March, 29 2012, 08:38am EDT
Sustainable Energy Roadmaps Chart Course to Healthier Economies and Societies
Mix of GIS, technical and financing advice helps countries shift from high-carbon imports to low-carbon domestic energy
WASHINGTON
By embracing an integrated mix of renewable energy, energy efficiency, and grid technologies, countries can put their energy systems on a more sustainable path while developing economically, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute. The report, Sustainable Energy Roadmaps: Guiding the Global Shift to Domestic Renewables, lays out an innovative, targeted approach that details how countries can take specific technical, policy, governance, and financial steps to help make the shift to sustainable energy a reality.
"Still today, an estimated 1.3 billion people worldwide lack access to electricity, and another 1 billion have unreliable access," said Alexander Ochs, Director of Worldwatch's Climate and Energy Program and the lead author of the report. "But expanding fossil fuels is not the solution to the world's energy challenges. We need solutions that are economically, socially and environmentally sustainable----many of which are now at hand. Implementing our Sustainable Energy Roadmaps will enable decision makers to pursue strategies that are in the true interest of their people while protecting Earth's climate."
To develop a Sustainable Energy Roadmap, Worldwatch analyzes an area's potential for energy efficiency gains and undertakes detailed GIS mapping of local renewable energy resources, including wind, solar, and biomass. The Institute also produces an infrastructure inventory that assesses solutions for grid renovation and energy storage. In addition to technical analysis, the Roadmaps explore the socioeconomic impacts of diverse energy pathways, including the potential for sustainable energy development to create jobs and reduce healthcare and electricity costs. Worldwatch's Roadmaps can be applied almost anywhere----in industrialized and developing countries----and at multiple levels of political organization, from the municipal to the regional.
"When governments, energy specialists, and the public join in a guided conversation to consider their country's energy status and potential, they can see more easily the options for freeing themselves from dependence on imported fossil fuels," said Worldwatch President Robert Engelman. "The Roadmaps show a route to sustained long-term economic development, universal energy access, cleaner local environments, healthier populations, and carbon-free energy systems. It's impressive that some developing countries are now poised to make this shift more rapidly than many countries that are much wealthier."
The burning of coal, oil, and other fossil fuels is a leading driver of global climate change and many other environmental and socioeconomic problems worldwide. Air pollution from fossil fuel combustion contributes to smog, water pollution, and acid rain and can trigger or exacerbate health conditions, including chronic respiratory and heart disease, lung cancer, and asthma. Many countries rely heavily on fossil fuel imports, making them dependent on foreign energy supplies and vulnerable to price fluctuations on the global market. Competition among energy-insecure countries over dwindling fossil fuel resources also contributes to civil or international conflicts, creating an unnecessary obstacle to development and prosperity in many regions.
Due in large part to massive subsidies to fossil fuels, the world's energy resources are not utilized as effectively or efficiently as they could be. Coal, oil, and natural gas still account for more than 80 percent of the world's primary energy consumption, despite the adverse impacts of these fuels on the well-being of both present and future generations. And although energy production from all major renewable energy sources----wind, solar, biomass, hydro, and geothermal----is booming, it remains far from its full potential. Developing local renewable energy resources, alongside job training and education programs, can provide quality long-term employment and help countries build strong economies with sustained growth.
In Sustainable Energy Roadmaps, Worldwatch emphasizes four key components that can help countries and regions transition successfully to sustainable energy use:
- Capture synergies from energy efficiency and renewable energy. Expanding both energy efficiency and renewable energy capacity simultaneously results in increased energy benefits. Reducing energy demand through efficiency measures means that renewable energy can displace fossil fuels more rapidly. At the same time, many sources of renewable energy, such as solar photovoltaic (PV), have much higher efficiency rates than conventional energy sources. And, since renewable energy is often produced at or close to the location where it is consumed, less energy is lost in distribution through the grid.
- Integrate multiple renewable energy sites and sources. One challenge to a rapid transition to a renewable energy economy is the "variability" of renewable resources such as wind and solar: power generation depends on factors like the time of day, cloud cover, and wind patterns. Such variability can be reduced greatly by harnessing renewable resources from both different areas as well as different energy sources. In the Dominican Republic, for example, wind resources in the north are strongest in the early evening and peak in the winter months, whereas wind resources in the south are strongest in the morning and peak in the summer. Integrating wind power from both areas into the electricity system can provide a relatively consistent level of wind power throughout the day and year. Similarly, wind and solar power can be integrated with the burning of combustible renewable fuels such as biomass and biogas, which can provide reliable generation on short notice during periods of particularly high energy demand, or at times of low generation from other renewable sources.
- Promote strong and feasible policy solutions. Identifying both energy efficiency measures and strong renewable resource potentials are important steps to making smart energy planning decisions, but effective policies are vital to ensure that the benefits of sustainable energy are fully realized. A long-term vision for sustainable energy, concrete policy tools and incentives, and a streamlined and transparent governance structure are all important to creating a stable and profitable investment environment for scaled-up investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy. Analyzing the regulatory environment in a country or region is an important first step to understanding what policy tools are most effective and politically acceptable. A toolbox full of proven effective and affordable mechanisms exists, and best practices from around the world provide important guidance for action. But ultimately, policymakers must decide which concrete tools to apply.
- Identify lifecycle costs and financing opportunities. Around the world, renewable energy is already cost-competitive with fossil fuels----if the long-term economic and societal costs are taken into account. But fossil fuels benefit from decades of subsidies and the support of powerful interests. It is therefore essential that energy developers seeking to pursue energy efficiency and renewable energy projects gain access to appropriate financing tools. Because the renewable energy industry is still relatively new, there is a general lack of knowledge on the part of investors and banks about how to effectively fund such projects. Capacity building within the financial sector is necessary to develop long-term loans for renewable energy development and to minimize the perceived riskiness of sustainable energy investment. Options within domestic public funds, multilateral lending agencies, and bilateral financing must be explored, and networks between the key finance actors must be actively promoted.
In October 2011, Worldwatch released the first detailed country study implementing its roadmap approach, a wind and solar roadmap for the Dominican Republic entitled Roadmap to a Sustainable Energy System: Harnessing the Dominican Republic's Wind and Solar Resources. The Institute is currently developing national Sustainable Energy Roadmaps for the governments of the Dominican Republic, Haiti, and Jamaica. Worldwatch recently embarked on its first project at the regional level, providing advice to the seven member countries of the Central American Integration System (SICA). The Institute is actively exploring opportunities elsewhere to help decision makers pursue a strategy for transitioning to domestic sustainable energy solutions.
The Worldwatch Institute was a globally focused environmental research organization based in Washington, D.C., founded by Lester R. Brown. Worldwatch was named as one of the top ten sustainable development research organizations by Globescan Survey of Sustainability Experts. Brown left to found the Earth Policy Institute in 2000. The Institute was wound up in 2017, after publication of its last State of the World Report. Worldwatch.org was unreachable from mid-2019.
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Indigenous Brazilians Mobilize for Land Demarcation, Tribal Rights
Participants in the 20th Free Land Camp demanded that leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva deliver on his promises to Indigenous people.
Apr 26, 2024
Thousands of people rallied this week in BrasÃlia for the 20th annual Free Land Camp—the largest gathering of Indigenous people in Brazil—where participants demanded that President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's administration safeguard their lands and cultural rights
Organized by the Association of Brazil's Indigenous Peoples (APIB), the five-day Free Land Camp—in Portuguese, Acampamento Terra Livre (ATL)—wrapped up Friday after a week of solidarity and action. Activities included rallies and marches; events commemorating slain Indigenous activists; and plenary sessions on the climate emergency, education, mental health, and more.
Some participants criticized Lula—who was notably absent from this year's ATL after attending the previous two camps—for what they said was his failure to fulfill campaign promises to Indigenous Brazilians—although attendees also acknowledged that his administration has taken major steps toward tackling illegal resource extraction and demarcating tribal lands.
Two big issues at this year's ATL—whose theme was "Our Existence is Ancestral: We Have Always Been Here!"—were the demarcation of Indigenous lands and opposition to proposed Amazon megaprojects, especially the plan to build the EF-170 railway through the heart of the imperiled rainforest in order to boost mining, logging, agribusiness, and other resource extraction and exploitation.
Last year, Brazilian lawmakers overruled Lula's partial veto of the highly contentious "Marco Temporal" law, which effectively paused demarcations and potentially opened more Indigenous lands to exploitation.
Demarcation confers legal protections against the illegal logging, mining, and ranching that have plagued rural Brazil for generations. On April 19—Indigenous Peoples Day in Brazil—Lula touted his government's demarcation of Aldeia Velha, land of the Pataxó people, in the northeastern state of Bahia, as well as the territory of the Karajá people in Cacique Fontoura, Mato Grosso.
Lula has acknowledged that his administration is falling short of its own demarcation pledges to Indigenous people and has promised to do more.
Alessandra Korap Munduruku, a member of the Munduruku people and a 2023 winner of the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize, criticized the demarcation delay.
"Twenty years of resistance struggle by the Terra Livre camp. For 20 years we've been coming to BrasÃlia, occupying and seeking our rights," she said. "This year, we're waiting for the government to demarcate all our lands. But the government is letting the [state] governors decide for us."
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Brazilian and international agribusiness interests, including commodity traders like U.S.-based Cargill, are pushing Lula's administration to proceed with EF-170—commonly called the Ferrogrão—over the objections of Indigenous peoples. Kayapó leader Doto Takak-Ire warned last year that the Ferrogrão threatens the survival of no less than 48 native peoples, calling the project "the railway of Indigenous genocide."
Earlier this year, Brazilian Transport Minister Renan Filho said that building the Ferrogrão is a top administration priority, sparking widespread disappointment and anger among the Kayapó and other Indigenous people who say they'll be adversely affected by the railway.
ATL participants on Thursday led a "train of death" through BrasÃlia's Esplanade of Ministries, a greenway bisecting numerous government buildings, to draw attention to the project's perils.
"Ferrogrão is the train of death, of deforestation," Korap Munduruku said Thursday.
"The railroad is not going to carry people, as they claim, but grain production of international companies that are financing this project," she continued. "It's a project that will affect not only Indigenous people, but also traditional communities and the people who live in the towns alongside its route."
"In addition, it is a project that will affect people all over the world because it would exacerbate climate change with the massive deforestation it would cause," Korap Munduruku added.
APIB executive coordinator Kleber Karipuna said the government did not adequately consult Indigenous peoples when planning the Ferrogrão.
"Hearings have only been held in cities, none in Indigenous villages," the Karipuna tribal leader said. "Once again, we demand that the protocols for consulting Indigenous peoples be respected. Additionally, the absence of a consultation protocol should not be used as an excuse to deny consultation of peoples affected by the project."
Takakpe Tapayuna Metuktire of the Raoni Institute, which promotes Indigenous rights and sustainability, warned that "Ferrogrão represents the death of kilometers and kilometers of forest."
"While we should be thinking about how to preserve what remains and think about alternative infrastructure projects that respect our rights, nature, and Indigenous and traditional peoples," Tapayuna Metuktire asserted. "We are fighting to prevent yet another project of death and destruction from prevailing in the Amazon. With Ferrogrão all that will be left is scorched earth."
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The United Nations' top humanitarian affairs officials on Friday called for an immediate deescalation of hostilities in Sudan, where rival factions in the military government have been fighting for a year and where an attack on the city of El Fasher is reportedly imminent.
About 800,000 people in the city, the capital of North Darfur state, are in "extreme and immediate danger," U.N. aid operations director, Edem Wosornu, told the U.N. Security Council earlier this week, as she reported that clashes between the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a paramilitary group, and the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) are nearing El Fasher.
Fighting between the two groups has intensified in recent weeks, forcibly displacing an estimated 40,000 people.
The U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs said Friday that the security situation in North Darfur has left more than a dozen aid trucks with relief supplies for 122,000 people stranded in neighboring Northern state, unable to proceed into the only capital city in Darfur that is not controlled by RSF.
"A patchwork of armed actors, including the Darfur Joint Protection Forces, the SAF, and the RSF control different parts of the El Fasher area," Human Rights Watch reported this week. "Tense calm alternating with episodic fighting has prevailed for months."
Since April 14, when RSF began to push into El Fasher, at least 43 people—including women and children—have been killed due to fighting between the SAF and RSF.
"Civilians are trapped in the city, afraid of being killed should they attempt to flee," said Seif Magango, spokesperson for the U.N. high commissioner for human rights, Volker Türk. "This dire situation is compounded by a severe shortage of essential supplies as deliveries of commercial goods and humanitarian aid have been heavily constrained by the fighting, and delivery trucks are unable to freely transit through RSF-controlled territory."
The lack of humanitarian aid in North Darfur has pushed the state toward a famine, with one child dying of starvation every two hours, according to a February report by Doctors Without Borders.
In December, the U.S. State Department announced an $85 million sale of radar and other military equipment to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which The New York Times reported last year has been covertly supporting the RSF.
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) proposed a joint resolution to block arms sales to the UAE in January, in light of its support for the paramilitary group.
Omar was among several lawmakers who wrote to President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken earlier this week, urging them to "deliver urgently-needed humanitarian assistance" and to help end the hostilities.
Sudanese-Australian writer Yassmin Abdel-Magied urged Americans on Friday to pressure lawmakers and the White House to take more action.
"There is a tiny window of opportunity for us to find a way to get the UAE... to make the RSF to stop in their tracks," said Abdel-Magied. "Maybe there's a way that we can avoid this massacre."
OCHA called on the warring parties to "take constant care to spare civilians and civilian objects in the conduct of military operations."
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With US Workers on the March, Southern States Take Aim at Unions
GOP leaders in the region are "truly astonished that workers might not trust their corporate overlords with their working conditions, pay, health, and retirement," said one critic.
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Since six Southern Republican governors last week showed "how scared they are" of the United Auto Workers' U.S. organizing drive, Tennessee Volkswagen employees have voted to join the UAW while GOP policymakers across the region have ramped up attacks on unions.
The UAW launched "the largest organizing drive in modern American history" after securing improved contracts last year with a strike targeting the Big Three automakers—General Motors, Ford, and Stellantis. The ongoing campaign led to the "landslide" victory in Chattanooga last week, which union president Shawn Fain pointed to as proof that "you can't win in the South" isn't true.
The Tennessee win "is breaking the brains of Republicans in that region. They're truly astonished that workers might not trust their corporate overlords with their working conditions, pay, health, and retirement," Thom Hartmann wrote in a Friday opinion piece.
"The problem for Republicans is that unions represent a form of democracy in the workplace, and the GOP hates democracy as a matter of principle."
"The problem for Republicans is that unions represent a form of democracy in the workplace, and the GOP hates democracy as a matter of principle," he argued. "Republicans appear committed to politically dying on a number of hills that time has passed by. Their commitment to gutting voting rolls and restricting voting rights, their obsession with women’s reproductive abilities, and their hatred of regulations and democracy in the workplace are increasingly seen by average American voters as out-of-touch and out-of-date."
Just before voting began in Chattanooga, GOP Govs. Kay Ivey of Alabama, Brian Kemp of Georgia, Tate Reeves of Mississippi, Henry McMaster of South Carolina, Bill Lee of Tennessee, and Greg Abbott of Texas claimed that "unionization would certainly put our states' jobs in jeopardy" and the UAW is "making big promises to our constituents that they can't deliver on."
The next nationally watched UAW vote is scheduled for May 13-17 at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Vance, Alabama.
"Workers at our plant are ready for this moment," Mercedes employee Jeremy Kimbrell said last week. "We are ready to vote yes because we are ready to win our fair share. We are going to end the Alabama discount and replace it with what our state actually needs. Workers sticking together and sticking by our community."
As workers gear up for the election, the Alabama House of Representatives on Tuesday voted 72-30 for a bill that would withhold future economic incentive money from companies that voluntarily recognize unions rather than holding secret ballots. The state Senate previously passed a version of the legislation but now must consider it with the lower chamber's amendments.
The Associated Pressnoted that "Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp signed similar legislation on Monday" and that Tennessee already has one on the books.
With his signature on Senate Bill 362, "Kemp's aim is to thwart future organizing attempts by workers at automotive plants in Georgia, such as those operated by Hyundai Motor Group," according toThe Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
As the newspaper detailed:
Georgia has been a right-to-work state since 1947, when Congress passed the Taft-Hartley Act, allowing workers to refuse to join a union or pay dues, even though they may benefit from contracts negotiated by a union with their employer. Just 5.4% of workers in the state belonged to a union in 2023, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But the National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, protects the right for workers to form a union and collectively bargain for better wages and working conditions.
The new Georgia law is expected to be challenged in court, labor experts have said.
Acting U.S. Labor Secretary Julie Su told the AP on Thursday that she is not sure if the department will challenge the laws, given the National Labor Relations Board's responsibilities, but she stressed that "there are federal standards beneath which no worker should have to live and work."
In terms of joining a union, "that choice belongs to the worker, free from intervention, either by the employer or by politicians, free from retaliation and threats," Su said. "And what we are seeing is that workers who were thought to be too vulnerable to assert that right are doing it, and they're doing it here in the South."
The U.S. labor chief also slammed "unacceptable" union-busting efforts by companies and suggested that protecting the right to unionize is part of President Joe Biden's "promise to center workers in the economy."
"He has said he's the most pro-worker, pro-union president in history, and we are going to make good on that promise. And that includes making sure that workers have the right to join a union," Su said of the president.
Biden's commitment to workers and unionizing rights has caught the attention of GOP leaders. The governors' joint statement nodded to the UAW's January endorsement of the president, who is seeking reelection in November, and South Carolina's leader attacked the administration earlier this year.
During his January State of the State speech, McMaster declared that "we will not let our state's economy suffer or become collateral damage as labor unions seek to consume new jobs and conscript new dues-paying members. And we will not allow the Biden administration's pro-union policies to chip away at South Carolina's sovereign interests. We will fight. All the way to the gates of hell. And we will win."
News From the Statesreported Friday that "of all the foreign-owned automakers in South Carolina, BMW would be the most likely mark in the near term if enough of its workers show interest. The massive plant near Greer—the manufacturer's only U.S. production facility—employs some 11,000 people, twice the number of workers at Volkswagen in Tennessee and Mercedes in Alabama. It has operated in the Upstate for nearly 30 years and is in the process of adding electric vehicle lines."
However, a UAW spokesperson told the outlet that they don't yet have the numbers for the BMW and Volvo facilities in the state, and Marick Masters, a Wayne State University professor who studies the union, said: "I don't think they're writing anybody off but they know the history of unionization. And I would say South Carolina is a very inhospitable place for unions."
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