Heat of the moment

Fuelled by outrage over ‘summit fudge’, Jeremy Leggett of Solar Century brings back home the energy of that reaction. We still have a chance, he says, to match the hot air of Johannesburg with real commitments on renewables.

Like many in the renewable energy world, I looked forward to this summer’s Johannesburg summit with a mix of cynicism and optimism. In my view the outcome, the fudge on climate change and renewables targets, the failure to stand up to US and other pro fossil fuel interests, was a scandalous case of abrogating collective responsibility. But on the international stage, as in other walks of life, nothing beats leading by example. Here in the UK, if the prime minister is serious about a sustainable low carbon future, he should immediately match his words in Johannesburg with action to deliver increased investment in solar PV and other renewable technologies.

Summits attended by 60,000 people are by nature disposed to duck the difficult challenges, and gravitate instead towards the lowest common denominator. Yet I’d still cherished hopes for Johannesburg. Part of me still likes to believe that our politicians and business leaders really do mean it when they say they are committed to ‘sustainable development’. Admittedly they had “yet to turn the fine words and intentions of Rio into far-reaching actions”, as a Solar Century briefing put it, but the 2002 summit offered them “a chance to begin making amends”. To say they failed to take it, spectacularly, would be an understatement.

Most of the world’s leading energy companies have (eventually) signed up to the notion that global warming is a reality, and that the world literally cannot afford to carry on as it had for the last 100 years. So far, so good. But ‘sustainable development’ in energy clearly means different things to different people. For me it’s about a zero carbon future, and about taking real steps to deliver practical renewable energy options both here and abroad. For the fossil fuel lobby, it’s about switching investment from coal to oil to gas, and promoting ‘stakeholder dialogue’ with local communities affected by their exploration and production activities.

But while the big carbon players perfect their stakeholder consultation techniques, and then just get on with the major new oil and gas projects anyway, the global carbon arithmetic continues to stack up against all of us. In case anyone in Johannesburg had forgotten, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown that we need cuts in excess of 60% in carbon dioxide emissions, to do no more than stabilise current atmospheric concentrations. And the devastating consequences of climate change, if we don’t take action now, are already becoming obvious. The insurance industry stares at bankruptcy as a result of disasters, coral reefs are dying the world over as their water gets too warm, and low-lying Pacific islands such as Tuvalu are literally disappearing as sea levels rise: their people needed action in Johannesburg, not dithering.

We know what our critics and the vested interests in the fossil fuel lobby will cry. Promoting real advances in renewable energy is ‘not practical’ or ‘too expensive’. And the UK government continues to view proven technologies such as solar PV as options only for the ‘long-term’ - beyond 2020. But in solar PV, as in other micro renewable technologies, we are not starting from zero. Over a million households in the developing world already have solar power. Japan and Germany are delivering major programmes of hundreds of thousands of solar PV roofs. “Serving up to a billion people in the next decade with renewables should be our goal and aspiration,” says Sir Mark Moody-Stuart. The ex-chairman of Shell, he co-chaired the G8 Renewable Energy Task Force, whose report, Renewable Energy: Development That Lasts, sets out a range of practical steps to deliver real change - and should have been required reading at Johannesburg.

So it’s not just Solar Century making the case for binding renewable targets, and real and urgent action on the ground. Our great fear is that the forthcoming UK Energy White Paper, like the Johannesburg Declaration, will fudge the issue. It wouldn’t be the first time that the government’s positive rhetoric had run ahead of its actual policy and investment record. But the optimist in me is still alive and kicking, and desperately hoping that the cynic is proved wrong.

Jeremy Leggett is chief executive of Solar Century and was part of the Greenpeace team at the negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol.

30 October 2002

Jeremy Leggett