Category Archives: Energy

by | 2011-06-11 · 11:05

Report Reveals World Bank’s Role in Fuelling Climate Chaos

BONN [GERMANY], June 11, 2011 – A new report released today by Friends of
the Earth International during the UN climate talks in Bonn this week
shows that the World Bank Group has been increasing its investments in
fossil fuels and promoting corporate-led false solutions to climate
change, including carbon trading, that serve to deepen rather than
alleviate the current environmental crisis.

The report, ‘Catalysing Catastrophic Climate Change’, follows widespread
concerns voiced by developing countries about the growing role of the
World Bank in delivering climate finance.

The report shows how the Bank’s dirty fossil fuel financing is on the
rise, locking countries such as India and South Africa into an even
greater reliance on coal. Furthermore, the Bank is driving the expansion
of carbon markets, an escape hatch for rich industrialised countries from
cutting their emissions, whilst causing ecological damage and the
displacement of communities in the global South. And despite negative
environmental, social, and climate change impacts, the World Bank is
significantly scaling up support for large hydropower.

Despite the Bank’s lending for highly unsustainable projects around the
world, it is seeking an influential role in the UN’s new Green Climate
Fund and in mechanisms to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest
degradation (REDD).

Friends of the Earth International Economic Justice Program Coordinator
Sebastian Valdomir said:

“The World Bank is part of the climate problem, not the climate solution.
Its conflicts of interest, and appalling social and environmental track
record, should immediately disqualify it from playing any role whatsoever
in designing the Green Climate Fund, and in climate finance more
generally.”

The World Bank has been accused of having a conflict of interest with
regards to serving as both the interim trustee of the Green Climate Fund
(fiduciary function) and on the Technical Support Unit designing the fund
(consultancy function). In effect, the Bank would be designing a fund that
is meant to oversee its own activities.

The World Bank’s fossil fuel lending practices and propagation of false
solutions to climate change, such as carbon trading and large dams, should
lead to its exclusion from any role in designing the UNFCCC’s Green
Climate Fund.

Friends of the Earth International calls for climate finance that is
derived from assessed budgetary contributions and other non-market-based
innovative sources – like financial transaction taxes – that is
commensurate with rich countries’ disproportionate role in creating the
problem of climate change.

Policy Analyst at Friends of the Earth United States Kate Horner said:

“The World Bank claims to provide leadership on climate change but, as
shown in this report, it is a major funder of dirty fossil fuel projects,
carbon trading and mega dams. These initiatives deepen poverty and push us
closer to the brink of a global environmental disaster.”

NOTES:
[1] The report shows that in 2010 the Bank hit a new record in terms of
its fossil fuel funding, totaling US$6.6 billion, a 116% increase over
2009. US$4.4 billion of this total was invested in coal, also a record
high, and a 356% increase over the previous year.

[2] The World Bank’s private lending arm, the IFC, approved investment of
US$450 million for the Tata Mundra 4,000-megawatt coal-fired power plant
in Gujarat, India, which is expected to emit an estimated 25.7 million
tons of CO2 annually for at least 25 years.

In April 2010, the World Bank also approved a massive US$3.75 billion
loan, the overwhelming majority of which will finance the 4,800 megawatt
Medupi coal-fired power plant being built by Eskom, South Africa’s
state-owned power utility. The loan will lead to 40 new coalmines opening
up to feed the Medupi plant and related projects. South Africa is
currently responsible for 40% of all of Africa’s greenhouse gas emissions,
and this loan will add to these emissions.

[3] The World Bank has been increasing investment in large hydropower
since 2003, following a lull in such investment in the 1990s, despite that
dams have already displaced 40–80 million people.

[4] The World Bank’s Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) include a Pilot
Program for Climate Resilience (PPCR), which allows for loans for
adaptation, unlike UNFCCC funds and the Adaptation Fund, which has
recently led to protests in Nepal and Bangladesh.

[5] The English version of the report can be found at:
http://www.foei.org/en/resources/publications/pdfs/2011/world-bank-catalysing-catastrophic-climate-change/
The Spanish version of the report can be found at:
http://www.foei.org/es/recursos/publicaciones/pdfs-por-ano/2011/banco-mundial-catalizador-del-cambio-clima301tico-devastador/

[6] Key findings from the report will be presented at a side event at the
UNFCCC climate talks in Bonn, Germany on Saturday 11 June: 18:15—19:45,
WIND, Ministry of the Environment building.

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by | 2011-05-11 · 15:52

IPCC: Let’s Destroy our Forests to Save the Planet!

Yes, more oxymoronic logic from UN.  Let’s massively increase the demand for trees at the same time that we promote a major program to supposedly “Reduce Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation.”  Don’t try to figure it out logically, you will only wind up hurting your head…

–The GJEP Team

Why Does the IPCC Want Us to Cut Down Trees?

Posted by BRYAN WALSH Tuesday, May 10, 2011 at 3:20 pm

Yesterday the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) came out with an early summary of a new report projecting the future of renewable energy. As with many international studies of the sort, readers were free to use parts of the results towards whichever conclusion they’d already reached on alternative power and climate change. Optimistic greens could be cheered by the IPCC’s promise that renewable sources could provide 77% of the world’s energy by 2050, up from 13% in 2008, as long as governments adopted the right bundle of policies. Skeptics could point to the enormous price tag of those policies—the IPCC estimates that such a shift could cost up to $15 trillion over the next couple of decades, more than the entire U.S. government debt. The bottom line: a major shift to renewables may be doable, but as IPCC economist Ottmar Edenhofer said, it would be “technically and politically very challenging.”

No real surprise there, as Andrew Revkin pointed out on Dot Earth yesterday:

The document doesn’t take readers much beyond what is already well established: that without sustained and focused climate and energy policies by governments around the world, the potential of renewable energy technologies to compete with fossil fuels remains deeply limited.

But as Nathanial Gronewold of Climatewire wrote in a smart piece today, the IPCC’s estimates may actually be much more optimistic than they seem, even with the high costs the group cites. That’s because the IPCC counts as a renewable energy source “traditional biomass”—the use of wood for heating and cooking, either as charcoal or directly burnt. As Gronewold notes:

The latest IPCC report estimates that in 2008, the renewable energy sources under their review contributed 12.9 percent of the world’s main energy supply, measured in a thermal energy output unit called an exajoule. Half of that is from traditional biomass, the IPCC admits, and the group offers little justification for including this most primitive source of energy in its calculations.

IPCC researchers say their estimates show traditional biomass usage shrinking over time, to be gradually placed by more modern biomass generation, whereby trees felled are actually replanted. But charts showing the possible scenarios of the growth of renewables’ share of energy still show biomass as the top source, even out to 2050.

The IPCC’s blending of charcoal production with modern practices like biomass cogeneration on farms or wood waste burning near cities makes it difficult to determine how much traditional practices are to be replaced by more modern ones. But the IPCC admits that traditional biomass’s share is larger, and the report suggests that its consumption will only fall slightly over the coming decades while modern biomass’s share expands gradually.

In one sense, of course, biomass can be considered a renewable fuel. If you cut down a tree and burn it for fuel, the carbon that is released can be absorbed by a replacement tree. That’s renewable in a way that oil—a finite source—would never be. But the dependence on biomass for energy is already a major component in deforestation and habitat loss for endangered species. For all the focus on logging and the clearcutting of trees for agriculture in countries like Brazil, a major source of deforestation comes from the use of trees for basic energy by those who live off the grid—whether they choose to or not. As if that’s not bad enough, traditional biomass is an incredibly inefficient source of energy, and a major cause of indoor air pollution, which is why it’s only used by the poorest populations in the world.

A future where traditional biomass remains a major source of energy is not a sustainable one—not for the climate, and not for the world’s poor. The IPCC likely knows that—the summary report cautions policymakers that any policies on biomass need to take into account the impact on existing forests and land use. But that fact shouldn’t be buried in the report. If we don’t count all biomass as renewable—and we shouldn’t—getting to a clean energy system by mid-century will likely prove even harder and more expensive than it looks today.

Read more: http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2011/05/10/why-does-the-ipcc-want-us-to-cut-down-trees/#ixzz1M3l8TjCp

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Filed under Bioenergy / Agrofuels, Climate Change, Energy, False Solutions to Climate Change, Pollution, UNFCCC

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by | 2010-12-02 · 16:53

Photo Essay: First 2 Protests at Cancún UN Climate Convention

Two Photo essays by Orin Langelle/GJEP-GFC:

Wastepickers protest outside of UN Negotiations, 1 Dec

Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) and Global Alliance of Wastepickers and Allies (GAWA) stage protest in front of the entrance to the Exposition Center where the UN climate negotiations are taking place.  All photos by Orin Langelle/ GJEP-GFC

GAIA’s Ananda Tan negotiates with security to allow the protest to continue

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Indigenous Peoples Protest Canada’s Tarsands Gigaproject on 2 December

The Indigenous Environmental Network and allies protest the Tar Sands gigaproject scheme in front of the Moon Palace where UN climate negotiations are taking place.  All photos by Orin Langelle/ GJEP-GFC

Canada’s massive tarsands gigaproject draws protest from Indigenous Peoples who come from the communities it is and will impact

Maude Barlow, of the Council of Canadians, speaks out against Canada’s toxic tarsands gigaproject

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Filed under Actions / Protest, Climate Change, Energy, Indigenous Peoples, Photo Essays by Orin Langelle, Tar Sands, UNFCCC

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