Michael McCarthy
Monday 12 December 2011
An extraordinary face-to-face encounter between two powerful women, sitting in the midst of a giant huddle in a packed conference hall, finally sealed the Durban climate change agreement as dawn was breaking yesterday, when many had given it up for lost.
After a fortnight of talks and two final all-night negotiating sessions, with the meeting on the edge of collapse, Connie Hedegaard, the Dane who is the European Union's leading climate negotiator, persuaded her Indian opposite number, Jayanthi Natarajan, to accept a form of words meaning that all countries in the world – India included – would be legally bound, in a future climate treaty, to cut their emissions of greenhouse gases.
Ms Natarajan finally agreed to the disputed text despite the fact that her senior officials were telling her she did not have the latitude to do so, and that she had to refer the matter back to the Indian cabinet. Her show of independent-mindedness saved the meeting, and made possible the prospect of a new way forward for dealing with global warming.
The Indians had all along been the main objectors to the idea of a legally-binding agreement, and in the early hours proposed text which EU negotiators believed undermined the idea, although you need to be an expert in the arcane dialect of UN treaties to understand this.
They suggested that the new treaty should have "a legal outcome"; but EU negotiators were convinced this could refer merely to decisions of future meetings of the UN Climate Convention such as the Durban one, and would not be binding in international law. The European Union roundly rejected it, threatening the talks with collapse.
Eventually the chief Brazilian negotiator, Luiz Figueiredo Machado, suggested another form of wording – "an agreed outcome with legal force", which became known as the Figueiredo Compromise. Although many might think there is little difference in the wording, all 27 EU member states agreed that this really did mean "legally binding" in law, whereas the first phrase did not, and agreed to accept it.
The Conference's president, the South African Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, then invited the contending parties to go into a huddle – in the middle of the plenary session, the full coming together of all delegates, which was going on in the Baobab Hall of Durban's International Convention Centre.
Watched intensely by leading negotiators from many key states, including Todd Stern from the US and Xie Zhenhua from China, who were looking over their shoulders – as the photo opposite shows – Ms Hedegaard and Ms Natarajan then argued the toss, with the Indian minister eventually giving way, accepting the revised text, and making agreement possible.
There is no doubt that the outcome was a notable success for the European Union as a corporate body acting together, as all member states had maintained a completely united front over their quest for a new climate treaty which for the first time would bind all nations legally.
EU negotiations in the conference were led by Britain's Energy and Environment Secretary, Chris Huhne, and his German opposite number, Norbert Roettgen – although it was Ms Hedegaard who finally clinched the deal.
Mr Huhne said last night: "It shows that when the European Union is united, we can play an absolutely critical role in protecting our national interests. This is a very good example of how the European Union actually can act very crucially in the British national interest, in a way we could not possibly achieve on our own."
Monday, 12 December 2011
Nations Chart New Course Toward Climate Pact
By PATRICK MCGROARTY
DURBAN—Major industrial and emerging economies set a course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade and beyond, even as poorer nations warned it wasn't enough to shield them from the worst potential impacts of climate change.
Following marathon negotiations that stretched past dawn on Sunday, two days after the conference's scheduled conclusion, delegates from almost 200 countries agreed to draft a new international emissions treaty by 2015.
Under the agreement, most industrial nations currently bound to reduce emissions under the so-called Kyoto Protocol will extend their commitments beyond their current expiration in 2012. Many are European Union members already bound by EU law to make cuts that will satisfy the Kyoto requirements. Even though Russia, Canada and Japan earlier vowed not recommit to the Kyoto Protocol, they have signed onto the new agreement. The U.S., China and India—the three largest emitters of greenhouse gases—pledged to join them in the pact to take effect in 2020. Delegates will spend the next four years hammering out the specifics of their 2020 deal, starting at meetings next year in South Korea and Qatar.
Separately, envoys agreed to establish a fund to guide the flow of much of what they hope will be $100 billion in annual pledges by 2020 to mitigate the impact of climate change in poor countries.
China and India nearly derailed the broader climate pact by refusing to accept a strict "legal instrument," to police those emissions cuts. Instead, the version of the agreement that emerged Sunday contained the phrase "legal force"—a broader term that is seen as offering governments more leeway to identify how to curb emissions.
The pact marks a small sliver of common ground among different nations committed to checking climate change. But taken together, the two weeks of meetings in Durban highlighted the monumental challenge of any future treaty passing political muster at home.
China and India have long argued it would be unfair to curb rapid development that is helping eradicate poverty to offset emissions that rich countries produced over decades without consequence.
"I'm wondering if there is an effort here to shift the burden of this entire climate change problem on countries who have not contributed to this entire issue," India's environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, said as she rejected an unqualified binding deal. "Please don't hold us hostage."
Meanwhile, the U.S. had said it wouldn't accept binding targets unless India and China were on board. The chief U.S. negotiator, Todd Stern, also interpreted the agreement as a strong collective obligation to cut emissions. As long as India and China sign up for emissions cuts that are "symmetrical" to those pledged by the U.S., Mr. Stern said he believed the final treaty stood a chance of passing in a Congress that has rejected climate legislation—including the Kyoto Protocol—in the past.
"If the agreement has those elements then we could get into the category of the just very hard rather than the impossible," Mr. Stern said.
Though they didn't block its passage, many smaller nations were bitterly disappointed by a deal they said wasn't sufficient to keep emissions low enough to prevent temperatures from rising more than an average of two degrees Celsius, a threshold above which scientists say the impact of climate change will become much more pronounced.
Venezuela's Claudia Salerno urged fellow negotiators to push for a more robust deal when they meet again next year. "This is a very bad agreement," she said.
But many saw the pact as the one compromise possible. Even vaguely defined "legal force" commits China and India to emissions cuts, according to Luiz Alberto Figueiredo of Brazil. "It's legally binding and indeed it's very strong," he said.
Two years ago, talks in Copenhagen also broke down when China refused to accept a legally binding deal delegates had hoped to have in place by 2013, after the Kyoto Protocol was set to expire.
The EU revived the quest for a legally binding deal by pushing the target date back to 2020. Ahead of the United Nations-led meeting in this tropical port city, EU officials said they would only extend their Kyoto commitments if a broader binding deal was on track.
But after nearly a week tense negotiations in Durban, the EU accepted the broader wording that India and China demanded. "We wanted more ambition--The EU strategy worked," said Connie Hedegaard, the EU's climate commissioner.
Write to Patrick McGroarty at patrick.mcgroarty@dowjones.com
DURBAN—Major industrial and emerging economies set a course to reduce greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade and beyond, even as poorer nations warned it wasn't enough to shield them from the worst potential impacts of climate change.
Following marathon negotiations that stretched past dawn on Sunday, two days after the conference's scheduled conclusion, delegates from almost 200 countries agreed to draft a new international emissions treaty by 2015.
Under the agreement, most industrial nations currently bound to reduce emissions under the so-called Kyoto Protocol will extend their commitments beyond their current expiration in 2012. Many are European Union members already bound by EU law to make cuts that will satisfy the Kyoto requirements. Even though Russia, Canada and Japan earlier vowed not recommit to the Kyoto Protocol, they have signed onto the new agreement. The U.S., China and India—the three largest emitters of greenhouse gases—pledged to join them in the pact to take effect in 2020. Delegates will spend the next four years hammering out the specifics of their 2020 deal, starting at meetings next year in South Korea and Qatar.
Separately, envoys agreed to establish a fund to guide the flow of much of what they hope will be $100 billion in annual pledges by 2020 to mitigate the impact of climate change in poor countries.
China and India nearly derailed the broader climate pact by refusing to accept a strict "legal instrument," to police those emissions cuts. Instead, the version of the agreement that emerged Sunday contained the phrase "legal force"—a broader term that is seen as offering governments more leeway to identify how to curb emissions.
The pact marks a small sliver of common ground among different nations committed to checking climate change. But taken together, the two weeks of meetings in Durban highlighted the monumental challenge of any future treaty passing political muster at home.
China and India have long argued it would be unfair to curb rapid development that is helping eradicate poverty to offset emissions that rich countries produced over decades without consequence.
"I'm wondering if there is an effort here to shift the burden of this entire climate change problem on countries who have not contributed to this entire issue," India's environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, said as she rejected an unqualified binding deal. "Please don't hold us hostage."
Meanwhile, the U.S. had said it wouldn't accept binding targets unless India and China were on board. The chief U.S. negotiator, Todd Stern, also interpreted the agreement as a strong collective obligation to cut emissions. As long as India and China sign up for emissions cuts that are "symmetrical" to those pledged by the U.S., Mr. Stern said he believed the final treaty stood a chance of passing in a Congress that has rejected climate legislation—including the Kyoto Protocol—in the past.
"If the agreement has those elements then we could get into the category of the just very hard rather than the impossible," Mr. Stern said.
Though they didn't block its passage, many smaller nations were bitterly disappointed by a deal they said wasn't sufficient to keep emissions low enough to prevent temperatures from rising more than an average of two degrees Celsius, a threshold above which scientists say the impact of climate change will become much more pronounced.
Venezuela's Claudia Salerno urged fellow negotiators to push for a more robust deal when they meet again next year. "This is a very bad agreement," she said.
But many saw the pact as the one compromise possible. Even vaguely defined "legal force" commits China and India to emissions cuts, according to Luiz Alberto Figueiredo of Brazil. "It's legally binding and indeed it's very strong," he said.
Two years ago, talks in Copenhagen also broke down when China refused to accept a legally binding deal delegates had hoped to have in place by 2013, after the Kyoto Protocol was set to expire.
The EU revived the quest for a legally binding deal by pushing the target date back to 2020. Ahead of the United Nations-led meeting in this tropical port city, EU officials said they would only extend their Kyoto commitments if a broader binding deal was on track.
But after nearly a week tense negotiations in Durban, the EU accepted the broader wording that India and China demanded. "We wanted more ambition--The EU strategy worked," said Connie Hedegaard, the EU's climate commissioner.
Write to Patrick McGroarty at patrick.mcgroarty@dowjones.com
Could the desert sun power the world?
Green electricity generated by Sahara solar panels is being hailed as a solution to the climate change crisis
Leo Hickman
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 December 2011 20.30 GMT
During the summer of 1913, in a field just south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile, an American engineer called Frank Shuman stood before a gathering of Egypt's colonial elite, including the British consul-general Lord Kitchener, and switched on his new invention. Gallons of water soon spilled from a pump, saturating the soil by his feet. Behind him stood row upon row of curved mirrors held aloft on metal cradles, each directed towards the fierce sun overhead. As the sun's rays hit the mirrors, they were reflected towards a thin glass pipe containing water. The now super-heated water turned to steam, resulting in enough pressure to drive the pumps used to irrigate the surrounding fields where Egypt's lucrative cotton crop was grown. It was an invention, claimed Shuman, which could help Egypt become far less reliant on the coal being imported at great expense from Britain's mines.
"The human race must finally utilise direct sun power or revert to barbarism," wrote Shuman in a letter to Scientific American magazine the following year. But the outbreak of the first world war just a few months later abruptly ended his dream and his solar troughs were soon broken up for scrap, with the metal being used for the war effort. Barbarism, it seemed, had prevailed.
Almost a century later, a convoy of air-conditioned coaches sweeps through the affluent suburb of Maadi – where Shuman had demonstrated his fledgling solar panels – continuing south for 90km towards Kuraymat, an area of flat, uninhabited desert near the city of Beni Suef. The high-level international delegation of CEOs, politicians, financiers and scientists has come to visit a brand new "hybrid" power station that uses both natural gas and solar panels to generate electricity. Before the coaches reach the facility's security gates, its 6,000 parabolic troughs – each six metres tall with a combined surface area of 130,000sq metres – are already visible from the perimeter road. Even though the panels account for just one seventh of the power plant's 150MW generating capacity, the Egyptian government, which has been pushing to develop the site since 1997, hopes to prove to the delegation that it is the desert sun – not fossil fuels, such as gas, coal and oil – that should be used not only to generate far more of the electricity across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), but, crucially, for neighbouring Europe, too.
Gerhard Knies, a German particle physicist, was the first person to estimate how much solar energy was required to meet humanity's demand for electricity. In 1986, in direct response to the Chernobyl nuclear accident, he scribbled down some figures and arrived at the following remarkable conclusion: in just six hours, the world's deserts receive more energy from the sun than humans consume in a year. If even a tiny fraction of this energy could be harnessed – an area of Saharan desert the size of Wales could, in theory, power the whole of Europe – Knies believed we could move beyond dirty and dangerous fuels for ever. Echoing Schuman's own frustrations, Knies later asked whether "we are really, as a species, so stupid" not to make better use of this resource. Over the next two decades, he worked – often alone – to drive this idea into public consciousness.
The culmination of his efforts is "Desertec", a largely German-led initiative that aims to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050 through a vast network of solar and wind farms stretching right across the Mena region and connecting to continental Europe via special high voltage, direct current transmission cables, which lose only around 3% of the electricity they carry per 1,000km. The tentative total cost of building the project has been estimated at €400bn (£342bn).
Until now, Desertec has been seen by many observers as little more than a mirage in the sand; the fanciful plan of well-meaning dreamers. After all, the technical, political, security and financial hurdles can, each on their own, appear to be utterly insurmountable. But over the past two years, the initiative has received significant support from some of the biggest corporate names in Germany, a country that already leads Europe when it comes to adopting and developing renewable energy, particularly solar. In the autumn of 2009, an "international" consortium of companies formed the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii) with weighty companies, such as E.ON, Munich Re, Siemens and Deutsche Bank, all signing up as "shareholders". Germany's announcement earlier this year that, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, it was to speed up its total phase-out of nuclear power suddenly pulled the Desertec idea into much sharper focus. Coupled with faltering international negotiations and increasingly dire warnings on climate change – just last month the International Energy Agency warned that the world is headed for irreversible climate change if it doesn't start reducing carbon emissions within five years – it would seem the time is now right for an idea of such scale and ambition.
Last month, at its annual conference in Cairo, Dii confirmed to the world that the first phase of the Desertec plan is set to begin in Morocco next year with the construction of a 500MW solar farm near to the desert city of Ouarzazate. The 12sq km project would act as a "reference project" that, much like Egypt's own project at Kuraymat, would help convince both investors and politicians that similar farms could be repeated across the Mena region in the coming years and decades.
"It's all systems go in Morocco," announced Paul van Son, Dii's CEO, to the visiting delegates. Talks, he added, were – given their shared close proximity, along with Morocco, to western Europe's grid – already under way with Tunisia and Algeria about joining the "first phase" of Desertec. Countries such as Egypt, Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia would be expected to join in the "scale-up" phase from 2020 onwards, once extra transmission cables were laid across the Mediterranean and via Turkey, with the whole venture becoming financially self-sustaining by 2035.
Van Son swats away any talk that the Desertec project is built on a precarious foundation of presumption, naivety and hope. "Yes, the current global financial crisis has clearly not been very helpful, but everyone also realises that being dependent on fossil fuels creates vulnerability," he says.
He also rejects any notion that Desertec carries with it even a whiff of neo-colonialism. Earlier this year such sentiments were raised by Daniel Ayuk Mbi Egbe of the African Network for Solar Energy. "Many Africans are sceptical [about Desertec]," he said. "[Europeans] make promises, but at the end of the day, they bring their engineers, they bring their equipment, and they go. It's a new form of resource exploitation, just like in the past." Other Mena-based speakers made similar points, not least that any electricity generated will first be desperately needed by local populations as they fight poverty.
"When the idea for Desertec was first announced there was anger and irritation from the Arab League," admits Van Son. "They didn't understand it at first, but we explained that it would benefit their members, too. We explained it would be a cooperative process and they became more relaxed. It's a win-win for all, we stressed. The relationship is all positive now."
Desertec should also be supported, argue its champions, because it will improve energy security by helping to diversify supply. At present, says Van Son, Europeans are vulnerable to the so-called "energy weapon", namely, when an energy-rich country holds its neighbours to ransom by restricting or denying supply. Think Russia and its gas, he says. Or a terrorist attack on an oil pipeline. Desertec will help to dilute these threats.
He is bemused, though, that the current domination of Dii by German companies should rouse suspicion. (There was not a single political or corporate representative from the UK at the conference, yet at least half hailed from Germany.) "Yes, the initiative came from Germany. But there are 15 different nationalities involved, including companies such as HSBC and Morgan Stanley. This is just the start."
A common question at the conference is: "Who is going to pay for Desertec?" There is talk of loans from development institutions such as the World Bank (the route being taken by Morocco). The presence of German banks suggests they are considering being key lenders, too. But there is also the implication that much of the burden will fall on the European taxpayer, either through EU subsidies, or tariffs added to their energy bills.
Angelika Niebler, a Christian Democrat MEP from Germany, travelled to Cairo as a member of the European parliament's energy committee. She says it is "too early" to talk about EU financing but adds: "Energy is going to be a bigger priority for the EU in coming years than agriculture has been in the past and Desertec will surely feature."
Hans Josef-Fell, a representative of Germany's Green party, is also in Cairo for the conference. "There is a fear in Germany that paying for green electricity direct from North Africa will be too heavy a burden on our consumers," he says. Germany already has among the highest electricity prices in Europe, in part because of a huge wave of renewable energy installations across the country.
Europe, particularly Germany, seems to increasingly know what it wants from Desertec. But what of its Mena partners? Obaïd Amrane, a board member of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy, the government body responsible for overseeing Desertec's first plant, says his country has its own plans for the electricity generated at the facility – and for the other four that will follow by 2020 – and it doesn't necessarily include selling it to Europe.
"By 2020, we are expecting a doubling of electricity consumption in Morocco, as the population and standard of living grow," he says. "At the moment, we are 97% dependent on foreign energy which is becoming increasingly unsustainable. But we are now aiming to have 42% capacity of renewable electricity by 2020. We will build extra capacity beyond what Morocco needs if someone wants us to, but we will need a big share of the electricity produced by these projects."
Such sentiments propose another challenge for Desertec: how will it guarantee that the electricity Europe needs is sent down the transmission cables and not just all consumed locally? And how will Mena countries justify selling the electricity to Europe – where the retail price of electricity can be up to 20 times more expensive – if the local population is, say, experiencing regular blackouts?
At the visitor centre at Kuraymat, bottles of chilled water are being distributed ahead of a tour of the parabolic troughs. The mid-morning November sun is already heating the engine oil-like fluid inside the troughs' receiver tubes – a technology not that far removed from Shuman's century-old design – up towards 400C.
The technical questions are coming thick and fast for Bodo Becker, the operations manager at Flagsol, the German company that specialises in building concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in the deserts of the US, Spain and now Egypt. The leading query is how the troughs perform in such harsh conditions.
"We only have one sandstorm, on average, pass through here each year," he says, "but we tilt the troughs down and away from the wind whenever it gets up beyond 12 metres per second, as they act like giant sails."
Keeping them clean is the main challenge, he adds. "Due to the dusty conditions, we are witnessing about 2% degradation every day in performance, so we need to clean them daily. We use about 39 cubic metres of demineralised water each day for cleaning across the whole site."
This surprises many delegates, as they have previously been told at the conference that CSP troughs need cleaning weekly compared to photovoltaic panels which need cleaning monthly. Either way, it highlights yet another challenge for Desertec: can enough local water ever be secured for cleaning duties? The Nile is just a few miles from Kuraymat, but some countries aim to push much deeper into their deserts to build such facilities. "Dry cleaning" technologies are being developed, but they reduce the generating efficiency at the plant. Either way, the super-heated transfer fluid requires cooling before it can loop back to the troughs for re-use, and, as with cleaning, water is the cheapest and easiest way to do this. Until "dry cooling" technologies are further advanced, it could limit solar farms to the desert fringes close to large bodies of water.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, some countries, such as Jordan, now favour wind over solar as a source of desert energy, because it is currently more affordable and isn't so water-intensive. But it is suspected that it will be many years before a single desert energy technology comes to dominate the market. Some within the industry advocate photovoltaic panels, but, currently, CSP is more popular. However, even within CSP, there are loyalists for parabolic troughs and others for "solar towers", which rely on hundreds of pivoting mirrors laid out on the ground to track the sun and direct its rays towards one fixed point at the top of a giant tower.
Whichever technology succeeds, it is already clear which nation in particular will win out as Desertec develops in the coming decades. One member of the visiting delegation asks Becker where the troughs are made.
"The metal cradles were made here in Egypt, but the glass troughs were all made in Germany," he says. "And only two companies in the world make the glass tube receivers, which is where the main intellectual property of this technology lays – Schott Solar and Siemens." Both companies are German.
Leo Hickman
guardian.co.uk, Sunday 11 December 2011 20.30 GMT
During the summer of 1913, in a field just south of Cairo on the eastern bank of the Nile, an American engineer called Frank Shuman stood before a gathering of Egypt's colonial elite, including the British consul-general Lord Kitchener, and switched on his new invention. Gallons of water soon spilled from a pump, saturating the soil by his feet. Behind him stood row upon row of curved mirrors held aloft on metal cradles, each directed towards the fierce sun overhead. As the sun's rays hit the mirrors, they were reflected towards a thin glass pipe containing water. The now super-heated water turned to steam, resulting in enough pressure to drive the pumps used to irrigate the surrounding fields where Egypt's lucrative cotton crop was grown. It was an invention, claimed Shuman, which could help Egypt become far less reliant on the coal being imported at great expense from Britain's mines.
"The human race must finally utilise direct sun power or revert to barbarism," wrote Shuman in a letter to Scientific American magazine the following year. But the outbreak of the first world war just a few months later abruptly ended his dream and his solar troughs were soon broken up for scrap, with the metal being used for the war effort. Barbarism, it seemed, had prevailed.
Almost a century later, a convoy of air-conditioned coaches sweeps through the affluent suburb of Maadi – where Shuman had demonstrated his fledgling solar panels – continuing south for 90km towards Kuraymat, an area of flat, uninhabited desert near the city of Beni Suef. The high-level international delegation of CEOs, politicians, financiers and scientists has come to visit a brand new "hybrid" power station that uses both natural gas and solar panels to generate electricity. Before the coaches reach the facility's security gates, its 6,000 parabolic troughs – each six metres tall with a combined surface area of 130,000sq metres – are already visible from the perimeter road. Even though the panels account for just one seventh of the power plant's 150MW generating capacity, the Egyptian government, which has been pushing to develop the site since 1997, hopes to prove to the delegation that it is the desert sun – not fossil fuels, such as gas, coal and oil – that should be used not only to generate far more of the electricity across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena), but, crucially, for neighbouring Europe, too.
Gerhard Knies, a German particle physicist, was the first person to estimate how much solar energy was required to meet humanity's demand for electricity. In 1986, in direct response to the Chernobyl nuclear accident, he scribbled down some figures and arrived at the following remarkable conclusion: in just six hours, the world's deserts receive more energy from the sun than humans consume in a year. If even a tiny fraction of this energy could be harnessed – an area of Saharan desert the size of Wales could, in theory, power the whole of Europe – Knies believed we could move beyond dirty and dangerous fuels for ever. Echoing Schuman's own frustrations, Knies later asked whether "we are really, as a species, so stupid" not to make better use of this resource. Over the next two decades, he worked – often alone – to drive this idea into public consciousness.
The culmination of his efforts is "Desertec", a largely German-led initiative that aims to provide 15% of Europe's electricity by 2050 through a vast network of solar and wind farms stretching right across the Mena region and connecting to continental Europe via special high voltage, direct current transmission cables, which lose only around 3% of the electricity they carry per 1,000km. The tentative total cost of building the project has been estimated at €400bn (£342bn).
Until now, Desertec has been seen by many observers as little more than a mirage in the sand; the fanciful plan of well-meaning dreamers. After all, the technical, political, security and financial hurdles can, each on their own, appear to be utterly insurmountable. But over the past two years, the initiative has received significant support from some of the biggest corporate names in Germany, a country that already leads Europe when it comes to adopting and developing renewable energy, particularly solar. In the autumn of 2009, an "international" consortium of companies formed the Desertec Industrial Initiative (Dii) with weighty companies, such as E.ON, Munich Re, Siemens and Deutsche Bank, all signing up as "shareholders". Germany's announcement earlier this year that, in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, it was to speed up its total phase-out of nuclear power suddenly pulled the Desertec idea into much sharper focus. Coupled with faltering international negotiations and increasingly dire warnings on climate change – just last month the International Energy Agency warned that the world is headed for irreversible climate change if it doesn't start reducing carbon emissions within five years – it would seem the time is now right for an idea of such scale and ambition.
Last month, at its annual conference in Cairo, Dii confirmed to the world that the first phase of the Desertec plan is set to begin in Morocco next year with the construction of a 500MW solar farm near to the desert city of Ouarzazate. The 12sq km project would act as a "reference project" that, much like Egypt's own project at Kuraymat, would help convince both investors and politicians that similar farms could be repeated across the Mena region in the coming years and decades.
"It's all systems go in Morocco," announced Paul van Son, Dii's CEO, to the visiting delegates. Talks, he added, were – given their shared close proximity, along with Morocco, to western Europe's grid – already under way with Tunisia and Algeria about joining the "first phase" of Desertec. Countries such as Egypt, Syria, Libya and Saudi Arabia would be expected to join in the "scale-up" phase from 2020 onwards, once extra transmission cables were laid across the Mediterranean and via Turkey, with the whole venture becoming financially self-sustaining by 2035.
Van Son swats away any talk that the Desertec project is built on a precarious foundation of presumption, naivety and hope. "Yes, the current global financial crisis has clearly not been very helpful, but everyone also realises that being dependent on fossil fuels creates vulnerability," he says.
He also rejects any notion that Desertec carries with it even a whiff of neo-colonialism. Earlier this year such sentiments were raised by Daniel Ayuk Mbi Egbe of the African Network for Solar Energy. "Many Africans are sceptical [about Desertec]," he said. "[Europeans] make promises, but at the end of the day, they bring their engineers, they bring their equipment, and they go. It's a new form of resource exploitation, just like in the past." Other Mena-based speakers made similar points, not least that any electricity generated will first be desperately needed by local populations as they fight poverty.
"When the idea for Desertec was first announced there was anger and irritation from the Arab League," admits Van Son. "They didn't understand it at first, but we explained that it would benefit their members, too. We explained it would be a cooperative process and they became more relaxed. It's a win-win for all, we stressed. The relationship is all positive now."
Desertec should also be supported, argue its champions, because it will improve energy security by helping to diversify supply. At present, says Van Son, Europeans are vulnerable to the so-called "energy weapon", namely, when an energy-rich country holds its neighbours to ransom by restricting or denying supply. Think Russia and its gas, he says. Or a terrorist attack on an oil pipeline. Desertec will help to dilute these threats.
He is bemused, though, that the current domination of Dii by German companies should rouse suspicion. (There was not a single political or corporate representative from the UK at the conference, yet at least half hailed from Germany.) "Yes, the initiative came from Germany. But there are 15 different nationalities involved, including companies such as HSBC and Morgan Stanley. This is just the start."
A common question at the conference is: "Who is going to pay for Desertec?" There is talk of loans from development institutions such as the World Bank (the route being taken by Morocco). The presence of German banks suggests they are considering being key lenders, too. But there is also the implication that much of the burden will fall on the European taxpayer, either through EU subsidies, or tariffs added to their energy bills.
Angelika Niebler, a Christian Democrat MEP from Germany, travelled to Cairo as a member of the European parliament's energy committee. She says it is "too early" to talk about EU financing but adds: "Energy is going to be a bigger priority for the EU in coming years than agriculture has been in the past and Desertec will surely feature."
Hans Josef-Fell, a representative of Germany's Green party, is also in Cairo for the conference. "There is a fear in Germany that paying for green electricity direct from North Africa will be too heavy a burden on our consumers," he says. Germany already has among the highest electricity prices in Europe, in part because of a huge wave of renewable energy installations across the country.
Europe, particularly Germany, seems to increasingly know what it wants from Desertec. But what of its Mena partners? Obaïd Amrane, a board member of the Moroccan Agency for Solar Energy, the government body responsible for overseeing Desertec's first plant, says his country has its own plans for the electricity generated at the facility – and for the other four that will follow by 2020 – and it doesn't necessarily include selling it to Europe.
"By 2020, we are expecting a doubling of electricity consumption in Morocco, as the population and standard of living grow," he says. "At the moment, we are 97% dependent on foreign energy which is becoming increasingly unsustainable. But we are now aiming to have 42% capacity of renewable electricity by 2020. We will build extra capacity beyond what Morocco needs if someone wants us to, but we will need a big share of the electricity produced by these projects."
Such sentiments propose another challenge for Desertec: how will it guarantee that the electricity Europe needs is sent down the transmission cables and not just all consumed locally? And how will Mena countries justify selling the electricity to Europe – where the retail price of electricity can be up to 20 times more expensive – if the local population is, say, experiencing regular blackouts?
At the visitor centre at Kuraymat, bottles of chilled water are being distributed ahead of a tour of the parabolic troughs. The mid-morning November sun is already heating the engine oil-like fluid inside the troughs' receiver tubes – a technology not that far removed from Shuman's century-old design – up towards 400C.
The technical questions are coming thick and fast for Bodo Becker, the operations manager at Flagsol, the German company that specialises in building concentrated solar power (CSP) plants in the deserts of the US, Spain and now Egypt. The leading query is how the troughs perform in such harsh conditions.
"We only have one sandstorm, on average, pass through here each year," he says, "but we tilt the troughs down and away from the wind whenever it gets up beyond 12 metres per second, as they act like giant sails."
Keeping them clean is the main challenge, he adds. "Due to the dusty conditions, we are witnessing about 2% degradation every day in performance, so we need to clean them daily. We use about 39 cubic metres of demineralised water each day for cleaning across the whole site."
This surprises many delegates, as they have previously been told at the conference that CSP troughs need cleaning weekly compared to photovoltaic panels which need cleaning monthly. Either way, it highlights yet another challenge for Desertec: can enough local water ever be secured for cleaning duties? The Nile is just a few miles from Kuraymat, but some countries aim to push much deeper into their deserts to build such facilities. "Dry cleaning" technologies are being developed, but they reduce the generating efficiency at the plant. Either way, the super-heated transfer fluid requires cooling before it can loop back to the troughs for re-use, and, as with cleaning, water is the cheapest and easiest way to do this. Until "dry cooling" technologies are further advanced, it could limit solar farms to the desert fringes close to large bodies of water.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, some countries, such as Jordan, now favour wind over solar as a source of desert energy, because it is currently more affordable and isn't so water-intensive. But it is suspected that it will be many years before a single desert energy technology comes to dominate the market. Some within the industry advocate photovoltaic panels, but, currently, CSP is more popular. However, even within CSP, there are loyalists for parabolic troughs and others for "solar towers", which rely on hundreds of pivoting mirrors laid out on the ground to track the sun and direct its rays towards one fixed point at the top of a giant tower.
Whichever technology succeeds, it is already clear which nation in particular will win out as Desertec develops in the coming decades. One member of the visiting delegation asks Becker where the troughs are made.
"The metal cradles were made here in Egypt, but the glass troughs were all made in Germany," he says. "And only two companies in the world make the glass tube receivers, which is where the main intellectual property of this technology lays – Schott Solar and Siemens." Both companies are German.
Climate deal salvaged after marathon talks in Durban
Delegates clashed over attempt to make agreement legally binding until deal was struck in pre-dawn hours
John Vidal and Fiona Harvey, Durban, and agencies
The Observer, Sunday 11 December 2011
Countries have agreed a deal in Durban to push for a new climate treaty, salvaging the latest round of United Nations climate talks from the brink of collapse.
The UK's cimate change secretary, Chris Huhne, hailed the deal, finally struck in the early hours of Sunday after talks had overrun by a day and a half, as a "significant step forward" that would deliver a global, overarching legal agreement to cut emissions. He said it sent a strong signal to businesses and investors about moving to a low-carbon economy.
But environmental groups said negotiators had failed to show the ambition necessary to cut emissions by levels that would limit global temperature rises to no more than 2C and avoid "dangerous" climate change.
The EU had come to the talks in Durban, South Africa, calling for a mandate to negotiate a new legally binding treaty on global warming by 2015, covering all major emitters, in return for the bloc signing up to a second period of emissions cuts under the existing Kyoto climate deal.
But talks were plunged into disarray after the EU clashed with India and China in a series of passionate exchanges over the legal status of a potential new agreement, putting more than a year of talks between 194 countries in jeopardy.
In the third consecutive all-night session, exhausted ministers had more or less agreed on a series of measures aimed at protecting forests, widening global markets and establishing by 2020 a $100bn fund to help poorer countries move to a green economy and cope with the effects of climate change. But the crucial issue at the talks was whether a new agreement on protecting the climate should have full legal force.
Connie Hedegarrd, the EU climate change commissioner, said she was prepared to offer developing countries the prize they had sought for many years – a continuation of the Kyoto protocol, the only treaty that commits rich countries to cut greenhouse gases. But the price of the offer was for all nations to agree to be "legally bound" to a new agreement by 2020. There were cheers as she said: "We need clarity. We need to commit. The EU has shown patience for many years. We are almost ready to be alone in a second commitment period [to the Kyoto protocol] We don't ask too much of the world that after this second period all countries will be legally bound."
But the Indian environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, responded fiercely: "Am I to write a blank cheque and sign away the livelihoods and sustainability of 1.2 billion Indians, without even knowing what the EU 'roadmap' contains? I wonder if this an agenda to shift the blame on to countries who are not responsible [for climate change]. I am told that India will be blamed. Please do not hold us hostage." As countries clashed in the early hours of the morning, scenes in the conference hall resembled a theatre, with wild applause bursting out sporadically.
China's minister Xie Zhenhua made an impassioned speech backing India and accusing developed countries. "What qualifies you to tell us what to do? We are taking action. We want to see your action," he said.
The fate of the talks were, by 2am, hanging on a knife edge, with no resolution likely for many hours. The talks had already overrun by 36 hours.
A deal was reached after the South African president of the talks urged the EU and India to go "into a huddle" in the middle of the conference hall in the early hours of this morning, in a bid to work out language both sides were happy with.
A compromise, suggested by the Brazilian delegation, saw the EU and Indians agree to a road map which commits countries to negotiating a protocol, another legal instrument or an "agreed outcome with legal force".
The treaty will be negotiated by 2015 and coming into force from 2020.
The deal also paves the way for action to address the "emissions gap" between the voluntary emissions cuts countries have already pledged and the reductions experts say are needed to effectively tackle climate change.
Earlier Venezuela's ambassador, Claudia Salerno, had stood on a chair and banged her nameplate as she accused the UN chair of the session of ignoring the views of some developing countries. Referring to the money promised by rich countries to help developing countries to adapt to climate change, she said: "This agreement will kill off everyone. It is a farce. It is immoral to ask developing countries to sell ourselves for $100bn."
The row over the legal status of a new agreement has dogged climate talks for over a decade. Rich countries have wanted rapidly emerging economies such as like China – the world's largest emitter – and India to be equally legally bound as developed countries, though taking on softer targets on emission curbs.
However, developing countries argue that they were not responsible for the bulk of climate change emissions in the atmosphere and argue that they have pledged to rein in their emissions more than the developed countries.
Despite the broad backing of more than 120 countries, including major developing economies such as Brazil, plus the US and Japan, the EU had found it hard to push through its ambitious "roadmap", which would establish a new over-arching agreement that would commit all countries to emission cuts.
China, India and some developing countries had raised a series of objections throughout the talks about the dates that the new treaty would become operational, and argued that the Kyoto protocol would effectively be killed off before a replacement could be put in its place. With Japan, Canada and Russia saying that they were unwilling to sign up to a second period, the EU had become almost alone among developed countries in committing to continue the protocol in some form.
Several countries said they feared the deal on offer would suit the US most because it had always insisted that all other countries should cut emissions and has resisted a legally-binding agreement.
Several developing countries spoke out strongly in favour of the EU proposals, including Brazil and Colombia, rejecting calls to downgrade the legal status of any agreement.
John Vidal and Fiona Harvey, Durban, and agencies
The Observer, Sunday 11 December 2011
Countries have agreed a deal in Durban to push for a new climate treaty, salvaging the latest round of United Nations climate talks from the brink of collapse.
The UK's cimate change secretary, Chris Huhne, hailed the deal, finally struck in the early hours of Sunday after talks had overrun by a day and a half, as a "significant step forward" that would deliver a global, overarching legal agreement to cut emissions. He said it sent a strong signal to businesses and investors about moving to a low-carbon economy.
But environmental groups said negotiators had failed to show the ambition necessary to cut emissions by levels that would limit global temperature rises to no more than 2C and avoid "dangerous" climate change.
The EU had come to the talks in Durban, South Africa, calling for a mandate to negotiate a new legally binding treaty on global warming by 2015, covering all major emitters, in return for the bloc signing up to a second period of emissions cuts under the existing Kyoto climate deal.
But talks were plunged into disarray after the EU clashed with India and China in a series of passionate exchanges over the legal status of a potential new agreement, putting more than a year of talks between 194 countries in jeopardy.
In the third consecutive all-night session, exhausted ministers had more or less agreed on a series of measures aimed at protecting forests, widening global markets and establishing by 2020 a $100bn fund to help poorer countries move to a green economy and cope with the effects of climate change. But the crucial issue at the talks was whether a new agreement on protecting the climate should have full legal force.
Connie Hedegarrd, the EU climate change commissioner, said she was prepared to offer developing countries the prize they had sought for many years – a continuation of the Kyoto protocol, the only treaty that commits rich countries to cut greenhouse gases. But the price of the offer was for all nations to agree to be "legally bound" to a new agreement by 2020. There were cheers as she said: "We need clarity. We need to commit. The EU has shown patience for many years. We are almost ready to be alone in a second commitment period [to the Kyoto protocol] We don't ask too much of the world that after this second period all countries will be legally bound."
But the Indian environment minister, Jayanthi Natarajan, responded fiercely: "Am I to write a blank cheque and sign away the livelihoods and sustainability of 1.2 billion Indians, without even knowing what the EU 'roadmap' contains? I wonder if this an agenda to shift the blame on to countries who are not responsible [for climate change]. I am told that India will be blamed. Please do not hold us hostage." As countries clashed in the early hours of the morning, scenes in the conference hall resembled a theatre, with wild applause bursting out sporadically.
China's minister Xie Zhenhua made an impassioned speech backing India and accusing developed countries. "What qualifies you to tell us what to do? We are taking action. We want to see your action," he said.
The fate of the talks were, by 2am, hanging on a knife edge, with no resolution likely for many hours. The talks had already overrun by 36 hours.
A deal was reached after the South African president of the talks urged the EU and India to go "into a huddle" in the middle of the conference hall in the early hours of this morning, in a bid to work out language both sides were happy with.
A compromise, suggested by the Brazilian delegation, saw the EU and Indians agree to a road map which commits countries to negotiating a protocol, another legal instrument or an "agreed outcome with legal force".
The treaty will be negotiated by 2015 and coming into force from 2020.
The deal also paves the way for action to address the "emissions gap" between the voluntary emissions cuts countries have already pledged and the reductions experts say are needed to effectively tackle climate change.
Earlier Venezuela's ambassador, Claudia Salerno, had stood on a chair and banged her nameplate as she accused the UN chair of the session of ignoring the views of some developing countries. Referring to the money promised by rich countries to help developing countries to adapt to climate change, she said: "This agreement will kill off everyone. It is a farce. It is immoral to ask developing countries to sell ourselves for $100bn."
The row over the legal status of a new agreement has dogged climate talks for over a decade. Rich countries have wanted rapidly emerging economies such as like China – the world's largest emitter – and India to be equally legally bound as developed countries, though taking on softer targets on emission curbs.
However, developing countries argue that they were not responsible for the bulk of climate change emissions in the atmosphere and argue that they have pledged to rein in their emissions more than the developed countries.
Despite the broad backing of more than 120 countries, including major developing economies such as Brazil, plus the US and Japan, the EU had found it hard to push through its ambitious "roadmap", which would establish a new over-arching agreement that would commit all countries to emission cuts.
China, India and some developing countries had raised a series of objections throughout the talks about the dates that the new treaty would become operational, and argued that the Kyoto protocol would effectively be killed off before a replacement could be put in its place. With Japan, Canada and Russia saying that they were unwilling to sign up to a second period, the EU had become almost alone among developed countries in committing to continue the protocol in some form.
Several countries said they feared the deal on offer would suit the US most because it had always insisted that all other countries should cut emissions and has resisted a legally-binding agreement.
Several developing countries spoke out strongly in favour of the EU proposals, including Brazil and Colombia, rejecting calls to downgrade the legal status of any agreement.
Thinktank blasts wind power support
Renewables policy overambitious and unrealistic, argues Adam Smith Institute
Terry Macalister
The Guardian, Monday 12 December 2011
Britain is heading for an energy crisis by the middle of the decade due to the government's "unrealistic" reliance on wind, solar and other high-cost renewable energy technologies, according to a controversial report out today.
Ministers are failing to factor in the cost of dealing with intermittent energy sources and ignoring the implications of burdening consumers with higher energy bills, said the right-leaning Adam Smith Institute and Scientific Alliance.
The report argues the renewable energy roadmap for 2020 is hugely overambitious. It says the target has already been reduced but current renewable power generation is still 28% short of meeting it.
Solar and wind energy have no prospect of becoming economically competitive in an unrigged market, with government intervention leading to higher energy costs and jeopardising energy security, the document says. It is being published just as ministers are preparing further details on reform of the electricity market.
"For too long, we have been told that heavy investment in uneconomic renewable energy was not only necessary but would provide a secure future electricity supply," said Martin Livermore, co-author of the report and a self-styled consultant who has in the past questioned the science around global warming.
"The facts actually show that current renewables technologies are incapable of making a major contribution to energy security and have only limited potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions."
Livermore said the main drawbacks of wind and solar were that they must be backed up with gas, coal or nuclear generation when the wind does not blow or sun shine.
With the decommissioning of many coal-fired stations and nearly all existing nuclear reactors over the coming decade, energy security has become a priority for policymakers alongside the drive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Livermore argued that to achieve current targets for wind turbines for 2020, almost five must be installed every working day, with the majority of them offshore. "This is unrealistic," he said.
Critics of renewables have become increasingly vocal in recent months with some backbench Conservatives suggesting they are unaffordable in an economic downturn, an argument the nuclear industry privately admits is playing into its hands.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change said Livermore had failed to recognise that the UK had already attracted nearly £2.5bn of investment in renewable energy, with the potential support of more than 10,600 jobs.
A department spokesman said: "This report completely misses the point. Our policies are aimed at developing a mix of energy sources here in the UK rather than relying so much on expensive fossil fuel imports, so we can keep the lights on and cut emissions as old power stations close. It would be madness to put all our eggs in one basket, ignore the UK's huge renewables potential and just give away Britain's share of the green energy revolution."
RenewableUK, the lobby group, dismissed the report as failing to take into account factors including the effect of technological advances bringing down the cost of wind power. "Given these people are from a scientific alliance they do not seem to have much belief in progress. It's like saying to a five-year-old he won't be going to university because he can't read. To be honest this report makes the same kinds of arguments that we have refuted before and they just keep repeating," said Gordon Edge, director of policy at Renewables UK.
Terry Macalister
The Guardian, Monday 12 December 2011
Britain is heading for an energy crisis by the middle of the decade due to the government's "unrealistic" reliance on wind, solar and other high-cost renewable energy technologies, according to a controversial report out today.
Ministers are failing to factor in the cost of dealing with intermittent energy sources and ignoring the implications of burdening consumers with higher energy bills, said the right-leaning Adam Smith Institute and Scientific Alliance.
The report argues the renewable energy roadmap for 2020 is hugely overambitious. It says the target has already been reduced but current renewable power generation is still 28% short of meeting it.
Solar and wind energy have no prospect of becoming economically competitive in an unrigged market, with government intervention leading to higher energy costs and jeopardising energy security, the document says. It is being published just as ministers are preparing further details on reform of the electricity market.
"For too long, we have been told that heavy investment in uneconomic renewable energy was not only necessary but would provide a secure future electricity supply," said Martin Livermore, co-author of the report and a self-styled consultant who has in the past questioned the science around global warming.
"The facts actually show that current renewables technologies are incapable of making a major contribution to energy security and have only limited potential to reduce carbon dioxide emissions."
Livermore said the main drawbacks of wind and solar were that they must be backed up with gas, coal or nuclear generation when the wind does not blow or sun shine.
With the decommissioning of many coal-fired stations and nearly all existing nuclear reactors over the coming decade, energy security has become a priority for policymakers alongside the drive to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Livermore argued that to achieve current targets for wind turbines for 2020, almost five must be installed every working day, with the majority of them offshore. "This is unrealistic," he said.
Critics of renewables have become increasingly vocal in recent months with some backbench Conservatives suggesting they are unaffordable in an economic downturn, an argument the nuclear industry privately admits is playing into its hands.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change said Livermore had failed to recognise that the UK had already attracted nearly £2.5bn of investment in renewable energy, with the potential support of more than 10,600 jobs.
A department spokesman said: "This report completely misses the point. Our policies are aimed at developing a mix of energy sources here in the UK rather than relying so much on expensive fossil fuel imports, so we can keep the lights on and cut emissions as old power stations close. It would be madness to put all our eggs in one basket, ignore the UK's huge renewables potential and just give away Britain's share of the green energy revolution."
RenewableUK, the lobby group, dismissed the report as failing to take into account factors including the effect of technological advances bringing down the cost of wind power. "Given these people are from a scientific alliance they do not seem to have much belief in progress. It's like saying to a five-year-old he won't be going to university because he can't read. To be honest this report makes the same kinds of arguments that we have refuted before and they just keep repeating," said Gordon Edge, director of policy at Renewables UK.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
