Renewable energy sources for development.

• Author: Ottinger, Richard L.

1. INTRODUCTION

   Virtually every expert who has addressed the energy aspects of sustainable development has concluded that renewable resources should play a major role. Yet, while the use of these resources is growing rapidly in both developed and developing countries, use has not reached anywhere near the technical and economic potential that worldwide studies have attributed to them. (1)

   A host of economic, social, and legal barriers account for the failure of renewable resources to reach their potential. Those barriers can be overcome, as in a number of jurisdictions, including India and other developing countries. Legislation can remove these barriers, get the price signals right, and encourage successful use of renewable resources. This Article explores mechanisms that can be used and that have been used successfully in developing countries in various parts of the world to remove those barriers and to promote greater use of renewable resources.

2. RESOURCES COVERED

   Renewable resources vary widely in technical and economic characteristics. Some renewable resources, such as wind, geothermal, modern biomass, and small hydroelectric energy, are in fairly wide use throughout the world, are often economical, and offer significant environmental advantages. Those renewable resources are applicable for either grid use or for stand-alone energy in rural communities. Other renewable resources, such as photovoltaics, remain too expensive for many electric grid applications, but are well suited for grid niche applications, such as for switching equipment upgrades. For poor and remote communities not yet served by electricity, the above-mentioned renewable resources are highly economical, particularly to provide power for lighting, refrigeration, irrigation, and communications. (2) In addition, modern biomass applications are particularly advantageous for developing countries because they use local feedstocks and labor. (3) Other renewable resources with tremendous technical and economic potential such as hydrogen fuel cells, wave and tidal energy, and deep hot rock geothermal energy, require additional research and development to be economically or technically feasible. (4)

   Nuclear energy is excluded from this analysis as a development option because of its high capital and operating costs, complex technical requirements for operation and maintenance, and unresolved problems of proliferation and waste disposal. After the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York on September 11, 2001, an overriding concern with nuclear plants is their great vulnerability to terrorist attack (particularly on the control rooms and spent fuel pools that are located outside the containment vessels). At any rate, nuclear energy is not renewable unless reprocessing of spent fuel is used; and this process is even more prohibitively expensive and technologically challenging for developing countries. Further, reprocessing poses difficulties for all countries because its plutonium production is particularly vulnerable to proliferation.

   In addition, nuclear energy is derived from plutonium or uranium processed with high energy into forms capable of utilization in reactors. If fossil fuels are used as the energy source to refine the uranium (currently the usual process) then nuclear energy has much of the same carbon dioxide and pollution problems as direct fossil fuel combustion. (5) Nuclear power waste disposal and plant decommissioning also involve substantial unsolved environmental problems and costs. Finally, there are safety problems with nuclear power plant operations, and risks of diversion of nuclear fuel to weapons production. Because nuclear power requires safety and high capital costs for construction, waste disposal and decommissioning, nuclear power is not an economical energy option today in the United States; no new U.S. plants have been constructed for more than twenty-three years. (6) Indeed, nuclear power is the world's slowest growing energy source. Worldwide some ninety nuclear plants have been retired after serving fewer than seventeen years. Though nuclear power is widely used in Japan and Europe, there is now considerable public resistance to construction of new nuclear plants. This is particularly true in Japan following a recent major accident. Germany is phasing out its existing nuclear plants, while France (which gets more than seventy-five percent of its electricity from nuclear power), has put a moratorium on nuclear plant construction. (7)

   Waste to energy power from trash incineration also is excluded from this analysis because it is highly polluting, and because recycling options for wastes are much cleaner and more economical.

   Additionally, large hydroelectric dams have been excluded because of their expense, their unreliability (the vulnerability of dams to droughts has recently been demonstrated in Brazil and the west coast of the United States), and the environmental damage that results from flooding large areas of productive and often populated lands and from the carbon dioxide released from decaying vegetation in the dam reservoirs.

3. RENEWABLE ENERGY RESOURCES

   Renewable energy resources hold great promise for meeting the energy and development needs of countries throughout the world. This promise is particularly strong for developing countries where many areas have not yet committed to fossil fuel dominance.

   Renewables include a considerable number of proven and emerging technologies. For instance, electricity can be produced from sunlight via photovoltaic cells for individual buildings or communities of buildings, for the production of central station power, and for localized tasks such as providing homes with hot water or space heating. Other renewable sources of power include fields of parabolic collectors that focus on a fixed hot water source (8) or solar ponds, crop waste cellulose that can be gasified for heat, electric and transportation applications, and power generated from wind, geothermal applications, ocean tides and waves, temperature variations between ocean surfaces and depths, hydropower installations, biomethanation (power from agricultural wastes), and biomass crops grown for energy use. (9)

   Use of renewable resources has grown markedly in the past decade. Many countries have significant renewable installations and programs. For example, India is a world leader in the use of renewable energy. India is perhaps the only country in the world to have created a cabinet-level department for promotion of renewable energy technology--the Ministry of Non-Conventional Energy Sources (MNES). (10) India has pioneered research in renewable energy applications through its internationally renown TATA Energy Research Institute. Technology support centers have been created in India's universities to promote renewable technology support to manufacturers and to certify the quality of technology procured by the government. (11) India has also embarked on manufacturing a number of renewable technologies, and in 1987, created a Renewable Energy Development Agency (IREDA) to fund renewable energy projects. (12)

   The results of these efforts have been remarkable. India now has cumulative installations of 3.02 million family-size biogas plants, 32 million modern cook stoves (including 485,000 solar cookers), 500,000 solar hot water systems, 57 megawatts of photovoltaic installations (including 3371 water pumps, 1920 kilowatts of electric power systems, 40,000 community and street lighting units, 100,000 home electric systems, and 250,000 home and community lighting systems), 34.36 megawatts of biomass gasifier electric systems, 222 megawatts of bagasse cogeneration units, 1167 megawatts of wind farms, and 217 megawatts of mini- and micro-hydroelectric generating units. (13)

   Since India created MNES in 1993, major increases in these installations have been achieved. This increased penetration of renewables is largely attributable to the conversion from a technology-oriented subsidy program to one that focuses on fostering markets through indirect subsidies (14) to meet communities' end-use needs such as lighting, communications, pumping, and industrial uses. (15) In addition, MNES is now organized into sectoral groups of rural energy, urban/industrial energy, and power generation, rather than by technology. (16) Quality control, systems maintenance, and personnel training also have contributed to India's successes. (17) It should be noted, however, that India, like most countries, still gets the preponderance of its energy from coal and large hydroelectric projects. (18)

   Other countries also have extensive renewable energy programs. Indonesia has a goal of providing one million solar homes and already has delivered 200,000 systems towards this goal through installment purchases and the assistance of World Bank and Global Environmental Facility (GEF) loans. (19) In Europe, Finland extracts about thirty percent of its electricity from renewable resources, the majority of which comes from biomass. (20) The other Scandinavian countries and Germany also have significant renewable energy programs.

   Renewable resources are attractive for developing countries where some two billion people have no access to electricity. In 1990, fifty-six percent of the world's rural population had no access to electricity, (21) and today ninety percent of the entire African population is without electricity. (22)

   In rural areas, renewable resources often are far cheaper than traditional resources that have heavy capital costs for generating equipment as well as demanding transmission and distribution requirements. Wind, photovoltaic, biomass, and hydroelectric resources are the most advantageous and widely used renewable resources for energy in developing countries today. (23)

   Wind energy for electricity production is a mature, competitive, and virtually pollution-free technology widely used in many areas of the world. It...