The keynote speaker of the day was John Christensen, head of UNEP-Risø Research Centre. He spoke about how to mitigate the current CO2 emissions. As he see it, it is necessary to keep the average global warming below 2 degrees to avoid major climate damage. This could be achieved by having global CO2 emissions starting to decline by 2015 and have it 50-85% below the 2000 level by 2050. To reach this goal the solution is a combination of different energy sources.
One important source is, of course, renewables, and he used Jutland, with a large part of Denmark’s wind production comes from, as an example of fully functional regional energy production. But even though Christensen thinks the solution for future energy challenges is a combination of different sources, he's sceptical about CCS and sees it as the coal sector’s attempt to confuse the debate.
Afterwards there was an interesting feature by Daniel Sherrard from the EARTH University located in a 3300 hectare big campus in Costa Rica. This is the only CO2-neutral university in the world. To reach this goal, they used different strategies, including carbon neutrality, water management, waste management, alternative energy and energy efficiency. The interesting part about the EARTH University is that they're partly supporting themselves economically by a range of commercial enterprises such as banana production, banana paper, recycling plastic bags and rope and conversion of waste into fertilizer. This not only helps to reduce the CO2 emissions, but actually creates new areas to reduce CO2 that have been taken into use by other companies in Costa Rica.
A question from one of the participants was how Sherrard convinced the board that the university should be CO2-neutral. He replied that it was quite easy, it only needed to be economically feasible and then it was easy to talk the board into the shift. He emphasized that in order to convince companies and governments to make the necessary changes it is important that it has a positive effect on profit.
The panel debate Wednesday was once again controlled with a good grasp of the situation by Martin Lidegaard, who had Svend Friis, Senior Official, Danish Energy Agency, Christian Kjaer, Chief Executive, European Wind Energy Association, and Lars Aagaard, Vice President, Danish Energy Association in the panel. The topic of the day was "How do we tackle energy related security challenges? Self-sufficiency or diplomatic alliances."
Kjaer focused on the self-sufficiency because it makes Europe's position stronger in a negotiation about other sources of energy. If we can't choose another supplier they will demand higher prices. Friis focused on three objectives to secure energy in EU and that is sufficiency, reliance and price, but these objectives are hard to secure in the EU. Aagaard focused on electricity as the main source of power in the future and to succeed we need a mix of sources and more flexible systems.
One of the possibilities to secure electric power in the EU suggested by one of the participants was to use solar energy. The solar plants would be located in Northern Africa to make it as close to Europe as possible, but Aagaard estimated it would be too insecure. Kjaer on the other hand thought it made sense, but it needs a lot of infrastructure, a grid. This is, however, in his opinion easier to establish than a gas pipeline. In Friis' opinion solar power from Africa is much too visionary and he believes more in developing a SuperGrid e.g. with large wind power parks in the North Sea.
The use of CCS is a controversial subject and earlier in the day Christensen expressed his scepticism towards it, but Aagaard emphasized that we won't stop using fossil fuels the next 20 years. This is why CCS is the main answer to handle the climate change. This is an area that needs public funding, because the companies will have to take great risks to develop it and it won't happen without economic backup from the governments. The advantage of coal is that it's easy to get a hold of and it's also easy to store, so there's a low risk of supply disruption. CCS is also cost-effective compared to wind energy. Kjaer is a lot more sceptical towards CCS. He said that there is no one who believes that the technology will be developed before 2020, so it won't help reduce the CO2 emissions within the next 10 years.
Another topic brought up in the discussion was the electric car. Aagaard says that in order to switch from fuel-driven cars to electric cars, we need an extensive storage grid and it's a big logistic assignment. Policy makers have to make long-term decisions on the matter because it's a big investment and risk. In a defence for CCS, he pointed out that electric cars are more effective on electricity from coal-powered plants than petrol-fuel cars. Friis specified that electric motors are up to four times as effective as petrol-fuel motors. Kjaer couldn't argue against the fact that a combustion engine is a lot less effective than an electric engine, but he emphasized that electric cars are only as clean as the sources producing the electricity, so in his view we will have to change to renewable energy in all EU-countries before making the shift.
Closing the discussion on how to tackle the energy related security challenges, all three members of the discussion board could agree that it's important to have a flexible mix of both centralized and de-centralized energy producers. To make that possible, there needs to be both public regulation and private investors. Aagaard pointed out that most people in Denmark who invested in wind energy, did it for profit, e.g. many farmers invested in their own wind mill to make a profit out of it. The private sector is needed to overcome the challenges of the future energy solutions.
CCS continues to be a big conflict point and it seems that the debaters and speakers can't agree on the matter. The question is whether it's an excuse for the energy sector to keep using coal powered plants or if it really is needed to reach the goals of lower CO2 emissions by 2020.
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