Michael Igoe :
(From previous issue)
The World Bank employs a tiered system to describe energy access levels, with 1 being the lowest and 5 being the highest. But still, tier 5 corresponds to roughly 420 kwh per capita per year, according to Bazilian and Pielke, which, they note, “at less than 10 percent of Bulgarian consumption, is still much lower that what typical energy services would imply in even the least energy-consumptive wealthy countries.” “There’s a certain aspect of this that’s a little disconnected from what the aspirations of people really are,” Cohen told Devex.
The 1,000-year overhang
The win-win scenario, in which the world achieves universal access through greater energy efficiency and a larger share of renewables, while avoiding dangerous climate change, ignores another reality: Asia.
China is the largest solar and wind market in the world. It also added 40 gigawatts of coal power in 2013.
“We’re not displacing coal with wind and solar. We’re adding to the coal, since the demand is so great,” Cohen told attendees at a National Bureau of Asian Research panel in Washington last year.
If China completely stopped building coal plants in 2030, according to Cohen, the country’s existing plants would still produce 250 billion tons of carbon dioxide, which equates to one-third or all of the planet’s remaining carbon budget, depending on whether you choose the more or less conservative estimates of how close we are to “dangerous climate change.”
“It means that if we don’t deal with that embedded base of coal energy that’s already been built and is going to be built in Asia … You can build all the new clean energy you want but you’re going to have that overhang, and that overhang lasts for 1,000 years,” Cohen said.
For Cohen, who works to promote decarbonizing technologies, that adds up to one big conclusion, and it isn’t that development institutions will make or break the global climate with their decisions to support or prohibit individual coal projects overseas.
“You’re digging a hole you can’t get out of, except if you have carbon capture and storage,” Cohen said, describing CCS as, “the only practical way to meet climate targets.”
International financial institutions have waded into CCS, and U.S. President Barack Obama’s pledge to restrict coal financing overseas gave a strong nod to promoting the technology.
“Today, I’m calling for an end to public financing for new coal plants overseas unless they deploy carbon-capture technologies or there’s no other viable way for the poorest countries to generate electricity,” Obama said in a speech outlining the administration’s broader efforts on climate change at Georgetown University in June 2013.
Five days later, Obama launched Power Africa, a whole-of-government effort to facilitate private investment in Africa’s power sector and double access to energy in sub-Saharan Africa, and the initiative’s leaders have been riddled with questions about how it will balance energy and climate concerns, and whether it will invest heavily enough in renewable energy.
The U.S. position on coal has grown murkier, and a few U.S. agencies have found themselves caught in the political crossfire. Both the Overseas Private Investment Corp., which provides risk mitigation for investments in developing countries, and the U.S. Export-Import Bank have been prohibited from supporting coal projects by Obama’s pledge, and have had their budgets threatened by lawmakers from coal states if they follow through on Obama’s Climate Action Plan. The result seems to be a return to a polarized argument, with no room for fossil fuel promotion on one side, and with no tolerance for restricting energy investments on the other.
Cohen sees the current level of discourse – or lack thereof – as a missed opportunity to have a conversation about the role that bilateral donors and multilateral institutions could play in deploying and commercializing technologies like CCS, which he thinks have the potential to bridge the distance between climate concerns and real energy aspirations.
“The discussion of renewables has been privileged and I don’t think that’s out of ill will or ideology. I think it’s largely out of the fact that the conversation hasn’t really been happening, and there has not been a good, factual dialogue around this,” Cohen told Devex.
The World Bank shared an overview of its work on carbon capture and storage with Devex, and while it notes that the International Energy Agency expects CCS will account for 14 percent of emissions reductions, it also says that World Bank funding for CCS is around $57 million, compared to about $5 billion for renewables between the bank and the International Finance Corp.
“It’s not a sexy topic,” Cohen said. “Everyone likes solar panels, and everyone likes wind, and everyone likes thinking about distributed appropriate technology, so that has been the discussion. There just hasn’t been as much reality check based on the size of the energy demand.”
Cohen is encouraged that the recent U.S.-China climate agreement did include carbon capture and storage as a central pillar, but, he said, those kinds of agreements need to be built out at a global level, and they need to look at “modern energy access.”
“That’s what’s going to really lift people out of poverty and make life more materially manageable … and that’s where we need to be,” Cohen said.
“Now let’s talk about how we get there, and let’s talk about the role of renewables, and let’s talk about the role of central station, and let’s talk about the role of energy efficiency. But let’s come up with a realistic package and roadmap. No one has done that work … at a global level. No one.”
2015 will be a pivotal year for global climate change planning and financing. In Paris, the 21st Conference of Parties will convene in July to agree on a legally binding global agreement on curbing carbon emissions that world leaders hope to sign in December. It will likely include technology transfer to developing countries, new commitments that will alter the landscape of coal and renewables, and funding commitments to help developing countries “leapfrog” older, dirtier technologies.
With less than a year remaining to negotiate, whether the Paris agreement will include a roadmap to balance climate goals with the level of energy access that people want remains an open question.
(Michael Igoe is a Global Development Reporter for Devex. Based in Washington, he covers US foreign aid and emerging trends in international development and humanitarian policy. )
(Concluded)
