COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES FOR DEVELOPMENT TO MEET AT HEADQUARTERS 5-16 APRIL
Press Release
ENR/1*
COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES FOR DEVELOPMENT TO MEET AT HEADQUARTERS 5-16 APRIL
19990401 Background Release The Committee on Energy and Natural Resources for Development will hold its first session from 5 to 16 April at Headquarters. A subsidiary body of the Economic and Social Council, the Committee was created through resolution 1998/46 of 31 July 1998, annex I, which merged two committees -- the Committee on New and Renewable Sources of Energy and on Energy for Development and the Committee on Natural Resources -- into a single expert body.During this first session, the Committee will take up items on issues in the water and energy sectors that emerged after the cancelled sessions of the two former Committees. The session will also provide an opportunity for the Committee to contribute substantively to the preparatory process of the Commission on Sustainable Development. In the multi-year work programme of the Commission, the sectoral theme of the ninth session will be Atmosphere/Energy and the topic for the economic sector of the session will be Energy/Transport.
In addition, the Committee will could contribute to the preparation of the report of the Secretary-General on progress made in providing safe water supply and sanitation for all during the 1990s, to be submitted to the Commission on Sustainable Development at its eighth session.
The Committee will also take up a review of salient trends and issues on energy development and use in the context of sustainable development. Among them are: environmentally sound and efficient fossil energy technologies; renewable sources of energy, with special emphasis on wind energy; development and implementation of rural energy policies; and energy and transportation. The Economic and Social Council has emphasized the crucial role of energy in sustainable development, and the importance of adopting a proactive approach towards removing the obstacles and barriers hampering the development of new and renewable energy technologies.
* This is the first meeting of a new body and the initial press release under the symbol ENR.
Also considered will be issues related to assessment and management of land and water resources on an integrated basis. The former Committee on Natural Resources had requested the Secretary-General to prepare a report on issues related to the spatial planning of land resources (including minerals) and water resources, taking into account urban and rural development needs and food security requirements, as well as the protection of ecosystems.
The provisional agenda for the forthcoming session is contained in document E/C.14/1999/1.
Reports before Committee
According to the Secretary-General's report on environmentally sound and efficient fossil energy technologies (document E/C.13/1998/3), most global energy needs today are provided by fossil fuels. Current practices of production, distribution and the scale of resource use threaten the assimilative capacity of the environment at local, regional and global levels. Thus, there is a clear need to increase the efficiency of fossil energy use, improve the environmental compatibility of fossil technologies and shift to fossil fuels with lower environmental impacts, such as natural gas.
The report states that the world will have a secure supply of fossil fuels for more than 100 years. Therefore, if measures are taken to realize the large potential for improving efficiency and to engineer a shift to advanced fossil fuel technologies as well as natural gas, many environmental problems will be mitigated. Virtually all fuel cycles have negative environmental impacts, including health risks, accidents, pollution and global climate change.
Today, fossil fuels provide about 75 per cent of all primary energy consumed in the world, according to the report. The most dominant fuel is crude oil, accounting for 33 per cent of the total, followed by coal and natural gas, accounting for 24 and 18 per cent of the total, respectively. Extraction and use of all fossil fuel sources of energy are associated with adverse environmental impacts. Thus, improvements in efficiency and environmental compatibility of fossil energy technologies are important prerequisites for their utilization. This is especially important for developing countries rich in coal resources.
The report stresses that appropriate policies should be designed to support research, development and demonstration. They should be complemented by other measures for promoting efficient and clean energy that take into account the widely differing institutional, social, economic, technical and natural resource endowments in individual countries and regions.
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The report of the Secretary-General on renewable sources of energy, with special emphasis on wind energy (document E/C.13/1998/4) summarizes the progress in wind energy to date and discusses the resource, technological, economic, environmental and sociological aspects of wind power today. It also summarizes the policy options available to stimulate the adoption of wind energy.
According to the report, only a few comprehensive investigations of the world's wind energy potential have been carried out to date, but they all conclude that the overall resource is much larger than the world's total electricity demand. However, wind potential is area-specific and geographically uneven. Nevertheless, the overall resource potential is vast, considering the potential in offshore locations, sparsely populated remote areas and complex terrain, as well as the possibility of conjunctive use of land.
The report describes two general types of wind turbines that exist, named after the direction of their main shaft: horizontal axis wind turbines (HAWT); and vertical axis wind turbines (VAWT). The VAWT machines have not lived up to their early promise and, today, only a very small fraction of wind turbines in operation are of the VAWT type, the report states. Hence, the present report focuses solely on the HAWT type. The prime objective for industrial research and development in wind turbine technology is cost reduction.
The report also describes the economics of wind energy, including: capital cost and efficiency trends; operation and maintenance costs; overall cost-effectiveness; comparison with the cost of conventional power; and the economics of small-scale irrigation pumping.
Some of the environmental impacts of the wind energy fuel cycle include noise, visual amenity, global warming, acidification, public accidents, occupational accidents, land use, bird mortality and radio interference. While comparisons with other fuels are difficult, owing to differences in assumptions and methodologies, wind energy's environmental impacts appear to be no higher than those of any other fuel and considerably lower than those of fossil fuels. In addition, wind energy's environmental impacts are local, relatively predictable and primarily aesthetic.
The report describes a number of incentive mechanisms that have been used to promote the development of wind energy projects and have led to the generation of considerable modern wind energy in a number of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries and some developing countries. Among these initiatives are: power purchase agreements; production subsidies; tax credits; carbon taxes; preferential finance; and research, development and demonstration grants.
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The report also suggests several recommendations for promoting renewable energy sources, including: the establishment of rational pricing and well-designed incentive mechanisms; the provision of stable markets for wind-generated electricity; and the removal of institutional barriers to wind energy.
Also before the Committee is the report of the Secretary-General on development and implementation of rural energy policies (document E/C.13/1998/5). It states that the provision of energy services to rural areas remains inadequate owing to the dispersed nature of the population and the low income levels of rural dwellers. Of the estimated 3.1 billion people in rural areas, approximately 2 billion have no access to electricity and about the same number of people rely on traditional energy sources for cooking, such as wood, charcoal and animal and plant wastes, which are associated with adverse environmental effects at the local level.
Policies aimed at providing modern energy services to rural areas in many countries have focused on extending national electricity grids to those areas, the report continues. Although those policies have been successful in many areas, they have often necessitated substantial subsidies to customers in remote areas with low population densities, since the unit cost of supply is higher. Those subsidies have resulted in a precarious financial position for some electricity generating companies, many of which are nationally owned.
Further, the companies themselves often rely on national budgetary allocations for the capital cost of expanding the grid, since their revenues (inclusive of subsidies) are inadequate, the report states. Thus, many rural areas have no access to a national grid and, even in areas which do have access, many rural dwellers are not connected. Also, low electricity prices, along with subsidies for other conventional fuels, may have discouraged the adoption of renewable energy technologies.
Renewable energy technologies, the report states, often have cost advantages for rural areas, since transportation and/or transmission costs are not a significant portion of total costs, although they may require periodic maintenance to operate efficiently. Their successful adoption in rural areas can aid in providing modern energy services with fewer adverse environmental consequences than energy services produced from conventional fuels. Recent technical advances have lowered the cost of some, and many countries are investigating the possibility of encouraging small decentralized systems to serve isolated rural areas.
The report states that policies for rural development and those aimed at enhancing rural energy services should be developed and implemented in a mutually reinforcing way. It also sets forth recommendations in the areas of:
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energy pricing in rural areas; meeting the costs of financing energy supply; and improving the enabling environment for renewable energy.
The Secretary-General's report on energy and transportation (document E/C.13/1998/6) reviews global transportation trends, with particular emphasis on the major transportation consumer countries and the transport demand growth in developing countries. It also provides a brief review of a variety of alternative or replacement fuels and vehicles that are being tested, demonstrated and marketed. The scope of the report is largely confined to the use and related environmental problems of transport fuels.
The transportation sector has been the major source of growth in oil demand over the past 25 years, and is expected to continue to be so in the medium term, according to the report. The transportation system relies nearly completely on petroleum-based fuels, accounting for almost 60 per cent of final world oil consumption. The growing concerns over its environmental impacts, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, have stimulated research and development of alternative fuels and technologies. However, alternative fuel vehicles remain a small fraction of the total world vehicle stock.
The report states that the environmental impacts of transportation continue to be very large, but a few countries have made much progress in reducing some impacts, in particular vehicular emissions by means of catalytic converters and cleaner fuels. Carbon dioxide emissions, the major greenhouse gas of concern, continue to increase, which is unavoidable, as it is a by-product of fossil fuel combustion. However, the environmental impacts of transportation are not confined to the combustion of transportation fuels, but occur throughout the entire vehicle and fuel cycle.
Governments have a significant role to play in reducing the environmental impacts of the transportation sector, through implementation of an energy policy for the sector that promotes improvements in transportation efficiency and the use of alternative fuels, the report continues. The main thrust of a transportation sector energy policy, particularly for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, should be on: increasing efficiency and fuel flexibility; promoting short-term efficiency improvements; developing markets for alternative fuels; developing technologies for alternative fuel vehicles; and reducing the demand for travel.
Also before the Committee is the Secretary-General's report on issues related to the spatial planning of land (including minerals) and water resources (document E/C.7/1998/5), which identifies emerging issues in the area of land and water resources management, and places human-induced stress in the context of finite land and water resources. It also puts forward recommendations for improving the spatial planning of land and water resources.
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According to the report, air, water and land ecosystems are intimately linked. That link often comes into sharp focus when environmental balance breaks down irretrievably, as a result of accelerated erosion, salinization, groundwater pollution and other similar processes. Although human influence on land and water resources play a major role in many regions, it should also be seen against the background of natural processes, such as erosion and chemical cycles. Land and water issues are multidisciplinary and include a large number of other environment and development issues, among them desertification, deforestation, biodiversity and air and water pollution. Although those clearly call for an integrated approach, such issues are often addressed independently, resulting in duplication and waste of financial, human and institutional resources.
Economic growth and urban development will lead to further competition among various users for scarce land and water resources, the report states. Agriculture will continue to be the most important economic sector and represent the most important user of those resources in many developing countries, including some countries with limited availability of water resources. Hence, policies and programmes affecting the allocation of land and water among competing uses can have a profound impact on urban and rural development, and on the generation and distribution of economic benefits.
Further, the report states, the economic and social aspects of the interaction between land and water resources are among the most neglected areas of economic and social policy. The perception of land and water resources as free environmental goods has resulted in their true value being underestimated, often leading to inefficient exploitation and environmental degradation.
The report describes various actions to improve and enhance the spatial planning of land and water resources. They include: integration of land and water resources management into national socio-economic strategies; land, water and food security; protection of land and water ecosystems; information management and monitoring systems; institutional and legal frameworks and capacity-building; transfer and adaptation of technologies; and mobilization of financial resources.
Committee Membership
The members of the Committee, elected to four-year terms, are:
Adam Edow Adawa (Kenya); Carlos Alberto Aguilar Molina (El Salvador); Hernan Bravo Trejos (Costa Rica); Dmytro Victorovych Derogan (Ukraine); Bernard Devin (France); Malin Falkenmark (Sweden); Siripong Hungspreug (Thailand); Jon Ingimarsson (Iceland); Ahmad Kahrobaian (Iran); Christian M. Katsande (Zimbabwe); Badr Kasme (Syria); Owen Macdonald Kankhulungo (Malawi);
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Markku Juhani Makela (Finland); John Michael Matuszak (United States); Wafik Meshref (Egypt); Messaoud Moumaout (Algeria); Sergey M. Natalchuk (Russian Federation); Ainun Nishat (Bangladesh); Neculai Pavlovschi (Romania); Carlos Augusto Saldivar (Paraguay); Eddy Kofi Smith (Ghana); Wilhelmus C. Turkenburg (Netherlands); Raymond Marcio Wright (Jamaica); and Zhang Guocheng (China).
Committee Officers
On the first day of the session, the Committee is expected to elect a Chairman, Vice-Chairmen and a Rapporteur.
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