3E Intelligence

In search of the silver bullet

2008-12-22T15:19:23Z

“There is no silver bullet to solve the climate/energy crisis” is one of theses phrases which can be heard over and over again in each and every energy debate in Brussels. Most of the times, the phrase is used by someone who wants to push his or her own silver bullet, be it nuclear, CCS or prolonged use of fossil fuels. A recent and totally independent study from Stanford University gives at least some indication as to which bullets are less silvery than others.

Professor Mark Z. Jacobson of the department of environmental engineering at Stanford looked at the different proposed solutions to deal with global warming, air pollution and energy security and compared them according to their life-cycle impacts on climate, air pollution, energy security, water supply, land use, wildlife, resource availability, thermal pollution, water chemical pollution, nuclear proliferation and undernutrition. The study was not paid for by any stakeholder or government agency.

According to Jacobson’s ranking, wind power, concentrated solar power, geothermal, tidal, solar photovoltaics, wave and hydro are the most promising energy sources. Nuclear, coal (even with carbon sequestration) and ethanol (corn as well as cellulosic) score considerably less good in terms of externalities.

The Climate Progress blog has an excellent longer summary of the study, which completely debunks the myth that nuclear and carbon capture and storage are low-carbon technologies.

Political “leaders” postpone the energy revolution

2008-12-17T15:11:35Z

The grandstanding of EU leaders on the adoption of the climate and energy package cannot hide that Europe’s and the world’s political elites have succumbed to short-term economic fears and have postponed the necessary start of the transition to a new energy regime. Let’s hope and pray the climate/energy leadership role will now be taken up by the incoming American administration.

The deal French President Sarkozy clinched on the climate/energy package confirms once more that our politicians excel at setting apparently ambitious but in reality hollow rhetorical targets and then fail miserably when it comes to working out the real policy measures to reach these targets. By introducing exemptions from the auctioning system for carbon allowances and increasing the “hot air” carbon offsets that can be bought outside of the EU, the package has in reality become a Swiss cheese full of holes. Who honestly believes that with this dilution of the package, the 20-20-20 targets will still be reachable? I would not have minded the early Christmas presents to the industry if the EU leaders would have said at the same time where and how they were going to compensate to deliver the “triple 20″ goods by 2020. But then again, who of the leaders present at the European Council will still be around in the next ten years. “Après moi, le déluge”?

That said, I do not doubt European industry feels “encouraged” by the EU’s climate deal (see EurActiv) but, in the long run, this might well become a Pyrrhic victory if Europe loses its first-mover advantage to the US in the coming years. Or do I have to read the EU industry’s getting cold foot over the climate policies as a statement to President Obama? “Yes you can, but we cannot”? Let’s look at the impact of this on our industry’s competitiveness in ten years.

The outcome of the Poznan COP-14 summit does not raise many hopes for an international agreement in Copenhagen next year either. Of course, we now have a work plan for the negotiations but the conference failed to bring developed and developing countries closer together as there were no agreements on the adaptation fund and the necessary measures to counter deforestation (see Washington Post). For a full analysis of the Poznan summit, read the IISD’s COP-14 final report.

All this short-sightedness and political backtracking indicates that our so-called world leaders have yet to grasp the full urgency and seriousness of the energy challenge we are facing. This is all the more dramatic as the time we have to catapult ourselves on a path to a sustainable future is becoming increasingly short. Even with oil prices as low as they are now, the International Energy Agency’s recent World Energy Outlook 2008 has provided all the worrying facts which should ring policy-makers’ alarm bells over the climate/energy crisis as much as over the current economic turmoil. With decline rates of over 6.7%, the mega-oil fields which are the life-blood of our economies are getting closer to peak production every day. Even IEA’s Fatih Birol now predicts peak oil for 2020 (which knowing him is probably a bit diplomatic for saying “it is already here”) in an interview with Guardian journalist and climate activist George Monbiot. And the World Energy Outlook’s predictions on global warming are as dire as if they come with a potential global temperature increase of up to 6 degrees under the IEA’s Reference Scenario.

So is postponing the low-carbon energy revolution an option? Not really but then again, as Nicholas Stern said in Poznan: “The human race has an incredibly well developed capacity to screw up, and we may miss this chance”.

Why it would be good to reconsider the Copenhagen process

2008-12-06T07:46:00Z

Climate negotiators in Poznan are starting to question whether the 2009 deadline for Copenhagen is realistic. Maybe there are good reasons to take a step back and reconsider the global climate diplomacy process.

This week, a few non-suspect climate experts have uttered doubts about the end-2009 deadline for a new global warming agreement.

As reported by Associated Press, Eileen Claussen of the Pew Center on Climate Change does not believe the Obama administration will be ready in time with a full negotiation package as it will have to deal with a difficult Congress. Former Clinton administration energy expert Joseph Romm is also convinced that Obama will not succeed in convincing 67 senators to vote for a new climate deal. The “only thing worse than no global climate treaty in 2009 is a treaty that Obama can’t get ratified”, says Romm and I fully agree.

That means that we also need to have the courage to question the UNFCCC process. The “UNFCCC process as we now know it is essentially a Dead Man Walking, even if nobody knows it yet”, according to Romm.

Of course, I am fully convinced about the need for an urgent climate “surge”, but I am also realistic. Without leadership from the US (including the Congress), there will be no REAL progress on fighting climate change. This is the first good reason to postpone Copenhagen and wait (one more year?) for the new American President and his other “first lady (yes Hillary ) to get their act together.

But there is a second reason which I think is even more important. Copenhagen and the whole UNFCCC deals only with one dimension of our current systemic sustainability crisis. Where is the international diplomatic dialogue on resource scarcity (“peak everything”), biodiversity, water or inequality? Maybe it is time to create a new global governance platform where all the sustainability issues (including also the current economic crisis which is just one side-effect of the sustainability crisis) can be discussed? Maybe putting all the issues on the table could make the process more efficient.

So let’s postpone Copenhagen and start talking about how to best tackle the biggest challenge of the 21^st century: provide quality lives for all our 6 billion citizens within the ecological limits of our one Planet.

Green wish list for Santa Obama

2008-11-30T19:39:57Z

In the US, twenty-nine of the biggest NGOs published a 391-pages policy document with recommendations for the new Obama administration on how to start the transition to a green and clean economy.

The impressive report includes detailed proposals on how to endorse legislation to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 35% before 2020 and and 80% cut compared to 1990 by 2050.

The Gristmill blog has a good summary of the main action points of the “Transition to Green” report. The Natural Resources Defence Council’s (NRDC - one of the organisations behind the report) blog explains the sense of urgency behind this unusual coalition and the policy document they agreed on.

I hope we can bring our own European social, development and environmental NGOs together around a similar policy recommendation report before next year’s European Parliament election. Anyone who wants to take the lead, let me know.

Poznan summit: the King has no clothes

2008-11-28T09:27:16Z

Next week’s COP-14 meeting in Poland is likely to go down in history as the top where the European Union’s self-proclaimed global leadership on climate and energy policy got sacrificed on the altar of economic growth fundamentalism.

With Poland and most of the new EU member states in opposition and their unholy alliance with Berlusconi’s “little Italy” and Merkel’s “Germany Inc”, it seems clear that the EU will have difficulties speaking with one voice during the Poznan meeting. Moreover, the latest French “compromise” on the climate-energy package is no more and no less than a wonderful Christmas bag of gifts for the European coal-power utilities and the energy-intensive sectors. In effect, it will definitively bury Europe’s “ambitious” climate plans.

And what are countries like China and India to think when even the rich industrial countries start backtracking on their grand promises for a post-carbon future now that the financial crisis (which was partially caused by our carbon addiction) has hijacked the short-term political agenda? At least the lame-duck Bush administration can be expected to stick to its traditional role in Poznan and Obama’s diplomatic delegation is likely to keep a low-profile as long as the President-elect is not fully in power.

So, will Poznan be a complete failure? Probably not, as the diplomatic circus has become very sophisticated at producing hollow rhetorical declarations where every country can find its little treat.

And exactly THAT is possibly the biggest danger. I would rather see a total failure of Poznan than a non-text which all government delegations will be able to spin as their victory.

Once the whole world will have seen that the EU (“the King”) is naked, it is time for a regime change. Let’s put our hopes for the post-carbon future in the Obama Presidency, although it may also take him a few years to push through his new climate policies. As for the EU, it will have proven that it has become part of the problem, not part of the solution.

Terminator to become Obama’s "climate czar"?

2008-11-13T17:48:14Z

Could Arnold Schwarzenegger become the future energy and climate czar for the new Obama administration? If that were to be the case, the European Commission would have no other choice than to nominate Al Gore as our European “climate emperor” after 2009 .

The “energy and climate czar” would be heading the Energy Security Council which has been proposed by one of Obama’s closest advisors. Next to the name of Mr Schwarzenegger, other potential candidates for this post might be Al Gore himself or Google director for climate change and energy initiatives Dan Reicher. Other news sources in the US have reported that Al Gore does not have any plans to accept this job.

For more on this fascinating story, read Fox News’ Transition Tracker.

The Grist blog has an excellent background article on the Energy Security Council.

EU climate lead in peril

2008-11-12T14:56:57Z

For how long will the EU’s self-acclaimed “climate leadership” survive the Obama revolution? Could a “green” Obama administration pose a bigger challenge to the EU’s climate credentials than the temporary backlash of the financial crisis? Who will win the race for the new “eco-competitiveness”?

These questions are hard to answer for the moment but there are two trends which might tell us where the future of green policies is heading. On the one hand, there is the climate “counterrevolution” which we can now observe in the European Union against the Commission’s climate and energy package, led by the new EU member states (who never had a green revolution in the first place or strong environmental movements). On the other hand, the momentum for change in the US which could lead to a new “Green Deal” which would see the US take over the climate/energy leadership banner from the EU.

One example: one of the most interesting developments coming out of the Obama transition news in the US, is the likelihood of a new Energy Security Council or a Climate and Energy Council.

The EU commission officials who are these days starting to prepare the blueprint for the post-2009 EU commission should keep their eyes on these developments. The EU post-2009 could do with an integration of the three portfolios of energy-environment-economy (the 3Es). The Lisbon agenda should be shelved and replaced with a new project: to prepare Europe for the hard transition from a world without limits to the future resource-constrained one-Planet global economy. Yes, we can.

A President for “Hard Times”?

2008-11-04T12:46:00Z

Whoever wins the US Presidency today will be facing the ultimate challenge: steering a self-destructing Western-based economic growth model through a painful transition towards a new global sustainability. This is a task far beyond any past Apollo project.

These are indeed historical elections and it is appropriate that the whole world is watching. Although the financial crisis and the recession have hijacked the last months of the campaign (to the advantage of the Democrats), the real challenge remains one of systemic transformation. To avoid accelerating global warming and new energy and resource scarcity (to live within the ecological limits of our Planet), we will have to fundamentally rebuild our global energy system, our infrastructure and our consumption and production patterns. And we will have to do that at a time when less capital might be available, when new economic players will continue to demand the right to the living standards we got used to, and when trust in politics is at an all-time low.

The big question is whether the new ruling generation will be ready to deal with this transformational process. In the New York Times (“A date with scarcity”), columnist David Brooks is sceptical. The next leaders, Brooks says, “will be confronted by the problem for which they have the least experience and for which they are the least prepared: the problem of scarcity.

Raised in prosperity, favored by genetics, these young meritocrats will have to govern in a period when the demands on the nation’s wealth outstrip the supply. They will grapple with the growing burdens of an aging society, rising health care costs and high energy prices. They will have to make up for the trillion-plus dollars the government will spend to avoid a deep recession. They will have to struggle to keep their promises to cut taxes, create an energy revolution, pass an expensive health care plan and all the rest. “

Brooks’ conclusion is dark: “We’re probably entering a period, in other words, in which smart young liberals meet a stone-cold scarcity that they do not seem to recognize or have a plan for.

In an age of transition, the children are left to grapple with the burdens of their elders”.

Europe’s climate and energy debate keeps on living in Disneyland

2008-10-30T16:13:52Z

Friends of Europe’s annual energy summit (held on 30 October) saw tough exchanges between CCS defenders and the renewable energy sector but kept dodging the real question: can we solve the climate/energy crisis without questioning our economic growth and development paradigm?

Energy commissioner Andris Piebalgs, as expected, defended his commission resolve not to “deviate” from the proposed energy/climate policies. “Each day we postpone to do something about these issues, will make later solutions more difficult and more expensive”, he said. He also criticised OPEC’s recent decision to cut production and warned for plans by Russia, Iran and Qatar to create an OPEC-like gas cartel.

Belgian energy and climate minister Paul Magnette tried to answer one of the main questions put forward by the organisers: are the EU’s climate policies convincing its partners worldwide? “Is the EU convincing itself?” was the rhetorical question Magnette used as his answer. The Belgian minister referred to the mistakes made during the 70’s oil crisis: reacting along national interests and looking only at short-term solutions. He urged the commission to come up with much more ambitious proposals and underlined the need for more R&D spending on energy and with more regulation.

WTO Trade and Environment Director Vesile Kulaçoglu brought a very general contribution on the issue of climate change and possible restrictive trade measures and carefully avoided to give any hint of how WTO would react legally to an EU border tax adjustment to prevent carbon leakage or to similar instruments proposed in the US.

“We need more leadership” and a JFK-like “man on the moon” strategy to help start the energy revolution according to Greenpeace Climate and Energy Head Gavin Edwards and Chinese Academy of Social Science researcher Xingshu Zhao gave a polite presentation of her country’s efforts to reduce carbon emissions. Mrs Zhao forgot to mention the recent report of her Academy of Sciences which last week admitted in its “Chinese energy report 2008” that by 2030 China could well reach half of the world’s current global CO2 emissions (14.7 billion tonnes – current world emissions are 31 billion tonnes).

Last but not least, Nuno Lacasta, Director of the Portuguese Climate Change Commission, repeated Andris Piebalgs warning that the climate/energy crisis will not “subside” and the EU should “keep its eye on the ball”. He also said that much more “revolutionary” solutions might be needed. “We need to plant the seeds of a revolution”, Lacasta concluded.

And this is exactly what I missed in this debate as well as in most others in Brussels. There is still a lack of understanding of how dramatic the situation really is in terms of the sustainability collapse we are facing and policymakers have not yet grasped the full extent of the long emergency process we have started (climate and energy are just one – be it the most important one – of the sustainability challenges: there is the declining natural resource base – “peak everything”, the biodiversity challenge and the increasing water scarcity in several countries, as well as high food prices).

We will not escape asking ourselves whether the economic growth model which brought high materialistic prosperity to the US, Europe and Japan can be transposed to the BRICS countries without endangering the basic life-support systems that make life and therefore the economy possible on this planet in the first place. If we do not start to come up with the seeds of a new development model which respects the ecological limits of our one Planet within the next ten to fifteen years, we will be forced back by Nature into the pre-industrial life style our ancestors enjoyed for thousands of years. We better learn quickly!

Stop blaming the bankers

2008-10-24T16:00:56Z

In times of crisis, people always need scapegoats in order to avoid having to look at one’s own responsibilities and this financial crisis is no different. But blaming bankers is a bit too easy when one looks at this crisis from a systemic and sustainability point of view. We have all enjoyed living beyond our means for way too long and now reality is biting back.

I got an interesting and angry comment from one of my readers for my last post “Strengthen climate/energy policies to avoid the Great Depression“. The commentator questioning the credibility of the Deutsche Bank report and saying “banks have no wisdom beyond mere greed”. I wonder whether his anger was provoked by him losing a lot of money having believed the share market gurus in the first place?

Anyway, it is too easy to blame the bankers and to still talk about a “credit crunch” or a crisis of “liquidity”. As I already indicated in other posts about the crisis, this is so much more than just a bank crisis. Some even have used words like the “end of capitalism” which is also seriously exaggerated.

What this crisis reflects though, and that is why the link with sustainability issues is so important, is that we have been living on virtual financial wealth (or debt) believing that the sky is the limit. Just go to Dubai or read the magazines for the super-rich and you will know what I mean. In the process of creating this hyper-consumption society (for a small minority but part of the life aspiration of all of us), we have over-consumed our ecological life-support systems (our “real wealth”, although without a market price) and exploited our energy wealth at a dramatic pace.

On the fossil fuel abundance this planet provided, we could have lived happy lives for billions of people for thousands of years, if we would have been smart. Now we have wasted it on over-consumption (not creating more happiness since the 6Os) in less than 200 years. We are all guilty of this crash and BTW is it not dramatic that the 60s generation which once aspired to change the world for the better, is actually the one which really messed up once it came to power?

Should the banks be rescued? Of course they should, but more important is to prevent the next crash, the crash of our Planet’s life-support systems.