International Day of Clean Energy

   A global sustainable energy transition needs to be achieved within four decades, a significantly faster rate than in the past.   Global sustainable energy policy must take into special consideration the 3 billion poor people who aspire to gaining access to electricity and modern energy services.    The scope of current national and global policies and programmes does not “add up” to the scale of actions needed to meet global emission reduction targets . Paradoxically, they are also overly ambitious in terms of their expected outcomes and are inconsiderate of certain biophysical, techno-economic and socio-political limits to scaling up known technologies. A reality check of current plans is needed so that realistic and well-targeted initiatives can be devised at a far greater scale.   There is a need for comprehensive, strategic and systemic approaches that emphasize performance goals, niche markets and technology portfolios, especially those related to end-...

The Global Energy Assessment reviewed 51 programmes, conducted since 1980 in 8 Asian, 12 African and 9 Latin American countries, whose aim has been to distribute clean cooking stoves to poor households. Included in the review were costs, efficiency and technologies used. The review highlighted the wide range of cooking-stove models tailored to local needs, fuel supply, available technical skills and affordability. Energy efficiencies ranged from 15 per cent for simple mud stoves running on straw and twigs (several thousands of which were constructed by trained artisans in Viet Nam at a cost of $1.8) to as high as 40 per cent in the case of a programme in China involving 300,000 clay stoves running on coal briquettes and constructed in local workshops since the 1980s. There was no evidence of systematically increased efficiencies or reduced costs over time. Programmes in Latin America tended to be smaller in size, but were mostly subsidized to varying degrees, including 100 per cent...

 China has the largest hydroelectricity potential in the world . During the “Great Leap Forward” (which started in 1958), there had been plans to build 2.5 GW of Micro-size hydroelectricity plants by 1967, but only about 0.5 GW were completed (Carin, 1969). In a new wave of construction from 1970 to 1979, their number increased from 26,000 to 90,000, with mean size doubling to only 70 kW. Much larger hydro plants in the MW and GW ranges have been built since the 1980s. Many technical and maintenance problems (silting, drought, leaks) with hastily built micro-hydroelectric power plants meant low load factors and relatively high costs. In 2006, China completed the world’s larges t hydropower  plant, with a capacity of 18.2 GW. From the early 1970s, China had promoted microscale biodigesters running on animal dung, human faeces, garbage and waste water . A 10 cubic metre (m3 ) biodigester was deemed sufficient to provide biogas for a family’s cooking and lighting needs . So...

 The United States, Germany and Spain have led long-standing research programmes in  solar thermal electricity , which included experimentation with a variety of designs. The first modern concentrating solar power (CSP) plant with 1 megawatt (MW) capacity had been built in Italy in 1968. The parabolic trough design of a 354 MW plant built in California in 1984 became dominant. Different types of working fluids (such as molten salt), which are a key determinant of the efficiency, have been used. Overall deployment remains much lower than that of wind power, owing to higher cost and water-use conflicts in desert areas. In the United States, costs of producing Concentrated Solar Power  are about 12-18 cents per kWh compared with 2 cents for nuclear power, although costs as low as 5 cents might be achievable in the future with heliostat mirrors and gas turbine technology . An industrial consortium, consisting mainly of German companies, has recently been formed with the g...

  Solar photovoltaics (PV) was invented in the United States but was not deployed there on a large scale. For several decades, through its R&D , and its “Sunshine Programme” from 1994 to 2004, Japan refined the technology and successfully reduced the costs of a 3kW roof system from 6 million to 2 million yen. The Sunshine Programme was remarkable in that it phased out its solar PV subsidies (which peaked at about $250 million in 2001) over the duration of the Programme. Despite its low insolation levels, Germany is today by far the largest solar PV market in the world, owing to its generous feed-in tariffs. China produces and exports the majority of solar panels , most of which are sold in Germany, which remains the producer of machines needed in the manufacturing Solar panels .  Most recently,  off-grid solar PV has become increasingly popular in poor areas without access to electricity , in view of the prevailing high electricity prices and low demand levels....

  The first wind power plants had been developed in the 1880s, but it was not until the 1970s that the currently dominant design was settled upon and deployed. Denmark, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands were early movers in wind energy innovation but followed different approaches. In the 1970s and 1980s, Germany and Sweden had focused on public R&D support for a quick scaling up to a range of 2-4 megawatts (MW), but provided only limited support for market formation. Premature scaling up failed to build a sustainable industry , and established utilities had little incentive to deploy high-cost, intermittent wind turbines which were difficult to maintain. Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States focused on R&D and deployment of smaller-scale and simpler wind turbines in niche markets. Denmark established a test station for wind turbines in 1978, issued type approvals from 1979 and introduced investment and production subsi...