For a Less Vulnerable Energy System, Switch to Renewables

José Goldemberg
Wednesday, October 10, 2001 SAO PAULO The hideous terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon will change priorities in the energy area. One clear winner, in all likelihood, will be renewable energy sources and energy efficiency in industrialized countries.

Today's energy system is dominated by large-scale facilities such as oil tankers, refineries, pipelines, power lines and nuclear power installations that are vulnerable to acts of terrorism with extremely serious potential consequences

Renewable energy sources - hydroelectric, wind, photovoltaic and various forms of biomass such as waste, agricultural residues and energy crops - are by nature decentralized and much less vulnerable to disruption. Energy security is thus an intrinsic attribute of renewables and offers an obvious opportunity for self-reliance.

The advantages of such energy sources have been known for some time but they
have not been adopted on a large scale due to the entrenched positions of coal, oil and gas, the motors of the 20th century economy. Coal resources could last for centuries, but convenient oil and gas at cheap prices will not last more than a few decades. "Convenient" means that the resources can be made available by conventional technologies and are located in attractive geographical locations.

Some argue that fossil reserves are large. But they will require special or expensive technologies and particular attention to environmental concerns. Fossil fuels (except gas) are the main source of local and regional pollution due to their impurities. And they are the principal contributors to the carbon dioxide and methane emissions responsible for global warming.

In sharp contrast with fossil fuels, renewables are generally pollution-free at the local and regional levels and do not emit greenhouse gases.

Why are they not more widely used? The modern renewables (excluding traditional biomass) account for only 2 percent of all the energy used worlwide. The reason is that they are more expensive in the current marketplace. This cost differential is aggravated by the fact that fossil fuels often benefit from generous government subsidies. And the environmental consequences of their use are by and large not accounted for by the market.

The technologies involved in the use of renewables have been developed only recently and have not yet benefited from the long-term learning curves that have reduced substantially the cost of using fossil fuels during the last 100 years. It would be of enormous benefit to the entire planet if renewable energy sources could be incorporated early in the process of economic growth in developing countries, where energy consumption is growing more rapidly than in industrialized countries whose energy infrastructure is already in place.

To accelerate the use of renewables in the world's energy system, it is essential that developed countries expand the use of wind, photovoltaics and modern biomass technologies to create electricity and liquid and gaseous fuels in order to drive prices down through economies of scale and gains in organizational learning.

The success of the large ethanol program in Brazil proves the point. Important starts in this direction are under way in Germany, Spain, Denmark and Britain.

At their Okinawa meeting last year, the Group of Eight established a task force under the chairmanship of Sir Mark Moody-Stuart, then CEO of Shell, and Corrado Clini, from the Environment Ministry of Italy, to develop practical steps to promote use of renewables. Such a strategy becomes even more timely in light of the recent terrorist attacks in the United States.

We have an opportunity now to shift gears and push forward seriously the use of renewables. This course will be cleaner, safer and more decentralized. It is one of the few win-win policies on which North and South could agree.

The writer, a former minister of science and technology in Brazil, chaired the editorial board which issued a report last year for the World Energy Assessment, a partnership of the UN Development Program, the UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs and the World Energy Council. He contributed this comment to the International Herald Tribune.

Copyright © 2001 The International Herald Tribune