Steven Poruban
Senior Staff Writer
Energy deserves its place as a "key area" when discussing global "sustainable development," said Amy Myers Jaffe, a consultant with the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy and associate director for the Rice University energy program, Environmental and Energy Systems Institute.
Jaffe served as moderator for a panel discussion of the role energy will play in sustainable development at a recent conference inaugurating the Shell Center for Sustainability at Rice University in Houston (see related story, this page).
Energy a key
"It is absolutely appropriate for energy to be a key area in thinking about sustainable development," Jaffe told the audience, adding, "Roughly 1.6 billion people on this planet have no access to electricity at present. About 2.4 billion located in developing countries are using traditional biomass for their basic energy needs—many of them suffering ill health effects as a result." It is this "lack of electricity" that contributes to "a perpetuation of poverty," she claimed.
"Energy that is affordable, clean, sustainable, and universally abundant is the single-most important technical problem facing us today," Jaffe said. "If we solve the energy problem, we can solve other problems such as food supply, water, poverty, and also ease the pressure on greenhouse gases."
In the absence of a major new government policy on sustainable energy supplies, "1.4 billion people will still lack electricity in 30 years despite technological gains and an increase in world prosperity," Jaffe noted. "That's really a daunting statistic to think about, for the progress that we would make would be very minimal on a global scale."
Jaffe said the potential for sources of renewable energy to "close the gap" between growing energy demand and the use of hydrocarbons as a primary source of fuel remains a serious worldwide challenge. "There is no question that investment in renewables could be highly beneficial," she said. However, she added, the use of nonhydroelectric renewables for electricity generation within the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development member countries is expected to rise to only 4% by 2020 from 2% of world energy supply.
"Just to get renewables to be 9% of world energy supply, the International Energy Agency estimates that it would take investment of $228 billion," Jaffe said.
Developing world transition
Kurt Hoffman, director of the Shell Foundation, discussed the third of the world's population that still lacks access to electricity. He noted that the US, Europe, and parts of Asia are the largest consumers of electric power, while other areas of the world are shrouded in darkness.
Commenting on a satellite image of the electrically lighted and unlighted areas of earth at night, Hoffman said, "It's an interesting picture, but underlying the reality there is the fact that there are hundreds of millions of children who are trying to learn and study under the dim light of a kerosine lamp."
David Victor, director, Stanford University Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, posed the question of how the poorer areas of the world are to make the transition from traditional biomass fuels to more modern, cleaner ones.
Victor noted that, as income rises in developing countries, there would be a shift away from biomass fuels toward more modern fuels, including electricity and natural gas.
An accompanying shift toward world markets also will aid the transition toward the use of more modern fuels, Victor said. He noted that in the 1980s, many of the decisions about crises and the allocation of capital were made by the state. Today, he said, the situation is "totally different." This shift is happening everywhere, he said.
