Tag: energy

ECO clearly missed a presentation by Germany in Thursday’s workshop on developed country mitigation. Germany could have taken the opportunity to present its package of wide reaching energy and infrastructure legislative proposals, presented this Monday, as a response to the nuclear disaster in Fukushima.

While these negotiations rarely deal with nuclear energy, delegates would surely have been intrigued to witness what could become a historical turn in energy policy taking place in a leading industrial country. One that, if planned and executed carefully, could become a development! model for many other countries struggling with their dependence on increasingly expensive, climate change causing fossil fuels or nuclear energy with its risks and dirty and dangerous legacy. Because, ECO notes, the government has confirmed that phasing out nuclear energy will not alter the country’s resolve to cut itsgreenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2020 and by 80-95% by 2050. Not replacing the nuclear threat with a new climate threat is ambitious, but possible, as numerous experts from all sides have confirmed. ECO hopes that dirty industry and its buddies in government aren’t going to screw it up.

The most prominent piece is the accelerated phase out of nuclear power plants, with the 8 oldest plants not going online anymore at all, and the remaining ones shutting down one by one more gradually until 2022. Earlier phase out, such as in 2017, would have been possible, but nonetheless the legislative proposals, which have now been presented to the German Parliament represent a significant shift.

The renewable energy act is confirming the principles of a long-term guaranteed feed in tariff and grid priority for renewable electricity. ECO has learned that this means the ambition to meet 35% of German power demand from renewable electricity by 2020 is therefore not a cap, but a minimum floor, from which to build beyond 2020. The dynamic development of renewable energies in Germany is a result of that policy.

The grid infrastructure laws are attempting the ambitious goal of increasing public participation and acceptance while reducing the length of the permitting procedures. Most proposals are sound but it remains to be seen how successfully they can be implemented.

The laws on energy efficiency could be much more ambitious and goals more binding. However, the conservative liberal coalition in Germany has set up a multi- billion support programme for efficiency measures, e.g. in the building sector.

All these proposals are slowly but surely exploring the practical possibility for a paradigm change in the systems of electricity generation, distribution and consumption.

Some industry lobbyists are, together with the four big utilities, warning that a “deindustrialization of Germany” is imminent. However, the overwhelming majority of studies show that a whole new industry – with substantial positive growth and labor market impacts – is emerging. The economic benefits of such a transformation will hopefully be understood by other sectors (e.g. transport) as a signal that the chances and rewards associated with such transition to a low carbon future are tremendous.

Bioenergy had a starring role in this week’s workshop on developed country emission reduction targets. The theme of many parties was reducing energy sector emissions by substituting bioenergy for fossil fuels.

At last, Mexico sounded a note of caution in their presentation in the workshop on NAMAs, pointing out that reliance on biofuels is difficult to do sustainably, can be harmful in terms of conservation and REDD targets, and can impact on agriculture

Bioenergy - a clean alternative?

Bioenergy leaves a carbon footprint which is largely ignored when proposed as an alternative. This is an unacceptable situation as we face exponential growth in this energy source which is being justified in the name of addressing climate change.

The worry arising from tremendous expansion of bioenergy production from land and forests is not just the unintended consequences of constraining food supply and the potential to destroy biodiversity, as important as those are. There are also problems arising directly from the failure to address deficiencies of accounting rules in the KP.

ECO is compelled to point out that although the use of bioenergy is often claimed to be carbon neutral, this is rarely so. The emissions released from producing and burning bioenergy can be much larger than those for fossil fuels, especially when converted to liquid fuels or where grown on emissive peat soils, as shown in the chart.

Developed countries:

Actual emissions, fake accounting

Equally rare is accounting for the actual emissions. Yes, it’s that old problem – the LULUCF rules – once again!

Under existing IPCC guidance, bioenergy is accounted as carbon neutral when it is combusted in the energy sector, as it is a renewable energy source. But the crucial presumption underpinning this is that emissions associated with the provision of bioenergy have been accounted for in their sector of origin (i.e., the land use and forestry sector) in their country of origin and netted out against carbon sequestration in growing the bioenergy crop in the first place.

In developed countries this assumption founders on the failure of the LULUCF rules to mandate accounting for either forestry or cropland management. Currently, many parties choose not to do this. There isn’t even a proposal on the table that all parties must account for all LULUCF emissions including cropland management, in which case parties won’t include those activities in their reporting when they are emissive. In addition, the proposal for projected reference levels for forest management in the KP second commitment period opens a new kind of loophole, and this is a very concerning development also for accounting bioenergy emissions specifically.