Intelligent energy: how can Europe co-operate with South Asia?
Rainer Sauerborn, Heidelberg University, Institute of Public Health, Germany
Guest Professor of Climate Change and Global Health, Umeå University, Sweden
The crucial role of transforming energy systems
Energy systems in South Asia, as in most low and middle at a crucial intersection
of policy objectives: ensuring economic growth, reducing dependence on foreign
countries for imports, protecting the climate, protecting the health hazards from
using biomass for cooking inflicted on the most vulnerable population segment:
poor women and their children. These policy objectives are sometimes strongly
conflicting, it is essential that they be transformed form the current state of
energy systems in South Asia, which is characterized by low access to energy and
electricity by the poor, inefficiency in producing, distributing and using energy,
harmful health consequences of energy use (biomass cooking), high import
dependency, often on unstable countries, which raises a security issue, and
enormous use of foreign currency to purchase oil and gas, in spite of rising
domestic production (the case of India).
What do we mean by “intelligent energy”, focus of this paper
Primary energy production is the extraction of energy from a primary source.
Gross inland consumption refers to the quantity of energy consumed within the
borders of a country plus bunkers. The latter are a term for fuel supplied to ships
of the respective country. Final energy consumption denotes the amount of
energy, which is finally consumed in transport, industry, commerce, and
agriculture, public and household sectors. Energy import dependency is
calculated as the relationship of net imports divided by gross inland production
Finally let’s recall that renewable energy comprises hydro-electric, biomass,
wind, solar, tidal, geothermal sources.
Energy, of course, is a physical concept and cannot be intelligent per se, put
energy polices can. For the purpose of this paper we focus on two of the abovementioned aspects of energy systems relating to (i) health and (ii) climate
change. We ask the following questions:
1. How must energy systems be transformed in South Asia to minimize
health hazards form indoor air pollution through burning biomass for
cooking?
2. How must energy systems be transformed to keep below 2 degrees of
global warming by the end of the century?
3. Are there synergies between these policies?
4. What, if any, role for the cooperation between the European Union and
South Asia to support such policies?
This paper is a discussion paper aimed to foster debate and not to provide a
comprehensive overview of energy systems and policies, which would fill
several tomes of books. For an overview the reader is referred to Schellnhuber et
al. (2003).
A sketch of the energy situation
As in all emerging economies, the energy consumption has increased
considerably in South Asia in the past 2 decades. In India for example, final
energy use was 4.000 PJ in 2005 and is projected to rise to 11,000 PJ in 2020 go
from, an overall increase of more than 150%. This is a a reflection of one the
one hand population growth and on the other hand the growth of GDP/capita. In
India, total gross domestic product (GDP) rose form about 2000 billion USD (PPP
adjusted) in 1990 to 3,500 USD in 2006m. During this period, the primary energy
supply increased from 10 EJ to 18 EJ. Interestingly, biomass contributed more
energy than coal and gas, exceeded only by oil. Electricity amounted to about half
of primary energy supply in 2006.
In 2009 India’s energy consumption was covered about half by coal (47%), oil
about a fourth (24%), renewable energies, mainly firewood by another 24%,
natural gas by 7%) and nuclear covered only 1% (International Energy Agency
(2010)).
The bulk of energy imports are oil and gas. The main sources of oil comprise the
Middle East (34%), Africa (27%), Saudi Arabia (18%) and Iran (11%). Hence 2/3
of oil imports are from South West Asia, which is currently again witnessing
strive and conflict in Syria and Iran raising the specter of open war.
Domestic primary energy production of fossil fuel ahs risen considerably in the
past decade, but has not been able to catch up with increases in consumption.
While the oil production has remained flat at below 1 million barrels per day,
consumption has risen from 2,2 million barrels in 2000 to over 3 million in 2010.
The production of natural gas shows essentially the same pattern. Both
consumption and production have been steeply rising, but the curves are parallel
leaving a gap of about 500 billion cubic feet (US Energy information
administrations, International energy statistics, 2011).
As for the final energy use by sectors residential (39%) use is in the same
magnitude as industrial use (35%), whereas transport, which is the focus of
media and public debate contributes only 16% of final energy use. Agriculture
takes 6% and services 6%. Within the industry sector, projected growth is the
largest: form 4200 PJ in 2005 to 10,200 PJ in 2020. The main industrial uses of
energy remain roughly in the same proportion, with iron and steel leading the
list followed by cement, aluminum and ammonia production ( ). About half of
the energy used by industry comes from coal, followed by oil, electricity and gas.
These proportions remain unchanged in the projections to 2020.
Poverty and energy, energy poverty
Poor people in India (like the rest of South Asia) suffer from lack of access to
modern energy services, such as electricity or LPG. Rural electrification in India,
although much progress has been achieved still leaves 25-50% of the population
without access to electricity. This is known to be a crucial road block to
development (information access of households, refrigeration, lighting of schools
and homes, substitution of women’s chores, replacement of biomass as main
fuel).
Figure 1. Relationship between rural electrification and biomass use in South
Asia. Source: van Duuren et al. (2012).
The second feature of energy poverty in all LMICs is the reliance of households
on solid fuel, largely biomass for cooking (and in some areas for heating). This
has enormous adverse health effects, raising the risk of broncho-pulmonary
disease, tuberculosis, cataract leading often to blindness, asthma, low birth
weight (through CO formation), COPD and more. Indoor air pollutions causes
more deaths and more disease burden in South Asia than out door air pollution
or malaria. It amounts to 6% of the total disease burden in India (WGBU 2003)
.The public awareness is the inverse: outdoor air pollution is on the top of media
attention. Indoor air pollution is therefore often dubbed the “silent killer”
affecting the most vulnerable segment of the population: mothers and their small
children.
Adverse health effects of climate change
In the context of this paper, I can only sketch the conundrum of energy, climate
and health.
Climate change, of course, is caused by the massive and increasing use of fossil
fuels since the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century. Importantly
low income regions such as South Asia, land use changes from deforestation,
intensive agriculture and livestock contribute about 25% to global warming
through the combined effects of methane, NOx and CO2.
The thorny policy issues at the global negotiation table (UNFCC, COPs) revolves
around the principles of shared but differentiated responsibility, precautionary
action and no regrets strategies:
Shared but differentiated responsibilities
The agreed principle implies that all countries, irrespective of their level and
timing of industrialization share the responsibility to contribute to effective
climate policy limiting global warming to 2 degrees C till the end of the century, a
level considered as acceptable, if certainly not completely safe. Differentiated
means that the types of action (reducing deforestation in some countries,
switching from coal to gas in others, energy efficiency world wide etc.) and the
source of payments (the rich industrialized countries are called upon to shoulder
the loin share of the burden of mitigation policies. Central to mitigation is the
transformation of energy systems.
Another ramification of interest in the framework of this paper is the enormous
toll in deaths and diseases that South Asia is faced with in the process of climate
change: lower harvest yields due to a mixture of warming, drought, flooding,
salination of coastal soils, extreme weather events (SREX 2012) wreaking
economic havoc and malnutrition. A rise in diarrheal diseases and vector borne
infectious diseases, mainly Dengue; an increase in within country and cross
border migration flows with the concomitant disruption of social networks and
precarious health conditions. These are the health effect of a mismanagement of
global energy systems. The only fair path to climate policy respecting the
principle of shared, but differentiated responsibility is called “contraction and
convergence”, the interested reader is referred to (IPCC) 2007
Policy conclusions:
While the policy implications of the energy landscape I sketched are far reaching
and cannot be discussed in such a limited space, the focus of this paper was on
the energy policy goals of maintaining security/energy independence, protecting
health and contributing South Asia’s fair share to limit global warming to 2°C by
2010. What would access to electricity for all households cost in South Asia?
What would the health co-benefits (from avoided deaths and disease) amount
to? Table 1. Compares the data answering these questions between South Aisa,
Sub-Saharan Africa and Pacific Asia (van Duuren et al. 2012, Table 1). It would
cost between 160 and 180 million US$ to achieve access to electricity for all in
South Asia, 55-60million to phase out traditional biomass for cooking. The health
benefit of both policies would be enormous, saving 800,000 deaths and an untold
amount of disease.
Table 1. Costs and health benefits of policies to achieve (i) universal access to
electric energy (ii) removal of traditional hazardous biomass. (Van Duuren et al.
2012)
Figure 2 shows the costs of policies focusing on energy security only (left),
focusing on avoiding indoor air pollution (second from left), avoiding climate
change (second column from right) and all policies combined. It clearly
demonstrates that a single sectoral lens seriously overestimates the marginal
costs of policies and ignores synergies (van Duuren , 2012) – a call for hugely
increased inter-sectoral cooperation including scientists and policy experts form
the energy, health, security, climate sectors.
Figure 2. Costs of policies focusing on energy security only (left), focusing on
avoiding indoor air pollution (second from left), avoinding climate change
(second column from right) and all policies combined (Van Duuren et al. 2012)
Opportunities for cooperation with the EU
Outline of the EU’s roadmap for transforming energy systems
In its policy road mal for 2020 (EU 2012), the EU set the triple goals of
(i)
reducing greenhouse gas emission by 20% (with 1990 as the
reference year)
(ii)
increasing the proportion of modern renewables to 20%
(iii) increasing energy efficiency by 20%
This implies a radical overhaul of energy production (and distribution for that
matter). By the end of the century the largest proportion of reduction of
greenhouse gases in Europe will have to come from technical energy efficiency
gains and from changes in behavior and low-energy living, working and
transport systems. Of the remaining energy requirements renewables, mainly
solar-thermal, wind and photovoltaic (PV) will contribute more than 50%Coal
will be essentially phased out by the middle of the century, while oil will be
phased out by 2075. A hotly debated issue is whether carbon capture and
storage from plants burning fossils or modern biomass can prolong the “life” of
these fuels. Even under this scenario, fossils will be nearly completely phased out
in 2100.
Potential cooperation South Asia - Europe
(i) Joint research
Europe is leading in energy efficiency engineering and in renewable technology.
Hence, a cooperation funded by EU research funding seems to be the most
immediate consequence. Unfortunately the research funding worldwide is
inversely related to policy needs. In 2008 40% of energy research was still
directed to nuclear technology, while energy efficiency received only 12% and
modern renewables only 10% of the share respectively (Smith et al. 2012).
(ii) Joint policy solution
Joint South-Asian – European teams of energy policy-making teams including
scientists from climate and public health could look at the large array of pricing,
regulation, legislation and technology assessment. The latter should include
health impact assessment.
(iii) Economic cooperation.
The most immediate pathway building on a large array of existing contracts
between industry and the public sector on both sides of the South-Asian –
European partnership.
(iv) Joint trans-disciplinary and trans-sector training programs
These would usefully be targeted to enlist young scientific minds into the
extremely difficult approach to energy related research addressing health,
climate, economic, agriculture and business sectors.
Similarly flagship courses for executives/policy-makers should be set up jointly
to expose decision-makers to the complex evidence and to compare different
policy solutions and their effects and costs in the two regions.
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