Extracts from the March-April 2003 edition of Renew
These extracts only represent about 25% of it

14 World Round up

Vampires to be Slayed in USA

Many household appliances use energy even when they are ostensibly switched off, including the ubiquitous LEDs lights and the transformers which convert power from main voltage to 12 volts to run electronics- a terrible way to heat your house. Devices with ‘standby’ losses like this have been called energy vampires.

According to Mark Pierce from Cornell University, the average American home has 20 electrical appliances that need power for timers, clocks, memory and remote on and off switches. He told the Guardian that these vampires cost US consumers a total of $3bn a year- or about $200 per household. "We’re using the equivalent of seven electrical generating plants just to supply the amount of electricity needed to support the standby power of our vampire appliances".

Meanwhile California has passed legislation that requires the state to double its supply of renewable energy to 20% of all retail power sales by 2017, the highest level in the US. California is now the thirteenth state to introduce a Renewables Portfolio Standard (RPS) scheme, and their ambitious RPS involves suppliers in effect having to expand their use of renewables by 1% p.a..

With the Bush administration hostile to Kyoto, several other states are also pushing ahead with their own independent emission reduction programmes. More than half the states have adopted voluntary or mandatory programmes for reducing carbon emissions in recent years, according the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.

Fifteen states, including President Bush's home state of Texas, have enacted legislation requiring utilities to increase their use of renewable energy sources such as wind power or biomass in generating a portion of their overall electricity.

* British Disease spreads: It’s not called New England for nothing. A familiar NIMBY battle is emerging in relation to a 400MW 170 turbine offshore windfarm proposed off the coast at Cape Cod, despite it being 4 miles out. See: www.capewind.com & www.saveoursound.org.

Renewable Spain

Wind power has been roaring ahead in Spain, with over 4GW installed, and renewable energy could account for almost 30% of electricity generation within a decade, compared with around 17% at present, according to the Spanish Association of Renewable Energy Producers. However this growth may be stifled if government subsidies were removed from renewable energy- there had been indications that the government was considering ending subsidies for renewables, since it felt that some were mature enough to compete in the open market. The Association claimed that subsidies were still needed as ‘the most difficult part is still ahead’.

Irish Wind Objections

The Republic of Ireland has a quite ambitious programme of renewable development- and aims to source 13.2% of its electricity from renewables by 2010. However that is seen as a minimum by the enthusiasts, although, equally, they are worried that it might not be achieved. One problem, as in the UK, is the emergence of local opposition to wind projects- including opposition to the proposed wind farm in Fermanagh, at the Knocks, which would be the biggest in Ireland to date.

That has already become a problem in the Northern Ireland. Last year, several hundred people held a protest against plans to build a wind farm with up to 85 turbines off the north coast of Northern Ireland, but near the border with the South. The £200m project would be located in the sea between Portstewart in County Londonderry and Donegal in the Republic of Ireland. If successful, it could supply power to 170,000 homes, 28% of all homes in Northern Ireland. However, the north coast is famous for its sea views and, according to BBC On-Line, some residents feel "clean" energy would be generated to the detriment of tourism, one of the area’s main incomes.

Dutch Green Power Mess

The fate of the very progressive green energy programme in the Netherlands looked decidedly shaky last year when a political swing similar to some extent to that which occurred in Denmark, led to proposals for severe cutbacks on the renewable energy subsidies, including halving the tax exemption on green energy. However, although the so-called ‘MEP’ legislation was proposed and passed, the coalition government collapsed after only 100 days in office, and the situation now looks somewhat fluid.

The new ‘caretaker’ Government has proposed providing 140 million euros in new subsidies for green electricity producers to partially offset the elimination of 450 million euros in renewable energy tax breaks for consumers announced by the previous government last September. But that is not seen as enough by renewable energy supporters who argue that it will mean that the country’s target of getting 10% electricity from renewables by 2010 would be unreachable. And all this despite the fact that 1.2 million Dutch people signed up for green power schemes, in the first year or so of the new scheme, indicating widespread support for renewables, even if they cost more.

Dutch environmental groups have been fighting back, with a ‘Save Green Energy’ campaign, which, it seems, led to a softening of the cuts proposed in the MEP bill, at least for a while.

For updates see Greenprices: www.greenprices.nl

The Philippines Department of Energy together with WWF Philippines recently organised a visit to Europe to showcase opportunities for investment in renewable energy. In its briefing paper, WWF claim that the technical potential for renewables in the Philippines is massive and enough to meet energy needs many times over: The Philippines is already a world leader in geothermal power. Globally the country is second only to the United States in installed capacity. Over 1900MW of geothermal power provides 17% of the existing power supply, and the technical potential is put at 4000MW. So far there are only 4 windfarms, but the wind potential is seen as large, as of course is the solar potential, given the national average insolation level of 5.0-5.1 kwh/m2/day. The potential for small Hydro and Biomass is also large. Government plans have targeted renewables as a priority, and intend to deliver an additional 3549MW of added renewables capacity over the next 10 years, an expected annual increase of 7.8% per year.

EU to miss Kyoto target?

The European Union will miss its Kyoto targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions even if it launches new policies on cleaner energy, according to the International Energy Agency. Although the EU could increase the share of renewables such as wind and solar to 30% of electricity supply by 2030, that would not reduce emissions enough to meet climate change targets. According to the IEA, the EU emitted around 3,080 million tonnes of CO2 in 1990. This would rise to 3,146 m tonnes in 2010 and to 3,829 by 2030 without any new "green" policies. With new policies on renewable energy, emissions would be 4.9% lower than that "business as usual" case by 2010, but would still be up from the 1990 level. The main reason was the large projected rise in demand for transport.

‘Nuclear Unavoidable’

Views like this seem to be providing ammunition for nuclear proponents in the EC. The European Union’s commissioner for energy and transport, Loyola de Palacio, attending the Eighth International Energy Forum in Osaka, repeated her now familiar line "Renewable energy forms like wind and solar power are not enough", she said. "A diverse energy mix is needed. Nuclear power is unavoidable in Europe if we wish to fulfill our commitments to the Kyoto Protocol".

More German wind

However, Germany is clearly not going the adopt this view. It already has over 10GW of on-land wind capacity and it has plans to add 25GW of offshore capacity by 2030. Permission has already been given for the 1,000 MW Borkum-West project, 45 kilometres off the German/Dutch North Sea coast, with construction due to start soon. The next in line looks like being the 240 MW Butendieck North Sea wind park, planned to be built from 2005. It would be 30 kilometres off the north-west German coast near Denmark, owned by a pool of private investors with 80 three MW turbines.

EC sets up hydrogen study

Looking to the future, the European Commission is setting up a High-Level Group to assess the prospects for using hydrogen and fuel cells as a key element in transport and overall energy policy. The group’s initial report is due mid 2003.

Hydrogen seems increasingly to be seen as the key long term option. Commission President Romano Prodi commented that the scientific programme will be as important for Europe as the space programme was for the U.S. in the 1960’s. Overall, the EU plans to spend 2.12 billion euros from 2003 to 2006 on renewable energy development, mostly technologies related to hydrogen, compared to the 127 million euros spent between 1999 and 2002. But it might not just be renewables that benefitted. The EC Energy & Transport Commissioner said that production and distribution of hydrogen on, a commercial scale, posed enormous technical and infrastructural challenges and would require massive inputs from sustainable energy sources ‘notably nuclear power’.

There is already a European Integrated Hydrogen Project (EIHP), aimed at creating a basis for the harmonisation of necessary legislation in the EU and developing concepts for safety, infrastructure and standardised vehicle components.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr. Prodi, compared the importance of the hydrogen initiatives with the introduction of the euro and EU enlargement, and put the cost of converting Europe to a decentralized energy grid based on hydrogen fuel cells placed at or near the point of energy consumption at about five times the cost of installing a mobile-phone network. "The cost is enormous", he said, "but it is not out of reach", assuming the involvement of the private sector.

EU looks at carbon sinks

If all else fails there is always the sequestration option. The EC has launched a new CarboEurope research initiative- a cluster of 15 research projects supported with a budget of Euro 25 million, bringing together around 160 research institutions from over 20 countries to look at whether the biosphere, and above all forests, can reduce the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. In theory European forests could be huge carbon sinks. CarboEurope’s preliminary results point to a CO2 absorption rate of up to 30% of EU annual industrial emissions.

Kyotoc: COP 8 smooths the way

The eighth Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP-8) took place in New Delhi at the end of Oct. Final ratification of the Kyoto Accord will probably not be until COP 9, now scheduled for Dec. COP 8 focussed on the details of technical and operational issues relating to the so called ‘flexibility mechanisms’- Joint Implementation, the Clean Development Mechanism, and the Carbon trading system. Progress seems to have been made, despite Saudi Arabia evidently complaining that the support for renewables implicit in the negotiations was ‘discriminatory’ against oil.

The head of the UK delegation, Margaret Beckett, described the meeting as ‘very useful, though unspectacular’ and said it would ‘help to make the Kyoto Protocol a success when it comes into force’.

Kyoto ratification requires support from 55 Parties representing 55% of Annex I Parties’ 1990 CO2 emissions. By the time of COP-8, the ratification situation was that 95 Parties representing 37.1% of Annex I emissions had ratified. Russia, which had to ratify in order for the Protocol to enter into force, has indicated it would ratify in the near future. But Canada equivocated. It said at WSSD that it would ratify but it also came up with a controversial ‘Clean Energy Proposal’ under which it would receive credit equivalent to 70m tonnes of CO2 toward its commitment under the Kyoto Protocol for its export of natural gas and hydroelectric power to the USA. But in the end it signed up- making the USA (and Australia) look increasingly isolated.

Although not among the 38 developed (Annex 1) countries that agreed to specific targets to limit their greenhouse gas emissions, S. Korea has ratified the Kyoto Agreement under which, like other developing countries, it is is required, between 2008 and 2012, to draw up and regularly update "national and regional programs containing measures to mitigate climate change and measures to facilitate adequate adaptation to climate change".

China is in the same situation and said at WSSD that it will ratify soon.

For ECO’s excellent coverage of COP8 see http://www.climatenetwork.org/eco/

We particularly liked their cartoon of the ‘Whitehouse Effect’, with the comment: ‘Human in activity can also cause climate change’

The full Delhi Declaration is at: http://unfccc.int/cop8/index.html