Renew On Line (UK) 39

Extracts from the Sept-Oct 2002 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

13. WREC 2002

The World Renewable Energy Congress 2002 in Cologne followed the tradition of previous WREC’s with a vast turnout of renewable specialists from around the world assembling to exchange ideas. Dave Elliott reports.

Cologne is surrounded by flat land but nevertheless, on the train journey from Brussels, scores of windturbines can be seen in operation. Altogether, the North Rhine Westfalen region has over 1GW of wind power capacity in place, and prides it self on being one of the most progressive regions of Germany, in terms of renewable energy. However, it’s also still a major user of coal. So maybe it was a good place to explore some of the conflicts that are emerging as renewable energy tries to take over here as elsewhere. There certainly were some conflicts apparent. To start with, although it’s the largest, WREC is no longer the only major international conference around - rival conferences and organisations have sprung up, like the World Council for Renewable Energy. which had just had a gathering in Berlin. More importantly, rival agendas have begun to emerge, not least in terms of national policies. Just about everyone at WREC seemed to be batting on the same side, but there were spirited attacks on the policies adopted by the Danish government (80% cut in support for renewables), the US government (on their lack of support for the Kyoto Accord) and on the world in general (for focussing the upcoming WSSD too much on the needs of people rather than the needs of the planet).

But WREC isn’t the UN, and although WREC did explore policy issues (like the long running battle over whether to use REFIT type subsidies or NFFO/RO type competitive support mechanisms) the bulk of the week focussed on the technical issues and achievements. There certainly were a lot. Wind power continues to triumph over all else, PV solar is still trying to catch up, but doing increasingly well in the building sector, biomass is consolidating its position as the bulk energy supplier in many countries, with pyrolysis being the big new area of interest.

Meanwhile, geothermal and small hydro maintain their roles as useful local sources of power in many areas, and wave and tidal power continue to emerge as new options. The UK’s Stingray tidal current device ( see our Technology Section) and Pelamis wave snake were both featured in the parallel Renewable Energy trade exhibition, both of them being about to be tested at sea in Scotland (more in Renew 140). But it isn’t just the UK that is looking at wave and tidal power. There were also papers on wave energy from Ireland, India, Japan, Jamaica and the USA, and a paper from Bangladesh on tidal barrages. One interesting idea was to use the base of an offshore wind turbine to house a pendular wave device: it was calculated that the combination would produce power at 10% less cost.

In parallel, hydrogen is increasingly seen as the next big thing, with some novel ideas about new renewably driven processes for the dissociation of water being reported, including photo dissociation, with one US project evidently achieving hydrogen production efficiencies of 12.5%. Of course that is nowhere near the 80% achieved by the more familiar method, electrolysis - a Russian paper looked at using seawater, with chlorine production being a useful by-product. But there are clearly other approaches. For example there was the idea from India of generating hydrogen from organic wastes. Nanotube storage of hydrogen was the other big idea, along of course with the development of fuel cells – there were more than a dozen papers on this area.

But in the end, as at previous WREC’s, it wasn’t the technology that was important so much as the personal networking between people from across the world. WREC is excellent for that- and also takes care to pay attention to gender related issues, such as the role of women in economic development. Prof. Ali Sayigh, WREC’s ever energetic chairman, opened the conference by calling on those present to ‘make the world a smaller place’ by building new contacts. It rained at lot in Cologne, but that didn’t inhibit the delegates from carrying out this instruction. Next, in 2004, WREC meets in Denver. It will be interesting to see if the positive mood continues to prevail.