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    Spanish company Ferry Group is to invest €42/US$55.2 million in a project for the production of biomass fuel pellets in Bulgaria. The 3-year project consists of establishing plantations of paulownia trees near the city of Tran. Paulownia is a fast-growing tree used for the commercial production of fuel pellets. Dnevnik - Feb. 20, 2007.

    Hungary's BHD Hõerõmû Zrt. is to build a 35 billion Forint (€138/US$182 million) commercial biomass-fired power plant with a maximum output of 49.9 MW in Szerencs (northeast Hungary). Portfolio.hu - Feb. 20, 2007.

    Tonight at 9pm, BBC Two will be showing a program on geo-engineering techniques to 'save' the planet from global warming. Five of the world's top scientists propose five radical scientific inventions which could stop climate change dead in its tracks. The ideas include: a giant sunshade in space to filter out the sun's rays and help cool us down; forests of artificial trees that would breath in carbon dioxide and stop the green house effect and a fleet futuristic yachts that will shoot salt water into the clouds thickening them and cooling the planet. BBC News - Feb. 19, 2007.

    Archer Daniels Midland, the largest U.S. ethanol producer, is planning to open a biodiesel plant in Indonesia with Wilmar International Ltd. this year and a wholly owned biodiesel plant in Brazil before July, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. The Brazil plant is expected to be the nation's largest, the paper said. Worldwide, the company projects a fourfold rise in biodiesel production over the next five years. ADM was not immediately available to comment. Reuters - Feb. 16, 2007.

    Finnish engineering firm Pöyry Oyj has been awarded contracts by San Carlos Bioenergy Inc. to provide services for the first bioethanol plant in the Philippines. The aggregate contract value is EUR 10 million. The plant is to be build in the Province of San Carlos on the north-eastern tip of Negros Island. The plant is expected to deliver 120,000 liters/day of bioethanol and 4 MW of excess power to the grid. Kauppalehti Online - Feb. 15, 2007.

    In order to reduce fuel costs, a Mukono-based flower farm which exports to Europe, is building its own biodiesel plant, based on using Jatropha curcas seeds. It estimates the fuel will cut production costs by up to 20%. New Vision (Kampala, Uganda) - Feb. 12, 2007.

    The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has decided to use 10% biodiesel in its fleet of public buses. The world's largest city is served by the Toei Bus System, which is used by some 570,000 people daily. Digital World Tokyo - Feb. 12, 2007.

    Fearing lack of electricity supply in South Africa and a price tag on CO2, WSP Group SA is investing in a biomass power plant that will replace coal in the Letaba Citrus juicing plant which is located in Tzaneen. Mining Weekly - Feb. 8, 2007.

    In what it calls an important addition to its global R&D capabilities, Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) is to build a new bioenergy research center in Hamburg, Germany. World Grain - Feb. 5, 2007.

    EthaBlog's Henrique Oliveira interviews leading Brazilian biofuels consultant Marcelo Coelho who offers insights into the (foreign) investment dynamics in the sector, the history of Brazilian ethanol and the relationship between oil price trends and biofuels. EthaBlog - Feb. 2, 2007.

    The government of Taiwan has announced its renewable energy target: 12% of all energy should come from renewables by 2020. The plan is expected to revitalise Taiwan's agricultural sector and to boost its nascent biomass industry. China Post - Feb. 2, 2007.

    Production at Cantarell, the world's second biggest oil field, declined by 500,000 barrels or 25% last year. This virtual collapse is unfolding much faster than projections from Mexico's state-run oil giant Petroleos Mexicanos. Wall Street Journal - Jan. 30, 2007.

    Dubai-based and AIM listed Teejori Ltd. has entered into an agreement to invest €6 million to acquire a 16.7% interest in Bekon, which developed two proprietary technologies enabling dry-fermentation of biomass. Both technologies allow it to design, establish and operate biogas plants in a highly efficient way. Dry-Fermentation offers significant advantages to the existing widely used wet fermentation process of converting biomass to biogas. Ame Info - Jan. 22, 2007.

    Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited is to build a biofuel production plant in the tribal belt of Banswara, Rajasthan, India. The petroleum company has acquired 20,000 hectares of low value land in the district, which it plans to commit to growing jatropha and other biofuel crops. The company's chairman said HPCL was also looking for similar wasteland in the state of Chhattisgarh. Zee News - Jan. 15, 2007.

    The Zimbabwean national police begins planting jatropha for a pilot project that must result in a daily production of 1000 liters of biodiesel. The Herald (Harare), Via AllAfrica - Jan. 12, 2007.

    In order to meet its Kyoto obligations and to cut dependence on oil, Japan has started importing biofuels from Brazil and elsewhere. And even though the country has limited local bioenergy potential, its Agriculture Ministry will begin a search for natural resources, including farm products and their residues, that can be used to make biofuels in Japan. To this end, studies will be conducted at 900 locations nationwide over a three-year period. The Japan Times - Jan. 12, 2007.

    Chrysler's chief economist Van Jolissaint has launched an arrogant attack on "quasi-hysterical Europeans" and their attitudes to global warming, calling the Stern Review 'dubious'. The remarks illustrate the yawning gap between opinions on climate change among Europeans and Americans, but they also strengthen the view that announcements by US car makers and legislators about the development of green vehicles are nothing more than window dressing. Today, the EU announced its comprehensive energy policy for the 21st century, with climate change at the center of it. BBC News - Jan. 10, 2007.

    The new Canadian government is investing $840,000 into BioMatera Inc. a biotech company that develops industrial biopolymers (such as PHA) that have wide-scale applications in the plastics, farmaceutical and cosmetics industries. Plant-based biopolymers such as PHA are biodegradable and renewable. Government of Canada - Jan. 9, 2007.


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Friday, December 01, 2006

Europe to cooperate with Brazil to produce ethanol in Africa

Via EthanolBrasil, a new blog tracking bioenergy developments in Latin America's leading economy: according to [*Portuguese] Brazil's ex-minister of agriculture, Roberto Rodrigues, the governments of the Netherlands and the UK will be financing ethanol production projects in Africa, and rely on Brazilian technology and expertise to do so. This is a classic example of how so-called 'South-North-South' exchanges can unlock Africa's biofuels potential. Rodrigues speaks in his function as the coordinator of the recently established Centro de Agronegócio [*Portuguese, *.pdf] (created by the Getúlio Vargas Foundation, Brazil's leading social science foundation), which has taken up bioenergy as one of its main research areas.

Interestingly, the European governments in question are not taking the easiest route because they want to support the development of biofuels in some of the continent's poorest and most troubled countries. Rodrigues says that with aid of these governments, war-torn Sudan will be one of the first countries to be invited to Brazil on a mission to learn about ethanol technologies and production strategies.

The Centro de Agronegócio wants to become a leading consulting organisation and will be networking in the Global South to spread Brazilian knowledge and experience with biofuel production. The Fundação Getúlio Vargas had already established a large body of expertise in the sector, but is now concentrating it in a 'biofuels intelligence centre'.

Brazil's experts and interests
The center - which cooperates both with academia and with leading enterprises - will offer an integrated approach to South-South exchanges and bioenergy technology transfers. It is being supported by the Interamerican Development Bank. Rodrigues: "We have 310 ethanol plants in Brazil and 160 under construction. We are going to need many qualified professionals. After their experience in Brazil, these professionals will carry the technology forward in the developing world. The Centro de Agronegócio will also become a leading meeting place for international negotiations and debates on bioenergy, Rodrigues adds.

The ex-minister explains that it is in Brazil's very own interest that ethanol becomes a globally traded commodity. "Currently there is no real global trade in ethanol, because there is only one real exporter of the product. It is crucial that other countries start producing the fuel as well, so that producing countries can trade their excess and sell to non-producers". Other countries that can't implement large biomass programs or that don't have enough land, like India and China, will gladly become importers of ethanol that can be produced economically and efficiently elsewhere, Rodrigues says.

Currently, Brazil and the United States are the world's major ethanol producers. The US uses maize as its main feedstock. Because of the low energy yield of this crop, the US will never become a biofuel exporter. This is why the US is already beginning to implement ethanol projects abroad, in the Dominican Republic, Jamaica and Colombia, Rodrigues says. According to the ex-minister, the US has set its eyes on Africa and Asia as well. But the EU might become the biggest biofuel investor in the South:
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Rodrigues is in the know about the fact that the governments of the Netherlands and the United Kingdom have already spoken with Luís Carlos Guedes Pinto, Brazil's current Minister of Agriculture, about creating joint projects for the production of ethanol in Africa.

On another note, Rodrigues and Guedes agree that Brazil can double its ethanol output in ten years by dedicating another 3 million hectares of land to sugarcane. Yet another 3 million hectares will be devoted to the production of raw sugar. According to Guedes, it will even be possible to triple the country's ethanol output "without cutting down a single tree".

The current minister replies to the bad press Brazil is receiving over its agricultural policies. According to Guedes, a study of Embrapa [a leading agronomy research organisation], Brazil currently has 69,5% of its original ecosystems intact, whereas Europe holds only 0.3%. "The territory that has conserved its ecosystems better than any other on this planet, is Brazil", Guedes stresses.

More information:
the Centro de Agronegócio will be integrated in the Escola de Economia de São Paulo da FGV. Besides aiming to become a leading bioenergy consulting body, its actions will focus on networking with other organisations, creating an exchange platform on agronomy and bioenergy, organising advanced courses, and distributing information to larger audiences.

ANBA: Europeus querem produzir etanol com o Brasil na África - November 29, 2006

The new expert blog on Brazil's bioenergy developments: EthanolBrasil.

The Fundaçao Getúlio Vargas.

Presentation of the newly established Centro de Agronegócio, at the Escola de Economia de São Paulo.

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Economic burden of AIDS in Africa highlighted in ILO report

Here at the Biopact we often paint a rosy picture of sub-Saharan Africa and its potential to overcome rural poverty by investing in labor-intensive bioenergy production (our project, we hope, is just one contribution to this optimistic goal). But the relentless advance of HIV/AIDS is markedly reducing growth prospects in countries hit hardest by the epidemic, jeopardizing their efforts to reduce poverty, create new jobs, and fight child labour, says a new report by the International Labour Organisation (ILO) released today (see the ILO's World AIDS day website). We don't want to reduce the HIV/AIDS tragedy to a mere economic problem, but in a world where money is the measure, a hard economic perspective might open people's eyes more easily.

"HIV/AIDS and work: global estimates, impact on children and youth, and response 2006" [*.pdf] indicates that an estimated 36.3 million persons of working age were now living with HIV/AIDS - the vast majority in sub-Saharan Africa.

What's more, the report says the epidemic was causing a reduction in employment growth resulting in 1 million fewer jobs per year in the worst-hit countries, compared to what might have been in the absence of the HIV epidemic. The report presents a model which captures the impact of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on economic and employment growth in 43 countries with over 1 per cent HIV/AIDS prevalence for which sufficient data were available. This made it possible to arrive at an estimate of the annual cost to the global economy in terms of curtailed job growth.

The report concludes that:
  • Among those of working age, in addition to the 24.6 million labour force participants living with HIV/AIDS, 11.7 million more persons who are engaged in some form of productive activity, often women in the home, are now living with the virus.
  • Forty-three countries heavily affected by HIV/AIDS lost on average 0.5 percentage points in their rate of economic growth every year between 1992 and 2004 due to the epidemic, and as a result forfeited 0.3 percentage points in employment growth. Among them, 31 countries in sub-Saharan Africa lost 0.7 percentage points of their average annual rate of economic growth and forfeited 0.5 percentage points in employment growth. This produced a global employment shortfall of 1.3 million new jobs every year, of which 1.1 million were lost annually to sub-Saharan Africa.
  • The impact of the epidemic is particularly severe for children and youth whose lives, hopes and future are blighted directly or indirectly by HIV/AIDS. Globally, nearly 2.3 million children live with AIDS and there are an estimated 15 million AIDS orphans. When children in worst-affected countries do reach working age they face a severe shortage of legitimate job opportunities.
  • Unemployment for young people considered to be of working age is 2 to 3 times as high as for their adult counterparts. This puts young people at risk in terms of poverty but the report also highlights the increased risk of exposure to HIV of large numbers of unemployed youth in resource-poor settings. Consequently young people account for half of all new HIV infections. An estimated 5,000 to 6,000 young persons aged 15 to 24 years acquire HIV each day.
  • In 2005, more than 3 million labour force participants worldwide were partially or fully unable to work because of illness due to AIDS, and three-quarters of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Globally 41 per cent of the labour force participants living with HIV are women, and in sub-Saharan Africa, the proportion is even higher at 43 per cent.
The report's focus on children and youth reflects the severe impact the epidemic is having on the future global labour force. Often the epidemic propels children into work too early because their parents are sick or have died and a means of income is needed:
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Child labour puts children at risk, robs them of education and can lead to work that makes them more vulnerable to acquiring the virus themselves. Yet a range of rights-based legal instruments have seen widespread ratification that would eliminate the worst forms of child labour if vigorously enforced, and limit access to underage children for purposes of work in order to keep them in compulsory education.

A rapid assessment study by the ILO in Zambia in 2002 estimated that HIV/AIDS increased the child labour force between 23 and 30 per cent. A survey in Uganda in 2004 found that over 95 per cent of children living in AIDS-affected households were engaged in some type of work. Sixteen per cent of the children working - mostly girls - worked both day and night. In addition, girls are more likely overall than boys to stay at home and look after ill parents or younger siblings, thereby foregoing education.

The new ILO report also found that girls face greater risks than boys of being sexually abused and acquiring HIV at their workplace, particularly through prostitution and other sexual exploitation.

A lack of opportunities for decent work can compel young women and men to work under precarious and un-regulated conditions. They are at increased risk from HIV when these conditions expose them to the virus. Studies often show that the majority of men and women who resorted to the sex industry for their livelihood began sex work in their teens or early 20s.

These factors interact with the result that, according to the most recent data, young people account for half of all new HIV infections. Moreover, the majority of young persons who are living with HIV do not know that they carry the virus, especially in resource-poor settings.

"Mortality losses to the labour force, illness and lack of access to antiretroviral treatment (ARVs) are jeopardizing the ability of worst affected countries to lift themselves out of poverty", the report said, adding that the future of the labour force is imperilled by the epidemic's severe impact on children, as it may force them into child labour and later constrain them from finding productive jobs when they reach the legal working age.

Noting that there had been some recent progress in remedying "woefully delayed" access to ARV treatments, the report also said there was a need for "forceful" new measures to increase access to ARVs and urged that the workplace be designated as a "major entry point" for doing so.

Without increased access to ARVs, cumulative mortality losses to the global labour force are expected to continue to increase as a result of the impact of the HIV epidemic, from 28 million estimated for 2005 to 45 million projected by 2010, over 64 million projected for 2015, and nearly 86 million anticipated by 2020. However the report demonstrates that increased access to ARVs could have a significant impact on labour force losses. It shows that of the 17.3 million losses to the labour force expected to occur between 2005 and 2010 at the global level, at least 14 per cent would be averted by universal access to ARVs.

"Much can be gained from forceful expansion of access to ARVs, even when and where continuation rates tend to be at the low end of the expected range", the report said (continuation rates reflect the proportion of treated persons who stay with the treatment from one year to the next). "The prospect of averting between one fifth and one quarter of potential new losses to the labour force should serve as a powerful incentive to target the workplace as a major entry point to achieve universal access to ARVs."

The ILO is committed to long-term strategies for the elimination of child labour, the preparation for entry into the labour market of youth at the appropriate age, and the elaboration of national policies to reduce youth unemployment. In principle, the removal of children from child labour requires fostering alternative means to encourage the creation of jobs, increase labour productivity and raise wages for young people, as well as provision of alternative assistance to the current generation of children, enabling them to strengthen their work skills in the long run. Unemployed youth cannot replace child labour in many cases, but the potential to re-orient the demand for labour away from children and towards youth is a compelling priority that cries for attention and deserves thorough examination.

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Genetically engineered blood protein can be used to split water into oxygen and hydrogen


Here comes another twist to the 'bio-' prefix we use so often: scientists have combined two molecules that occur naturally in our blood to engineer a molecular complex that uses solar energy to split water into hydrogen and oxygen, says research published today in the Journal of the American Chemical Society [abstract and news at Eurekalert].

This biological molecular complex can use energy from the sun to create hydrogen gas, providing an alternative to electrolysis, the method typically used to split water into its constituent parts. The breakthrough may pave the way for the development of novel ways of creating hydrogen for use as fuel in the future.

Professors Tsuchida and Komatsu from Waseda University, Japan, in collaboration with Imperial College London, synthesised a large molecular complex from albumin, a protein molecule that is found at high levels in blood serum, and porphyrin, a molecule which is used to carry oxygen around the body and gives blood its deep red colour. Porphyrin molecules are normally found combined with metals, and in their natural state in the blood they have an iron atom at their centre. The scientists modified the porphyrin molecule to swap the iron for a zinc atom in the middle, which completely changed the chemistry and characteristics of the molecule.

This modified porphyrin molecule was then combined with albumin; with the albumin molecule itself being modified by genetic engineering to enhance the efficiency of the process. The resulting molecular complex was proven to be sensitive to light, and can capture light energy in a way that allows water molecules to be split into molecules of hydrogen and oxygen.
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Dr Stephen Curry, a structural biologist from Imperial College London's Division of Cell and Molecular Biology who participated in the research explains: "This work has shown that it is possible to manipulate molecules and proteins that occur naturally in the human body by changing one small detail of their make-up, such as the type of metal at the heart of a porphyrin molecule, as we did in this study.

"It's very exciting to prove that we can use these biological structures as a conduit to harness solar energy to separate water out into hydrogen and oxygen. In the long term, these synthetic molecules may provide a more environmentally friendly way of producing hydrogen, which can be used as a 'green' fuel."

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West-Java farmers to produce cassava for ethanol

Quicknote bioenergy investments
Farmers in four districts in the Indonesian province of West-Java will begin growing cassava for a first bioethanol project in the region, a local official told state news agency Antara.

According to Nu'man Abdul Hakim, the province's vice-governor, the farmers from districts will cooperate with South Korean firm LBL Network Co Ltd and be assisted by the West-Java provincial authorities. Representatives of Subang, Indramayu, Sumedang and Kuningan district signed a memorandum of understanding with Kang Yong Soo, president of LBL to make 50,000 hectares of land available to grow cassava, in exchange for a beneficial supply contract.

The investor needs 200,000 hectares of land to take scale-advantages, Hakim said, after which LBL has committed to invest 900 billion rupiah (€750,000/US1 million) to build a first ethanol plant.

Cassava, also known as manioc, is a starch-rich tuber that grows well on degraded land and requires relatively little fertiliser and water inputs. Its starch is already being used to produce ethanol on a large scale in China , Nigeria and Thailand [entry ends here].
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Large-scale introduction of renewables will not lead to higher energy prices - RAND report

A while ago, the RAND corporation published a study on the possible role and effects of renewables in the US energy portfolio. Most media focused on the fact that these renewables - biomass, wind, solar, geothermal - could satsify up to 25% of America's energy needs by 2025. But in fact, the report looked more at what the price effects on energy are when renewables are introduced on a large scale. It is these conclusions that might be more interesting for non-US readers.

The debate on use of renewable energy has largely centered on the tensions between some seeing renewables as socially desirable and others seeing them as economic losers. Even advocates for renewable energy based on environmental benefits have had to acknowledge that these alternative energy sources have been too expensive to compete economically with nonrenewable fossil fuels on a broad scale. However, the idea that renewables are too expensive has most often been based on the current situation or on very short-term projections. When a longer time-frame is taken, the picture changes radically: if 25 percent of the electricity and motor vehicle fuels used in the United States were replaced by renewables by 2025, then this would happen at little or no additional cost. Preconditions: fossil fuel prices must remain 'high enough' and the cost of producing renewable energy must continue to fall in accord with historical trends. The study also deduces that, under these same conditions, it is not necessarily expensive to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Uncertainty about long-term fossil fuel prices
The RAND study, entitled “Impacts on U.S. Energy Expenditures of Increasing Renewable Energy Use” [*.pdf] examined 1,500 simulated cases of varying energy price and technology cost conditions for renewable and nonrenewable resources. The high number of simulations is due to the high degree of uncertainty about future fossil fuel prices. The US Energy Information Administration's (EIA) own projections about future prices have been more often wrong than right, and the EIA outlook changes considerably from year to year. Whereas in its 2005 Annual Energy Outlook, the EIA anticipated that the price of crude oil would fall to around $33 per barrel by 2025, in its 2006 projection, the price of crude was predicted to be at $54 a barrel by 2025 - a difference that makes or breaks the case for renewables:
:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

The same uncertainty holds for natural gas prices, which have increased sharply over the past few years.

For this reason, the RAND study created a model that takes into account these uncertainties and allows for the simulation of a great variety of fossil fuel price and technology cost curve interactions. The analysis of these simulations then helps to identify the circumstances under which the specified renewable energy target (25% by 2025, "25x'25") raises or lowers total energy expenditures for the US.

Results: renewables bring no additional energy expenditures
Renewable energy is shown in the simulations to lower total energy expenditures in virtually all cases in which current energy price and technology cost trends continue. Under a range of plausible futures, therefore, the model results indicate that expanded use of renewables could be achieved at acceptable costs.

Shifting to renewables had adverse impacts on total energy expenditures in cases when (a) fossil fuel prices are lower than current forecasted projections; (b) costs of renewable energy technologies increase or decline less than historical trends as renewables use scales up, and (c) nonrenewable technology costs drop relative to the cost of renewables, the reverse of what has tended to occur as renewable technologies improve.

If renewable technologies continue to improve at historic rates, leading to roughly 20 percent lower renewables costs by 2025, then future energy expenditures in a 25x’25 future might be 0.5 percent higher or lower than the nonrenewables case, essentially breaking even.

One of the more interesting findings of this analysis is the relatively narrow range of expenditure impacts in percentage terms across cases, though the absolute amounts are of note. Indeed, the most extreme of the 1,500 scenarios produced no more than a 6-percent change in energy expenditures, or about US$75 billion in 2025. This includes the most favorable scenario for nonrenewable energy simulated—in which the costs of renewable energy technology rise 30 percent during the next 20 years, while natural gas, oil, and coal prices fell 50 percent from current projections. However, as the Energy Information Administration has shown in recent projections such as its Annual Energy Outlook report, such a rise in energy expenditures would have little or no impact on long-term economic growth (EIA, 2006).

In 2025, such an increase in energy expenditures would amount to roughly one-quarter of a percent of gross domestic product (GDP) in the United States. Similarly, in the best-case scenarios for renewable energy, our renewables case could reduce energy expenditures by about 3 percent, or $40 billion. (All scenarios assume least-cost implementation of the goal at a national scale.) This narrow range helps justify our focus on direct energy expenditures versus broader macroeconomic implications.

In essentially all of the cases considered, electricity expenditures rise. But those increases are more than cancelled out in the cases where total expenditures fall by reductions in the costs of oil, gas, and coal. As renewable energy supplants nonrenewable energy, demand for fuels declines, and this drives down the prices of fossil fuels in the model. The renewables case could displace about 2.5 million barrels a day of petroleum products in the United States in 2025, or 20 percent of total consumption in EIA projections (EIA, 2006).

It is interesting to note that in the computer runs of the renewables goal, more scenarios have lower energy expenditures in 2015 than in 2025. Those findings suggest that, while cost savings from renewable energy will not materialize overnight, they also will not take decades to achieve. These somewhat unexpected findings are due to the fact that, as the penetration of renewable energy rises from 10 percent of the market in 2015 to 25 percent in 2025, the most favorable renewable sites will already be taken; therefore, costs rise as we increase the share of renewables, even while costs per unit fall due to technical advances.

Reducing CO2 is not expensive
The simulations also indicate that, in most cases considered in this study, significant reductions in CO2 emissions can be achieved at a relatively low cost. In 2025, under the 25-percent renewables goal, CO2 emissions from the electricity and fuel sectors would fall by one billion tons. That reduction is equivalent to eliminating one-seventh of the total U.S. CO2 emissions projected for that year and two-thirds of the projected increase expected between now and 2025, according to EIA forecasts (EIA, 2006). It would also reduce emissions of other pollutants or the prices of emissions permits, depending on how the different pollutants are regulated.


In short, if looked at on a longterm scale, the introduction of renewables will most likely not bring additional energy expenditure costs, and allows for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions at no extra cost.

The RAND study is a welcome piece of ammunition in the arsenal of renewable energy advocates. For too long, proponents of a green energy future have been ignored and painted as idealist treehuggers who lack insight into the hard economics of energy. The contrary is true.

More information:
RAND press release on the study: Rand study says renewable energy could play larger role in U.S. energy future under right conditions - November 13, 2006
The study itself: Mark A. Bernstein, Jay Griffin, Robert Lempert, “Impacts on U.S. Energy Expenditures of Increasing Renewable Energy Use” [*.pdf], RAND Infrastructure,
Safety, and Environment (ISE), technical report prepared for the Energy Future Coalition.


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