Sep 05, 2008

The Road to Carbon Neutrality

by Laura Starita

Gas prices have declined a few cents since early August, but the larger issues of energy dependence and global climate change—along with their out-sized impact on the world’s poor—remain as pressing as ever. Even more pressing, perhaps, because there seems to be so little that any individual can do about them. While most advocates pay token attention to the idea that “every little bit helps” they seem almost entirely focused on government regulation and political advocacy as the only way to have a meaningful impact. Which is why the story of how a small agricultural Danish island became a net exporter of wind energy, as told by Elizabeth Kolbert of the New Yorker, is so compelling.

Samso is a small island the size of Nantucket, with 4300 residents in the middle of the North Sea. Ten years ago the Danish government sponsored a “renewable energy contest” in which it invited communities to submit plans for how it would offset carbon emissions. An engineer who didn’t even live on the island submitted a plan for developing wind energy on Samso. The proposal won, and the island received publicity as the “renewable energy island” (though no money). A local, seeing interest in the project, worked for many years within the island’s self-defined “conservative” culture in order to get enough local involvement and consensus to inspire others to join in. Today Samso boasts about a dozen large land-based turbines, another dozen micro-turbines and ten off-shore turbines. Collectively, they produce ten percent more energy than the island needs (including the energy used in cars and other automobiles, the oil and gas for which the wind generation offsets). Most interesting is the fact that many of the locals are investors in the turbines, and receive dividend checks based on how much energy their wind farms produce. A comment from one of the investors drives home the importance of community investment: “We care about the production, because we own the wind turbines. Every time they turn around, it means money in the bank. And, being part of it, we also feel responsible.”

The wind energy movement is not without its problems. Most windy places are remote, far from electric grids which deliver the energy. Wind is also more expensive than the current, albeit distorted, price of fossil fuels, and some view turbine farms as unsightly, a cause of conflict in a failed project off the coast of Cape Cod. Yet wind is attractive partly because it is a true positive-sum energy source. Capturing wind in one area of high blow does not result in less wind elsewhere. For that reason, wind remains an interesting proposition, especially in the Northeast and Plains regions of the United States.

Inspiring as it is, Samso is something of a sustainable exception: a windy place in the middle of one of the world’s wealthiest countries, where money, and political and social will was sufficient to make the unlikely happen. The circumstances are very different for Tajikistan, which is attempting a similar conversation to water power. The Central Asian country has numerous hydroelectric projects either in process or in proposal, including a massive structure called Rogun which, if constructed, would be 100 feet taller than the world’s largest dam and provide 80 percent of the country’s electrical power. In conjunction with existing and in-process hydroelectric infrastructure, Rogun looks like a development boon for the country, for a number of reasons. First, it accords with the popular idea in development circles of promoting sustainable energy practices in low-income and developing countries. Second, hydroelectric capacity could transform Tajikistan—currently a bottom billion nation with an impoverished government at risk of collapse—into a net exporter of renewable energy, creating an actual industry in a country which at present has little more than cotton fields. But the politics of the issue are complex. Unlike wind or sunshine, water dammed in one place changes resource availability downstream. In addition, the multi-lateral agencies which would typically fund such an investment are balking at the projects, with good reason. Tajikistan has a history of false reporting with the IMF, and infrastructure initiatives are less popular currently with agencies like the World Bank, which has seen how easy it is to ‘lose’ funds in large infrastructure projects, given the opportunities to falsify personnel and equipment records. 

Still the vision is appealing: bring reliable, renewable energy to a country of seven million; create an export industry; provide jobs in an impoverished region; possibly even stabilize an unstable regime and prevent a return to civil war. Surely these possibilities warrant a creative search for ways to make Samso and Tajikistan more similar than they appear.