Category Archives: Greening BRICs

Generate Electricity for creating Well Being

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Yes, CO2 may be bad but that is if you have first reached the level of usage in Australia, Kuwait or Norway. However, if you are a poor person in developing countries like India, China and Brazil, you still need a electricity to create well being even if it emits CO2 and consumption of 2,500 kw seems to be the magic number.

I think the focus to reduce CO2 to control the climate (and this is being questioned now by the solar cycle theory) we should not forget the current human beings who need electricity to survive and live a good life.

From HBR:

The greater a country’s electricity consumption, the greater the well-being of its people. Electricity doesn’t cause well- being, of course. But it is a powerful enabler. When people have lights that allow them to study and work after dark, refrigeration to keep foods and medicine fresh, pumps and purifiers to irrigate farmland and produce safe drinking water, and cell phones and computers to connect them with commercial, educational, and health care resources, they can more fully participate in the social and economic activities that drive human development.
A little electricity goes a long way. Note that when annual consumption rises from 0 to just a few thousand kilowatt hours per capita, countries move near the top of the HDI scale. Argentina, with per capita consumption of about 2,500 kWh, has an HDI score approaching that of Canada, whose consumption is seven times higher.

Carbon scheme better than it seems or is it?

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…if a power station has been given all the permits it needs, those permits have an opportunity cost because they could be sold to some other company that needs them, at the market price for permits.

This leaves the power station with an incentive to switch to gas-fired generation, for instance, and sell the permits it no longer needs. And since its free permits are valuable, it will still raise its prices to customers, requiring them to compensate it for its opportunity cost in not selling its permits.

via Carbon scheme better than it seems.

I cannot agree with Ross Gittins here. If the overall price of carbon is capped at $10 per tonne by the government and the households are compensated for the extra increase in prices how will they change their behaviour? Does not seem logical.

Rather than this half-cooked scheme Australia could have waited for a couple of years.

India gives conditional green light to emission cuts – Yahoo! News

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India should go the way of china and announce energy efficiency targets which the world believes is credible. This is the right thing to do in India’s state.

“India is willing to sign on to an ambitious global target for emissions reductions or limiting temperature increase but this must be accompanied by an equitable burden sharing paradigm,” Singh said in a speech, the text of which was released by his office in New Delhi.

via India gives conditional green light to emission cuts – Yahoo! News.

China’s carbon statement – a good economic and political decision.

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From the Australian:

China will cut the intensity of carbon dioxide emissions per unit of gross domestic product in 2020 by 40 to 45 per cent from 2005 levels, said a statement from the State Council, or cabinet.

“This is a voluntary action taken by the Chinese government based on its own national conditions and is a major contribution to the global effort in tackling climate change,” the statement said.

The announcement marks the first time China has put specific numbers on a September pledge by President Hu Jintao to reduce the intensity of its carbon emissions as a percentage of economic growth by 2020.

This is a fantastic economic decision. Cleverly China is talking about voluntary decrease of carbon intensity and not any specific carbon emission reduction. If I was running China, I would do the same. It is a economic decision to save energy, be more efficient and conserve energy in a world where it’s getting expensive.

Secondly, it is a great political statement. Before the Copenhagen meet it has shown commitment in a way it does not hurt the economy but actually helps China to be more productive.  India needs to do something similar.

China Pushing Solar Like Never Before

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Goldman: Solar power is the other rapidly developing industry in China as China now accounts for about 1/3 of solar power production capacity globally. The speaker refuted the view that PV cell production is an energy-ineffective process as he pointed out that the energy breakeven time is about 2 years for PV cells energy used to produce PV cells equals the energy generated by the PV cells but the normal lifetime is around 20 years. He also believes that solar energy could become commercially viable in the foreseeable future as the energy generating cost has been reduced from Rmb4 to Rmb1.1 per kWh over the past few years and is getting close to the Rmb0.3-0.4/kWh level of coal-fire power plants.

via China Pushing Solar Like Never Before.

Rethinking Green with Stewart Brand – An Ecopragmatist

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Stewart Brand in the his new book:

To my mind, the Green path forward begins with environmentalists realizing that nuclear power will grow no matter what we do. Our customary opposition would make it grow badly – slowly, expensively, unsystemically, and with dangerously poor overall coordination. But if we encourage it in the right way, nuclear energy growing well would mean that it minimizes humanity’s carbon-loading of the atmosphere; that it collaborates well with other carbon-free or superefficient energy forms; that it helps generate other Green services such as desalination or hydrogen . . . that it helps eliminate nuclear weapons; that it securely energizes cities and thereby helps to reduce world poverty . . .

via NEI Nuclear Notes: Stewart Brand’s “Whole Earth Discipline”.

In his lecture at the Longnow Foundation (from Fora.tv) he explains how slum dwellers in Dharavi, Mumbai, India are the greenest people on earth who live on very less energy and resources and recycle everything. However, this is possible because they are some of the poorest people on earth. And, they do not want to be like that.

From one of his TED talks

Here is the biggest paradigm that the developed world does not want to understand.

You cannot be rich without abundant and cheap energy.

How do you become rich and have low per-capita emissions? – Nuclear Energy, Geothermal and Hydro.

LightBucket has some fantastic analysis in this regard.

Table 1 shows the energy mix and carbon emissions data for the so-called “developed regions” as defined by the UN Statistics Division [1]. I’ve highlighted some of the stand-out numbers, both highest and lowest, and I’ll discuss these below.

Table 1. Energy mix, energy use and CO2 emissions by GDP and by population
Country Energy Mix Power/

Capita

 CO2/GDP CO2/Capita
fossil nuclear renew-

ables

 other kW/capita tonnes CO2/

US$10000

 tonnes CO2/

capita
Luxembourg 92% 0% 2% 6% 13.9 3.4 26.5
United States [6] 86% 8% 6% 0% 10.5 5.2 20.4
Australia [7] 97% 0% 3% 0% 7.9 5.1 19.0
Canada [8] 67% 7% 25% 0% 11.2 6.4 18.5
Estonia 87% 0% 10% 3% 5.0 16.3 14.3
Finland 59% 16% 23% 2% 8.9 3.5 13.2
Czech Republic 79% 15% 3% 3% 5.9 10.8 12.5
Belgium 75% 22% 2% 1% 7.2 2.8 12.2
Ireland 97% 0% 2% 1% 4.9 2.3 11.1
Netherlands 94% 1% 3% 2% 6.7 2.4 11.1
Germany 84% 12% 4% 0% 5.5 2.9 10.7
Denmark 85% 0% 14% 1% 4.8 2.2 10.2
Japan [9] 83% 12% 5% 0% 5.5 2.7 10.1
Greece 94% 0% 5% 1% 3.7 3.7 10.0
Norway [10] 37% 0% 60% 0% 9.2 3.4 9.6
Austria 77% 0% 21% 2% 5.5 2.4 9.4
United Kingdom 89% 9% 2% 0% 5.2 2.7 9.4
Italy 90% 0% 7% 3% 4.2 2.6 8.5
New Zealand [11] 71% 0% 29% 0% 5.5 3.2 8.4
Poland 95% 0% 5% 0% 3.2 12.2 8.3
Spain 82% 12% 6% 0% 4.4 3.2 8.3
Slovenia 69% 19% 11% 1% 4.9 5.0 8.2
Slovakia 72% 23% 4% 1% 4.6 8.6 7.9
Iceland [12] 28% 0% 73% 0% 16.3 1.7 7.8
France 52% 40% 6% 2% 5.8 1.9 6.9
Bulgaria 71% 22% 5% 2% 3.4 17.5 6.8
Portugal 83% 0% 15% 2% 3.4 3.3 6.3
Sweden 37% 37% 26% 0% 7.7 1.5 6.2
Switzerland [13] 63% 24% 13% 0% 4.8 1.1 6.1
Hungary 81% 12% 4% 3% 3.7 5.6 5.9
Romania 84% 4% 12% 0% 2.3 12.0 5.4
Lithuania 50% 37% 7% 6% 3.3 5.9 3.9
Latvia 60% 0% 36% 4% 2.7 5.2 3.2
World Mean [14] 87% 6% 6% 1% 2.4 5.6 4.0
Data are sorted by descending order of CO2 emissions per capita;

Units of CO2/GDP are metric tons of CO2 per US$10,000 of GDP;

Units of CO2/Capita are metric tons of CO2 per capita per annum;

Units of Power/Capita are kilowatts per capita. Power refers to Total Primary Energy Supply;

There are small rounding errors in some of the percentages;

Data are for 2004 except where noted;

Data are for “developed regions” as defined by the UN Statistics Division;

CO2/capita data are from ref [1];

CO2/GDP data are calculated from refs [2] and [3];

Power/Capita data are from ref [4];

Energy mix data for EU nations are from ref [5];

Remaining energy mix data are from refs [6] to [14], and are noted in the table.

What do these numbers show?

Four developed countries have emissions intensities below 2 tonnes-CO2 per US$10,000 of GDP. They are France, Iceland, Sweden and Switzerland. These are working models of low-emissions, high-income industrialised economies. How do they do it?

Iceland has the highest per capita energy consumption of any country (it’s the cold winters), so one might expect it to have high carbon emissions, yet it is among the very lowest carbon emitters – how? It’s thanks to its very large geothermal and hydroelectric resources, sufficient for its small population. Iceland’s energy mix has the highest fraction of renewables of any country (geothermal 56.0%, hydroelectric 16.6%) [12], giving it the lowest emissions intensity of any “developed region” nation that doesn’t use nuclear power.

France has the highest nuclear fraction at 40% – about 80% of its electricity is nuclear-fuelled – and Sweden is close behind with 37% nuclear energy. Sweden’s mix of hydroelectric and nuclear power, and France’s heavy use of nuclear power, give both of them very low emissions by population and by GDP.

The best performer of all by emissions intensity is Switzerland.

Switzerland has by far the lowest CO2 emissions per unit GDP of any developed nation, and the third lowest emissions/GDP ratio of any nation at all (only Chad and Cambodia have lower emissions intensities). This isn’t just down to its very high GDP; Switzerland also has the lowest per capita CO2 emissions of the western economies (four eastern European nations have lower per capita emissions).

How does Switzerland do it? It is a very wealthy nation, which certainly explains one side of the emissions-to-GDP ratio, but that doesn’t explain the emissions per capita ratio, which is also among the very lowest. Its electricity generation is almost entirely hydroelectric and nuclear. These are the two low-carbon energy sources available in quantity. Coal use is confined to two specific industries, foundries and cement factories [15]. These are the factors that combine to deliver Switzerland’s very low emissions figures.

At the other extreme, the U.S. stands out as a poor performer in every respect. It’s not just that its per capita emissions are the second highest of all (after Luxembourg), it also performs poorly on the economic measure of emissions intensity. Also noteworthy are Australia and Ireland, two economies almost entirely reliant on fossil fuels. Ireland has high per capita emissions despite low energy use, while Australia combines a high-carbon energy mix with high energy use to end up with the third highest per capita emissions of all. Given its low population density and natural advantages, it’s an extraordinary position to be in.

China is winning the emissions race

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Meanwhile, our major trading partner, China, looks like showing Australians (and Copenhagen) what is needed to reduce carbon emissions. The New York Times reports that although China took over from the US as the main carbon emitter in 2007, China has approached carbon reduction using a three pronged attack and it’s starting to show results.

The first prong of the China carbon reduction plan is to use nuclear energy. On the basis of current technology, including waste management, nuclear is an attractive option which is why the world wants our uranium. Australia sells the world huge tonnages of uranium, but we don’t use it ourselves to cut carbon. The popular Australian jokes in Asia haven’t cottoned onto this yet but they will.

China is also going all out for wind generation. In this area Australia is on the same path. And thirdly China is really working on making itself more energy efficient.

Australia (and the US) can reduce carbon emissions quickly via coal gas but because carbon reduction has degenerated into an political play-thing we have not taken clear steps.

And Europe has discovered the carbon reduction advantages of Ceramic Fuel’s household generators, which are based on gas. Again, Australia sticks to the same old rhetoric.

What we are looking to do is introduce what Geoff Carmody describes as a “GST from hell”. We plan to make exporters buy carbon permits which are simply a tax and we will allow imports in without taxation.

via China is winning the emissions race – Robert Gottliebsen – News – Business Spectator.

The Chindia price

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What is the single most important economic number that can make or break the climate change solution?

According to Vinod Khosla, it is the Chindia price.

SPENCER MICHELS: What do you call it, the Chindia price? China-India?

VINOD KHOSLA: Yes. I say most effective climate change technologies have to be on trajectory, they don’t have to day one be cheap enough, but they have to be on trajectory to meet the Chindia price, the price at which India and China would adapt these technologies for economic reasons. Because without India and China adapting these technologies, there is no cost effect, there’s no real climate change solution.

An extensive interview at PBS. Check it out.

Population – A Human problem

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Last month I quoted an article by Michael Backman writing about population and emissions. Backman assets that population is the major contributor to emissions growth.

Two commentators on the article did not agree with Backman.  John Brisbin comments that  ”The only obvious thing about sustainability is the per capita resource usage”. He wants to believe in a world where “20 billion living in peaceful resonance with the planet and requiring only the simplest of material inputs?”

I think that is next to impossible. The past has shown that people cannot be expected to behave like that.
It is tough, I know that from personal experience.

The consumer culture is all fine to moan about however, we need to remember that it is the present culture. There is a limit to what you can expect people to change. We need to work with what we have…and what we have is an increasing consumer culture all around the world.

Also, we need to remember that population as such creates problems in other areas – public health, infrastructure, provision of other services, standard of living etc.

And the second comment from Dani where he angrily writes that “Getting rid of all americans will drop carbon emissions far more quickly than all the population control in South Asia.”

What we need to think about is the future. I think we should not take Backman’s analysis personal. I am an Indian and I do know where you would come from.

We cannot change the past. Can we rid of all the Americans? Totally not possible and not ethical. We need to work with what is possible. Controlling population in South Asia is a very good thing in many ways.

Atanu helped me understand the consequences of population growth many years back. Lets read what Atanu Dey has to say on this:

In 1965, about 40 years ago, there were less than 500 million of us. By 2004, the population of India has more than doubled. The effect of this incredible increase has been a falling standard of living in general, shortages, untold misery and conflict. It is foolish to expect that we can provide a decent standard of living to so many in such a short time. The vast majority of us do not have adequate drinking water, sanitation, health care, education and job opportunities. The preceding statement does not even begin to indicate the amount of human misery and sorrow which it implies. It hides within it the teeming millions who suffer without the slightest hope of ever seeing a future remotely human.

Read the entire article. Atanu talks about the limited time available to create a standard of living for a huge population. In another post he quotes Joel Cohen’s book How Many People Can the Earth Support? (1995). Here Cohen explains the finiteness of time.

The finiteness of time, the second thread in the book, limit’s the abilities of individuals and of societies to solve problems. For each human being, time is finite. I want to eat and drink today. As a privileged inhabitant of a wealthy country, I can postpone buying a new car for several years, but the requirements of poor people for subsistence are not so elastic in time. Those who want firewood to cook a meal today will break branches from the last tree standing if they believe that otherwise their children may not surive to lament the absence of trees 20 years hence. In the American legal system, the finiteness of time to satisfy basic human wants is recognized in a phrase: justice delayed is justice denied.

Efforts to satisfy human wants require time, and the time required may be longer than the finite time available to individuals. There is a race between the complexity of the problems that are generated by increasing human numbers and the ability of humans to comprehend and solve those problems. Educating people to solve problems takes time. Developing traditions of stable, productive cooperation takes time. Building institutions with the resources to make educated people into productive problem-solvers takes time. Even with educated, cooperative people and appropriate institutions at hand, understanding and solving problems take still more time.

Re-read the paragraph above twice. The difference between the commentators and Cohen’s and Atanu’s arguments  is that they accept human wants as a given. And secondly, they work with current statistics and situation in many parts of the world. This is not a Malthusian type of argument for sure. It is far bigger than that.

Population is key to cutting emissions

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Michael Backman in his latest Age column writes about the issue of population and its connection to greenhouse gases.

WHAT is the ultimate cause of greenhouse gases? Excessive reliance on cars? Coal-fired power stations? Clear-felling forests? The answer is none of these. The ultimate cause is people and population growth.

Having one child with your partner instead of two or more is the biggest contribution to reducing greenhouse gases you can make. Have one child instead of two and you will be directly responsible for cutting your family’s greenhouse gas emissions by about 50% in the next generation.
[...]
Determining which countries have been responsible when it comes to population growth generates a different picture when it comes to developing countries. China is a big and growing greenhouse gas emitter. But it has one of the lowest population growth rates in the region due to the success of its one-child policy and also due to its rising wealth levels — richer people tend to have fewer children.

India, on the other hand, is not yet as big a gas emitter as China. Gas emissions per head are about three times less — but its population is growing much faster than China’s. Its population will overtake China’s in the 2030s, when both countries can be expected to have populations of about 1.5 billion. But South Asia, taken as a whole, is already the clear winner in the population stakes. Had partition not taken place in 1947, then India would have overtaken China for the No. 1 spot years ago. The combined population of pre-partition India today (India, Pakistan and Bangladesh) is 1.4 billion, compared with China’s population of 1.3 billion.
[...]
Indeed, the population of pre-partition India is expected to rise by another 900 million people in the first half of this century. Changing to energy-saving light bulbs will be a drop in the ocean compared with this