EARTH DAY 2010: CARIBBEAN EDITION - No 1

It’s Earth Day 2010.  Forty years on from the first, the day is being marked worldwide by countless events, project launches, meetings, speeches, press releases; actions big and small.

The Caribbean is not left out.  Our first earth-day-worthy post is that Senator Liz Thompson, former minister of energy and the environment in Barbados, has been nominated by the government to replace the outgoing executive secretary of the UNFCCC, the world’s climate change secretariat. 

The position carries the responsibility of coordinating a global response to what is probably the biggest and most far-reaching global development challenge of our time.  Liz is one of (at this point) nine respected climate leaders in contention. (Full disclosure: Liz is a colleague of mine and we are currently working together on sustainable energy consulting projects for a couple of governments in the Caribbean).

Each one of the nominees has the background and credentials to fill the post.  But the climate action website 350.org makes a great point, essentially about small being beautiful:

“Most important however is Ms. Thompson's unique perspective as someone from a small island state. Unlike her predecessor, she truly understands and can speak from the perspective of vulnerable communities and nations and bring their voice into every negotiating room.”

The Caribbean’s point of view, like that of other small island state regions, is represented by the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS); a group that, in the words of its vice chairman Hugh Sealy (another colleague),

“has acted as the conscience of the Convention and the Kyoto Protocol.  AOSIS has argued consistently that the litmus test of the success of the climate talks is the survival of small island states.  "No island left behind" and "1.5 (°C) to stay alive" are two of the clarion calls being made by AOSIS.”

For her part, Senator Thompson sees her candidacy as one that represents

“a great opportunity for small island developing states who are on the front line of the assault of climate change and whose survival may well be linked to our adaptation and mitigation strategies. The case of the Maldives graphically demonstrates how significant an issue climate change is for sustainability and survival.”

So, the stakes are clear from our point of view.  Voices such as Senator Thompson’s are needed in the halls of international power to be able to move the process in the necessary direction.  We wish her the best of luck.

BLOGGING THE CARIBBEAN RENEWABLE ENERGY FORUM

I attended the Caribbean Renewable Energy Forum (CREF) held in Jamaica, in October. It was well-attended and featured a packed programme of presentations and panel discussions on renewable energy issues and options in the region.

At the conference I heard the phrase “agnostic about renewables” a lot (and used it a couple of times myself I’m sure), which I guess is a safe position to take. There’s no single technology fix that’s going to secure the Caribbean’s energy future. In fact, the question of whether technology is the answer is something that’s been occupying me for the better part of the year, but that’s for another post.

That said, I think that, assisted by events such as the CREF, a fairly clear picture is emerging of the continuum of Caribbean renewable energy technology prospects, from the game-changers on the one hand, to the technologies that need to be in the game on the other. So here’s my list of the things we should be watching now in the Caribbean.

Geothermal is (as I had previously written) the game-changer in the Eastern Caribbean. Successfully implemented, interconnected geothermal power projects will provide abundant, renewable, baseload power to OECS countries at a predictable price, and will usher in the reality of hybrid and electric-vehicle transport in the region. Note that Dominica and St Vincent & the Grenadines, which are ranked 2nd and 3rd in the OECS for geothermal potential, already use more fuel for transport than in their power sectors. Memo to regional oil companies: you should be taking a serious look at geothermal energy as the 21st century driver of your energy business.

Wind energy is now the fastest growing renewable energy resource in the region, with some large projects on stream: Jamaica is upgrading its Wigton Wind Farm from 20 MW of installed capacity to 38 MW by July 2010 and Aruba has commenced construction of its 30 MW Vader Piet wind farm, also scheduled for completion in 2010. I think that the deployment of multiple small (@300 kW), collapsible wind turbines in distributed wind farms is an approach perfectly suited to the Caribbean, particularly for the smaller islands, but so far only the French island Guadeloupe has made any significant use of this windpower model. In any case, the bottom line is that the future of wind energy in the Caribbean looks very good.

For countries with relatively large populations and/or high rates of personal consumption (and therefore large waste output) Waste-to-Energy (WTE) makes complete sense, which would explain why two large WTE projects are now in progress in Jamaica (65MW) and the US Virgin Islands (49MW).

Continued development, improvement and upgrading of small hydro in the region is essential and, fortunately, ongoing. There are hydro projects at some stage of development now in progress in Belize, Dominica, Jamaica and St Vincent, all financed under the Caribbean Renewable Energy Development Programme (CREDP).

Ocean energy hasn’t yet made much of a splash. The ocean current regimes in parts of the region are considered by some to be quite favourable, but the shortage of fully-commercial ocean energy projects anywhere in the world isn’t helpful in bringing the technology to a region that can’t afford to be an early adopter.

Biofuels and biomass energy are always of interest in this region, but have made few inroads. The much-publicised debate on the role of biofuels in the 2008 ‘food crisis’ has left the sector with a definite image problem. Brazil, the world’s biofuels giant, has over the past 30 years created a huge, and hugely successful, biofuels sector based on sugarcane ethanol, that has replaced 50% of the country’s gasoline consumption. The Caribbean can’t match this using agriculturally-based biofuels production, but Jamaica has already made a small start, with its e10 program, which uses refined ethanol (produced in Jamaica from imported raw ethanol from Brazil) in a 10% blend with gasoline.

Solar thermal energy is truly the low-hanging fruit in the Caribbean RE space – and it’s not being picked. Barbados amply demonstrated, decades ago, how easy and inexpensive it is to make solar thermal energy a national success story with huge benefits. And yet, their excellent example has been all but ignored by the other countries.

As always, the belle of the ball was solar electricity and not surprisingly, the solar discussion panels generated the most heat!

I was intrigued by presentations on solar cooling projects that have been implemented on large commercial and institutional facilities in Europe and elsewhere. The technology appears to be developing rapidly and the economics are reported by its proponents to be far better than the economics of, say, installing PV panels to power space cooling needs. But, I didn’t get a sense that there was anything happening on this front in the Caribbean, despite the obvious facts that we have the sunshine and we need the cooling. As one local delegate passionately summed it up, “nutting naa gwaan!”

Jigar Shah, CEO of Richard Branson’s Carbon War Room, founder of SunEdison and pioneer of the solar-as-a-service business model for solar power, presented thought-provoking ideas on how to deliver solar electricity in large quantities to the Caribbean. Shah’s presentation was reflective of his thinking on how to enable the new paradigm for electric utilities – what he refers to as Utility 2.0 – and how to translate that to the Caribbean. (His ideas were well-received and I get the impression that several Caribbean utilities have been in follow-up discussions with him on this).

I believe that energy efficiency, one of the things only mentioned in passing at the CREF, is a critical component of the Utility 2.0 model, for the simple reason that whatever our sources of energy, we need to find ways to use it more efficiently: after all, even a resource such as solar PV can have a significant environmental footprint due to the materials and processes that go into its deployment.

All things considered, attending the CREF was a well-spent two days for me. Now some serious follow-up is needed by the people who can make things happen. I’d better get back to work…

Visit the CREF website or join the CREF group on LinkedIn here for post-conference information.

BEHAVE

When we were children and our mothers, grandmothers or assorted aunts wanted us to stop acting like children, their command was “Behave!” When you heard that and got the look that went along with it, you generally shaped up. Or else. These days, the problem with behaviour is that no one pays attention to it any more (no, this isn’t a discussion about parenting; it’s about energy efficiency and conservation in the Caribbean).

The energy problem in a nutshell is that we need to find ways to supply more green energy – and to reduce our demand for it at the same time. So energy conservation and energy efficiency are vital aspects of the solution.

The thing is: our policymakers (and here I’m also referring to the consultants who write the policies and plans that the politicians approve) have quite often misunderstood the demand side of the problem – and have traditionally framed it as being comprised of two separate things, one having to do with people and the other with technology.

For example, according to a national energy policy document published this year by a large CARICOM country, energy conservation is defined as “practices and actions that reduce the amount of energy that is used”, whereas energy efficiency is “changing technology so that less energy is used to accomplish the same task.”

In other words:

Conservation = Behaviour
and
Energy Efficiency = Technology

So, according to the above formulation, if I walk to the bar instead of driving there, I would be reducing my energy use by conservation. But if, on the other hand, I bought a new, more fuel-efficient vehicle that gets far better gas mileage than my current vehicle, I could still drive to the bar – but I would also use less energy, so I achieve the same result, thanks to technology!

New technology is so much sexier than better behaviour.

Except that: a British economist named William Stanley Jevons explained, some 144 years ago, why this would not actually be the case. “It is wholly a confusion of ideas”, Jevons wrote then, “to suppose that the economical use of fuel is equivalent to a diminished consumption. The very contrary is the truth.” In his book The Coal Question, published in 1865, Jevons pointed out how James Watt’s steam engine, by improving on the previous design, provided much better fuel efficiency – thereby causing England’s consumption of coal to soar. His observation came to be known as the Jevons Paradox.

The Jevons Paradox is explained by what is called the rebound effect; an economic theory which says that if the cost of a resource is reduced due to increased efficiency, people will consume more of the resource (or the services dependent on the resource) than previously, thereby offsetting (partially or entirely) the effect of the efficiency improvement.

For example: a colleague recently told me the story of his neighbour, who never used his outdoor lights at night – until he got energy efficient compact fluorescent lamps. Since then, he has been leaving the lights on outside, because he knows he now has “energy-saving bulbs” inside. Well, guess what the overall effect on his electricity bill is likely to be? (This is an example of a direct rebound effect).

Or, take television. I want a new TV. I have a 32” Sony cathode-ray tube model, and I’m interested in a sleek flat-panel set. Flat-panel plasma or LCD TVs are more energy efficient than their bulky CRT counterparts; they use less electricity per inch of screen. But what are the chances that I will replace my 32” CRT with a 32” flat-panel? More than likely I (and many other buyers of new TVs) will upgrade screen size as well, which then causes the better energy efficiency per screen inch of the new TV to be offset by the larger number of screen inches. And, you know what? Flat panel TVs look really sexy when they’re on, so maybe I’ll inadvertently leave my new TV on more often than I did the old one. This all adds up to using more electricity, not less.

The important point here is that these are not isolated examples. A growing body of research indicates that the rebound effect is a universal behavioural response, one that gives rise to energy consumption outcomes that are quite different to the predicted ones.

So how is this relevant to Caribbean energy policy?

To date, I have seen no energy policy published in the Caribbean that makes any reference to the rebound effect or to behavioural factors in relation to energy efficiency outcomes. This omission causes us to get our sums wrong.

We can calculate, based on the technical efficiency differences, the energy-saving effect of new technology (importing fuel-efficient vehicles; replacing incandescent bulbs with CFLs and so on), but without taking behavioural factors into account, our estimate of the amount of energy to be saved will be incorrect. We need new equations, which are:

Conservation = Behaviour
and
Energy Efficiency = Technology + Behaviour

Who’s sexy now?

I’m writing some more on this soon, but here’s some reading on the rebound effect. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebound_effect_(conservation)

GREEN FLASH AT SUNRISE

I saw my first green flash for 2009 a few days ago. Most Caribbean people know what the green flash is. It’s the fleeting change of colour of the last sliver of a setting sun at a clear horizon – from red to green – and it’s gone in an instant.

The (totally exaggerated) green flash depicted in the movie “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End”. The first of the “Pirates” series was filmed in St Vincent & the Grenadines and other Caribbean islands.
Photo: Wikipedia

Later that night, I wondered: is there a green flash at sunrise as well? I’m not a morning person, so I would hardly know. But I figured there should be, since the physics of it (as far as I can tell) would be the same.

In any case, here’s a prediction about solar energy in the Caribbean: sunrise is coming and we’re about to see our green flash. That’s because as oil prices climb back to uncomfortable levels; as energy policy in the Caribbean adjusts to the new global reality; as technology continues to improve and prices continue to fall, electricity generated by photovoltaics will become very popular in these parts.

Photovoltaics (PV) is the name for the process by which light is converted directly to electricity by a solar cell. We’ve got lots of PV-powered devices around already. Look at a pocket calculator. Instead of a battery, it’s got a solar cell on the front that provides the electricity it needs. The same basic technology, on a larger scale and with a few additional devices, is already being used to power homes and businesses worldwide.

A typical home PV system would consist of roof-mounted solar panels, connected to an inverter (a device that converts the direct current produced by the solar panels into an alternating current, which is the same as the electricity that you buy from your electricity company). The inverter is connected via a switch to the main circuit breaker panel that distributes electricity to the house.

So if you had a PV system installed at home: depending on the size of your system, its type (whether it had battery storage or not) and the amount of direct sunlight available at the location, your entire electricity needs could well be supplied from the sun!

This sounds great; so the question is, again (this question will be coming up a lot on this blog): why isn’t more of this renewable energy technology being used in the Caribbean?

There are two basic problems: the first is that the technology is expensive. A PV system of 2.4 peak kilowatts (kWp) capacity, enough to power my own two-occupant home in St Vincent (my electricity demand is pretty low – did I mention I’m an energy efficiency consultant?) could cost up to US$15,000 installed. On the other hand, electricity in these parts is also expensive and we’ve got great sunshine, so I would expect my system to pay for itself in 7 to 10 years or so. After that, I would be making my own electricity – for free.

Essentially, PV works out well on an individual scale, once the matter of the up-front cost can be sorted out. But in the Caribbean, there’s another issue: the utility connection. The best way to use PV is as a grid-connected system. This means that your PV system is connected to the electricity company’s system, so that whenever your system is not producing enough electricity for your needs, the difference comes from the electricity company. At those times when your system is producing more electricity than you need (eg: when it’s a bright sunny day and no one’s at home), the extra energy will actually go into the electricity grid and be used by someone else. You pay for any electricity you use from the grid and the electric company pays you for any electricity your system supplies to the grid. This grid connection and payment arrangement, called “net-metering”, is a well-established practice worldwide.

The problem is that electric utilities generally will not encourage this sort of thing on their own initiative, so what is needed are government policies that encourage customers to invest in PV and laws that require the utilities to work with customers that want to go green. This is exactly what happens in the countries with significant PV use, and what is not happening in the Caribbean – with a couple of exceptions.

Two of the bright spots are found in Grenada and the US Virgin Islands. The utilities in these countries have taken a progressive approach to the matter and as a result the numbers of grid-connected systems are growing nicely (I’ll try to get some actual numbers on this for a future post).

So, the bottom line is there’s no mystery here. PV is not some esoteric, experimental technology that’s not ready for real-world use. It is a well-established (and rapidly-growing) renewable energy technology, in use all over the world, even in not-so-sunny places as Germany and Japan, two of the world’s biggest PV users. We need to use more of it. To do this we need creative ways of dealing with the up-front costs of PV for prospective customers, and we need government policies and net-metering laws, directed at getting the utilities on board.

Meanwhile, PV prices are falling, and sun is shining!

You can find lots of detailed information on PV here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photovoltaics

SUNNY WITH SHOWERS

The sun is our largest source of energy, but solar energy contributes less than 1% to global energy consumption. In the Caribbean we probably use a similar percentage. In other words: pretty close to zero.

Solar energy in the Caribbean basically refers to two things: solar thermal energy for water heating, and solar photovoltaics (PV) to directly generate electricity from sunlight. Of these, solar thermal easily accounts for the vast majority of our use and our only serious user is Barbados. In fact, Barbados is a world leader in solar thermal energy, as it is estimated that the island has the second highest number per capita of solar water heaters in the world!

Solar water heaters are simple devices that are cheap, effective, easy to install and maintain. And the Caribbean has plenty of the free fuel all year round, so a solar water heater pays for itself quickly, typically in three years or less. So, why is there so little use of solar water heating in the Caribbean? I think the reason is mostly due to a combination of three factors, one economic, one cultural and one related to government policy.

The first is that demand for hot water is higher in richer countries, particularly those with large tourism sectors, but many of the islands of the Caribbean are not quite in that category (yet).

The second is that in some of our countries there is a strongly-held belief that bathing in cold water is intrinsically better for the body. This belief has maintained a demand for cold water even as per capita incomes have increased.

The third factor – government policy – I think is the most important. Faced with several alternatives for doing a particular thing, consumers will not necessarily make the most economic choice. For someone who is building a house, an electric tank water heater priced at $1500 may seem a more attractive proposition than a $3200 solar water heater, never mind that the total cost of the electric heater over ten years will be far greater than that of the solar heater. But if the government provides an incentive for homeowners to spend the extra money up front (and provides some assistance enabling them to do so) then the right economic decision is encouraged.

This sort of government policy intervention has been the missing link in the region thus far.

This is unfortunate, because the fact is whether a country is rich or not, it just makes sense for it to save on its energy import bill by any reasonable means. And what could be more reasonable, in countries where sunshine is clearly abundant, than reducing the consumption of imported diesel fuel by replacing electric water heating with solar? This is no exaggeration: any government that takes this particular matter seriously could make a huge difference – just as the government of Barbados did decades ago.

Barbados, which is relatively rich and with a large tourism sector, got off to an early start with a solar water heating industry dating back to the 1970s (the decade in which the term ‘global energy crisis’ was coined). On the other hand, equally-rich Trinidad & Tobago may well have had significant demand for hot water, but locally-produced oil and gas has made electricity so cheap that no one bothers much what it’s used for.

The basic outline of the Barbados model was summarised in a paper published in 2000 by Professor Oliver Headley, the late dean of solar energy in the Caribbean. He advised that

"A crucial factor in creating the market was the provision of fiscal incentives by the Barbados government under the leadership of (then) Prime Minister Tom Adams. A householder could apply the cost of his water heater against his income tax for the year. The success was remarkable: 23,388 solar water heaters were installed in Barbados over the period from 1974 through 1992."

He goes on to note that

“In terms of avoided imports of fossil energy, the solar water heaters reduce annual imports by 33,000 tonnes of fuel, a saving of about $6.5 million US if one assumes a price of US$25 per barrel. These are the savings that the solar water heater industry achieves for Barbados, with its population of about 260,000. If solar water heating were applied over all the territories of the anglophone Caribbean, with a population of 5 million, to the same extent as in Barbados, savings would be US$125 million per year.”

These are compelling numbers and some Caribbean governments have taken notice, but few (if any) have engaged the matter as seriously as did Barbados’ government. Other incentives can be applied as well. For example: to defray initial costs, banks should be encouraged to automatically finance solar water heaters in new mortgages, and to rewrite existing mortgages to finance replacement of electric heaters.

The above things need to be done – and I believe they eventually will, for the simple reason that rising fossil fuel costs over the long run, coupled with our increasing awareness of the need to reduce carbon emissions, will accelerate adoption of this simple renewable energy technology that is perfectly suited to our region, dependent as it is on tourism for its economic vitality.

But for now, the proverbial rainy day is here. The current global economic crisis is deepening, and will probably get worse for us for a while before it gets better. In the very short term, don’t expect any significant increase in the use of solar energy. As the world emerges from this recession, the use of solar thermal energy in the Caribbean will grow.

What about photovoltaics? We’ll talk about that next week.