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  • Offshore Wind Makes Sense for China

     

    Offshore wind particularly makes sense for the provinces on the Eastern coastal region, from Guangdong to Shandong, which have the highest population densities. They have tremendous offshore wind resources which, in cases such as Guangdong and Fujian, are among the best in China. These cities are also where the bulk of China’s manufacturing capability is to be found.  By developing offshore wind farms close to the coastal regions where electricity demand is highest, China can avoid the headache of having to create a series of long distance transmission lines to bring onshore wind power from the far North and the West of the country, where most onshore wind facilities are based.

    Offshore wind does involve high initial investment costs, and this has no doubt been a factor hindering development of China’s offshore capacity. But the long-term advantages of offshore — minimal running costs, longer-lasting turbines, higher and steadier volumes — outweigh the short-term disadvantages.

    The role of China’s government to drive forward offshore wind power is crucial. Proper government incentives are needed to overcome the higher investment costs associated with offshore wind. China’s government recognizes this and has taken steps to push forward the commercialization of offshore wind energy. China successfully installed its first offshore wind farm earlier this year, in the East China Sea near Shanghai. It is expected to become operational in May 2010. There are many other proposed projects, based off the coast of Guangdong, Fujian, Zhejiang, Jiangsu and Shandong Provinces.

    However, there are large gaps in China’s offshore wind power expertise. While the pace of the market’s growth has been impressive, Chinese firms are still playing catch-up in terms of advanced offshore manufacturing and engineering. To realize China’s full offshore wind potential, technology transfer from developed countries with experience in offshore wind is vital.

    As a world leader in offshore wind energy, Scotland is a ready partner for China in developing its offshore capacity. Scottish firms such as SgurrEnergy are already actively involved in providing consultancy services to Chinese firms.  In fact, SgurrEnergy has been appointed by the EU-China Energy & Environment Programme to advise on the potential for China to exploit its offshore wind resource, and it will also work in partnership with the China Meteorological Administration (CMA) to assess whether it is economically viable to construct offshore wind farms along a 10,000-kilometre stretch of coastline from Fujian to Shandong.  

    Scottish companies SeaEnergy Renewables, one of the only companies in the world with deepwater offshore wind experience, and Crown Estates, focused on the lesser of the U.K.’s deep waters, will be visiting with the Scottish delegation to the China Wind Power 2009 exposition to enhance their growing collaborative relationship with the Chinese government and Chinese wind power manufacturers.  We believe that continued cross-border co-operation such as this will create many opportunities for mutual gain. 

    Most Chinese MW-class wind turbine generator (WTG) manufacturers also remain at R&D or prototype stage. Similarly, many local component manufacturers and service providers are not yet fully capable of meeting the sector’s needs. China’s wind farm developers, meanwhile, have limited practical knowledge or experience of offshore wind farms.

    There are great opportunities for experienced firms to work with China to build its capabilities in WTG system design and manufacturing, offshore power transmission, offshore wind measurement, wind farm design, installation engineering, access solutions as well as maintenance and services. With larger machines comes the need for better-designed substructures capable of coping with the forces involved in such giant wind turbines. Scotland has led the way in this field and applied such substructures not only to large wind turbines such as REpower’s 5-MW turbines but also in the deepest water yet reached by offshore wind. This is a jacket structure technology from the oil and gas industry, an industry in which Scotland has a long and distinguished heritage, applied to offshore wind. 

    Scotland now possesses some 25 percent of Europe’s wind resources and is a recognised world leader in offshore wind. We boast a vast supply base of innovative small and medium size companies who are pivotal in turning emerging technologies into commercial opportunities and securing business gains through technological advantages. Scottish companies are researching a new hydraulic transmission system for turbines, innovative blade manufacturing techniques, operations and maintenance of crane systems and application of various techniques to process gas and oil and operate deep-sea wind power plants.

    As well as tapping into the sector’s latest innovations, China also has the chance to learn from the past mistakes of more experienced countries. For example, it will be tempting for China to start building wind farms in tidal flats or very shallow water, but the lessons learned in the UK’s offshore wind market should be heeded and the problems associated with such sites avoided. To build wind farms offshore one needs a proper water depth for full-time access during the construction period and to avoid later problems for operations and maintenance activity.

    China’s government has been active in developing the country’s offshore wind capacity. However, there are some restrictions to foreign investment and trade in China’s offshore wind sector that will need to be addressed if China is to fully benefit from the knowledge transfer it requires.  Once those are addressed, we see great potential for collaboration between China and Scotland in renewable energy technology transfer, and are working to support Scottish firms in establishing links with their Chinese counterparts to make the most of these opportunities. We are confident that China’s government will continue to strike the right balance between nurturing the domestic offshore wind industry and allowing foreign firms to play a role in developing China’s offshore wind capacity.

    Frank Boyland is Director, Asia for Scottish Development International, a Scottish government organization tasked with promoting international trade for Scottish firms and inward investment to Scotland.  Mr. Boyland is responsible for further enhancing Scotland’s strong trade and investment links with the Asia Pacific region, overseeing operations across SDI’s ten offices in China, Japan, India, Korea, Singapore, and Australia.  Mr. Boyland’s background is in electronic engineering and he has over 22 years experience within the semi-conductor industry, including strategic posts for Chartered Semiconductor in Singapore and National Semiconductor UK in Scotland. Mr. Boyland was educated at James Watt College in Greenock, Scotland where he completed an HNC Electrical & Electronic Engineering as well as an HNC in Marketing, Economics and Advertising.

  • Where are we up to with draft texts in Copenhagen?

    Where are we up to with draft texts in Copenhagen?

    Blog Post | Blog of Christine Milne
    Tuesday 15th December 2009, 10:53am
    by TimHollo in

    As we head into the final frantic days of Copenhagen, all the work has boiled down to draft negotiating texts for the two streams of negotiations – the Kyoto stream and the non-Kyoto stream (known as KP and LCA, or long-term cooperative action). The two streams were separated at the Montreal meeting, after the Kyoto Protocol came into force, as a way of keeping non-Kyoto countries in the tent, but, if there is to be agreement here, the streams must now be brought together in a way which will satisfy the competing interests of all the countries and negotiating blocs involved.

    A thumbnail sketch would show the world divided into three general blocs with broadly aligned positions:

    Monday in Copenhagen at 2.45pm.

    Blog Post | Blog of Christine Milne
    Tuesday 15th December 2009, 10:47am
    by TimHollo in

    Crisis in Copenhagen: Climate Talks Suspended

    Tensions are rising as developing countries again walked out of the talks because there is no progress on the Kyoto Protocol discussions. Instead priority is being given to the Long term Co-operative Action track (known as LCA). Developing countries want the Kyoto Protocol to continue and they see the actions of the EU, USA and Australia in demanding simultaneous action from developing countries, as a move to dump the Kyoto Protocol. By prioritising the LCA track the President is seen as favouring the powerful developed countries. This is a very bad look for the Danish government and seriously undermines any likelihood of a “political” outcome, let alone a legally binding one.

    Australia‘s Reputation at stake on land use

    Talks in Copenhagen are going backwards on protection of forests and accounting from emissions from land use. It seems that negotiations at the level of officials are stalled and everything depends on the Ministers arriving this week.

  • It’s the poor who will pay for copenhagen circus.

     

    While public attention is focused on debates about emissions reduction targets and peak emissions years, it is in second-tier negotiations that green groups are having the greatest influence.

    A motley crew of negotiators representing Bangladesh, Bolivia, Ghana and India have put into technology transfer negotiating texts the scrapping of intellectual property rights necessary to attract private investment in the development of climate-friendly technologies that are needed to cut emissions.

    Related Coverage

    In deforestation discussions, greens are attempting to limit developing country conversion of forest lands to agriculture use that could achieve the dual purpose of carbon sequestration and poverty alleviation. And when they’re not thrusting themselves into negotiations they’re providing spectacles for the media such as last week’s Greenpeace resuscitation of a giant inflatable globe dying from a high temperature.

    The solution was for some activists dressed up as doctors to give needles to the globe injected with “adaptation finance”, “technology transfer” and “political will” wrapped up with some “international binding” in the form of bandages.

    On Tuesday an “angry mermaid” will award a business group the honour of being the most aggressive at “lobbying to block effective action to tackle the (climate change) problem”.

    But if there are businesses trying to stop an agreement they’re being awfully quiet.

    Text book multilateral institution conferences generally involve governments wanting negotiations to head in one direction, business in another and non-government organisations in a third.

    But in the Copenhagen conference all are swimming up the same stream because climate change provides the perfect marriage of the interests of big, green, non-governmental organisations, big government and big business.

    Over the weekend that bridged the fortnight’s negotiations, the Confederation of Danish Industry organised the Bright Green Expo that includes a trade show for companies to spruik their technology to reduce emissions.

    Wind farm manufacturers Vestas and Siemens have advertised in train stations used by the delegates to get to the conference centre.

    Big business isn’t fighting an agreement, it’s trying to find ways to explain why they are part of the climate solution so they can coax governments to regulate in their interests and attract subsidies for otherwise unviable commercial products.

    Not that big government minds because they can use climate change as an excuse to rein in the free hand of private enterprise and swell bureaucracy.

    The fact that the Australian government has 114 registered delegates, exceeding the size of India and Britain’s delegations, shows the bureaucratic regulatory threat of a Copenhagen agreement and policy instruments like an emissions trading scheme.

    The biggest opponents of a broad, sweeping international agreement aren’t business but poor countries because they know they cannot afford the green man’s burden.

    It is why attempts to get the Indian and Chinese governments to take on significant emissions reduction targets will fail because there’s no choice between two weeks of criticism from the 20-strong Australian Youth Climate Coalition delegates, against a lifetime of criticism from the billions of people who have to live with the consequences.

    The tragedy of Copenhagen is that the impact of any agreement on the world’s poor has largely been lost among the self-indulgent circus caused by rich country green activists who’d rather see themselves on television back home.

    Not that it should be a surprise. By comparison to the 21,000 Copenhagen observers,

    last week’s comparable World Trade Organisation Ministerial Conference in Geneva only attracted 500 observers who were broadly committed to securing an inter-national trade deal to promote poverty-alleviating free trade.

    The irony is that if there were as many people who cared about cutting poverty, the world’s poor would be better able to adapt to the consequences of climate change and there’d also be the economic resources to cut emissions and deliver a binding agreement at Copenhagen.

    Tim Wilson is director of the climate and trade unit at the institute of public affairs and is blogging from copenhagen at www.sustainabledev.org

  • Australia among climate index worst

    Australia among climate index worst

    AAP December 14, 2009, 10:34 pm

    Australia is among the bottom four nations who did the least this year to cut their greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming, two European pressure groups said in a report on Monday.

    In its fifth annual Climate Protection Index, the Climate Action Network and Germanwatch ranked the 57 countries responsible for 90 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions according to their anti-pollution efforts.

    The index is based on three factors: the current level of CO2 emissions, whether they are rising or falling, and political and regulatory efforts for climate protection.

    Brazil, Sweden and Britain turned in the best performance of the group, the report said, using data primarily gathered by the International Energy Agency.

    But the climate watchdogs left the three top spots unfilled due to what they said was a universal failure to make the kind of fundamental changes necessary to avert a climate disaster.

    “Once again, no country in the world embarked on the path of avoiding dangerous climate change,” the report said.

    Brazil thus claimed fourth place, overtaking traditional front-runner Sweden, thanks in part to a sharp drop in emissions due to the global economic downturn. After Sweden and Britain came Germany, France and India.

    China and the United States – the world’s top two emitters – scored poorly in the ranking at 52 and 53 although the authors of the study hailed “the beginning of a rethink in climate policy” under US President Barack Obama.

    The United States had ranked 58th last year.

    Australia, Kazakhstan, Canada and Saudi Arabia brought up the rear of the current list due to what the report said were a pattern of high emissions and little change in climate policy.

     

  • China must be part of the Copenhagen solution

    As the summit moves to the business end of the proceedings, the debate is narrowing to what is politically achievable. China’s official party line, spelt out in The Weekend Australian by the Chinese ambassador to Australia, Junsai Zhang, is presumably an ambit claim as it moves to position itself as a key player in the formulation of the final communique. There is a long way to go for the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gases as it argues that the rich, industrialised West owes a “carbon debt” to the developing world and refuses to be legally bound to targets. In the next few days, the world will want movement from China on two key issues – acceptance that carbon cuts must be binding and subject to monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV); and recognition that the rules are changing around financial assistance to countries such as China, India and Brazil.

    Related Coverage

    China has complained about the moves to jettison the Kyoto Protocol, but it is clear that document does not capture the complex range of economies within the developing world. It makes sense to distinguish between developing countries such as China and poorer, vulnerable nations when it comes to assisting them to adapt to climate change. China’s claim for access to new technology, regardless of patents, is part of its bargaining to receive help other than direct grants. Beijing has committed to reducing its carbon intensity by 40-45 per cent by 2020 compared with 2005 levels, but its refusal to agree to outside scrutiny runs counter to the spirit of a shared response to global warming. China was adamant again yesterday that it would “do its own checking”.

    In its 60th anniversary year, the People’s Republic of China has been debating its role as a political player in international affairs. During recent celebrations, English-language Chinese television was brimful of commentators navel-gazing about how the West perceived the new China. The big question was how to translate the increased economic power of China to a leadership role internationally. Beijing should see climate change as an opportunity to begin playing that global role, adopting a mature approach that recognises its responsibilities as a powerful developing nation.

    As the leaders gather for the showdown in Copenhagen, the US and China are looking to exert leverage on each other and the rest of the world. As US chief negotiator Todd Stern has made clear, the US will not do a deal unless “major developing countries (read China) step up”. Agreement at Copenhagen requires movement from many nations and cannot be achieved by the US and China alone. But without constructive engagement from China matched by leadership from the US, little will be accomplished.

    In the end, political reality, not science or street protests or justice for Tuvalu, will determine the result.

  • Talks Stall as poorer Nations Threaten to walk out.

     

    African delegates released a statement declaring they were “outraged with the lack of transparency and democracy in the process.”

    Jairam Ramesh, the chief negotiator for India, said that the Group of 77 developing countries had staged the temporary walkout because their representatives had grown frustrated with how conference leaders had been conducting negotiations. Mr. Ramesh said those countries were worried that Connie Hedegaard, the Dane who is serving as president of the conference, was pushing to abandon negotiations using the Kyoto Protocol, under which developing countries do not face limits on their emissions, to promote another form of treaty that could introduce restrictions.

    The question of whether to continue with the Kyoto Protocol, or abandon it, is one of the main fault lines dividing negotiators at the conference in Copenhagen. The group of developing countries “wanted assurances that the negotiations were continuing under two tracks, including along the Kyoto track,” Mr. Ramesh said. The matter had been resolved by early Monday afternoon, he said.

    “This is all part of the negotiating dynamic, especially as you get close to the end game,” said Jake Schmidt, director of international climate programs at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

    The note of turmoil came as the United States energy secretary, Steven Chu, announced that industrialized countries would spend $350 million over five years — including $85 million from the United States — to spread renewable and nonpolluting energy technology in developing countries.

    The plan was called the Renewables and Efficiency Deployment Initiative, formulated by an international energy partnership created under the Obama administration’s Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change. The forum brought together the handful of countries that are responsible for more than 85 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions in a series of meetings this year.

    Officials said four main components to the plan included health and economic benefits by cutting the use of guttering kerosene lamps; a program to enhance labeling and standards for high-efficiency appliances; a Web-based exchange to coordinate the deployment of clean energy technologies by major economies; and support for the World Bank’s Strategic Climate Fund to boost and held finance national renewable energy projects.

    Given the strong demands from less developed nations at the Copenhagen meeting for hundreds of billions of dollars in long-term energy and climate aid, these programs may not have much impact on the negotiations.

    But given the glaring energy gap in poor regions — the 700 million sub-Saharan Africans outside of South Africa have access to the same amount of electricity as the 38 million citizens of Poland — every bit helps.

    Since the lion’s share of greenhouse gases have been emitted by industrialized nations, moreover, developing countries have argued that rich countries have a duty to help poor lands deal with the consequences of global warming, including drought, floods and tropical storms.

    The program will mainly operate through existing initiatives by governments and nongovernmental organizations, including the International Finance Corporation’s Lighting Africa initiative, the Lighting a Billion Lives program of India’s Energy and Resources Institute and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Lumina Project.

    The program for extremely efficient appliances will involve the International Partnership for Energy Efficiency Cooperation, the Collaborative Labeling and Standards Program, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Energy Star program and the Asia Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate.

    The announcement was scheduled as the conference prepared to move into higher gear with world leaders, including President Obama, due in the Danish capital before the talks wind up on Friday. Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Britain planned to steal a march on other leaders by arriving ahead of others on Tuesday in a display of his green credentials. Mr. Brown is facing elections next year.

    Ed Miliband, Britain’s energy and environment secretary, said Mr. Brown’s early arrival was designed to press countries to boost commitments on emissions curbs and climate aid.

    “This is not just about getting any old deal,” Mr. Miliband said at a news conference. “We want an ambitious outcome that respects and understands the science.”

    The depth of feeling about climate issues was clear Saturday when the police and organizers estimated that 60,000 to 100,000 participants joined a long march from Christiansborg Slotsplads, or Castle Square, southward to the Bella Center.

    The main demonstration — which brought together a broad coalition of hundreds of environmental groups, human rights campaigners, climate activists, anticapitalists and freelance protesters from dozens of countries — was mostly peaceful. But in other parts of the city, spontaneous demonstrations by bands of radical protesters resulted in at least 950 arrests, the police said.

    Per Larsen, coordinator for the Danish police, said that officers arrested about 230 people by midday Sunday, most in an illegal protest in the northern part of the city. The Bella Center, where representatives of nearly 200 countries have been meeting to craft a global strategy to combat climate change, was closed for the day.

    Andrew C. Revkin reported from Copenhagen, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington. Tom Zeller Jr. and Lars Kroldrup contributed reporting.