Energy and Development

Frauke Urban

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781351047463
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi sullo sviluppo globale

This book explores the complex relationship between energy and development and discusses the core issues and concepts surrounding this growing area of research and policy.

In the field of energy and development, the world faces two major challenges: (1) Providing energy access to the roughly one billion people worldwide who do not have access to electricity and the nearly three billion people worldwide who do not have access to clean cooking fuels; (2) achieving socioeconomic development while limiting global atmospheric temperature increases to 2 degrees Celsius to mitigate climate change. Taking stock of progress, Frauke Urban explores the key issues surrounding these goals and addresses the policy responses aimed at ending energy poverty and achieving sustainable development. She outlines various options for delivering energy access, analyses past and prospective energy transitions and examines the social, environmental, economic and technological implications of these possibilities. Taking a holistic and multi-disciplinary approach and containing useful teaching resources, Energy and Development provides a comprehensive overview of this complex field of study.

This book will be a great resource for postgraduate and undergraduate students, scholars, practitioners and policymakers working in the fields of energy studies, international development, environmental studies, industrial engineering, as well as social sciences that relate to energy and development.

1
Energy, poverty and development

The challenges

Energy and development: why is it relevant?

Energy and development are inextricably linked. Energy is needed for basic human needs such as for cooking food, boiling water, space heating and cooling as well as lighting and other household activities. Energy is also necessary for income-generating activities like agriculture, industries and services. Energy is crucial for enabling modern transportation, Information and communications technology (ICT), healthcare and sanitation. Yet, about 1 billion people worldwide, mainly in rural areas, do not have access to electricity, and about 2.7 billion people rely on traditional biomass – such as fuelwood, charcoal, crop residues and dung – for basic needs such as cooking and heating (IEA, 2019a).

While challenges such as energy poverty continue to exist, a lot of progress has been made over the last few decades, and large-scale changes have occurred:

• First, providing modern energy for human development is today a global, regional and national priority. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), particularly the energy goal SDG 7, and the United Nations’ Sustainable Energy for All (SE4All) initiative are aiming to provide universal modern energy access to everyone worldwide by 2030. These global targets have been translated into national targets and remain a priority for many countries.
• Second, electricity generated from renewable energy such as solar photovoltaics (PV), wind energy, hydropower and modern biomass are today economically competitive compared with electricity generated from fossil fuels. The price drop for solar PV has been particularly striking in the last few years. Renewable energy has established itself as an important part of the global energy mix over the last couple of decades, and more and more countries are diversifying their energy mix by relying on their domestic resources of renewable energy.
• Third, the development of emerging economies like China, India, Brazil and South Africa has not only changed the world geopolitically and in terms of economic power, but also in terms of environmental impact and environmental leadership. This is very clear in the field of energy, climate and development. Most striking is the development of China, which emerged into an economic, political, demographic and also environmental global power. Since 2007, China has been the world’s largest emitter of carbon dioxide (CO₂) and the world’s largest energy consumer. Today China accounts for about 20% of global energy consumption and about 30% of global CO₂ emissions and has a high dependency on polluting coal – making up nearly 70% of the country’s electricity generation (IEA, 2019a). On the other hand, China is also the world’s largest investor and installer of renewable energy including hydropower, wind energy and solar PV. Its policymaking is actively driving forward climate action. China’s domestic energy and climate policy therefore matters globally, and the country has also become a major player in the international climate negotiations.
• Fourth, after many years of standstill, the international community managed to negotiate a universal climate agreement for all countries, the Paris Agreement. It aims to avoid dangerous climate change by limiting atmospheric temperature increases to below 2 degrees Celsius. Many challenges remain as currently the policy ambitions are not in line with the 2 degrees goal and global emissions are still increasing rather than decreasing. Energy plays an important role in climate change mitigation, and the next few years will be crucial for advancing low carbon energy transitions in all sectors to mitigate global climate change.

The purpose of this book

Energy and development are therefore at the heart of wider international, regional, national and local policy agendas that aim to deliver human development, while at the same time living within the planetary boundaries. This book serves as an introduction to and an overview of the field of energy and development. It addresses the issues raised above and many more. Many issues are highlighted both conceptually and theoretically, as well as in applied terms that are relevant for real-life challenges faced by governments, businesses, donors, NGOs, institutions, the scientific community and the public. The textbook is relevant for master’s students, advanced undergraduate students, postgraduate students, as well as academics, policymakers and practitioners who are interested in energy and development issues. The book is written from an interdisciplinary perspective, combining relevant knowledge from development studies, environmental studies, engineering, economics and social sciences.

After each chapter there are thought-provoking, interactive exercises. These exercises are not merely testing or repeating the knowledge that has been read, but they rather encourage the development of the reader’s own analytical skills, critical thoughts and further understanding by applying the chapter’s content to real-life cases. For example, the exercises will ask for applying specific concepts or theories to real cases by analysing data from the World Bank or the International Energy Agency; or, they will ask for exploring a specific case for which a presentation should be made or a speech should be prepared, as if the reader were a specific actor (e.g. a policymaker urging their parliament to take action, or an organisation bidding for donor funding). The aim is to build up the reader’s understanding of the subject area by first reading about it and then actively applying it.

The link between energy and development

What is energy?

Energy is a physical term that describes the capacity of a physical system to perform work. Energy exists in several forms such as thermal energy (heat), radiant energy (light), mechanical energy (kinetic), electric energy, chemical energy, nuclear energy and gravitational energy. There is also a difference between potential energy that is being stored, such as the water in the reservoir of a hydropower dam, and kinetic or working energy, such as the energy produced when the water is released and the turbines are operating (Cutnell & Johnson, 2012).

Energy is also a physical unit. It is usually measured in joules ( J). In physics, the law of conservation of energy suggests that within a closed system the total energy remains constant and cannot change. This means that energy is conserved. Energy cannot be created or destroyed; however, it can change its form (Cutnell & Johnson, 2012). An example is thermal energy – such as from a thermal coal-fired power station – that is being converted into electric energy; or kinetic energy – such as from the water of a hydropower dam that produces electric energy (Goldemberg & Lucon, 2009).

Energy carriers and energy sources can be differentiated. An energy carrier is a substance or system that contains potential energy that can be released and used as actual energy, in the form of mechanical work, for heating or for operating chemical and physical processes. For example, energy carriers include batteries, coal, dammed water, electricity, hydrogen, natural gas, petrol and wood. Energy carriers do not produce energy; however, they ‘carry’ the energy until it is released.

Energy sources can be divided in renewable and non-renewable energy sources. The term refers to the resources that are being used for the energy, for example coal or wind. Renewable energy resources are abundantly available and can be renewed over time, such as energy from wind, the sun (solar), water (hydropower) and biomass. Non-renewable energy sources come from resources that are finite and can be depleted, such as fossil fuel energy resources like coal, oil and natural gas, but also nuclear energy, such as uranium (Goldemberg & Lucon, 2009).

We can differentiate between primary and secondary energy. Primary energy has not been subject to any conversion or processing and contains raw fuels, such as crude oil or solar energy. Secondary energy has been subject to conversion or processing, such as from crude oil to petrol for powering vehicles. Another example is the conversion of solar power to electricity (Goldemberg & Lucon, 2009).

What are W, kW, MW, GW, TW and PW and how do they relate to energy?

Answer

These are units of power that measure the rate of energy conversion in the International System of Units (SI). The basic unit is expressed in watts (W), named after the inventor James Watt (1736–1819). One watt equals one joule per second.

• watt = 1 W
• kilowatt = 1 kW = 103 W
• megawatt = 1 MW = 106 W
• gigawatt = 1 GW = 109 W
• terawatt = 1 TW = 1012 W
• petawatt = 1 PW = 1015 W

The next section will discuss the term development, followed by a section on the links between energy and development.

What is development?

There are various definitions for development and despite its universal use, there is no universally agreed definition. Some scholars such as Robert Chambers simply define development as ‘ “good” change’ (Chambers, 1995: 174); others associate it with progress and/or modernisation, or economic growth. Even others make a distinction between formal development, such as development aid, and development as a deeper process of change, such as capitalism (Urban et al., 2011). Hart (2001: 650) distinguishes between ‘big D’ and ‘little d’ development whereby

‘big D’ development [is] defined as a post-second world war project of intervention in the ‘third world’ that emerged in the context of decolonization and the cold war, and ‘little d’ development or the development of capitalism as a geographically uneven, profoundly contradictory set of historical processes.

(cited by Urban et al., 2011: 6–7; Urban & Nordensvärd, 2013: 10)

There are various approaches to Western development thinking, including rights-based approaches, which focus on human rights and/or increasing the voice of marginalised groups (Mohan & Holland, 2001; Hickey & Mohan, 2005; Urban et al., 2011). There are also human development approaches, which incorporate broader development objectives than economic ones and aim to expand human choices and strengthen human capabilities related to education, health, income and gender ( Jolly, 2003; Urban et al., 2011). There are also approaches that are based on concerns for the poorest ‘bottom billion’ (Collier, 2007; Urban et al., 2011). There are further approaches that come from different disciplines such as anthropology, economics and political science, and different perspectives such as gender, globalisation and the environment. In other parts of the world, such as China, different streams of non-Western development thinking prevail which are more related to these countries’ own experiences, culture and philosophy of development (Urban et al., 2011; Urban & Nordensvärd, 2013).

While humans have been concerned about economic development and social transformation for centuries, the concept of international development and development studies as a discipline is reported to have emerged in the late 1940s, 1950s and early 1960s. Development studies began as a post-Second World War project in support of poorer ‘developing countries’. ‘Development’ was driven by so-called developed Western/Northern countries. ‘Development’ has often been accused of paternalism and trusteeship (Cowen & Shenton, 1996; Urban et al., 2011). Back in the 1950s, development policy was dominated by the goal of achieving modernity, by an optimist worldview, by expecting the state to play an active, positive role and by focussing on national development (Humphrey, 2007; Urban et al., 2011; Urban & Nordensvärd, 2013).

While development studies started with optimism after the Second World War, the concept of development, and development studies as a discipline, has endured criticism for many years (Urban et al., 2011). This is linked to ongoing problems such as widespread poverty in many parts of the world; global neoliberalism, which sees states as part of the problem rather than part of the solution (Humphrey, 2007); as well as the occurrence of various transboundary phenomena. Challenges like the global financial crisis, terrorism and large-scale environmental problems, such as climate change and natural resource depletion, are seen to require international and multilateral solutions (Urban et al., 2011). One other major shift in development policy is due to the rise of emerging economies like China, India, Brazil, South Africa and states of the Middle East (Urban et al., 2011). Their rise questions dominant ‘Western’ approaches to development (Humphrey, 2007). Unfortunately, the optimism of earlier decades has been replaced by some pessimism, including development being declared dead in the 1990s by both the political right and the political left (Hart, 2001; Urban et al., 2011). Fifteen years later, Rist argued that development as practised and imposed by the West was ‘toxic’ (Rist, 2007; Urban et al., 2011; Urban & Nordensvärd, 2013).

The notion of ‘reimagining development’ therefore prevails within the discipline of development studies, with new thinking of what development policy and practice means today, who is driving it and for whom, particularly in view of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to be achieved by 2030. In the field of energy and development, the most important initiatives are SDG 7 on sustainable energy and the UN energy access initiative SE4All that provides positive and forward-looking pathways to achieving access to sustainable energy for everyone worldwide to enable sustainable development (SE4All, 2014).

Please note: The terms ‘developing’ country and ‘developed’ country are used in line with international practice. Nevertheless, the author acknowledges the following: First, there is a wide range of so-called developing countries, ranging from the least developed countries to low-income countries, lower-middle-income countries, upper-middle-income countries and emerging economies. Some of these terms overlap. For example, China is an e...