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A RENEWABLE FUTURE Renewable energy sources can deliver most of the energy needed by humanity in the 21st century, cleanly, economically and sustainably. What is needed is political commitment to make it happen. By Godfrey Boyle
December 1999 The sun is the ultimate source of power underlying a family of renewable energy sources that ranges from solar electricity generation to biofuels and hydro, wind and wave power. Together, they constitute a vast resource. The total amount of sunshine reaching the Earth's surface is more than 10,000 times humanity's current rate of consumption of nuclear and fossil fuels. But the huge potential of renewables is only just beginning to be tapped. The Future in Wind Wind power provides the most spectacular example of such technologies becoming more and more cost-effective and efficient. Twenty years ago, wind turbines were unreliable and the cost of their power was very high. Today wind power from the latest turbines on good sites costs around 3.5p/kWh, cheaper than power from new nuclear and coal-fired stations, and very nearly competitive with the cheapest gas-fired plant. Of course, if environmental damage and human health were added to the equation, conventional sources of energy would be much more expensive. In Britain, the visual impact of wind turbines in the landscape is a controversial subject - though in other countries such as Denmark they are largely uncontroversial. But wind farms are now beginning to be located offshore, where their visual impact will be minimal. The British Wind Energy Association estimates that 6% of Britain's electricity could be supplied from wind by 2010. Denmark already obtains 10% of its electricity from wind power and its wind turbine industry employs 15,000 people. Worldwide, the wind industry has an annual turnover of around $2 billion and installs some 2,000 MW of turbine capacity every year. Harnessing the Sun Photovoltaics (PV) - the generation of electricity directly from sunlight - is another prime example of a rapidly developing renewable energy technology. When 'solar cells' were first used in the US space programme in the 1950s they cost several thousand dollars per watt of output. Improvements in efficiency and mass-production have brought prices down to around $4 per watt today. This is still about four times as expensive as power from conventional sources. But major energy companies are investing substantially in solar power and additional price cuts are in the pipeline. BP-Amoco plans to increase the turnover of its solar subsidiary BP Solarex 10-fold, to $1 billion by 2010. Shell International Renewables likewise has ambitious plans for its solar subsidiary, including the construction of the world's largest PV production plant in Germany. At the Mercy of Political Will The EU recently launched its 'Plan for Takeoff' for renewables, which aims to double their contribution to Europe's energy supply from a current 6% to 12% by 2010. This will involve installing 10,000 MW of wind-generating capacity, 500,000 photovoltaic roofs and facades on buildings and 10,000 MW of biofuelled combined heat and power (CHP) plants. The UK Government's target is to obtain 10% of electricity from renewables by 2010, but it is doubtful that there is sufficient commitment to enable this to be achieved. Despite having the best wind resources in Europe, Britain had installed only 350 MW of wind-generating capacity by 1998, compared with over 2,800 MW in Germany. British ministers talk of the possibility of 100 photovoltaic roofs and facades in the UK, whereas Germany actively plans to install 100,000. Japan plans 70,000 and the United States 1 million solar roofs by 2010. Denmark plans to supply 12-14% of its energy from renewables by 2005 and 35% by 2030. In 1993, a UN study suggested that by 2050 renewable energy could be supplying 60% of world electricity and 40% of energy in other forms. In 1993, a Greenpeace report demonstrated the feasibility of a 'fossil-free energy scenario', in which all fossil and nuclear fuels could be phased out by 2100, to be replaced by renewables. Surprisingly, similar scenarios were prepared in 1995 by planners in Shell Oil. They envisaged renewables contributing around half the world's energy by 2060, having become competitive with conventional fuels. In 1995, a range of further long-range scenarios was produced by the World Energy Council (WEC), which represents the major world energy producers and distributors. In the WEC's 'ecologically-driven' scenario, new renewables contribute 80% of world demand by 2100. All of these scenarios assume that world population will double to around 10-12 billion by 2100, and that economic growth will continue. They also assume that the efficiency of energy and resource use will improve dramatically. The enormous potential for such improvements has been convincingly demonstrated by Ernst von Weizsacker and Amory and Hunter Lovins in their 1997 book Factor Four: Doubling Wealth, Halving Resource Use. Von Weizsacker and his colleagues at the Wuppertal Institute in Germany are working on a 'Sustainable Europe' energy and resource-modelling project, which challenges the conventional assumptions of endless economic growth. There is virtually no doubt that renewables can deliver the majority of the energy needed by humanity in the 21st century, cleanly, economically, and sustainably. The only cloud that dims this otherwise bright prospect is that many (though not all) countries still lack the political commitment to make it happen. - Third World Network Features About the writer: Godfrey Boyle is co-director of the Energy and Environmental Research Unit (EERU) at the UK Open University. He is co-author and editor of Renewable Energy: Power for a Sustainable Future. On the EERU website (http://www-tec.open.ac.uk/eeru) you can use his computer model 'DREAM-World' to generate your own world energy scenarios. The above article first appeared in The Ecologist (Vol. 29 No. 7, November 1999).
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