Report on Seminar on Renewable Energy: Prospects and Problems in the Development, Adoption and Governance of Sustainable Technologies 1

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1 Report on Seminar on Renewable Energy: Prospects and Problems in the Development, Adoption and Governance of Sustainable Technologies 1 This report was written by by Miguel Esteban and David Leary The United Nations University Institute of Advance Studies (UNU-IAS) organised a seminar to analyse the current prospects and problems in the adoption of renewable energy in the Asia-Pacific Region. The meeting was held at the Headquarters of the UNU-IAS in Yokohama, Japan, on the 3 rd of August 2009 and included speakers and commentators from a variety of backgrounds and organisations involved in the development of renewable energy. As the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Bali Roadmap recognised, the development and adoption of new technologies will play an important role in reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in its 4 th Assessment Report also highlights the important role that renewable energy can play in sustainably meeting the dual challenges of responding to climate change and meeting the rapidly growing demand for energy. Participants at the seminar discussed various problems relating to the adoption and transfer of technology from developed to developing nations, and also the barriers that exist in all countries for the growth of renewable energy industries. The seminar opened with a keynote speech from Prof. Parayil, Director of the UNU-IAS, in which he pointed out how the Secretary General of the UN acknowledges climate change is a defining problem of 21 st century. However Prof. Parayil emphasized that it is the poor who suffer most, as they must face the double burden of climate change and lack of access to energy. G. Parayil also explained that in the run to the UNFCCC COP15 meeting in Copenhagen in December 2009 it is crucial that we should have a more equitable distribution of energy. Although previous COP meetings emphasized that transfer of technology between developing and developed nations was desirable, not much of this has happened so far according to Prof. Parayil. He also acknowledged the difficulties involved in changing the system, highlighting how we must change the way that the energy sector operates, from a centralised system run by major utility companies to something more de-centralised. The first speaker of the seminar, Dr. Krishnan S. Raghavan, outlined the structure of UNESCAP in the Asia-Pacific Region and the role that his centre (APCTT) has in promoting technology transfer and south-to-south cooperation. This speaker also reiterated the problems that the poor face due to lack of access to energy and how global energy production must grow in the future. Although Asia accounts for 24% of renewable use, between them China and India produce 63% of all the renewable energy in the continent, which is rich in natural resources. He stressed the need to promote the renewable energy sector, although a number of barriers (lack of supportive frameworks, 1 The archive videos for the whole seminar can be found at 1

2 public and private sector involvement, finance and information about renewables, amongst others) prevented this from happening. It is thus necessary for an institutional cooperation mechanism between countries to share information, build capacity and encourage the uptake of renewables. This prompted UNESCAP at its 64 th Commission Session in 2008 to pass Resolution E/ESCAP/64/L.13/Rev.1 to promote renewable energy for energy security and sustainable development in the Asia Pacific. This resolution mandated APCTT to establish an institutional cooperation mechanism to draw up a programme of cooperation by identifying activities on development, demonstration and capacity building of renewable energy technologies. They thus established The Renewable Energy Cooperation-Network for the Asia-Pacific (RECAP) to try to help the 15 member countries share their ideas and to promote cooperation on renewable energy programmes and expertise. One key element of this program is the establishment of a website, which will have country papers with details of their renewables program, which ministry is responsible for them, what capacity building programs are in place, the requirements of various technologies and other relevant information. The website would thus try to highlight success stories and also highlight best practice projects for the common benefit of member countries and serve as a business hub. The second speaker, Dr. Kurosawa from the Institute of Applied Energy, emphasized how we need innovative technology to solve our long-term energy problems, apart from other measures such as improved energy conservation efficiency. The speaker introduced the Cool Earth 50 Initiative announced by the Japanese Prime Minister in 2007, which has the long-term objective of reducing global greenhouse gas emissions by half of the current level by As part of this initiative, a survey was conducted on what specific measures can be taken to develop innovative energy technologies to meet the 2050 target. Amongst the many technologies in this initiative, the speaker focused his message on only two, photovoltaics and biofuels. He highlighted how new types of photovoltaic materials and technologies (such as organic solar fuel cells or compound crystalline solar cells) have the potential to reduce the costs and increase the efficiency of photovoltaic panels. The photovoltaic industry is at the end of the first generation (of silicon based products) and it beginning the second generation of technologies, with the third generation (such as multijunction and quantum nanostructure materials) being currently under development. However, although many countries have a high potential for solar energy production (such as areas of Africa, Australia and Latin America) there are a number of barriers that are preventing development of this technology, such as the necessity of backup power capacity in cloudy days, inadequate grid connections and lack of storage capacities. The speaker also explained how future economies of scale and technology improvements are likely to reduce the costs, though in the meantime subsidies and feed-in-tariffs were desirable for the development of the industry, with the ultimate objective of achieving grid parity (where the cost of the renewable energy would be equal or lower to that of the other types of energy used by the grid). Dr. Kurosawa also talked about biofuels in Japan, where the target of the Japanese government is for them to cost 40 Yen per litre by 2020 (similar to the cost of gasoline before tax). He explained some of the problems that the first generation of biofuels have encountered, such as the perception that they were displacing food production, though the 2

3 second generation of biofuels (from the inedible parts of the biomass) were starting to appear, and possibly a third generation would be able to use algae from the ocean. He finished by emphasizing how sustainability was the key consideration in the biomass energy development. Dr. Esteban from the UNU-IAS used his presentation to describe the present situation of the ocean energy Sector and its future prospects. This speaker began by outlining how three of the key modern technologies work, namely the Seagen, Wavedragon and Pelamis Units. His key message was the ocean energy was a reality nowadays, and how it had a great potential to help in the production of electricity in many countries in the world. By using the history of offshore wind energy as a basis, he estimated that this sector could probably become competitive with conventional electricity production mechanisms around 2020, as shown in Figure 1. These dirty technologies are generally have a cost of between 0.05 and 0.08 USD per kwh (depending on whether the cost of carbon is included or not). Dr Esteban pointed out, however, that up to this time considerable investment and support would have to be given for the industry to allow for the natural learning process that will lower costs to the point when the technology would be competitive. Particularly he argued strongly for the case of feed-in-tariffs, which already exist for ocean energy in some countries, and which in general have been shown to be effective in developing the wind and solar renewable sectors in countries like Germany or Spain. He also described other blocking forces facing this industry, such as the need for improved grid connections and greater financing of the industry. P ri c e (e u ro c e n t s k W h ) Learning Factor = 0.75 Learning Factor = 0.9 Variable learning Factor Carbon Carbon with tax Year Fig. 1. Different cost scenarios for Ocean Energy for various learning factors The final speaker, Dr. Leary from the University of New South Wales, examined the implications of ocean energy in ocean law and policy. One of his central messages was how there is a disconnection between the reality of Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology and the amount of money currently being put into it, which contrasted with the fact that ocean energy was a proven technology though comparatively little money 3

4 was being spent on it. Despite this, he showed how a number of ocean energy projects were under way in Australia, New Zealand and Korea. He also pointed out how original reports for the 4 th Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were sceptical with regards to ocean energy, but that in recent reports it has been given an equal amount of coverage as other forms of energy. Dr. Leary explained how many ocean energy projects could be recognised as CDM (Clean Development Mechanism) projects, and how this system could be used to finance some of these projects in the short term. He also highlighted some of the issues that affect ocean energy in terms of the usage of coastal areas, and went on to discuss how the current framework of environmental assessment of ocean energy projects is quite confused. This has led the Portuguese, for example, to try to streamline the process by creating a Pilot Maritime Zone for ocean energy. Likewise the British government is in the process of streamlining legislation and approval processes for off-shore renewable so that in future such projects will only have to deal with one licensing authority (as opposed to many as present). Following the speakers, four invited commentators expressed their views on the prospects of renewable energy in the light of the presentations that were made and their experience in the field of energy. Shigeto Hayafuji, CEO of CDM Consulting, emphasized the importance of bio-energy as a renewable source of energy, explaining how it is the only source of where the output exceeds the energy input into the system. Viswa Ghosh, Chief of Operations Office at TopTech Informatic Inc. (a Business and IT Consulting Company), summarized that in his view the main theme of the presentations was the need for an institutional mechanism to effectively transfer technology. From his experience and the presentations he ventured that it could be useful to have a central UN agency that dealt with all issues of technology transfer. Mika Ohbayashi, Director at Office Ecologist, emphasized that it was crucial to limit emissions and how Japanese emissions were up from 1990 levels. She explained how local authorities have a crucial role in reducing emissions, and highlighted how Tokyo metropolitan government has plans to cut emissions by 20% b On a similar theme Tetsuya Nakajima, Director at the Climate Change Policy Headquarters of the City of Yokohama, that Yokohama city is planning to cut down emissions through the installation of solar panels on public buildings and schools and subsidies for private citizens and the transfer of knowledge and technology to other cities in the Asia-Pacific Region through CITYNET, which is chaired by the mayor of Yokohama. Discussions afterwards focused, in particular, on how to make renewable energies benefit peoples of developing countries and the best way to finance these technologies. One particular strong theme that emerged from the seminar was the need for an adequate institutional framework to promote the transfer of technologies from developed to developing countries, and the need to highlight the inconsistencies in funding between the established energy producing sectors and the new renewable sources. Concern was also expressed about how some of the subsidies going into conventional energy production were being hidden, which distorted the economics of renewable energies. The financing of renewable energy sources emerged as the second major theme of the meeting, which touched on the issue of feed-in-tariffs proposed by some of the speakers, and which could be an effective way to finance renewables, together with CDM. The 4

5 issue of patents was also debated, though Dr. Leary explained how there was little appetite to open this can of worms in the run-up to the UNFCCC COP15. 5