Time to Establish an International Sustainable Energy Fund
Alice Slater
The 1995 founding statement of the Abolition 2000 Network recognized the “inextricable link between nuclear weapons and nuclear power” and called for the establishment of an International Sustainable Energy Agency[1]. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), established under the Non-Proliferation Treaty that recognizes an “inalienable right” to the peaceful uses of nuclear technology, serves dual and conflicting functions, responsible for guarding against nuclear proliferation while promoting nuclear power, the inevitable precursor of the very proliferation it is designed to prevent.
The Abolition 2000 Sustainable Energy Working Group drafted a Model Statute for the creation of an International Sustainable Energy Fund (ISEF)[2] that incorporates the growing interest for a detailed financing mechanism through which to implement sustainable development objectives. The creation of ISEF would go a long way to address the most immediate and urgent challenges of the new century: nuclear proliferation and global climate change caused by the consumption of fossil fuels. In 2001, ISEF was introduced at the ninth session of the United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD-9) in New York. It was subsequently discussed at the Financing for Development Roundtable on “Global Taxes” and at the European Union/North American Regional Roundtable that same year. It was also noted by the International Forum on Globalization in Alternatives to Economic Globalization, a report widely distributed at the third World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, (2002) as “among the more comprehensive and widely circulated” statutes for alternative global operating systems.[3]
ISEF was widely promoted and broadly supported in the lead-up to the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg, South Africa, where it generated interest among governments, and was introduced at a “Friends of the Chair” meeting with the WSSD Secretary General and 25 member states, but was never placed on the official agenda. Funding issues, targets, and timeframes which it supports are formalized in the Sustainable Energy Initiatives of the 2002 NGO Energy and Climate Caucus, which were submitted at preparatory meetings to WSSD (Prepatory Committee 4) and are incorporated as Appendix I in the Statute.
Neither at WSSD nor since, have governments committed outright to funding for sustainable forms of renewable energy. Instead, they futilely rely on voluntary accountability by non-government entities, including multinational and private corporations, for solutions to the problems of worldwide poverty and inequitable access to energy. Despite years of professing their support for the progressive phase-out of harmful subsidies which support global warming and nuclear proliferation, they also refuse to negotiate specific targets and time-frames for accomplishing this and meeting their commitments.
Indeed, the overall amount of subsidies, direct and indirect, to conventional energy producers has actually increased over the past ten years, especially in industrialized countries. Estimates of subsidies, globally, amount to US$ 200 billion annually, not including infrastructure and other indirect relief.[4] Experience demonstrates that without targets and timeframes, it becomes impossible to ascertain how, or in fact, whether, progress towards zero-emissions is actually occurring.
Functions and Funding of ISEF
ISEF is designed to support projects to promote energy conservation and sustainable sources of renewable energy. It is intended that funding for ISEF come from monies saved from the phasing out of subsidies by industrialized governments that support unsustainable forms of energy. It therefore provides an economic basis for partially counterbalancing the market effects of eight decades of subsidies relief as well as ecological damage caused by eighty years of conventional energy production and consumption.
A specific function of ISEF is to support diverse participation in all energy policy and project decisionmaking by underrepresented groups, such as the rural poor and low-income, indigenous peoples who populate developing countries and countries in transition. Half the world’s two billion poorest people lack adequate access to electricity and water and are least able to defend themselves against the negative impacts of fossil fuel and nuclear energy technologies. ISEF offers a win-win solution to governments and civil society alike by addressing this inequity. Yet, in order for there to be sufficient time to put such projects in place, governments would have to commit to the establishment of such a fund.
An International Sustainable Energy Fund would produce increased returns by promoting existing renewable technologies, energy efficiency, and new applications that are clean, safe and inexhaustible in supply. Its approach guarantees a safer, cleaner world with access to more affordable and more reliable energy.
ISEF would, among other things:
use 80% of the fund’s income to support sustainable energy and pilot projects, including those in developing countries and economies in transition;
be financed with at least 20% of the monies saved from phasing out governmental subsidies that support unsustainable forms of energy;
help increase the global share of renewable sources of energy to 10% within five years of ratification and to 25% within ten years;
assist OECD[5] governments in disclosing subsidies to unsustainable energies, assist their redirection to sustainable energies, and monitor compliance with same, all within specific timeframes;
help integrate external costs (such as those to health and the environment) in national energy policy and pricing decisions by a full lifecycle cost accounting;
facilitate research, development, and the exchange of information and best practices between states;
assist the transfer of sustainable energy technologies, materials, delivery systems, and services;
assist states in meeting national targets for greenhouse gas reductions.
As Distinguished from the Kyoto Protocol
The implementation of ISEF would yield far greater benefits than we could realize from the Kyoto Protocol. Whereas ISEF specifically excludes nuclear and large-scale hydropower from its definition of clean, sustainable energies, Kyoto is unclear as to whether or not the permissible range of its “clean development” activities includes them. Moreover, Kyoto may reduce global emissions, but won’t actually fix the underlying problem, because it does not include renewable energy introduction targets. The development of renewable energy technologies, unaided, will not happen quickly enough to alleviate the negative effects of global warming, as renewables presently comprise less than 2% of global energy production.[6] And most scientists agree that the emissions reduction targets agreed to by industrialized countries – 5.2% below 1990 level – are inadequate to address global warming.
A reduction in emissions is not even guaranteed under Kyoto. “Even if the countries of the North were to dramatically reduce emissions, those cuts would be overwhelmed by the [expected carbon emissions] from India, China, Mexico and Nigeria,” who cannot afford to go solar, and who in large part do not even have access to electricity.[7] And emissions from the former Soviet republics, currently below the 1990 limits allowable under Kyoto, could actually result in an increase of up to 50% to 120% in emissions by 2012.[8]
Kyoto creates “transferable rights to dump carbon…far in excess of the capacity of these [natural] systems to hold it.”[9] Therefore, critics argue, commodity-trading in emissions amounts to no more than a license to pollute under the rubric of ‘free-trade.’ Its much heralded “flexibility mechanisms” not only delay the end of fossil fuel extraction, they cannot be shown to lead to any tangible environmental benefits.
Under Kyoto’s Clean Development Mechanism, developed countries can ‘invest’ in developing ones by purchasing their carbon credits. But credits earned by developed countries will allow them to increase their emissions, while developing countries, which are not required to make reductions at this stage, will not emit any less. Rather than transferring much-needed renewable technology to countries in transition and liberating them from a form of energy ‘colonialism,’ the heaviest polluters are effectively given the nod to continue burning filthy fossil fuels while paying developing countries, already disproportionately impacted by climate change, to forego that option. The transfer of renewable energy technologies to developing and transitional countries, by contrast, is an essential part of ISEF.
Kyoto’s benefits, if any, are impossible to quantify. Kyoto was ratified without first working out a method for its implementation, so stakeholders are not called to account and cannot measure the effectiveness of their trading. According to the Canadian Coalition for Responsible Environmental Solutions, “You wouldn’t take out a mortgage on a house you had never seen at a rate you had never discussed. That is the same as ratifying without first working out the implementation.”[10] ISEF is superior to Kyoto by calling for clear targets and timeframes to redirect subsidies towards sustainable energy solutions.
Stalled in Its Progress, as Has Its European Counterpart
No government has yet had the political and moral will to realize in concrete terms, rather than nonbinding agreements, its prior UN commitments, by agreeing to endorse ISEF before the UN. Doing so would be a first step toward actually implementing a meaningful and effective outcome to the problem of global climate change and nuclear proliferation. In 2001, at the Berlin Conference on Technology Transfer for Renewable Energies (organized by EUROSOLAR, the European Association for Renewable Energies) a call went forth for the creation of a similar initiative, an International Agency for Renewable Energy (IRENA) to be founded and funded by national governments.[11] A draftstatute was also created, similar to the proposed model statute for ISEF. A World Council on Renewable Energies (WCRE), created at that time, endorsed IRENA, arguing that it went beyond the Kyoto Protocol by replacing the CO2-reduction targets of Kyoto with renewable energy introduction targets,[12] as is proposed in ISEF. As with ISEF, parliamentarians at that and subsequent meetings were unsuccessful in finding a government to champion the establishment of a sustainable energy agency.
Sustainable Energy Defined
Sustainable energy is defined as energy which, in its production or conimpacts on human health and the healthy functioning of vital ecological systems, including the global environment, and that can be supplied continuously to future generations on earth. Such forms of energy include, but are not limited to the following: solar thermal, solar photovoltaic, wind, hybrid wind-solar, fuel cell, geothermal, small-scale hydroelectric, and tidal.
It also includes certain forms of bio-mass. ‘Clean’ biomass includes non-genetically modified, sustainably grown energy crops and retrievable agricultural wastes (but not factory-farmed livestock residues, which contribute to air and water contamination as well as unsustainable farming practices.) With clean bio-mass, a natural cycle is maintained in which carbon is extracted from the atmosphere during plant growth, and is released during hydrogen production, so no net greenhouse gas emissions result.
This definition specifically excludes nuclear and fossil fuel energy or their ‘improvements.’ Nuclear power is characterized by industry as a sustainable, clean energy source because the reactor does not in itself produce any CO2. But the nuclear fuel chain is a significant source of such emissions. Massive inputs of fossil fuel are required to mine and transport uranium, build the reactors of a nuclear power plant, maintain their parts, transport tons of nuclear waste and decommission them when they have outlived their utility. And at all points in the life cycle of a nuclear reactor, havoc is caused by radioactive contamination of air, water, and land.[13]
The Promise of Sustainable Energy
Renewable energies are an obvious solution to the energy problem. They are safe, low-risk technologies, impervious to swings in fuel prices and potential disruptions in fuel supply. Yet, they account for only 3% of the world‘s electricity despite the fact that the renewable energy sector is the fastest growing segment of the market and is poised for explosive growth.[14]
Every year, the sun pours 2,000 times more energy onto the planet than the worlds current consumption.[15] 15 Countries blessed with sufficient sunshine, wind, or geothermal resources can power every one of their homes, offices, and factories, with excess capacity left over for other uses. The US’s entire current electricity requirements could be met from just 9% of Nevada’s desert covered in solar systems.[16] Or, it could be met by the wind resources in 3 states alone – North Dakota, Kansas, and Texas –, which have been characterized as the Persian Gulf of wind. In fact, wind could supply all of Europe’s residential electricity needs by 2020.[17] A mere 3% of wind resources worldwide could provide 30% of our global energy needs.[18] Yet these resources remain virtually untapped. Why?
Within the last 25 years, the promises of natural, renewable energy sources have not been realized. That failure is due to the continued corporate welfare to well-established, commercial industries by the US, EU, and other industrialized nations, which, since 1992, collectively have spent billions of taxpayer’s money to prop up these aging, unsafe and economically unviable fuel sources. At the same time, new environmentally sound alternatives have received a scant, one-tenth of that funding.[19]
The Promise of Hydrogen
Hydrogen generated by renewable sources of energy provides a ‘postpetroleum’ solution to the seemingly intractable problems of global warming, international security, and the monumental social and environmental concerns that are the subject of countless U.N. conferences and agreements. A nation’s reliance on foreign sources of petroleum and natural gas from volatile and unstable regions in the world disappears in a ‘green’ hydrogen economy, one that is created from the abundant and sustainable resources of sun, wind, water, and geothermal heat. As part of a system of distributed generation, fuel cells in small, off-grid applications are also free from the public health and safety threat posed by nuclear power plants and inherently unattractive as terrorist targets. Hydrogen fuel can provide an endless supply of zero-emissions energy; as an energy source, its only byproducts are pure water and heat, infinitely recyclable and inherently sustainable.
A shift to fuel cells and a hydrogen economy can be as “far reaching in its … impact on … the global economy as the steam engine and coal were in the 19th century and the internal combustion engine and oil were in the 20th.”[20] Not only can hydrogen be produced domestically by every country – creating new jobs and economic security – it can be employed in virtually every application where primary fuels are used today.[21]
Governments can jump-start the new hydrogen economy by becoming hydrogen’s first major commercial customers and converting their own sizeable fleets and infrastructure to accept hydrogen. In making large purchase commitments in the transportation sector, where 800 million vehicles worldwide can be adapted to hydrogen use, a publicly-driven drive for hydrogen energy can help to create vast economies of scale, thereby attracting private investment, driving costs down, and shortening the pay-back period for new technological applications. With such public access to affordable hydrogen assured, governments can put their vast federal resources in service of a vigorous, credible public campaign to shed permanently the habit of fossil fuel reliance.
Mainstreaming a Global Renewable Energy Economy
Establishing a global renewable energy economy – that will produce the electricity to produce hydrogen – can be done today without incurring further governmental expense. It can be done by re-directing the hundreds of billions in global subsidies which are still given to mature fossil and nuclear fuel industries, resulting in even more fossil fuel pollution and more nuclear power plants. With the playing field skewed so much in favor of the established industry, how will young, renewable energy companies ever compete fairly in the marketplace? An International Sustainable Energy Fund would promote the progressive phasing out and re-direction of these subsidies towards clean technology markets, insure a funding mechanism for implementing these changes, and level the playing field for clean, safe sustainable energies.
Most countries’ strategies feature diminishing returns: no matter how much they increase fossil fuel output, they are burning a finite resource and contributing to a reduction in future potential with every barrel consumed. Likewise, their strategies calling for billions in new subsidies for nuclear power neither reduce its safety risk nor resolve problems with the transportation and storage of its lethally radioactive spent waste. Taxpayer dollars doled out for such inefficient, emissions-heavy fuels as these artificially prop up non-renewable industries and slow the emergence of sustainable energy markets.
According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, removing energy subsidies alone could cut global CO2 emissions by up to 18%.[22] And by shifting these funds from non-renewable industries to renewable technologies, tens of thousands of new jobs could be created without costing governments once cent in new funds, all the while decreasing the long-term costs of greenhouse gas emissions and nuclear waste disposal, storage, and clean-up. According to Greenpeace and the World Energy Council, shifting just one year’s worth of Europe’s subsidies – US$ 15 billion – to renewable energy sources could make the entire international solar industry cost-competitive with conventional sources of energy and ramp up a self-sustaining solar energy market throughout Europe.[23]
“The conversion to a hydrogen economy is not a problem of limited technologies but of political priorities.”[24] The failure of governments to finance a just transition to a renewable energy will force the world to pay billions in clean-up and liability costs, as well as other intangibles such as the cost to public health and safety. Promoting a sustainable future, based on locally available sources of energy, equally available to all on the planet, is an idea whose time has come.
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