Download Energy is central to achieving sustainable development goals

FACING
CLIMATE
CHANGES:
A
GLOBAL
CHALLENGE
In the past two centuries, we have been seeing a fairly steady rise in
the amount of greenhouse gases in the Earth's atmosphere. The
atmospheric concentrations of key anthropogenic greenhouse gases
(i.e. Carbon Dioxide, Methane, Nitrous Oxide and troposphere
ozone) reached their highest recorded levels in the 1990s. These
changes are happening at unpredictable speed. If emissions
continue to grow at current rates, it is almost certain that
atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide will double, or possibly triple,
from pre-industrial levels during the current century. The balance of
evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate.
Much of this carbon dioxide has been produced by the burning of
fossil fuels for transportation, manufacturing, heating, cooling,
electricity generation and other activities. Land degradation and
deforestation are also significant sources of greenhouse gas
emissions. The result, known as the "enhanced greenhouse effect,"
is a warming of the earth's surface and lower atmosphere. Climate
models estimate that the average global temperature will rise by 1.4
to 5.8 degrees C by the year 2100. A temperature increase of .6
degrees C occurred last century.
According to the British Government, climate change could have four
different kind of impact1:
 It will threaten the homes and livelihoods, and thus the well-being
of large numbers of people all across the globe.
 Climate change could also prejudice social progress. Also social
equity could be affected, since poorest countries and poorest
1
http://www.sustainable-development.gov.uk/
segment of population are the most vulnerable too. Moreover, the
costs of damage as well as the required adaptation and mitigation
efforts will be unevenly distributed both among and within
countries. As a consequence inequity could be enhanced thus
undermining social cohesion and worsening conflicts over scarce
resources.
 Climate change will slam economics of all sizes across the world.
Either in a direct way, as a changing climate affects the production
of their goods and services, or changes customers needs and
demands; or in indirectly, through increased costs of insurance,
higher costs of borrowing or reduced access to finance. All will be
faced with uncertainty and additional risk, and again it is most likely
to be the developing countries who will suffer most.
 As greenhouse gas emissions accumulate in the atmosphere,
there is an increased risk of major adverse effects, beyond those of
the basic predictions of increased ambient temperatures and sealevels. The stability of a range of critical, interlinked physical,
ecological and
social systems and
threatened (Fig.1).
2
subsystems could
be
Fig.1: An integrated framework on climate change
source: Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Changes
Slowing down the process of climate change requires a substantial
reduction in global emissions of the main greenhouse gases.
It has been estimated that 63 per cent of the increased concentration
of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have been generated
through fossil fuel burning and land use changes undertaken by
industrialized countries. For this reason, the global community has
urged industrialized and emerging countries like China, India and
Brazil (for their economic expansion and large population) to take
concrete initiatives in reducing their greenhouse gas emissions.
HOW THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY IS
RESPONDING?
3
It fell to scientists to draw international attention to the threats posed
by global warming. Evidence in the 1960s and '70s that
concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were increasing
first led climatologists and others to press for action. It took years
before the international community responded.
In 1988, an Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
was created by the World Meteorological Organization and the
United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). This group issued
a first assessment report in 1990 which reflected the views of 400
scientists. The report stated that global warming was real and urged
that something be done about it. The Panel's findings encouraged
governments to create the United Nations Framework Convention
on
Climate
Change
setting
an
overall
framework
for
intergovernmental efforts to tackle the challenge posed by climate
change. By standards for international agreements, negotiation of
the Convention was rapid. It was ready for signature at the 1992
United Nations Conference on Environment and Development –
also known as the "Earth Summit" -- in Rio de Janeiro. The earth
summit resulted in important documents, among them Agenda 21
that is a “a comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally,
nationally and locally by organizations of the United Nations System,
Governments, and Major Groups in every area in which human
impacts on the environment.” In other word Agenda 21 level the path
to follow for a sustainable development, intended as a process that
“meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of
future generation to meet their own needs” (Bruntland report, 1997).
The Agenda 21 called for the creation of a Commission on
Sustainable Development, to ensure effective follow-up of UNCED,
enhance international cooperation, and examine progress in the
implementation of Agenda 21 at the local, national, regional and
international levels.
4
After the entry into force of the 1992 convention, ratifying countries
gathered annually during Conference of Parties (COP) to concretise
the taken engagements. In December of 1997, the Kyoto Protocol
was drafted by the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the UNFCCC
at their third annual meeting. Information provided by IPCC set the
level of global CO2 emissions reductions that are needed in order to
prevent further climate change and the Kyoto Protocol served as an
international ‘plan’ for how to achieve a provisional target.
Kyoto Protocol is in fact the instrument that gather specific and
substantial obligation that countries have to respect in order to fulfil
with the principles of the 1992 convention. The agreed emissions
levels, set out in the Protocol, charge industrialized countries with
the responsibility of reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases
“by at least 5 per cent below 1990 levels in the commitment period
2008 to 2012” (Article 3 of the Kyoto Protocol). The Kyoto Protocol
is a complicated agreement that has been slow in coming. The
Protocol not only has to be an effective against a complicated
worldwide problem, it also has to be politically acceptable. As a
result, panels and committees have multiplied to monitor and referee
its various programmes, and even after the agreement was
approved in 1997, further negotiations were deemed necessary to
create instructions on how to "operate" it. While the text of the Kyoto
Protocol was adopted unanimously in 1997; it only entered into force
on 16 February 2005.
The full implementation of Agenda 21, and the Commitments to the
Rio principles, were strongly reaffirmed at the World Summit on
Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg, South
Africa in August-September 2002. Two main documents were
adopted: the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPOI) and the
Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development.
In that occasion the UN reaffirmed the commitment to achieve the
internationally agreed development goals, including those contained
5
in the United Nations Millennium Declaration, known as Millennium
Development Goals (MDGs) adopted during the Un Millennium
Summit in September 2000. The MDGs, which have become
commonly accepted as a framework for measuring progress in
development, comprise 8 goals, 18 targets and 48 indicators. The 7 th
goal in particular remarks the concept of sustainable development,
and
trace
new
targets
in
order
to
ensure
environmental
sustainability.
ENERGY,
DEVELOPMENT
AND
ENVIROMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
Although Agenda 21 and other important document, like the
Millennium Declaration, have no specific energy chapter and do not
treat energy as a priority itself, energy issues clearly raise as a
central point in the path toward the achievement of sustainable
development goals.
According to WSSD Johannesburg Declaration energy must be
considered a human need on par with other basic human need (food
security, clean water, sanitation, health care, etc….).
Almost two billion people have no access to modern energy
services, thus affecting all aspects of development social, economic,
and
environmental
including
livelihoods,
health,
agricultural
productivity, access to water, education, and gender-related issues.
In order to ensure that sustainable development goals are realized,
the main challenge lies in finding ways to balance a risky trade off:
the one existing between the necessity and demand for energy with
its impacts on the natural resource.
These impacts, including pollution, habitat degradation and climate
change can undermine the livelihood of world’s poor, and may
represent a big obstacle toward any poverty reduction process. This
is
6
because
poor
communities
vitally
depend
on
healthy
environmental resources, and moreover they are most vulnerable to
environmental degradation. Only contrasting the current tendency
toward environment degradation, poverty in its wider meaning can
be tackled.
In order to fulfil targets foreseen by MDG Energy Vision 2 (MODI,
2005) there is the need to accelerate the delivery of modern energy
service for poor people all around the world. Achieving this targets
will have positive environmental impact, both at local and global
viewpoint, helping in switching from traditional fuels to modern
energy sources, reducing greenhouse emission and boosting
development processes in a sustainable way.
“An effective energy sector that can fulfil the demand for energy
services is a prerequisite for economic and social development
which in turn is a prerequisite for sustainable poverty reduction”
However we have to take in account the previously mentioned tradeoff (of the negative environmental impacts of an expanded energy
sector), which underestimation could represent a great obstacle in
the planned development path. Climate change process can affect
very basic needs of population like food, health and shelter thus
there’s the need to increase energy efficiency and transition toward
sustainable and renewable energy sources world wide.
2
The targets of the MDG Energy Vision are that by 2015:
• 100% of the world’s urban populations and 50% of the world’s rural population use modern
liquid and
gaseous fuels for cooking
• 50% of the world’s rural population use improved biomass stoves
• 100% of the biomass used for cooking is produced in a sustainable way
• 100% of the world’s urban populations have a basic electricity supply to meet lighting and
communication needs
• 100% of the world’s health facilities and schools have electricity supply and use modern liquid
and
gaseous fuels to meet cooking and heating needs.
• 100% of all communities have access to mechanised power
7
GENERAL DEFINITIONS
Renewable energy sources (RES) can be defined, in general, as those
capturing their energy from ongoing natural processes, like sunshine, wind,
flowing water, geothermal heat flows and biological processes; they are
considered renewable because their flow of energy is replaced by a constant
natural process in a short period of time, which is one of the main differences
between RES and fossil energy sources.
RES can be used in different ways, either directly or indirectly, to generate
some more convenient form of energy: for instance, to produce electricity
through wind turbines or fuels, such as ethanol, from biomass.
Their use is not new in human history, since wood has been the primary energy
source since less than 150 years ago; nevertheless, in the last century, the low
price of fossil fuels caused a fall in wood use and, even today, it is one of the
main obstacles to a widespread development in RES exploitation.
In relatively recent years, during the 1970s, the concept of renewable energy
began to be debated; since then, RES have gained increasing attention due to
the emergence of various problematic issues related to the use of fossil fuels
and of nuclear energy: in particular their exhaustibility, their polluting emissions
and wastes, and quite recently their rising prices.
As a matter of fact, RES are seen as more sustainable than nuclear and fossil
sources of energy: firstly, because they may be classified as “free energy”,
which means (in engineering) an energy source available directly from the
environment and which cannot be expected to be depletable by humans;
besides, RES are commonly considered cleaner, in terms of their final
emissions and environmental impact.
However, several kinds of criticism have arisen, regarding a more extensive use
of RES, aiming at satisfying part of the increasing energy demand of the last
years.
One of the main critique on RES is referred to their habitat hazards. In fact,
even if they are not supposed to lead to any new global risk, like nuclear
wastes,
8
some
renewable
energy
capture
systems
entail
particular
environmental problems: for instance, someone claims that wind turbines can
be dangerous for flying birds, while hydroelectric dams can create barriers for
migrating fishes. Besides, some people disapprove the aesthetic consequences
of wind turbines or large solar-electric installations in the countryside.
Another problematic issue deals with the effective availability of a RES and with
its need of proximity to the energy demand. Since RES usually provide a
relatively low-intensity energy and are intermittent in nature, exploiting such
resources on a large scale is likely to require considerable investment in the
technology adopted, as well as in transmission and distribution networks. The
costs (not only financial, but also in terms of energy utilized) in infrastructures
and for the transport and storage of this energy will make two questions arise:
on one side, that of the economic profitability; on the other, that of the net
energy produced.
Finally, there is a debate on the opportunity cost of the land. Large areas should
be used to install wind turbines or photovoltaic cells, or to build a dam, or to
cultivate energy crops, in order to produce significant level of bio-energy; those
areas could be used to other kinds of production, or could even left wild for
conservation purposes.
The relevance of this issue is particularly evident in the case of biomass
production, and especially of biofuels by energy crops, since the large amount
of land required could be used to produce food crops: the achievement of food
security by a country and its bio-energy production become to be seen, in this
way, as they were in a sort of competition, as we will underline later.
In the case of biomass production for energy purposes, all the above mentioned
issues assume a peculiar relevance, not just that of land availability and
opportunity costs; however, before analyzing the peculiar meaning of those
issues, we think it is worth trying to give a definition of the term “biomass” and
underline its main characteristics.
The term biomass has different definitions, often depending on the defining
entity and its purposes. Nonetheless, it can be broadly identified as all kinds of
non-fossil organic material that is available on a renewable basis; we include
agricultural crop and wood wastes and residues, animal wastes, municipal
9
wastes, other organic waste materials and, of course, dedicated energy crops
and trees.
Given the high variety of raw materials, several types of technologies are used
to transform biomass into bio-energy: among them, we could list direct
combustion, co-firing, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion. On the other side of
the coin, final uses of biomass are various and diversified: biomass can be used
for household heating, as a liquid fuel, to produce bio-fuels or bio-gas.
Some differences can be identified between biomass and the other kinds of
RES. From the point of view of its availability, biomass can be considered,
among RES, the most independent one from geography, being available at
local level in various forms in almost every period of the year. However,
geography becomes relevant again in the phase of transformation of biomass
into bio-energy and its transport: collection logistics, available transformation
technologies and infrastructures are crucial aspects of the biomass supply
chain, as well as the distance existing between the production site and the
demand. In this perspective, biomass can be seen as an important resource at
territorial level.
In terms of renewability of the source, there is a wide diversity not only between
biomass and other RES, but also among different types of biomass: some kinds
of biomass are constantly renewed (e.g. municipal or animal wastes), while
some others take time and a new productive process to be renovated (e.g. trees
and energy crops). It is worth reminding that this second kind of biomass lies in
the definition of RES too, because the time it needs to be renewed never goes
beyond a human lifespan.
Furthermore, as opposite for the other RES, the final uses of biomass for bioenergy are usually characterized by some sort of polluting emissions, even if at
a lower level than fossil energy sources: in fact, these emissions would be
compensated by the amount of CO2 absorbed by biomass during its life,
resulting in no net CO2 emission.
Biomass shares most of the criticisms claimed against RES in general, as we
already mention in the case of land opportunity costs. Nevertheless, in the case
of biomass, the critical issue of net energy production assumes a peculiar
10
emphasis and ends up being linked to that of net polluting emissions, due to
high incidence of transport in its productive process. It is generally agreed upon
that total net polluting emissions of bio-energy from biomass (considering both
those of the transport phase and those of the final uses) are lower than those of
fossil fuels, especially if biomass is transported and use within a reasonable
distance from the production site.
Now, we want to focus our attention on bio-fuels, a specific type of biomass
obtained by the oil of dedicated crops, like sunflower, soy, sugar cane, which
are called energy crops when used for energy purposes.
Liquid biofuels usually produced are bio-ethanol, bio-diesel, as well as virgin
vegetable oils. Bio-ethanol can be used in internal combustion engines and in
fuel cells; bio-diesel can be used in modern diesel vehicles with little or no
modification to the engine and can be obtained also from waste and virgin
vegetable and animal oil and fats (lipids); while modifications in diesel engines
are needed to use virgin vegetable oils.
While the introduction of energy crops can contribute in the increase in biodiversity of areas previously dedicated to monocolture, the major benefit of
biofuels lies in their lower emissions, compared to fossil fuels. Nevertheless,
some drawbacks in their use are linked to the fact that the crops need to be
grown, collected, dried and fermented, and the oil obtained needs to be
transformed to be used safely by common engines. All these steps in the
production chain of biofuels require particular infrastructures and technology,
resulting in a higher price of the final product and, consequently, in a barrier
against a more widespread use of this kind of bio-energy.
Other two obstacles in the development of bio-fuels seem to be land availability,
since they would require large areas to be cultivated with energy crops, and the
fact that some more productive energy crops (like soy) may have a negative
environmental impact, causing habitat damage in those areas in which they are
massively grown.
11