Sustainable Energy

Klaus D. John, Dirk Rübbelke, Dirk T. G. Rübbelke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• eBook ISBN: 9781136899607
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Commerce
• Subtopic: Commerce Général

Rising fuel prices during recent years and the threat of global warming have reinforced public and scientific interest in the issue of sustainable energy, with the term sustainability understood as having economic, environmental and social dimensions.

Renewable energy is seen as an effective means to address several problems simultaneously, including climate change, exploitation of non-renewable resources, the high volatility of energy prices on the global markets, dependency on fuels from politically unstable countries (energy-insecurity) and the transfer of wealth to these countries.

This book addresses these and related topics including the diffusion of renewable technologies. Policies to induce sustainable energy use and production are discussed by researchers from a range of different disciplines. The result is a use-oriented and multidisciplinary perspective concerning policies to support sustainable energy use and production, which will be of great use to researchers and academics alike.

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Sustainable energy

An introduction to the topic

Klaus D. John and Dirk T.G. Rübbelke

I Introduction

Before the world economy was hit by the financial crisis the fuel prices and the prices for other commodities had increased rapidly. This fact together with the threat of global warming led to a renewed interest in sustainable development in the public and in the media. In parallel, the European Union has committed itself not only to promote sustainable development in Europe but to play a pioneering role in the worldwide efforts to combat climate change and to foster sustainable development.

The use of energy from renewable sources plays a pivotal role in every sustainability strategy for it is an effective way to counteract several problems at the same time: climate change, shortages of non-renewable resources, the high volatility of world energy prices, the dependency on commodities from politically unstable regions, and welfare losses to these countries.

An alternative, or better, a supplement to the promotion of the use of renewables is the increase in energy efficiency. A reduction of energy consumption via an increase in energy efficiency seems to be an especially attractive strategy of sustainable development for it may avoid disadvantages possibly linked to the use of renewables. Disadvantages of renewables may be due to adverse side effects like rival uses, use of herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers when growing feedstock, etc. We will return to this issue later when discussing one example of renewable energy.

This introductory chapter is organized as follows. In Section II, we will introduce and discuss several aspects of sustainability and sustainable energy. Section III deals with the EU Sustainable Development Strategy and the development of some of the Sustainable Development Indicators relevant to the theme ‘sustainable energy’. In Section IV, we investigate the chances and limits of renewable energy by discussing the example of biomass-to-liquids. The final section of this chapter will provide some conclusions and an overview of the rest of this volume.

II Sustainability and sustainable energy

The now widely accepted definition of sustainability stems from the so-called Brundtland Report: ‘Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). But the roots of the concept of sustainability date back much farther. In fact, the first document mentioning the idea of sustainability dates back to 1560 and was published not far away from the town Chemnitz in Saxony: due to the high demand of construction wood for mining purposes the Kursächsische Forstordnung required ‘eine vor und bleibende und beharrliche Nutzung’ (a steady or sustainable use) of the forests of Saxony. The first document that uses the German term for sustainability, Nachhaltigkeit, is the book Sylvicultura Oeconomica written by von Carlowitz in 1713 (von Carlowitz 2000). (By the way: von Carlowitz was born in the village of Oberrabenstein which is today a part of Chemnitz.) It is true, however, that von Carlowitz coined the term Nachhaltigkeit in the narrow sense of a sustainable use of forests. In a broader sense, the term ‘sustainability’ was employed probably the first time in The Limits to Growth where Meadows et al. used it to describe the state of the world that is sustainable without sudden and uncontrollable collapse (Meadows et al. 1979).

The modern use of the concept of sustainability often emphasizes that there are three dimensions of sustainability: the ecological dimension, the economic dimension, and the social dimension. These dimensions are also often called the three pillars of sustainability.

When reflecting on the term sustainable energy it is quite natural to refer to the definition of sustainability in general. Following the terminology of the Brundtland Report one can define sustainable energy as the provision and use of energy that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

As it is the case with the definition of sustainability in general, there is quite a lot of ambiguity linked to this definition of sustainable energy. One point is the distinction between weak and strong sustainability. Whereas weak sustainability allows for a trade-off between natural capital and man-made capital, this is not true for strong sustainability: strong sustainability requires leaving natural capital untouched. Similar questions arise with respect to sustainable energy: should the concept of sustainable energy allow for the use of, for example, fossil fuels for the time period needed to switch from conventional energy systems to renewable energy, provided that the sources used up are substituted by newly developed sources? And should the concept of sustainable energy allow for the use of fission power, possibly only for a transitional time period, provided that appropriate technology ensures that future generations have comparable access to nuclear fuels as the current generation? Given the current state of technology, answering the latter question in the affirmative would mean to use fast breeder reactors, which is highly disputed in many European countries.

There are a lot of other terms that are either used interchangeably with sustainable energy or with a slightly different meaning: renewable energy, green energy, alternative energy, etc. It seems sensible to make a distinction between the named concepts and sustainable energy. In this sense, the term sustainable energy stresses the fact that the energy stems from sources that can provide energy for an, in principle, unlimited period of time.

In contrast to renewable energy, the term sustainable energy is often used in the broader sense of covering also energy efficiency. Renewable energy and energy efficiency are often said to be the two pillars of a sustainable energy policy (Prindle et al. 2007). Both pillars refer to energy supply and energy demand, respectively.

A policy towards the employment of green energy implies a switch to an energy supply mix that produces lower emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. But as long as energy demand increases as it did in the past it is very unlikely that such a policy will decrease the overall amount of greenhouse gas emissions: the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions due to a greener energy mix will be overcompensated by the increase of greenhouse gas emissions due to the higher energy demand.

The increase in energy demand is to be counteracted by policy measures aiming at a more efficient energy use. Examples of a more efficient energy use are better insulated houses, less fuel-consuming combustion engines, and less energy-consuming household appliances. It is argued that only a strategy employing both pillars can achieve a sustainable energy economy (Prindle et al. 2007).

Energy efficiency may be interpreted in a very broad sense. In that sense it encompasses every aspect of the demand side. But in order to structure the problem of a sustainable energy future we propose to make a distinction between technical measures to increase the efficiency of energy converters (like better thermal insulation, less fuel-consuming combustion engines, etc.) and a change in lifestyle towards less energy-consuming behaviour. Whereas the advancement of energy from green sources and the encouragement of energy efficiency rely on technology and technological progress, the change in lifestyle, which implies personal sacrifices, requires a societal decision accepted by a broad majority of the people. The change in lifestyle constitutes a third pillar of a sustainable energy future.

It makes sense to even distinguish a fourth pillar of sustainable energy: in Europe and many other regions of the world green sources of energy are not located at the places where the energy is needed. For example, in Germany an important source for green energy is wind power. The best places to harvest wind power are found in the north of Germany. And in fact, the largest fraction of energy from wind power is obtained in the north. (And this fraction will further increase when the planned off-shore wind parks go on stream.) But most of the energy is needed in densely populated regions that are, in general, located far away from the coast (e.g. Rhine-Main area, Munich area). The regional mismatch of green energy supply and energy demand often requires the transportation of energy over far distances. (Another example is the abundance of electrical energy from water power in Norway and the high demand in the industrialized countries in central Europe.) The transportation of energy from source to sink implies leakages that are in contrast to the goal of sustainable energy.

The four pillars of sustainable energy discussed point to the fact that sustainable energy is an extremely diverse topic encompassing many different possible approaches, but not a single sufficient instrument.

The evaluation of the relevance of possible measures with respect to their ability to get closer to the goal is even harder if one takes into account that the four pillars of sustainable energy are no substitutes for the three dimensions of sustainability: an instrument that leads closer to the goal of sustainable energy will usually also lead closer to ecological sustainability. But it still has to be evaluated with respect to the economic and to the social dimension.

Given the sketched complexity one cannot expect that this book will give a final answer to the question what a sustainable energy future will look like. What is achieved is to pick up several aspects of the points discussed above and to analyse different possible measures that may lead closer to the goal.

Before proceeding to this analysis, the next section provides an overview of some important indicators of sustainable energy by discussing them in the context of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy.

III Indicators of sustainable energy in the context of the EU Sustainable Development Strategy

The European Council states that sustainable development ‘is an overarching objective of the European Union set out in the Treaty, governing all the Union’s policies and activities’ (EU 2006: para. 1). The EU Sustainable Development Strategy (SDS) aims at setting out a framework to better live up to this general objective: ‘The main challenge is to gradually change our current unsustainable consumption and production patterns and the non-integrated approach to policy-making’ (EU 2006: para. 2)

The SDS was first adopted by the European Council in Gothenburg in 2001. It was extended by incorporation of external dimensions by the European Council in Barcelona in 2002. In June 2006, building on the grounds of the 2001 version but taking into account the results of a broad revision process, the EU Sustainable Development Strategy was renewed. The European Council claims that this renewed version of the SDS sets out ‘a single, coherent strategy on how the EU will more effectively live up to its long-standing commitment to meet the challenges of sustainable development’ (EU 2006: para. 4). The identification and development of actions to improve policies towards sustainability is central to the renewed EU SDS.

In order to reach these goals, th...

Table of contents

• Routledge explorations in environmental economics
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Preface
• Abbreviations
• 1 Sustainable energy
• 2 Low cost but totally renewable electricity supply for a huge supply area
• 3 Market based or command and control?
• 4 More heat than light?
• 5 Combining insights from economics and social psychology to explain environmentally significant consumption
• 6 Germany on the way to a full supply on the basis of renewable energy
• 7 Discussions
• Index