Tribeca Film Festival

Tribeca Film Festival-2006
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Energy gap: Crisis for humanity?: BBC

Energy gap: Crisis for humanity?

By Richard Black BBC News website environment correspondent

It is perhaps too early to talk of an energy "crisis".

Fossil fuels have been the cheapest and most convenient so far

But take your pick from terms like "serious concern" and "major issue" and you will not be far from the positions which analysts are increasingly adopting.

The reason for their concern can be found in a set of factors which are pulling in glaringly different directions:

• Demand for energy, in all its forms, is rising
• Supplies of key fuels - notably oil and gas - show signs of decline
• Mainstream climate science suggests that reducing greenhouse gas emissions within two decades would be a prudent thing to do
• Meanwhile the Earth's population continues to rise, with the majority of its six billion people hankering after a richer lifestyle - which means a greater consumption of energy.

Underlying the growing concern is the relentless pursuit of economic growth, which historically has been tied to energy consumption as closely as a horse is tethered to its cart.

It is a vehicle which cannot continue to speed up indefinitely; it must at some point hit a barrier, of finite supply, unfeasibly high prices or abrupt climate change.

The immediate question is whether the crash comes soon, or whether humanity has time to plan a comfortable way out.

Even if it can, the planning is not necessarily going to be easy, or result in cheap solutions. Every energy source has its downside; there is no free lunch, wherever you look on the menu.

Runaway horse

The International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts a rise in global energy demand of 50-60% by 2030.

If all else remained equal, that rising demand would be accommodated principally by fossil fuels, which have generally been the cheapest and most convenient available.

But oil supplies show signs of running down; this, combined with concerns about rising demand and political instability, conspired to force prices up from $40 a barrel at the beginning of 2005 to $60 at its close.

There is more oil out there, for sure; but the size of proven reserves is uncertain, with oil-producing countries and companies prone to exaggerate the size of their stocks. Currently uneconomic sources such as tar sands could be exploited; but at what cost?

Natural gas stocks - in recent times the fuel of choice for electricity generation are also showing signs of depletion, and there is growing concern in Western capitals about the political instability associated with oil and gas supplies from the Middle East and Russia.

Coal, the fuel of the industrial revolution, remains relatively abundant; but here the climate issue raises its provocative head most volubly, because of all fuels, coal produces more greenhouse gas emissions for the energy it gives.

Based partly on the predicted availability of cheap coal, the IEA forecasts a 50% rise in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030.

Mainstream climate science, meanwhile, indicates that to avoid dangerous consequences of climate change, emissions should fall, not rise, by 50%.

The economic and environmental horses are clearly pulling in mutually incompatible directions.

No climate curbs

It is a rare human that dons a hair shirt voluntarily; and in seeking to deal with climate change, we are, it seems, behaving to type.

It took the world's most comfortably-off nations more than seven years to bring the Kyoto Protocol into force following its signing in 1997.

Sharp divisions over nuclear power show no signs of disappearing

An alternative "climate pact", the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate, emerged last year contending that technology alone would solve global warming.

It recently concluded its first ministerial meeting by endorsing projections that under its aegis, emissions will at least double by 2050; economic growth is sacrosanct, and so consumption of coal and other fossil fuels must also continue to rise.

Concern over climate change, then, is not on a global basis proving to be a driver for clean technology or for reducing demand for energy.

Price barriers

Rising prices or simply constraints on supplies of fossil fuels could, however, bring other fuels into the equation; and nuclear fission is at the head of the queue.

According to the World Nuclear Association, there are now about 440 commercial reactors in the world, providing 16% of its electricity; for major developing countries such as India and China, nuclear power remains both a significant part of the electricity mix and a close companion to military programmes.

But concerns over waste have set other countries such as Germany on a determinedly non-nuclear path.

Waste apart, nuclear faces another potential obstacle; stocks of uranium are finite.

Photo-voltaic cells: The look of the future?

Analysts differ over how soon a uranium deficit might emerge; some believe that a significant ramping up of nuclear capacity would exhaust economic reserves on a timescale of decades.

That could be extended by adopting "fast breeder" reactors, which create more fissile material as they go.

Too good to be true? Perhaps, because there is a major downside; the creation of plutonium, with its attendant dangers of proliferation.

The other nuclear technology, fusion, is full of hope but even its most ardent supporters admit it is decades away.

Wind, waves and sunlight

Most of the energy we use on Earth comes directly or indirectly from the Sun.

It is the Sun which stirs winds and the great water cycle, depositing rain on highlands and creating the potential for hydro-electric power; it is the Sun's energy which grew plants which decayed to form the coal and oil that we have extracted so determinedly in our industrial age.

Is it now time, then, to use its energy directly, to blanket the Earth in photo-voltaic cells and silently power humankind's future?

Certainly it could be done, with energy to spare; but at costs up to five times that of coal and gas, it is not going to be soon.

Wind, wave and tidal power are all fine technologies, but their potential is limited, not least by the fact that they do not generate continuously.

That could be overcome by storing energy. But there are few realistic ways of doing it; and the additional cost would quickly negate any advantage these technologies currently possess.

Hydrogen, meanwhile, is touted as the great climate-friendly hope.

But hydrogen is just a carrier of energy. It must be created, for example by using electricity to split water molecules, in which case replacing petrol-driven cars with hydrogen vehicles would vastly increase the global demand for electricity.

No free lunch, indeed - but a desperately tortuous and risk-laden menu and a kitchen where political or environmental fires could flare up at any moment.

Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk

Labouring for a greener planet: BBC

Labouring for a greener planet

VIEWPOINT Klaus Toepfer

The trade union movement has a critical role to play in building a cleaner and more just planet, argues the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep) in our new series of opinion pieces on the BBC News website entitled The Green Room.

A few decades ago the relationship between the environment and the trade union movement was characterised as one of suspicion Send us your comments

In Nigeria, a campaign has been launched to consign health hazardous, outdated and obsolete chemicals to the history books. It should eventually benefit an estimated five million factory workers along with the wider West African environment.

A joint Norwegian and Russian programme is educating and training staff at Russian factories in areas such as health and safety and cleaner production techniques.

Gains are expected to include healthier working conditions and reduced emissions to land, water and air.

Meanwhile in Germany a project is underway to make 300,000 apartments energy efficient under a renovation scheme. It should generate 200,000 jobs while cutting greenhouse gas emissions by two million tonnes.

The common thread running through these and numerous other pilots in both the developed and developing world is organised labour.

Indeed, they underscore the growing enthusiasm and commitment of trade unions to embrace sustainable development for the benefit of the workplace, communities living nearby and the global environment as a whole.

An enthusiasm also evidenced in the UN Global Compact, the initiative of the Secretary General, which has brought together a broad collation of private business and civil society.

Shared interest

A few decades ago the relationship between the environment and the trade union movement was characterised as one of suspicion.

Some in organised labour were concerned that environmental protection might jeopardize jobs by placing an undue burden on business and industry.

Environmentalists suspected that trade unions were bent on defending the status quo of heavy, and in many cases, polluting industry.

Those days are gone and these cobwebs of suspicion have been blown away by the realities of a modern globalised world.

Both sides now recognise the multiple benefits of reaching out in common cause.

There are obvious areas of mutual self interest, for example in the field of reducing exposure by workers and their families to harmful and dangerous substances.

International Labour Organization (ILO) estimates indicate that some 300,000 workers are killed each year as a result of exposure to chemical agents. This should and must be dramatically reduced.

Poverty targets

Other areas include a joint recognition that fighting environmental degradation is a win win battle. Take climate change.

Overcoming this most serious of serious threats will deliver not only a more stable and less wasteful world but one in which new, cleaner and more sustainable jobs can be generated in areas such as renewable energy systems and cleaner fossil fuel generation.

Meanwhile, organised labour can be a powerful catalyst for change, persuading employers and companies to be more environmentally responsible and resource efficient.

This should not only make firms more competitive - thus helping to maintain and boost employment prospects - but reduce the environmental footprint of such firms or sectors on forests and wildlife, up to water supplies and the Earth's protective ozone layer.

This blossoming relationship will come into sharp focus this month when 150 trade union leaders representing millions of workers meet at the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Programme.

Together, under the umbrella of the first World Assembly on Labour and the Environment, we will chart a new and forward-looking agenda aimed at taking organised labour and the global environment into a new sphere of cooperation.

The ultimate goal behind all of our aims will be a new push towards realisation of the Millennium Development Goals covering poverty eradication up to gender equality and environmental sustainability.

We are determined to make this unique event more than a mere talking fest.

United approach

A multi-pronged action plan, to be known as the Workers' Initiative for a Lasting Legacy or WILL2006, is set to be agreed in collaboration with Unep, the ILO, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU) and the Sustainlabour Foundation.

Unep will also be looking to see how we can, in concrete terms, assist trade unions in replicating the more than 20 case studies scheduled to be presented at the Assembly.

Other areas of mutual self interest include training and educating on the latest developments in international environmental law in areas such as the newly adopted chemicals treaties, for example the Persistent Organic Pollutant or Stockholm Convention.

Over recent years, Unep has been reaching out to civil society from business and industry up to traditional environment and sustainable development groups, indigenous peoples and women.

The time for forging closer ties with trade unions has been long overdue. An estimated three billion people, or half those alive on the planet today, are classed as being in the global work force.

It is high time we made our manifest and mutual self interests work. Work for the man and women on the factory and office floor and in the fields of agriculture - and work for a cleaner, healthier and more dignified world for all.

Klaus Toepfer was Germany's Environment Minister before taking up his position at the UN. Unep hosts the World Assembly on Labour and the Environment in Nairobi, Kenya, 15-17 January

The Green Room is a new series of environmental opinion articles running weekly on the BBC News website

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Photos over New York City