Regulation needed to solve the challenges

The cold facts and what to do about it

Thursday, the final day of the summit, was up and this was the day of big shots. Not that the previous speakers hadn't been interesting and exciting to listen to, but many participants were looking forward to listening at James E. Hansen and Daniel M. Kammen.

James E. Hansen, head of NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), was first man on the podium to teach the participants about the climate threat to the planet. He was one of the first to notice and draw attention to the evolving climate changes more than 20 years ago, but wasn't taken seriously at first. Now he is. But unfortunately not to the extent that is needed. As Hansen remarked, there is a gap between what is understood by scientists and what is known by the public and more important so, the politicians. That is why he started to speak up about the problems, because he won't have his grandchildren saying that their grandfather knew what was happening, but didn't do anything about it.

The reason he's concerned is not only the climate changes that has happened already, but also the climate changes that can't be stopped, the so called tipping points. So he gave some examples of how to measure the state of the world climate such as sea level temperature and solar irradiance that have been rising since the 1950's. Just within the last seven years the temperatures have increased more than from 1950 to 1980.

The critical question to ask is why care about it when it could just be a natural change in climate? Through the time of Earth these changes have been happening all the time, so it could just be a small weather fluctuation. So in order to prove if there is a problem, it's important to look at Earth's history. At the moment the human history occurs within the warm period of the Holoscene, which is the geological epoch we currently live in, but CO2 and CH4 levels have been increasing outside normal natural behaviour from 2001 to 2007. The humans are simply more powerful than natural change such as volcanos and natural drift of tectonic plates.

This means dangerous changes in the nature of the world and some of them are irreversible like extermination of animal and planet species and ice sheet disintegration which causes the global sea level to rise. To preserve the planet we need to reduce the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere to 350 parts per million (ppm). The symptoms that shows that all is not well, is increasing subtropic areas, more forest fires like the ones in Australia just recently and a recession on mountain glaciers. If we keep up our current CO2 emissions most glaciers will be lost within the next 50 years.

So as this was a summit on energy it was interesting to hear how the goal of 350 ppm could be reached. In Hansen's opinion it's essential to phase out coal and this isn't happening because fossil fuels have the lowest price and the companies selling fossil fuels have too much influence on governments. The technical solution would be to introduce carbon tax and make sure that people who have low emissions get their money back to use for themselves. This will motivate people to do the necessary changes and if the money went into the budgets of the governments, the changes won't happen in a sustainable pace.

A question from the audience was how to keep China from making coal plants? Hansen said that China is very aware of the problems. They actually experience them now with flooding in some parts of the country and drought in others. Carbon tax is relevant in developing countries as well, and Hansen would rather have them using 4th generation nuclear power than coal because it's very different than older generations. With the new technology it's possible to not only burn up all the uranium, but also nuclear waste. In India they even have a lot of thorium which is an even better alternative to uranium.

Hansen was generally positive towards many sources of energy including bio-fuels, although it needs more research, and solar energy, where a fluid is heated, is becoming competitive with coal in price, but it needs a grid of course. The highest priority to come to terms with the energy challenges is however energy efficiency, because it shows results the fastest. The one thing he couldn't tolerate was CCS, which he identified as a green wash tool and at the same time he pointed out that coal power gets more expensive when CCS is included. Another blow for the controversial CCS technology.

Green growth or de-growth?

After the progressive speech and somewhat grim forecast by Hansen, it was time for the day's panel discussion. Our moderator and rock star, as Carlos labeled him, Martin Lidegaard had three new debaters at the participants' disposal. They were Knud Pedersen, Vice President for R&D, DONG energy, Ole Jess Olsen, Environmental Economics RUC University, and John Holten-Andersen, Associate professor, DTU & co-founder of the Danish De-growth Network. Question of the day was: "Can we de-couple growth from energy consumption? Green growth or de-growth?"

Pedersen started off by announcing that the financial crisis is one of the best things happening for the climate. Also he saw energy efficiency as an important tool, just like Hansen, and estimated that more than half of the CO2 reductions would have to come from energy efficiency like producing both heat and power in combination. Olsen agreed that people's behaviour has to change, because renewables can only take us so far. Olsen also pointed out that the increase of growth of economy doesn't mean that the growth of energy increase just as much. Holten-Andersen on the other hand thinks it is desperately needed, that we need to change behaviour. We can't have economic growth at the same time as we want to reduce CO2 emissions and there by preserve our communities and nature. He admitted though that green growth is possible.

The question was raised in regards to the developing countries if they weren't entitled to economic growth. For them economic growth is most needed, but it's a threat to the CO2-level as China and India holds one third of the World's population. Holten-Andersen definitely believes that everybody is entitled to education, food, a home and so forth and the developing countries of course needs to have some growth in order to survive, but they shouldn't follow our path. Pedersen accentuated China as one of the most developed countries in the field of achieving growth without following the path of the Western World by producing electric vehicles and batteries in much larger extent than Europe. Olsen backed him up by mentioning the fact that most heavy industries have been moved to the developing countries, but they're more efficient and becoming even more so in regards to growth in economy v. energy consumption. So in many ways there's inspiration for European governments to gather from some of the developing countries.

To achieve the needed changes in society to meet the demands of reduced CO2 emissions, Olsen believes that the best way is by economic instruments. As an example he mentioned San Francisco who has introduced high prices on cars with high emission and it works because the very energy efficient and low emission car Toyota Prius is very popular in San Francisco. Pedersen mentioned that the current energy distribution have 85% coming from fossil fuels and only 15% from renewables, so it's an ambitious task, where it's needed to invest heavily in wind and move aggressively on biomass, that still needs better technology. In Pedersen's opinion carbon tax makes sense, but it's difficult to have an agreement on this tool. This might indicate that Hansen was right when he said that people from the coal industry have a great deal of influence on these matters.

Small local projects is part of the solution

The last speaker of the day was Daniel M. Kammen, distinguished Professor of Energy at the Berkeley University. Although he started out by driving to the wrong part of the University Campus, he arrived with an impressive positive and inspiring energy.

He had a lot of suggestions for reaching the goals of lower CO2 emissions: Diverse, measurable cases of low-carbon development are vital, energy efficiency must become a global priority, because it's easy to do and it pays back fast which makes it possible to invest in new technology. Also sustainable energy is needed globally, and a clean energy financing revolution is necessary. The problem right now is that dirty energy grows faster than clean energy and that has to change. One of the ways is efficiency in the energy sector making sure that waste products from producing energy of oil are used for gas to utilize all options available.

Kammen also made it clear that access to diverse energy options is needed. The Western World rarely innovate for the developing countries unless it gets economically positive, but leading companies need to investigate in small projects. The production of solar cells is a good example of this. Kenya is the one country in the World where most people get their energy from solar power. They use amorphous solar cells, but as these are less efficient, the companies producing solar cells cut down the production and switched to crystalline solar cells. In Kenya however they still use the amorphous solar cells because even though they are less efficient they're also dramatically cheaper and therefore have better possibility of getting wide distribution in developing countries. As the neighbouring countries to Kenya started to pick up the same idea it soon became economically feasible for the solar cell producers to make the less efficient amorphous solar cell. This kind of innovation is needed all around to explore all possibilities.

This story also show a change in energy distribution. Kammen don't believe in solar fields in the Sahara because it needs an extensive grid. There's a change from earlier on where big power plants were located away from urban areas to smaller power plants where you live. He thinks it would be much better to exploit the thousands of rooftops in suburban and urban areas and install solar cells there.

As earlier speakers Kammen also finds it necessary with public regulation. A policy is needed and he told another sunshine story from California to prove the effect. In 2008 the State administration of California made a new policy for renewable capacity. The last couple of years the capacity of renewable energy had slowly risen every year and was 113 megawatts in 2007. After the policy was introduced the number rose as much as to 516 megawatts which shows that intervention from public administration has a substantial effect.

Of course Kammen was also asked for his position on CCS. He had a quite pragmatic attitude towards it. If it works and we can afford it, fine, but it's not proven and needs more research. Personally he didn't see so much potential in the technology.

Through the day the discussions now and then had turned towards the old question of capitalism vs. socialism. This is of course an important matter when talking about reducing the energy consumption that might not be possible with the growth rate seen through out the last 50 years. Holten-Andersen also kept emphasizing the need to focus on other values such as community and solidarity and not money value, which only has symbolic value. On this aspect Kammen had some very true closing words: "Capitalism is for the poor, socialism for the rich."