy goals U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki- moon asked participants at the Forum to support and on which to develop a plan of action to be launched in 2012 during the U.N. International Year for Sustainable Energy for All.
The other two goals are to reduce energy intensity by 40 percent and to increase the share of renewable energy to 30 percent globally by 2030. These goals bring a multitude of benefits, including cleaner air, sustainable economic development, climate change mitigation, better health and livelihoods and more, Ban told delegates by video- link.
Energy experts calculate that decentralised, off-grid technologies like wind, solar, geo-thermal and micro-hydro energy generation are the fastest and more cost effective way for most who have no access. Extending current electrical grids only makes economic sense to meet 15-25 percent of the need due to the high costs.
'Access to electricity is the key to overcoming poverty,' said Ged Davis, co-president of the <a href='http://www.iiasa.ac.at/Research/ENE/GEA/index.html' target='_blank' class='notalink'>Global Energy Assessment</a> (GEA) Council.
Davis warned that most of this electricity for the poor needs to be green to avoid adding more carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels like coal. 'There's plenty of fossil fuels left in the ground. There is no way we can burn known coal reserves without a horrendous impact on the climate,' Davis told the forum.
A rapid transition away from fossil fuel energy sources is needed to avoid dangerous climate change, scientists agree. Developed countries need to reduce their carbon emissions 40 percent by 2020. The European Union has made cuts of nearly 20 percent so far, but countries like the U.S., Canada and Australia are far behind.
Fortunately, the energy potential of renewable energy is far greater than fossil fuels but they are conceptually different since renewables are energy flows not energy units, Davis said.
That is one issue the GEA will tackle in its advice to policy makers. The GEA is a five-year scientific assessment involving hundreds of energy experts on how to meet the world's energy needs.
The GEA will be a policy-relevant assessment, lay out the linked options for going forward, provide a vision of how to resolve energy challenges simultaneously and provide new insight into the potential leverage points for achieving more sustainable energy futures. It is expected to be released in 2012.
Energy efficiency is the key to bringing energy services to everyone and dealing with climate change, Davis said, noting that, 'Efficiency opens up enormous flexibility in energy choices.'
It is also two to three times better to invest in efficiency than in energy generation. Buildings can use 90 percent less energy, and can even be retrofitted to generate surplus energy, he said.
However, less than 50 million dollars a year is being invested globally in research into renewables and energy efficiency, an amount he calls 'peanuts'.
The biggest challenge of this decade is avoiding 'locking into current technologies', he warned. Building coal-fired power plants, high-energy buildings and other infrastructure today locks countries onto a wasteful energy and high-carbon emission pathway for the next 20 or 30 years.
Development with a 'high-carbon lock in' poses a danger to all. Everyone on the planet has a stake in the success of the U.N.'s Sustainable Energy for All campaign. However, finding the 30 to 40 billion dollars a year to make this happen won't be easy, warns Monique Barbut, CEO and chair of the <a href='http://www.thegef.org/gef/' target='_blank' class='notalink'>Global Environment Facility </a> (GEF), the world's largest funder of projects to improve the global environment.
'It's an extremely large amount to sustain for two decades. Getting the funding is a big challenge,' Barbut told the forum.
The GEF, which has 182 governments as members, has invested 3.1 billion dollars to finance low carbon projects in its 20-year existence.
'The private sector is not going to invest in this unless they are assured of a good return. That's the reality,' she said.
© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service