At the end of June 2012, Rio will be hosting the next Earth Summit, the world’s ten-yearly meeting on sustainable development. In December 2011, Durban, South Africa, hosted the annual conference of the countries that have signed the UN convention on climate change agreed at the 1992 Earth Summit. Pierre Radanne, Chairman of Futur Facteur 4 and Emmanuel Guérin, Program Director at IDDRI (Institute for Sustainable Development and International Relations) take a look back at this event and tell us whether renewable energy can emerge as a winner.
1. What has been the outcome of the Durban climate conference held last December?
Emmanuel Guérin: First, the countries collectively decided to draw up a binding agreement by 2015, to come into effect in 2020, whose aim would be to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The diplomatic success, however, does not lie in this result, but in the process by which the countries reached this outcome. Europe forged alliances with minor island states and African countries against India: this is a brand new scenario! We knew that this meeting would not have a great impact in the short-term, but countries need these encounters to spark an international chain reaction and to share the feeling that they are moving in a common direction.
Pierre Radanne: In fact, it’s this new interplay that stunned everyone. In Kyoto, in 1997, we had our first surprise: the deal between the Americans and the Russians to form a block of “empty” countries, as opposed to “full” countries (i.e. countries with dense domesticated populations, who are deprived of fossil resources, etc.). In these full countries, the European Union and Japan showed they were willing to control their greenhouse gas emissions (the goal being an average 5.2% reduction over 2008-2012 compared to 1990 levels). The empty countries, on the other hand, have never had any limits to their development and immediately adopted a stance rejecting any climate obligation. The great novelty about Durban is that certain developing countries have realized that their development must be low in carbon. And in this battle, they teamed up with Europe. Durban enabled the creation of a European Union-developing countries coalition that shattered the world model dating from Kyoto, whereby rich countries were lined up against so-called “non-annex 1” countries, which had no commitments. The next agreement must include all the world’s countries and share out the required efforts in a fair way that takes into account each country’s situation.
2. What is going to happen after December 31, 2012, when the Kyoto protocol runs out?
Pierre Radanne: Nothing. The protocol will expire without meeting the 5.2% objective. While we await the next agreement, we must monitor the progress of greenhouse gas emissions: the more they go off target under the pretext that we are no longer in the period covered by Kyoto, the more difficult the agreement to be discussed in 2015 will be to conclude.
Emmanuel Guérin: The expiry of the Kyoto Protocol period opens up another period that is underpinned by a different attitude among countries: controlling greenhouse gas emissions is no longer seen as a measure from the scientific community making lots of noise about a runaway climate, but as a political objective of the international community. The countries have set themselves the objective of limiting the average rise in temperature to 2°C by 2100.
3. And yet we are now on the way to a much greater rise…
Pierre Radanne: Yes and the impact could be dramatic. We have to realize that a mere six degrees separate us from the Ice Age. Historically, six degrees means a kilometer of ice over the British Isles, ice fields north of a line through London-Amsterdam-Munich, the oceans at 120 meters lower than the present levels, the tundra in Paris with pretty wooly mammoths. If we allow the rise in temperature to go beyond 2°C, it will produce a climate change equivalent to emerging from the Ice Age, but at a rate that is fifty times faster.
Emmanuel Guérin: In 2015, with the drawing up of the post-Kyoto agreement, it will be too late to lower emissions from 2020. The question is: how do we manage to stay in the race and assist the efforts of various countries to reach 20 billion tones in 2050? Emerging countries have begun their efforts. China, for example, has set up CO2 allowance markets in six cities, in anticipation of a national market in 2015.
4. Energy headlines were particularly dramatic in 2011: the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the development of schist gas, etc. Can this promote the development of renewable energy?
Pierre Radanne: Today we have a clearer vision of global resources: we haven’t exhausted fossil fuels, but those that remain (schist gas, tar sands, arctic, deep offshore) will be difficult to extract and with a higher environmental impact. Such energy will be expensive before it becomes rare. In parallel, a new truth is emerging: the idea that nuclear is not safe. Out of four major atomic nations, three have had accidents: the United States, the former USSR and Japan. Within this context, a vision of the world is emerging, according to which ten billions of inhabitants will have to live stuck on a planet with finite resources. The only solution is to live from renewable energies rather than from energies that will one day be exhausted.
Emmanuel Guérin: The Fukushima disaster has had a colossal impact on countries engaged in nuclear energy. It has completely changed the way we understand safety: this is no longer seen as an internal matter for the power stations, but as a question that involves the whole society. It has led to decisions such as that taken by Germany (Ed. Note: turning their back on nuclear energy) and to debates such as the place of nuclear energy in France.
As for non-conventional hydrocarbons, there has been a massive call for new fossil resources, beginning in the United States. What is both seductive and dangerous about schist gas is that it is much better spread over the planet than conventional gas. However, that does not take into account its major impact on the environment…