Investing in renewable electricity worldwide instead of burning fossil fuels could save US$180 billion annually and cut emissions of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide in half by 2030, according to a joint report by Greenpeace and the European Renewable Energy Council, released on July 6.
In the first global analysis of its kind, the report argues for a shift in global investments towards renewable energy--solar, wind, hydro, geothermal and bioenergy--within the next 23 years, and away from “dangerous“ coal and nuclear power.
“As Live Earth mobilizes billions of people to take urgent action against the climate threat, our report shows not only that the world’s electricity needs can be met by renewable energy, but that by doing so, we will literally save trillions of dollars; a massive US$180 billion a year, forever,“ said Sven Teske of Greenpeace International, Newswire.com said.
The report gives the financial rationale for Greenpeace’s “Energy Revolution,“ a blueprint for how to cut global carbon dioxide, CO2, emissions by 50 percent by 2050, while maintaining global economic growth.
The energy revolution scenario is an alternative to the International Energy Agency’s world energy outlook.
“In sharp contrast,“ Teske said, a “business as usual approach casts a dark cloud over our future.“
“Its 10,000 new fossil fuel power plants, would increase global CO2 emissions by over 50 percent, and more than double fuel costs; there is no way of putting a price on the disastrous results this will have for environment and humanity,“ he said.
The Energy Revolution needs an extra global annual investment of $22 billion in clean and renewable power plants on top of current expenditure, Greenpeace says.
The fuel cost savings of up to $202 billion per year, means this will pay for itself 10 times over,“ said Teske.
The report says that converting the subsidies of $250 billion a year that now are given to the coal and gas industries to clean, safe renewable energy will cover the costs of the energy revolution and much more, he said.
The European Renewable Energy Council says the global market for wind turbines was worth some 18 billion euros in 2006, and the total renewable industry was worth about $50 billion.
The Council is the umbrella organization of European renewable energy industry, trade and research associations working in the photovoltaic, wind energy, small hydropower, biomass, geothermal energy and solar thermal sectors.
Under an energy revolution scenario, renewable energy would be worth an annual market volume of $288 billion by 2030, the Council projects.
“The renewable industry is willing and able to deliver the power plants the world needs, we simply need the right climate and energy policy,“ said Oliver Schofer, EREC policy director.
“Decisions made in the next few years, will continue to have an impact in 2050. Only if a renewable energy path is taken, can we avoid the worst excesses of climate change,“ he warned.
The report stresses the urgent need for decisive action now. In the next decade, many existing power plants will need replacing, and emerging economies such as China, India and Brazil are rapidly building new energy infrastructure.

Widespread and damaging blackouts in southern Africa are testing the patience of citizens and dragging down economic growth.

Sub-Saharan Africa must urgently impose power rationing on companies and populations to limit the effects of a worsening energy crisis, industry and government experts said.
Decades of underinvestment in electricity networks and growing populations mean the poorest 20 percent in the region has no access to electricity.
Even in wealthier African countries such as Nigeria, reliability of supply is often so poor that all large businesses need their own generators. Widespread and damaging blackouts in southern Africa are testing the patience of citizens and dragging down economic growth.
Industry and government experts at a two-day energy conference in Marrakesh said it was urgent to boost maintainance of ageing power stations and transmission lines and add new ones to satisfy growing demand.
More cross-border connections could ferry electricity from countries with surplus energy to those with a deficit.
Delegates drew an alarming picture for parts of the continent where economic mismanagement meant that urgently needed energy investment have little prospect of arriving, Mg.co.za said.
“There is no accumulation of wealth,“ said Paris-based economic science professor Jean-Marie Chevalier. “Predators take money and put it in Swiss bank accounts. There is a lack of productive investment.“
Studies showed peak power demand in sub-Saharan Africa is forecast to exceed capacity from this year, meaning that even if power networks worked at 100 percent, cuts are inevitable at peak times.
Delegates called for power rationing by armies, police forces, ministries and other public services, which in some countries account for almost a third of national consumption.
Old generation units must be brought back online and emergency capacity installed, although even that was proving hard to achieve in countries such as Kenya, which has faced repeated delays to a tender for 30-40 MW of emergency power.
“It’s dragged on year as the process wasn’t very transparent or professional,“ said Philippe Durand, lead infrastructure and public-private manager at the African Development Bank. “There were complaints by companies that made offers.“
Some $40 billion of infrastructure investment is needed in sub-Saharan Africa, of which $8 billion for electricity, delegates said. Total infrastructure spending since 1985 is around $12 billion.
Governments are heavily in debt and under pressure from the IMF to pare back public spending before being allowed to borrow more, leaving private finance as the only option.
But the political climate in much of the region and a poor track record for completing major public works creates unacceptable risks for companies, which charge premiums for power projects that governments can simply not afford.
The most striking example of the continent’s problem is Grand Inga, a long-mooted project to expand a hydroelectric complex and draw 39,000 MW of power from the fast-flowing waters of the Congo river and export the energy across the region.
It would be the world’s biggest hydro-electric installation and nearly as large as the generating capacity of South Africa, whose main power utility Eskom is the driving force behind the plan. But despite the recent election of Democratic Republic of Congo leader Joseph Kabila after years of civil war, investors are not flooding in.
“No one will lend them money--It would be madness,“ Henri Boye, head of Middle East and Africa at French utility EDF said.
“At Inga 20 years ago we installed 1,500 MW of capacity but the maintenance is detestable. There is no money and they are doing nothing.“
With investment risks high, international lenders say the cost of capital in sub-Saharan Africa is between 15 and 20 percent, compared to about 5-6 percent for a healthier developing economy like Chile.

It has long been known that when two different kinds of atoms clump together, some of the resulting clusters are more stable than others. Physicists in the US and Germany have now devised a rule that predicts the ratios of aluminum and hydrogen atoms that will form such stable clusters. They also say that the clusters could be packed together to form a new type of material that can store hydrogen for use as an energy source.
Atomic clusters are formed when a finite number of atoms clump together to form an ensemble larger than a typical molecule, but too small to be considered a bulk solid. Although any number of atoms can form a cluster, those with a certain ratio of elements, called “magic clusters“, are inherently more stable than others.
Magic clusters are interesting because they can be used as building blocks for new materials, the properties of which can be fine-tuned by adjusting the clusters’ composition. But no-one has ever been able to predict the magic ratios, which have previously had to be determined by trial and error, Physicsweb.com said.
Now a group led by Kiran Boggavarapu of Virginia Commonwealth University in the US has come up with such a rule by considering how clusters of two particular atoms--aluminum and hydrogen--bond together.
Just like molecules, clusters have a series of discrete energy levels, and only become stable once one of these is completely filled with electrons. Faced with a cluster of aluminum atoms, therefore, a hydrogen atom will bond in such a way to either take or donate an electron to fill a level. “It is so unusual that the smallest atom--hydrogen--can bring such a big difference,“ Boggavarapu said.
For instance, if a cluster of aluminum atoms needs one more electron to become stable, a hydrogen atom could either form a “bridge“ between two aluminum atoms or form a “cap“ by linking three aluminum atoms. This would enable its electron to become delocalized so that it can be shared with the aluminum cluster. On the other hand, if a cluster has too many, a hydrogen could “radially“ bond and withdraw the extra electron from the cluster.
Using these electron-sharing conditions, the US group wrote an equation that predicted the different numbers of hydrogen atoms that could make a certain-sized cluster of aluminum atoms stable. A cluster of seven aluminum atoms, for example, could have either one radially-bonded hydrogen atom (Al7H), or it could have two radially-bonded hydrogen atoms and one bridge-bonded hydrogen atom (Al7H3).
Boggavarapu showed his group’s rule to Kit Bowen and co-workers at Johns Hopkins University to see if it worked for real magic clusters using a technique called photoelectron spectroscopy, in which ultraviolet light is used to knock electrons from a cluster so that their binding energy can be determined. They found that the binding energies for different magic clusters matched the bonding types that their rule predicted.
The researchers now want to see if the magic clusters will retain their properties when they interact together. If they do, they could be promising materials for storing hydrogen, which is widely touted as a clean alternative to fossil fuels as a source of energy. Boggavarapu told Physics Web that hydrogen is bonded weakly enough in aluminum-hydrogen magic clusters to allow it to be released at ambient temperatures and pressures.

The European Union signaled on Thursday it was ready to ramp up imports of biofuels from countries such as Brazil but warned producers it expected strict environmental standards to be met.
The 27-nation EU set itself a target in March for biofuels to make up at least 10 percent of vehicle fuels by 2020 as part of efforts to reduce carbon emissions and fight climate change.
But critics say growing crops for fuel may contribute to destruction of rainforests and raise food prices.
Some European farmers hope Brussels will favor locally produced biofuels as a new money-spinner for them, Reuters reported.
But several top officials at a biofuels conference stressed the EU had to be open to imports if they meet EU standards.
“Europe should be open to accepting that we will import a large part of our biofuel resources,“ Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said. “We cannot contemplate, in my view, favoring EU production of biofuels with a weak carbon performance if we can import cheaper, cleaner biofuels.“
European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU would push for sustainable biofuels output and consumption.
“This means setting up a rigorous sustainability mechanism to underpin a new market for these products,“ he said.
Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said his country is now working on a certification plan for its huge biofuels industry based on environmental and labour standards and he urged rich countries not to use them as new barriers.
“We cannot send out contradictory signals. The same governments concerned about sustainable development and cutting greenhouse gases cannot put up problems for biofuels becoming international commodities,“ he told the same conference.
Brazilian biofuel faces EU import tariffs of about 70 percent, trade officials say.
Mandelson and EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs indicated a willingness to cut tariffs if imports are truly green. “For me, there is no need for protective tariffs as long as the biofuels are sustainable,“ Piebalgs told Reuters.
Such comments are likely to raise eyebrows in EU countries with strong farm interests, chief among them France. Its new President Nicolas Sarkozy has repeatedly criticised Brussels for being too focused on open markets.
EU farmers group COPA-COGECA said biofuels from countries such as Brazil came at the cost of rainforest destruction and exploitation of workers, claims denied by Brazil.
“Mandelson must get his facts right on biofuels. You can only call for biofuel imports from low-cost producers on environmental grounds if you completely close your eyes to the economic realities in these countries,“ the group said.
EU biofuels producers also say imports of bio-diesel from the United States and Argentina are unfairly subsidized.
Sweden, in the EU’s free-market camp, wants no biofuel import tariffs at all. “It simply does not seem consistent to me to make import of ethanol more expensive at a time when we are trying to expand the use,“ Trade Minister Sten Tolgfors said.
An EU sustainability mechanism is expected to be a part of new biofuels legislation Brussels will propose later this year.
The rules are likely to stipulate that only sources that meet sustainability standards, such as more efficient second-generation biofuels, will be eligible for tax exemptions and will count towards the EU’s 10 percent target.

Uganda will require about 22,500 megawatts of electricity to satisfy the demand of the 42 million people by 2025. Daudi Migereko, the energy minister, said Uganda as an industrialised country in 2025, will consume 3,000 kilo watts per hour of electricity per capita, up from the current 60 kilowatts per hour.
This will require extra 126,000 giga watts per hour, Allafrica.com said.
“The Government’s strategy on power supply is to anticipate demand and not to chase demand,“ he said.
“Power supply should be determined by the country’s vision to transform its society from a peasantry one to an industrialised nation by 2025,“ he added.
Migereko said the traditional load-forecasting is pre-industrial and the methods are based on pre-industrial scenarios like the slow growth of gross domestic product and low levels of consumption.
The minister said the BKS Acres projection put the high peak demand at 345 megawatts in 2005 and 1,919 megawatts in 2025 for a population of about 45 million people. BKS Acres are the Canadian consultants who worked on a regional power master plan.
“The current estimated demand is 380 mega watts at peak hours and 280 megawatts during off peak hours.
“All consumers who want power cannot be served even if there was no drought,“ Migereko explained.
Drought had been blamed for low generation at the Jinja dams.
The demand projections, he said, were based on pre- industrial assumptions.
“Any slight industrial or commercial developments chock the power supply,“ he added.
“The deficit leads to massive load-shedding.
“There is need to address the shortage,“ he said.
The minister was on Thursday presenting a paper on “Uganda’s current and future generation capacity“ at a regional power conference at the Imperial Resort Beach Hotel, Entebbe.
Eriya Kategaya, the First Deputy Prime Minister and the Minister In-charge of the East Africa Cooperation, opened the summit, aimed at promoting the East Africa interconnection power plan.
Kategaya said integrating the power market would lead to reliable electricity supply at affordable prices.
The current hydropower generation at the Kiira and Nalubale dams in Jinja stands at 140 megawatts out of an installed capacity of 400 mega watts.
The thermal production at Lugogo is at 100 mega watts while another 50 megawatts is expected at the Mutundwe thermal plant by October.