Into the Future with New
Energy
Rio 1992, Johannesburg 2002, Bonn 2004:
three stages along the road towards a global alliance for climate protection and
sustainable development. The possibilities of renewable energy will be at the centre of
attention at the "renewables 2004" conference in Bonn in early June of this
year.
By Joachim Wille
Rio is where it all started. A ray of hope in
history. Shortly after the end of the East-West conflict, in 1992, the world’s
representatives gathered beneath the famous Sugarloaf Mountain in the Brazilian metropolis
to write a new global agenda. The fate of the planet was to be determined not by the arms
races, the nuclear threat, or competition between political and economic systems, but
rather by ideas for solving its two most urgent problems: the environment and development.
The "UN Earth Summit on Environment and Development" in Rio set standards.
Stabilize the global climate, end underdevelopment and poverty, stop the decline in
biodiversity, establish safe water supplies, stop deforestation and desert formation
– these were the objectives that were agreed. And much more besides.
Although the euphoria of Rio has faded
somewhat in the meantime, Germany continues to play a pioneering role in environmental
politics, despite difficult economic times. One milestone will be the international
conference on renewable energy which the Federal Government will stage between June 1st
and 4th in Bonn. Its name: "renewables 2004." "This conference can send out
a signal to the world," says the internationally renowned German environmental
researcher Ernst-Ulrich von Weizsäcker, founderpresident of the Wuppertal Institute for
Climate, Energy and the Environment and currently chairman of the Bundestag’s
environmental committee. He believes there is a chance that Germany’s good experience
with the introduction of climatefriendly energy will animate other countries to do the
same. "This is a field in which Germany is a leader," says von Weizsäcker.
Politically backed market incentives, for
instance, have turned wind power into an important source of electricity within just a
decade. It has already overtaken the traditional "green" form of energy,
hydroelectric power. Solar energy is also booming, and more success stories with other
renewable energy sources are in the offing.
Over 135,000 jobs have been created in the
"gentle energy" sector. Its annual turnover totals about ten billion euros,
creating a new, decentralized source of income especially in rural regions. This benefits
climate protection, because 53 million tonnes of emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon
dioxide are already avoided today every year. The air is becoming cleaner, because the
renewables produce next to no pollutant emissions. Germany is on track to reach the
country’s emissions-reduction target specified in the Kyoto Climate Protection
Protocol, which is an obligation under international law. The target figure for 2010 is a
21% reduction in six greenhouse gases, including CO2, CFCs and methane. A reduction of 19%
had already been achieved by 2003. Another reason why the further upswing in alternative
energy sources is important is because the phasing-out of the practically CO2-free (but
dangerous) nuclear power begun by the Red-Green Federal Government must not be allowed to
lead to higher greenhouse-gas emissions. The aim is that the "power gap" opened
up by the successive closure of 19 nuclear reactors by about 2020 will be filled by
improvements in power-station efficiency and with "green" electricity from
renewables. However, the development of alternative energy sources only makes sense if it
progresses wordwide – e.g. because of the global nature of the greenhouse problem.
The hope is, therefore, that the "renewables 2004" will launch a "global
alliance." Federal Chancellor Gerhard Schröder personally convened the conference at
the UN World Summit for Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in September 2002. At the
time he could be certain of arousing a lot of interest, because the mega-conference in
South Africa had failed to agree on concrete measures to expand renewable energy sources.
Schröder’s announcement came across all the more as a positive signal because it is
backed up by a financial commitment. He announced that Germany would spend an additional
billion euros on two cooperation projects with developing countries: 500 million on making
the use of energy more efficient, and another 500 million on modern renewables like wind
and solar energy.
At the time, the Johannesburg "follow-up
conference" had not been the great rallying point that people had hoped for ten years
after "Rio." For example, the hopes of many countries that binding targets would
be laid down for the energy sector were disappointed. The EU had demanded a 1.5
percentagepoint increase in the renewables’ share of total power generation to 15%
worldwide by 2010; Brazil was even more ambitious and called for a ten percentage-point
rise. However, the phrase used in the jointly adopted Johannesburg plan of action was only
that renewable energy should increase "substantially." No time target was laid
down.
The European Union was not prepared to accept
this result. Within a few days it managed in Johannesburg to persuade many countries to
join a vanguard group. This group promised to set up ambitious national and if possible
regional targets for renewables which, in the longer term, could be developed into a
global target. Over 80 states have signed up to the "Johannesburg Renewable Energy
Coalition" (JREC) in the meantime, including all the EU states plus countries such as
Brazil, South Africa, New Zealand and Morocco.
The German Minister for Economic Cooperation
and Development, Heidemarie Wieczorek-Zeul, and the Federal Minister of the Environment,
Jürgen Trittin, have great expectations of the "renewables 2004." Both are
hoping that green energies will achieve a break-through and that a master plan can be
drawn up for future energy policies. The Federal Government can build on its good
experience with the internationally acclaimed 2001 World Water Conference, which created a
global blueprint for a sustainable water supply, the second major topic that brings
together the environment and the development of a global society.
Having access to energy is just as basic a
prerequisite for fighting underdevelopment as access to a safe water supply. The United
Nations aims to halve the number of people living in poverty by 2015. "Two billion
people have no access to modern energy," says Wieczorek-Zeul. "Access to energy
is crucial to reducing poverty." She agrees with Trittin that this can be only
achieved with renewable energy. Not only would it be virtually impossible for many states
to finance an energy system for these two billion people based on coal and oil; it would
also deal a mortal blow to the world climate. "We must ensure that the climate does
not heat up by more than two degrees Celsius," warns Trittin. "Otherwise the
ecosystems will no longer be able to adjust." Access to sustainably generated energy
is "active climate policy and energy policy; at the same time it is also peace
policy," says Trittin. For example, solar power plants that simultaneously desalinate
water could prevent regional armed conflicts over the limited supplies of drinking water
around the earth’s sunbelt.
The world faces not only the huge task of
converting energy systems in the industrialized countries, but also the need to draw up a
strategy for the developing countries. For this reason, the "renewables 2004"
will certainly not be a purely academic energy conference. The initiators have issued
three principal objectives: the conference should
· draw up a joint "political
declaration" defining the growing role of renewables in a sustainable, more efficient
energy system, as well as the subsequent steps on an international level.
· adopt a concrete international plan of
action in which countries, or groups of countries, and other participants – business,
for instance – commit themselves to expanding renewables with firm targets, deadlines
and a system for monitoring implementation.
· make recommendations on "good
political strategies" for promoting alternative energy sources, also based on the
experience of various vanguard countries.
Another important topic in Bonn will, of
course, be how the hoped-for boom in renewable energy can be financed. For it is a
peculiarity of energy gained from wind and water, biomass and the sun that, although the
"raw material" is available practically free of charge and in unlimited amounts,
the capital costs for its use are (at least at present) very high. There are some ideas on
how to solve this problem, and Germany’s experience in particular can be helpful
here. It was not state subsidies that led to the unparalleled expansion of renewables; the
higher electricity-generation costs were financed by distributing them across all power
consumers. This works as follows: the "windmill operators" are guaranteed an
increased price of just under nine cents for every kilowatt-hour they feed into the public
electricity network.
This price is paid by the utilities and
distributed among all their electricity customers. This has made the operation of the
wind-powered plants profitable, and the banks have been willing to grant loans to build
the plants on the strength of the statutory guarantee to purchase the power. In the
meantime, the Red-Green Federal Government has extended this principle of distributive
financing. Since the adoption of the "Renewable Energy Law" (Erneuerbare
Energien-Gesetz, EEG) in 2000, the principle has also applied to the other forms of green
energy. The highest price of all is paid for electricity from the still very expensive
solar cells: up to 50 cents per kilowatt-hour. The government gave additional support to
the market introduction of photovoltaics by offering interest-free or lowinterest loans in
its so-called "100,000 Roofs Program." Solar cells with a maximum output of 400
megawatts had been installed in Germany by the end of 2003. Here, too, Germany is the
pioneer, together with Japan. Despite fears to the contrary, the distributive financing
principle has had little effect on the price paid by the individual power consumer.
The Bundestag is currently considering an
amendment of the EEG that would ensure the continuing growth of renewables. It will
benefit additional green energy sources, such as offshore wind power, large hydroelectric
power plants (if they are developed and designed in a more nature-friendly way), and large
plants that tap the earth’s heat (geothermal energy). Preparations for the
"renewables 2004" have meanwhile moved into top gear. Several preparatory
regional conferences have already been held, and they have added to the momentum. At the
first of these meetings, held in Brazil last October, the participants set themselves an
ambitious target: that modern renewables should cover ten percent of Latin America’s
total energy needs by as early as 2010. A further conference took place in Asia, and
another in Africa which focused on making the use of biomass more efficient. But there is
no doubt that attention will focus mainly on the Europeans. At the European preparatory
conference, which was held in Berlin in January, the EU demanded a signal showing the way
ahead – and backed it up by considerably raising its own targets. By 2020, they
recommend, wind and other renewable energy sources’ share of of total energy
consumption should be increased to 20%. Up to now, the EU has been aiming at doubling
renewables’ share – to about 12.5% – by 2010. There is no target for 2020
yet.
By the way, renewable energy will not only be talked about in Bonn. When the participants
travel to and from the conference venues, they will do so not in normal cars and buses,
but in an ecologically correct manner – for example, with solarmobiles, electric cars
using a solar filling station, or fuel-cell-driven buses. The fleet of vehicles serving
the "renewables 2004" is to be powered exclusively by renewable energy. "We
want to show that renewable energy can also be used in the transport sector," says
Environment Minister Trittin. "We want people to experience climate-friendly
transport for themselves."
Gerhard Schröder, Federal Chancellor
"In the future, the trademarks of
enduringly successful market economies worldwide will be resource and energy efficiency.
Any country that does not lay the foundations for these goals today will fall back in
international competition. With the eco-tax, the massive promotion of combined heat and
power generation, the fuel cell, and the agreements on climate protection, we have
initiated a development with which we can secure long-term energy efficiency."
Courtesy: Embassy of Germany,
Kathmandu |
