By Sanjay Suri
BONN, May 31 2004 (IPS)

Shootings in Saudi Arabia, new attacks on oil installations in Iraq, and the headlines these led to could hardly be considered preparation for a conference.

But they have prepared much of the world for looking at a conference on renewable energies in Bonn this week as something more than the stuff of seminars. Renewables – solar, wind and biomass – are now being explored with new urgency as an alternative to oil, not just as a principled indulgence for alternative groups such as the Greens.

The world has gone through this crisis mode before when a hike in oil prices by the Organisation for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) shook the oil market.

But close to two generations later nobody is turning up in Bonn in cars powered by hydrogen or planes that just came in with the wind. They came paying more for fuel in cars, more in air fares as a result of those rising costs.

There are few optimists who believe now that this time around the oil crisis will just pass.

The conference does not of course arise from the current or even the recent oil crisis in Iraq. German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder had declared at the World Summit on Sustainable Development held in Johannnesburg two years back that he would hold a conference on renewables in Germany.

The Johannesburg Renewable Energy Coalition (JREC) set up by Germany following that conference has by now drawn 87 countries as members. From partners in progress to clients for German technology in this field would be no doubt an inevitable step that the German government would not have failed to consider.

The stress in Bonn is on projects, and on political agreement and policy recommendations that would make them possible. At the heart of the conference is the “multi-stakeholder dialogue” that “aims to set the stage for a transparent and participatory conference by enabling an interactive dialogue between civil society, business and governments.”

A draft outcome has been prepared following extensive discussions leading up to the conference.

The political declaration at the conference would reflect a “joint vision of a sustainable energy future.” It is intended to give a political push to efforts for the development and use of renewables. This is expected to be made possible through policy recommendations for governments and for international organisations to adopt and implement.

In an attempt to steer the conference away from the dangers of becoming a talking exercise, participants have been invited to come with projects done or planned. The conference will seek to record both actions and commitments, and find ways of following these up.

Scores of proposals for new energy projects have been received ahead of the conference. Several agencies are due to negotiate implementation of these projects.

The conference follows a controversial decision by the European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, not to set a new target for energy from renewables for the year 2020.

An earlier directive from the Commission had set a target of 22 percent of electricity consumption from renewable energy sources by 2010. But only Germany, Denmark, Spain and Finland are on track to meet their national targets.

The European Renewable Energy Council (EREC) has suggested that half the world’s energy supply can come from renewable energy sources by 2040 if governments and businesses put the required research and development effort into development of renewables.

In the face of this several independent groups say the European Commission is aiming too low by not setting new targets just because the earlier ones will not uniformly be met.

The principal new sources of energy being explored at the conference are solar energy, wind energy and use of biomass. Germany itself has several solar and wind energy projects in place that are producing energy successfully.

Biomass is among the newer possibilities in the renewables. A new report produced by the environmental agency WWF suggests that biomass û fuel derived from agriculture and forest waste û could supply up to 15 percent of the electricity needs in the 30 industrialised countries of the Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) by 2020.

Britain already generates 0.9 percent of its electricity, about 650 MW from biomass, the WWF report says. That is enough to supply 750,000 homes.

The conference will seek to promote renewable energy by way of business, not as a do-good thing for which governments and donor organisations will somehow find money.

The projects due to be negotiated include a renewable energy project in Afghanistan, the funds that are beginning to finance renewable energy in the United States, new policies international banks could adopt in financing renewable energy projects, the strengthening of the World Wind Energy Association, and a close look at solar power projects in Germany. The German parliament draws all of its electricity and heating from solar power.

Inevitably, the conference has drawn environmentalists, because clean energies have a clean fallout. Environment groups will explore the consequences for climate change, for pollution levels, and for waste disposal techniques that can themselves feed into new energy, as with biomass.

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