Block’s Indicator of Sustainable Growth

by Ray Block

Kevin Rudd, Australia’s Prime Minister announced on September 19 2008 the formation of a Global Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) Institute, to help facilitate the setting up of 20 at scale international CCS projects to be up and running by 2020. An initial $100 million has been allotted to the institute, with annual contributions of around the same amount.

 

While Greenpeace is dismissive of CCS initiatives calling them a “false hope” in its pamphlet of May 10 2008, saying the technology is largely unproven and will not be ready in time to save the climate, both WWF and the Climate Institute are more positive. The reality is that CCS is being proven up now and the demonstration stage will continue over the next 10 years. By 2020, CCS will be ready for installation of new power plants and retrofitting of older ones over the period through to 2030.

 

The essential point is that CCS is only one of a handful of solutions in carbon reduction. There will also be need for large scale exploitation of wind power, solar, biomass, hydropower, geothermal, even nuclear energy to maximise the opportunities.

 

Coal’s cheap costs by comparison with competitive technologies, before the application of a carbon emission tax has one overwhelming advantage. It is the preferred technology of providing baseload power generation, something solar and wind power cannot do. Geothermal also provides the ability for baseload power, but because of its location disadvantages, it would be more costly in transmission costs. 

 

The July 2008 G8 meeting of leading nations in Hokkaido, which Rudd attended as an observer, had called for CCS demonstration plants, and Australia wants to facilitate their quick development. Australia, as the world’s largest coal exporter has a lot at stake, being heavily dependent  on coal fired power for 80 per cent of the nation’s electricity.  

 

In a study of the world’s largest carbon emitters, the Centre for Global Development in Washington, says Australia, which ranks as the world’s eighth biggest carbon polluter, and in per capita terms is almost on a par with America in carbon pollution has a great deal to do to reduce carbon emissions.

 

There are three different types of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies in development- post combustion, pre-combustion, and oxy-fuel combustion. Trials are proceeding around the world on all three technologies. In post-combustion, the CO2 is removed after coal is burned in conventional power plants. This is an expensive technology to deploy.

 

In pre-combustion, the coal is partially oxidised in a gasifier, the resulting syngas consisting of carbon monoxide and hydrogen is transformed into CO2 and H2. The CO2 can be captured relatively easily prior to the combustion of the H2, which can also be used for industrial processes or to fuel transportation.

 

In oxy-fuel combustion, coal is burned in an atmosphere of pure oxygen instead of air. This is the first time an oxyfuel boiler is being used in a power station. The resulting waste gas is almost pure CO2, and can be buried, preventing it from entering the atmosphere and contributing to global warming.

 

However, the initial step of separating oxygen from air requires considerable energy, with the result that final electricity costs from such a system are likely to be high. After CO2 is captured, it must be transported to a suitable storage site, which is usually via pipeline.

 

Permanent storage for captured CO2 include gaseous storage in deep geological formations, including saline formations and exhausted gas fields, liquid storage in the ocean, and solid storage by reaction of CO2 with metal oxides to produce stable carbonates.

 

Geological storage, also known as geo-sequestration, involves injecting carbon dioxide directly into oilfields, gasfields, saline formations, coal seams which can’t be mined, and saline-filled basalt formations. Several pilot programs are testing the long term storage of CO2 in non-oil producing geological formations.

 

The International CCS technology survey issue 3 July 2008 lists over 70 demonstration sites. 14 of these are in Australia-seven CO2 capture and storage projects, four capture projects, and three others limited to storage only.

 

In China, there are five major projects to develop CCS.  Greengen was founded in 2005, with the managing partner China Huaneng Group, and six other coal and power generating companies. The first stage (2006-2009) is a 250MW integrated gasification combined cycle (IGCC) plant. This is to be eventually expanded to a 400 MW IGCC plant.

 

NZEC are the initials for the Near Zero Emissions Coal project involving 20 Chinese participants including universities, government, and industry, with funding from the UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. In stage three, the intention is to construct and operate a demonstration plant by 2014-2015.

 

EU COACH  is a  demonstration of near zero emissions coal technology. The project has 20 Chinese partners and 12 EU partners. The intention is to eventually construct C02 capture in a IGCC post-combustion plant, with transport and storage in a mature oil and gas reservoir.

 

Yantai IGCC is a US$420 MW plant in Yantai, Shandong province, which has been included in China’s 10^th 5 year plan as a key element in developing and deploying CCS. The European Commission sees the project as an opportunity to promote European technology, and Mitsubishi Heavy Industry in Japan is also involved.

 

Japan-China enhanced oil recovery project signed by the two countries in May 2008 will be involved in a project to inject C02 emitted from a thermal power plant in China into an oil field. The start date is 2009.The intention is to capture annually from 1 to 3 million tons CO2 from the Harbin Thermal Power plant in Heilungkiang province and potentially other plants, and then transport it by pipeline about 100 km to China’s largest oil field-Daqing, for injecting and storing in the oil field.

 

Another international collaboration project is Australian-China Joint Coordination Group on clean coal technologies, which was announced in April 2008.

 

Japan has 18 CCS projects, including a joint venture in Australia, two in China, one in Vietnam, two in Malaysia, one in India, and one in Abu Dhabi.

 

In Europe, there are 26 CCS projects- five in Germany, two in France, 11 in the UK, two in Italy, four in Netherlands, and two in Norway.  

 

Perhaps the most interesting is the Sleipner project in the Norwegian oil zone of the North Sea, which was the first commercial scale project dedicated to geological CO2 storage in a saline formation.

 

Approximately 1 million metric tons is removed annually from the produced natural gas and injected under the sea at Sleipner. The project started in 1996, and over the lifetime of the project a total of 20 million tons CO2 is expected to be stored.

 

Other CCS projects are in Canada, the US and the Middle East.

 

The greatest level of progress has been in Europe, where there is common agreement that CCS is now a proven solution. This level of confidence has been reached through:

Ø      Large cooperative research programs, including international collaborations;

Ø      Amount of data and information acquired, shared knowledge;

Ø      Best practice manuals;

Ø      European demonstration projects and field laboratories;

Ø      Networks of research –CO2Net, CO2 GeoNet and national networks.

 

The next stage of cooperation is to:

Ø      Implement 10-12 large scale CCS demonstration projects Europe wide;

Ø      Prove beyond doubt that CO2 storage is both practical and safe, with zero tolerance for CO2 leakage;

Ø      Create the regulatory framework for storage;

Ø      Establish short and long term commercial incentives for commercial operation.

 

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Posted under World Inflation

by Ray Block

Wind energy is the fastest growing renewable energy technology in the world, and its generation quadrupled between 2000 and 2006. Current annual growth is around 30 per cent. The Economist (June 19 2008) says that world wind energy generating capacity will exceed 100 gigawatts (GW) this year.

The US Department of Energy in its Renewable Energy Data Book September 2008 said: “that after a decade of trailing Germany and Spain, the US re-established itself as the world leader in new wind energy. This resurgence is attributed to increasingly supportive policies, growing interest in renewable energy, and continued improvements in wind technology and performance.”

In 2007, Germany remained No1 in world wind capacity, with the US replacing Spain as No2. This year is seeing a complete change about, with the US emerging as No1. The American Wind Energy Association announced on September 4 2008 that US wind energy installations had reached 20.1 GW, with over 7.5 GW new wind capacity to be added this year. West Germany’s generating capacity installed is currently about 23 GW.

In the US, where renewable energy in 2007 represented 14.9 per cent of total energy consumption, (nuclear 8.3%, hydropower 2.4%, non-hydro renewables 4.2%), wind power generating capacity grew 45 per cent last year, with 5.24 megawatts (MW) new capacity installed. Wind power in 2007 represented just over 1 per cent of US electricity supply. Over the seven years 2000-2007, compound annual growth in US wind energy rose 30.7 per cent increasing 6.5 times over the seven year period.

In the DOE’s technical report “20%Wind Energy by 2030” July 2008, the department set out an agenda of how US wind energy could grow to the stage of having 20 per cent of total US energy consumption over the 24 years 2006 to 2030. This would require an installation rate of 16 GW, that is 16,000 MW every year after 2018. That is a very rapid rate of growth. It would involve increasing wind capacity from 16.8 GW in 2007 to more than 300 GW by 2030.

The US has more than 8,000 GW of available land based wind resources that the wind industry estimates can be captured economically. The US Energy Information Administration estimates that US electricity demand will grow by 39 per cent from 2005 to 2030, reaching 5.8 million GW by 2030. The 20 % wind scenario would require delivery of nearly 1.16 million GWh of wind energy in 2030.

Wind energy of this magnitude would allow the displacement of 18 per cent of US coal consumption by 2030, and about 50 per cent of electric utility natural gas consumption. There would be costs involved in wind energy growth, particularly in incremental transmission costs. The market cost of wind energy currently remains higher than that of conventional energy sources in many areas across the country.

As the DOE’s technical scenario suggest, the 20% wind scenario would involve higher initial capital costs to install wind capacity, and associated transmission infrastructure in many areas. But at the same time, it would open the door to lower ongoing energy costs, including maintenance costs.

The Department of Energy says that despite the considerable advances so far made in current turbine capacity, there would be need for considerable further advances, along with enhanced system reliability, and reducing capital costs. Today’s wind turbines currently being installed have three-bladed rotors with diameters of 70 to 80 metres, typically installed in arrays of 30 to 150 machines.

“Drag based devices and simple lift based designs have given way to experimentally designed and tested high lift rotors, many with full span pitch control. Blades that once had been made of sail or sheet metal progressed through wood to advanced fiberglass composites. The direct current alternator gave way to the grid synchronised induction generator, which has now been replaced by variable speed designs employing high speed solid state switches of advanced power electronics.

“Designs moved from mechanical cams and linkages that feathered or furled a machine to high speed digital controls. A 50 kW machine, considered large in 1980, is now dwarfed by the 1.5 to 2.5 MW machines being routinely installed today.”

In 2007, Texas consolidated its position as the leading wind state, followed by California, Minnesota, Iowa and Washington state. Along with Texas’s commitment to spend over the next four to five years US$ 4.93 billion on transmission lines for wind power delivering 18.46 GW of electricity to metropolitan areas of the state, there is a bonanza of new investment in wind power.

Billionaire T Boone Pickens (80 years young) who made his money from oil, but now convinced of Peak Oil, is on a crusade to end US reliance on foreign oil replacing it with renewable energies. Pickens’ current enthusiasm is wind power, his dream in the process of becoming reality is to create the world’s largest wind farm. Location is Nolan County, Texas, housing the largest number of wind turbines in the US. Pickens’ Pampa Wind Project is already spending $2 billion this year on turbines.

The overall plan, which will take four years to complete is to produce 4GW, enough to power one million homes at an all up investment of $10 billion. The wind farm, five times larger than the current largest wind farm, will have 2,700 turbines across 200,000 acres of the Texan panhandle.

Another massive wind farm, this time of 4 GW announced this year is a joint venture between Shell Oil and the largest Texan electricity utility,TXU, which is to be located in Briscoe County.

There remains one critical impediment to the exceptional rate of growth in wind power and solar. The House of Representatives has passed H.R. 6049, the Renewable Energy and Job Creation Act of 2008. This would extend the renewable production tax credits due to expire at the end of 2008. The wind and solar lobbies are saying that failure to extend the renewable energy tax credits will result in the loss of approximately 116,000 jobs-roughly 40,000 jobs in the solar industry and the remaining 76,000 in wind energy.

Whether the Senate passes the House Bill before Congress rises for the November elections is not known at this time of writing.

Posted under Economies, Global Warming, World Inflation

by Ray Block

 A blog in 2007 described Norman Borlaug (aged 94) as the “greatest living American”. Borlaug received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his contributions to the world food supply. He subsequently received the highest civilian honour in United States, the Congressional Gold Medal.

 

Borlaug was one of four American geneticists breeding high yield disease resistant semi dwarf wheat for the Cooperative Wheat Research Production Program, a joint venture of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Mexican Ministry of Agriculture in the 1940s and 1950s. In the mid 1960s, he extended his work to India, on behalf of the Rockefeller Foundation and the Indian Ministry of Agriculture, at a time of widespread famine and starvation.

 

Borlaug’s Lerma Rojo 64 and Sonora 64 wheat varieties, successfully developed in Mexico enabled an almost doubling of wheat yields, enabling India and Pakistan to become self sufficient in the production of all cereals.

 

By 1968, William Gaud of the US Agency for International Development called Borlaug’s work a “green revolution,” and the name stuck.  Borlaug’s third contribution was the development of high yield semi dwarf indica and japonica rice cultivars at the International Rice Research Institute started by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, and at China’s Hunan Rice Research Institute. Borlaug’s colleagues at the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research also developed and introduced a high yield variety of rice throughout most of Asia.

 

The first green revolution in Asia in the 1960s had been quite outstanding in its initial years, but 40 years on it has fizzled out. Is there now is a new green revolution in process of development, and can it sustain greater long lasting progress?

 

Today, there are a number of imponderables. The Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) put the problem simply enough. Said the FAO on June 3 2008:“the world only needs $30 billion dollars a year to eradicate the scourge of hunger.”

 

Nice sentiment, but there isn’t money of that volume available from international aid for handout, and to do so each year is an impossible reality.

 

Dr Jacques Diouf, the FAO director general reminded the rich countries, that in a typical year like 2006, the world spent US$1,200 billion on arms, while food wasted in a single country could cost $100 billion, and excess consumption by the world’s obese amounted to $20 billion.

 

“Against that backdrop, how can we explain to people of good sense and good faith that it was not possible to find $30 billion a year to enable 862 million hungry people to enjoy the most fundamental of human rights: the right to food and thus the right to life,” asked the FAO chief..

           

Put that way, there is merit in what he says. But money aside, land degradation is on the rise, with FAO (July 2 2008) reporting that one fourth of the world’s population is affected by increases in land degradation. More than 20 per cent of all cultivated areas, 30 per cent of forests, and 10 per cent of grasslands are undergoing degradation.

 

There is also a growing shortage of water in the world, with the additional handicap of a  great deal of contaminated water, greatly adding to disease, and not really conducive to increased agricultural production.

 

Lars Thunell, executive vice president of the International Finance Corporation, an affiliate of the World Bank said at the Stockholm International Water Conference (IPS August 22 2008): “I believe we are at a tipping point, because the scarcity of water poses a threat to the food supply, just when the agricultural sector is stepping up production in response to riots over food prices, growing hunger, and rising malnutrition.”

 

According to UN estimates, a little less than one billion people worldwide still does not have access to clean drinking water, while over 2.6 billion people lack adequate sanitation.”

 

Understanding the impediments standing in the way of feeding starving people has prompted the need for a Green Revolution Mark 2. As in the 1940s and 1960s, philanthropists are involved in the new “African Green Revolution.” This time around it involves the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and once again the Rockefeller Foundation.

 

Another international group, the Yara Foundation established in 2005 by the world’s leading supplier of fertilizers, the Norwegian based Yara International, has a record of a significant presence in Africa over the past 25 years.

 

Two other bodies have a role. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) promotes hybrid seeds through projects in Africa, as does the World Bank. There is also the lobbies of international biotechnology companies operating through the African Seed Trade Association (AFSTA), with the help of the American Seed Trade Association (ASTA).

 

At issue is a batttle about the role of biotech companies with proprietary genes dominating the international seed industry, which has been unresolved for a long time. That is the role of genetically modified crops (GMO), which United States promotes actively and the European Union still opposes.

 

The reporter Alleen Kwa (IPS September 1 2008) says that researcher Elenita Dano in her book “Unmasking the New Green Revolution in Africa: Motives, Players and Dynamics” is concerned about the deliberate sidelines role of the big biotech seed companies. 

 

Dano seeks to expose the seed companies. “Even as they quietly push their agenda forward through a myriad of partnerships with public research institutions, non-government organizations and farmers organizations.” She claims that the seed companies have allowed “public research institutions to be at the forefront in Africa, along with their philanthropic backers.”

 

The aim of the big seed companies is to secure an explicit target of gaining a five per cent increase in US seed exports to the African region within the first five years. Uganda was there first target, important mainly because it is strategically placed, as being next door to a much bigger market in Kenya. The US government’s USAID actively promotes the “potentials of biotechnology in the overall economic development strategy.” The philanthropists are fully behind the green revolution, with the involvement of the international seed companies.

 

Grace Machel of the Africa Progress Panel (New Times, Rwanda www.all Africa.com June 17 2008) says that Africa has the lowest use of fertilizers in the world, average grain yield in Africa is less than one ton per hectare, which is only one quarter of the world average. “Our population has increased, yet African agricultural yields have stagnated since the early 1960s. We must therefore raise agricultural productivity and increase food production.

 

“This includes reforming outdated policies and investing in key inputs such as fertilizer, improved seeds, effective water management and new crop varieties, and linking farmers to markets via investment in basic infrastructure. In short, Africa needs a green revolution. If the challenge seems daunting, there is some comfort in knowing that the expertise and the experience exist.

 

“With appropriate technology and support, for example, Malawi has gone from experiencing serious food shortages to becoming both self-reliant and a net exporter of food. The key is to build on this success and replicate it across the continent.”

 

The Africa Progress Panel is demanding that with the “shortfall of US$40 billion in aid, G8 countries must urgently address the deficits against their targets, set clear timetables for delivery and increase transparency in order to improve the quality of aid. The food crisis has put a clear premium on the G8 delivering its original pledges.” 

 

In West Africa, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation have financially supported the Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), with a $150 million contribution to help small scale farmers grow more food by developing new crop varieties, introducing better farming techniques, and improving seed distribution.

 

The chairman of the Alliance is Kofi Annan, the former UN Secretary General and the executive head Namanga Ngongi, a retired UN official involved in the World Food Program. To date, the Alliance has been investigating the health of Africa’s soils, now the most depleted in the world. It has extended its work to help small scale farmers in water management initiatives to provide low cost efficient water management systems. In addition, the initial area of West Africa has been extended to the sub-Saharan region, where the volume of food available to the people seems to be reducing each year, at a time when the population keeps on increasing.

 

The International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington, which is associated with the biotech seed companies has acknowledged that serious mistakes were made in the first green revolution in Asia. To rectify the faults, there is a need for:

 

Ø       scale neutral technology package that can be profitably adopted on farms of all sizes.

Ø      The need for an equitable distribution of land with secure ownership or tenancy rights.

Ø      Efficient input, credit and product markets, so that farms of all sizes have access to modern farm inputs and information, and are able to receive similar prices for their products.

Ø      Policies that do not discriminate against small farms and landless laborers (no subsidies on mechanization and no scale biases in agricultural research and extension).

 

“These conditions are not easy to meet. Governments must make a concerted effort to ensure that small farmers have fair access to land, knowledge, and modern inputs.

 

“Another shortcoming of the Green Revolution was that it spread only in irrigated and high potential rain areas, and many villages or regions without access to sufficient water were left out.” There is widespread criticism that excessive and inappropriate use of fertilizers and pesticides polluted waterways, and killed beneficial insects and other wildlife.”

 

Irrigation practices have led to salt build-up and eventual abandonment of some of the best farming lands. Groundwater levels are retreating in areas where more water is being pumped for irrigation than can be replenished by the rains. Heavy reliance on a few major cereal varieties has led to a loss of biodiversity on farms.

 

The International Food Policy Research Institute says that there is a compound of tangled issues. “Millions of largely illiterate farmers began to use modern inputs for the first time, but inadequate extension and training, an absence of effective regulation of water quality, and input pricing and subsidy policies that made modern inputs too cheap and encouraged excessive use”are the root causes of most of the inadequacies.

 

There is no doubt that American and European researchers have developed some very valuable technologies, which can help to create a new green revolution. The sticking point is that most of the Asian and African farmers want the technologies, but they don’t want to be tied hand and foot to seed contracts by the biotech companies.

 

Professor MS Swaminathan, whom Time Magazine described in 1999 as the father of the Green Revolution, he had been a colleague of Norman Borlaug, and acclaimed as one of the 20 most influential Asians of the 20^th Century in a paper “Genetic Engineering and Food Security:Ecological and Livelihood Issues” deserves the last word.

 

“Because land and water for agriculture are diminishing resources, there is no option but to produce more food and other agricultural commodities from less arable land and irrigation water. In other words, the need for more food has to be met through higher yields per units of land, water, energy and time. We need to examine how science can be mobilized to raise further the biological ceiling without associated ecological harm.

 

“…The Green Revolution has so far helped to keep the rate of growth in food production above the population growth rate. The Green Revolution was, however, the result of public good research, supported by public funds. The emerging gene revolution, by contrast, is spearheaded by proprietary science and can come under monopolistic control. How can we take the fruits of the gene revolution to the unreached?”

 

It is a pity that the US, which does so much good work ruins it all with championing monopolistic biotech companies, rather than the needs of the Africans.

 

 

 

 Block

Posted under Climate Change, Economies, Food

by Ray

It is easy to paint China as the chief culprit for the dramatic rise in world carbon emissions.

After all, China as the world’s most concentrated centre of manufacturing produces more than 500 million metric tons of steel a year. That is equal to 38 per cent of the world total. Chinese coal consumption.in 2007 totalled 2.9 billion short tons, equal to more than one third of the world total.

With sulphur bearing coal dust in the atmosphere and other greenhouse gas emissions, including the large residential use of coal, it is understandable that deaths in China from respiratory problems are around 400,000 a year.

Understandably, even if global warming wasn’t a fact of life, the Chinese have a vested interest in a rapid expansion of renewable energies.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China’s chief industrial planning agency in its latest five year plan 2006-2010 places critical importance on the medium and long term developments for renewable energy. The latest directive was released on September 4 2007.

NDRC sees the main renewable developments in hydro power, biomass, wind and solar developments. In 2008, the renewable energy proportion of total energy consumed in China was about 8 per cent, and this will rise to 10 per cent by 2010.The renewable target for 2020 is for 15 per cent.

The ambitious program is expected to cost around the equivalent of US$100 billion. The Chinese expansion in renewable energy will be getting closer to the renewable energy targets in the European Union, where the 2020 goal is for 20 per cent.

Biomass energy resources include mainly straw and other agricultural wastes, waste from forestry and forest product processing, animal manure, energy crops (eg biofuels), organic effluent from industry, municipal wastewater, municipal solid waste. Of about 900 million tons of waste from forestry and forest product processing available every year, nearly 300 million tons, or around 150 million tons coal equivalent (tce) can be used for fuel.

There are also large areas of marginal land to cultivate energy crops, including bagasse. Similarly, biogas and municipal sold waste are also biomass resources. Presently, China’s total biomass resource that can be potentially converted to energy is about 500 million tce.

By 2010, the five year plan expects installed capacity of biomass power to reach 5.5 GW, and this is to be increased to 30 GW by 2020. Similarly, installed capacity of power generation based on municipal solid waste will be 500 MW by 2010, and with a sixfold increase this will amount to 3 GW by 2020.

Biomass pellets will be another by product. The annual use of biomass pellet fuels in 2010 will reach 1 million tons, the annual use of biogas will reach 19 billion cubic metres, the use of non-food grain fuel bio-ethanol will be 2 million tons, and the annual use of bio-diesel will reach 200,000 tons.

By 2020, the annual use of biomass pellets as fuel will reach 50 million tons, the annual use of biogas will reach 44 billion cubic metres, the annual use of fuel bio-ethanol will reach 10 million tons, and the annual use of bio-diesel will reach 2 million tons.

In rural areas, the main emphasis will be put on household biogas digesters in small and medium sized towns, as well as livestock farms, and in cases of industrial organic effluent, larger scale biogas projects will supply gas in a more concentrated fashion. By 2010, about 40 million rural households will use biogas as their main fuel, while by 2020, 80 million households will do so.

By 2010, the installed grid connected wind capacity will be 5 GW. About thirty 100 MW- scale wind farms will be established, mainly in the eastern coastal areas and ‘Sanbei Region” (“Three Norths Region”), thereby building up of three 1 GW-scale wind farm bases in Jiangsu, Hebei and Inner Mongolia, respectively. In addition, one or two 100 MW-scale pilot offshore wind projects will be established.

By 2020, the installed grid connected wind capacity will be 30 GW. Rich wind energy resources in Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu, Shandong, Hebei, and Inner Mongolia, Liaoning, and Jilin will be developed, establishing a backbone of major wind provinces, each with over 2 GW of capacity installed.

Six wind farm bases (Dabancheng in Xinjiang, Yumen in Gansu, the eastern coastal area around Jiangsu and Dhanghai, Huitengxile in Inner Mongolia, Zhangbei region of Hebei, and Baicheng in Jilin will be developed each with GW-level installed capacity. 1 GW offshore wind capacity will also be installed.

Over recent years, China has become the world’s third largest producer of solar PV (photovoltaics) after Japan and Germany, but until recently installed capacity in China itself was quite modest. This trend is being reversed. According to solarbuzz.com, the world solar pv market rose 62 per cent in 2007 to reach a new record of 2,826 MW of installed solar panels. Germany is world leader in installed solar capacity followed by Spain.

By 2010, the total capacity of solar PV power in China will be 300 MW, and this will rise to 1.8 GW by 2020. This total includes about 100 MW of solar PV to be installed to 1 million rural households.

China will aim to build large solar PV and solar thermal power stations. By 2010, the grid connected capacity will be 20 MW solar PV and 50 MW solar thermal. In 2020, this is expected to rise to 200 MW for grid connected solar PV power and 200 MW for solar thermal stations. In addition, there is a large potential for solar PV application in communications, meteorology, long distance pipelines, railways, highways etc. The application of solar PV technologies in these commercial areas will be 30 MW by 2010 and 100 MW by 2020.

China will actively promote the development of geothermal and tidal energies. In the regions of the Yangtze River and in coastal areas, geothermal technology will be used for space heating, air conditioning, and hot water supply. The target of annual geothermal energy utilization will be 4 million tce by 2010 and 12 million tce by 2020. The total capacity of tidal power generation will be 100 MW by 2020.

Hydropower, the other renewable energy has an economic potential capacity of 400 GW, with an annual power generation potential of 1750 TWh. These are distributed mainly in China’s western provinces, with 70 per cent located in the south west.

The devastating earthquake in Sichuan province has had a major impact on China’s natural gas production, as well as severely affecting the hydro power resources of the region. 27 power stations have been shut down, and 391 dams badly damaged. The Water Resources Ministry has pointed to major safety issues with reservoirs, hydro stations and lakes. 37,000 of China’s 87,000 dams are believed to be in a dangerous state.

renewable energies, global warming, carbon abatement, greenhouse gas, emissions trading

Posted under Carbon Abatement Scheme, Global Warming, Renewable Energies, World Inflation

by Ray Block

After years of global warming scepticism by the previous Liberal government, the new Australian Labor government signed the Kyoto Protocol shortly after election in November 2007. After putting out a green paper for community consultation in June, the government will issue a white paper this December setting out the cap and trade scheme to be introduced in 2010.

Professor Ross Garnaut, the government’s adviser on climate change policy has now issued three reports. The latest Targets and Trajectories released in September sets out an agenda for implementation. There are a number of alternative scenarios:

• If there is broad agreement to an international emissions trading scheme at the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 15) at Copenhagen (November 30-December  11 2009), then Australia should be reducing its net emissions by 10 per cent from 2000 levels by 2020. This would be equivalent to a 30 per cent reduction in per capita terms.

• It is almost certain that no broad agreement between developed and developing countries will be reached as early as 2009. However, if United States and the few  other developed countries not already in the Kyoto club sign up to 2020 targets, that would be an appropriate start of an international trading scheme.

• If Copenhagen gets nowhere in resolution, so that it is business as usual, then Australia should limit itself to a 5 per cent reduction in net emissions from the 2000 level by 2020. This would mean a reduction in emissions of 25 per cent per capita.

• Irrespective of the level of cutting emissions by 10 or 5 per cent, Australia should start its emissions trading scheme in 2010 by selling permits at $20, rising each year by 4 per cent a year, plus percentage increases in the consumer price index. However, if an international trading scheme started in 2013, after the expiry of Kyoto in 2012, Garnaut sees the permit price floating as Australian emissions trade internationally.

• Garnaut says that the fragile Australian environment, citing as an example the survival of the Great Barrier Reef, the world’s largest coral reef,  would need to ensure that CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions in the atmosphere be limited to no more than 450 parts per million (ppm). This was also the preferred position of the IPCC Climate Change consensus in 2007.

• However, as a coal driven economy in terms of power generation, and as the world’s largest coal exporter, with the largest level of emissions per capita in the world, the high emissions-intensive exports puts Australia at a big disadvantage to all other developed countries. On this basis, Australia would have to start its carbon reduction scheme, with a second best option of tolerating an atmospheric concentration of C02 and other GHG at 550 ppm, dangerous as this might prove in the future.

Professor Garnaut, a former Australian Ambassador to China and leading economist with great experience of Asia realises the government’s limited options only too keenly. His policy proposal for Australia to reach a 10 per cent cut in emissions by 2020, if an international agreement can be reached, is seen by scientific critics as being far too soft and weak.

David Karoly, professor of Meteorology at Melbourne University, and one of the authors of the IPCC consensus report on Climate Change in 2007 says in effect that if Garnaut gets a green tick with the government over the emissions trading scheme, it would demonstrate that the new government is all talk and little action. It might be “politically and economically palatable or acceptable, but it is the wrong prescription.”

On the other hand, the Business Council of Australia (BCA), the big business lobby, armed with a detailed study of how Australian exports would be vulnerable to severe Asian competition, because of the carbon reduction scheme is vehement that leading Australian exporters cannot afford even a 10 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020 over 2000 levels. They want compensation from government, if they are to continue operating in Australia, and not just jump ship and move their operations to Asia or elsewhere.

The key to Australia lowering its carbon levels is a successful implementation of the carbon capture and storage (CCS) program on a large scale, but this is not likely until after 2020. There would also be the need for investment in new electricity generating plant capable of low emissions. This plant is available but at extremely high cost.

There are other options for greater investment in renewable energy, particularly in offshore wind stations, taking a cue from the success of Germany and Spain, and there remains a big future for geothermal power stations. Solar power is another option, and although solar photovoltaics received a big boost years ago from Professor Martin Green’s innovations at the University of NSW, it has not been utilised on a very wide scale in Australia.

Ironically, the biggest beneficiary of Green’s work has been in China, which now boasts world leadership in solar PV installations. Hopefully, Worley Parsons’s decision to commit to the development of a $1 billion 250 MW solar thermal plant in the Australian outback, possibly in the Pilbara will start a new wave of leadership in renewable energy.

It is hard not to feel some sympathy for Australia, this rich medium sized economy, tied so heavily to a carbon economy, which for many years had its head in the sand, and has suddenly woken up to the potential dangers ahead. Whatever emissions trading scheme is implemented in 2010, it will eventually have to be replaced by more bold schemes later on, which would dramatically change the country’s direction to more meaningful cuts in carbon emissions.

Australia needs the input of the maverick, but brilliant climatologist Dr James Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Hansen is at least one or two steps ahead of the slow moving IPCC scientific consensus. George Bush tried to muzzle Hansen, but you can’t keep the maverick down. In open letters to German Chancellor Angela Merkel and to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, Hansen is particularly concerned about coal’s increasing place in world electricity generation.

Hansen says that while oil slightly exceeds coal as a source of CO2 emissions today, because of the long lifetime of CO2, about one fifth is still in the air after 1000 years. “Because of this long CO2 lifetime, we cannot solve the climate problem by slowing down emissions by 20 per cent, or 50 per cent, or even 80 per cent. It does not matter much whether the CO2 is emitted this year, next year, or several years from now. Instead of a percent reduction in the rate of emissions, we must identify a portion of the fossil fuels that will be left in the ground, or captured upon emission and put back into the ground.”

Hansen goes to say that currently emissions in the atmosphere are at 385 ppm CO2, but trending substantially higher. Unless they can be kept to a maximum CO2 close to 400 ppm, thus retaining the possibility to get CO2 back to below 350 ppm in a reasonable time, emissions are in a dangerous zone.

If Australia is going to have a strong future, it will with its international partners have to solve very quickly the carbon capture and storage potential on a large demonstrable scale, and go quickly into a major investment program in renewable capabilities. There is not much time to waste.

Posted under Carbon Abatement Scheme, Climate Change, Economies