Gustav
R. Grob, F.IP, Board Member International Energy Foundation (IEF)
President of the International Clean Energy Consortium,
CH-6315 Morgarten / Zug
President of the CMDC-WSEC World Sustainable Energy
Coalition, Geneva
President of ISO/TC203/WG3 on Technical Energy
Systems Analyses
Email: info@cmdc.net. Websites www.cmdc.net
& www.exergy.net
Key words: Global Energy Charter, International Standards,
United Nations CSD
Abstract
There is a growing world-wide awareness that fossil and fissile energy resources will soon be depleted and that a much better protection from the hazards and risks of conventional energy systems is urgently needed of the health, biosphere and climate.
The CLEAN
ENERGY 2000 conference with the active participation of many UN agencies,
NGOs, universities and industry experts from over 100 nations dealt with clean
energy policies, implementation strategies and tools, such as the international
standardization committees ISO/TC 197 for Hydrogen, ISO/TC 203
for Technical Energy Systems Analyses, Energy Statistics Methodologies, the
updated Global Energy Charter for Sustainable Development and conceived the
historic ”Blueprint for the Clean Sustainable Energy Age”.
These tools
allow to plan, finance and implement cleaner, more efficient energy systems
effectively and sustainably in industrial and developing countries alike. The ISO 13600 standards series enables
legislators, planners and decision makers to compare energy systems with all
their external costs and risks in conjunction with other ISO standards on
energy systems, quality and environmental management.
The Global
Energy Charter is the guide for sustainable energy implementation, including
better legislation, increased energy systems efficiencies, renewable energy
solutions, financing, educational and human behavioral aspects – see
www.cmdc.net.
The Blueprint
for Clean, Sustainable Energy Age contains all above tools and
Ø
The roles of UN Agencies,
Commissions, Intergovernmental and NGO Agencies
Ø
Energy Impacts on the Economy,
Environment, Climate and Health
Ø
Depletion of Non-Renewable
Energy Resources and Conservation
Ø
Energy Costing in the Total
Economic, Social & Ecological Context
Ø
Energy Efficiency Impacts
and Options
Ø
Renewable Energy Solutions,
Cost and Future Market Shares
Ø
Clean Transport Solutions
Ø
Sustainable Habitat and
Industry
Ø
Financial Mechanisms for
the Clean, Sustainable Energy Age
Ø
Clean Energy Implementation
Steps
Ø
National and Regional Energy
Characteristics and Case Studies
Introduction
The history of technical energy systems started in the stone age when humans started to make fires by friction rods and spark stones and used biomass to heat caves and to cook primitive meals. Later the wind force was used to move simple sail ships and to turn the wheels of the first wind mills. Animal power with simple gears and water mills were added as additional forms of renewable energy.
With the discovery of fossil fuels and the development
of electricity energy started to become an industry which was growing into
a mighty octopus and ultimately became the largest single economic and industrial
sector with a lot of political weight, often causing oil wars and creating
power monopolies with huge generating units, large power grids and pipeline
systems, nearly all of them relying on polluting, non-renewable energy in
the hands of governments and huge multinationals.
Independent small power producers and environmentally
compatible new energy technologies had little chance to compete with the energy
giants, who tried everything to keep their dominating position world-wide
until legislation was spreading for the liberalization of the power business,
by enforcing anti-trust laws and breaking up the power production, transmission
and distribution trusts.
However, the main power suppliers, the petroleum multinationals
and national oil companies continued to control the energy business with over
80 % market share. Only in the
nineties a few major oil companies started to think about the longer term
resource depletion problem and looked hesitantly at renewable energy alternatives.
Environmental Imperatives
In the eighties more and more scientists and environmentalists
started to prove that the threats to the health, biosphere and climatic balance
by polluting energy must be eliminated by clean, renewable systems.
The first and second oil shock made people think more about alternative
solutions, followed by a virtual R&D rush into new, benign energy system
developments, including photovoltaics, hydrogen, advanced biomass systems,
wind power and heat pumps. However
the R&D balance continued to be awfully biased towards the risky non-renewable
systems of the mighty power lobbies, including “clean” coal (with
the highest specific CO2 emission !!), deep sea drilling, hot fusion
and new fission ideas in order to cement the dominating role of the power
lobbies with their centralized generation concept.
Desperate efforts by the developers of small, decentralized
energy systems received only in the nineties some encouragement by state-enforced
special electricity rate compensations, sparing subsidies and “solar
energy exchange” cooperatives by a few liberal power companies and self-help
groups of idealistic NGOs.
New Energy Age
With all energy options becoming evident to more and more people in our limitless communication age and with the growing awareness about the external, social cost and risks of unsustainable, wasteful energy systems, the logic of a decentralized, more efficient clean energy economy cannot be concealed any more from critical consumers and responsible politicians.
Therefore renewable, decentralized energies will replace finite energy resources in the foreseeable future, creating a new technology drive, a lot of new clean jobs and making users and poor nations less dependent on energy from business lobbies, since humankind will be able to produce their own solar energy on their roofs, from their bio-waste, from decentralized windmills, small hydro turbines and local geothermal heat sources, producing even clean fuels and electricity for their own mobility needs.
Thus, the importance of huge central grids will diminish similar to the breathtaking trend away from a few mainframe computers to innumerable PCs and laptops.
The Blueprint for the Clean, Sustainable Energy Age
To cope with the new situation the Global Sustainable Energy Coalition, supported by farsighted UN agencies, governments, NGOs, universities and industrial pioneers, compiled the “Blueprint for the Clean, Sustainable Energy Age”, which contains all political, legislative, technical and financial tools to reach the noble goal of a fully sustainable energy economy. See also “The importance of international standards”.
This Blueprint deals with the causes of the environmental and health problems, the depletion constraints, the ways and means for more energy efficiency, all presently known renewable energy generation technologies with their total cost, the importance of sustainable architecture and clean mobility, the means how to redirect investments from destructive ends to benign, sustainable concepts to the extent of trillions of Euros and Dollars - away from corruption channels, arms and oil wars.
The “Blueprint for the Clean, Sustainable Energy Age” contains following chapters
Ø
The roles of UN Agencies,
Commissions, Intergovernmental and NGO Agencies
Ø
Energy Impacts on the Economy,
Environment, Climate and Health
Ø
Depletion of Non-Renewable
Energy Resources and Conservation
Ø
Energy Costing in the Total
Economic, Social & Ecological Context
Ø
Energy Efficiency Impacts
and Options
Ø
Renewable Energy Solutions,
Cost and Future Market Shares
Ø
Clean Transport Solutions
Ø
Sustainable Habitat and
Industry
Ø
Financial Mechanisms for
the Clean, Sustainable Energy Age
Ø
Clean Energy Implementation
Steps
Ø
National and Regional Energy
Characteristics
It was written by some of
the most competent experts in each field and will be translated into the main
world languages, distributed at the Johannesburg Summit on Sustainable Development
and to all decision makers and libraries in all 190 nations.
The Global Energy Charter
After the disappointing 2nd World Climate
Conference in Geneva in 1990, which was sabotaged by the USA and oil lobbies
and after the issue of the unsustainable European Energy Charter, aimed at
the exploitation of fossil resources in Eastern Europe, the UN-NGO group of
energy experts decided then to formulate a Global Energy Charter which protects
life, health, climate and the biosphere from emissions.
At the World Clean Energy Conference which took place
demonstratively in the same Geneva Congress halls, exactly one year later,
the Global Energy Charter for Sustainable Development was formulated by minister-level
experts from many governments, major NGOs, top academia and industry representatives
from over 70 nations as a policy guideline and implementation tool for the
new clean energy age.
The reactionary energy lobby groups tried to boycott
this Charter with the help from oil and coal producing nations and succeeded
to keep energy out of the Rio Conference on Environment & Development
(UNCED) in 1992, to continue this game in all Climate Conferences in Berlin,
Kyoto, The Hague and Marrakech, where the USA boycotted the Kyoto protocol
and still stubbornly tries to ignore the Charter.
Nevertheless, international support for a new energy
policy was growing and many of the Global Energy Charter principles are embedded
now in several national energy policies and legislations, including the European
Union, where renewable energies and environmental protection are going to
play a dominant role.
Main principles of the
Global Energy Charter for Sustainable Development
1 Reduce energy-related atmospheric
emissions, and enact strict legislation for ecological performance
standards and labelling for energy services and systems.
2
Establish clear guidelines
and internationally standardised evaluation methods for determining the external
effects and risks of all energy systems.
3
Create international, regional,
national and local programs for energy efficiency improvements, safety
controls, waste management and emissions reductions.
4
Create programs for the substitution of non-renewable energy resources
by environmentally benign sustainable energy technologies.
5
Introduce full-cost pricing
to reflect accurately the total life-cycle social and environmental costs
of energy production & consumption.
6
Establish sustainable energy
funds to finance energy efficiency improvements and the best available
environmentally sound energy technologies.
7
Promote and monitor the Global
Energy Charter for Sustainable Development and develop new financial mechanisms
involving the private and public sectors.
8
Promote world-wide cooperation
and exchange of technologies, expertise, education,
training programs and statistics for environmentally sound energy
technologies, energy efficiency, performance standards,
safety codes, methods of energy costing and means of internalising
external costs.
Cercle mondial du consensus, World Circle
of the Consensus, Weltkreis des Konsens
World Sustainable Energy Coalition
CMDC-WSEC, rue de Varembé 3, POB 200,
CH 1211 Geneva 20, Switzerland
Phone: +41-22-910-3006, Fax: +41-22-910-3014, e-mail:
info@cmdc.net