GREEN ENERGIES 100% RENEWABLES BY 2050

GREEN ENERGIES 100% RENEWABLES BY 2050 RECOMMENDATIONS  1. An explicit national target should be set for 100 per cent green, renewable energy sources by 2050  2. Nuclear power, carbon capture and storage, and large scale biofuel or biochar plantations should be excluded   3. There should be no carbon trading to offset greenhouse gas emissions in developing countries  4. The developed nations must take responsibility for reducing their own emissions at home, while providing genuine financial and technological assistance to developing nations that have to cope with the worst effects of climate change  5. Public investment should be targeted at education, research and development of the appropriate green energy technologies present and future, including those mentioned in this report  6. Grants and subsidies should be targeted to encourage decentralised distributed small scale to micro-generation of green renewable energies, and to promote green initiatives from local communities  7. Feed-in tariffs should be introduced for all new renewable energies  8. Existing nuclear power stations should be decommissioned at the end of their designated life times. Uranium mining should cease and clean-up should begin. At the same time, weapons grade uranium should be consumed in existing reactors in accordance with nuclear disarmament  9. Major public investment should be directed towards making safe toxic and radioactive nuclear wastes by low energy nuclear transmutation   The Institute of Science in Society Science Society Sustainability http://www.i-sis.org.uk  This article can be found on the I-SIS website at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/  ======================================================== ISIS Press Release 26/10/09  ISIS/TWN Report Green Energies, 100% Renewables by 2050 By Mae-Wan Ho, Brett Cherry, Sam Burcher & Peter Saunders  “This is a road map for survival…it could be the ‘get out of jail’ card that Britain and many other countries will need to play in avoiding the drift into climate chaos.” Alan Simpson MP, Special Advisor to UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate on Renewable Energy and Feed-in- Tariffs  “Inspiring and realistic…just what world governments need to renew their commitment to the UN Convention on Climate Change in Copenhagen this December” Chee Yokeling, Director, Third World Network  Stunning artworks (see the PDF preview) http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GreenEnergiesPreview.pdf  Pre-order at discount here http://www.i-sis.org.uk/onlinestore/books.php#282  Launch Conferernce 25 November 2009  Alan Simpson MP, Michael Meacher MP, Lord David Steel & others  Further details of the report and launch conference at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/  ======================================================== This article can be found on the I-SIS website at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/  All new articles are also announced on our RSS feed http://www.i-sis.org.uk/feed.xml  If you like this original article from the Institute of Science in Society, and would like to continue receiving articles of this calibre, please consider making a donation or purchase on our website  http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ISISappeal.php  ISIS is an independent, not-for-profit organisation dedicated to providing critical public information on cutting edge science, and to promoting social accountability and ecological sustainability in science.  If you would like to be removed from our mailing list unsubscribe at http://www.i-sis.org.uk/unsubscribe 

GREEN ENERGIES 100% RENEWABLES BY 2050
Institute of Science in Society Third World Network
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FOREWORD BY ALAN SIMPSON
Alan Simpson MP, Special Advisor to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Ed Miliband, on Renewable Energy and Feed-in-Tariffs
Let no one be in any doubt about the importance of this report. Take it seriously and this could be the ‘get out of jail’ card that Britain, and many other countries, will need to play in avoiding the drift into climate chaos.
The time for transformation is astonishingly short. There is no point in having 2050 targets without a programme that races into this transformation now. Rajendra Pachauri, the head of the International Panel on Climate Change, gives us three years in which to make dramatic switches in the whole way in which we think about energy systems.
Global leaders gathering in Copenhagen will haggle about a 2050 plan that can keep atmospheric carbon dioxide levels within a maximum of 450ppm. They hope it is not a bridge too far for the world’s politicians. The difference between the politics and the science is that the real survival threshold is around 350ppm. We are already beyond this level. Tomorrow’s agenda is not about the slowing down of carbon emissions, it is about how we row back form where we are now.
Many of the renewable energy choices set out in this report are already with us. Some require little more than a hop, skip and a jump to reach them. The trouble is that this leap has to be in a different direction from where we are currently heading. It involves some fundamental breaks from ‘big energy’, big pollution and the waste making society. Treading more lightly on the planet involves a shift into holistic economics which puts back as much - if not more - than we take out.
The report is a road map for survival. It sets out the science, the technology and the choices for a different future. All it requires is the political will... and that’s where we’re stuck. It invites changes that are as much about power as energy. Most of the choices touched on in the report work best where there is local and public ownership to ensure that the energy system supports sustainable communities rather than global shareholders.
It is not just about empowering the scientists to spell out what can be done. It is about empowering the public to become the drivers of change we can all live with. If we have the sense to act on this report may be we will.
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FOREWORD BY CHEE YOKE LING
Chee Yoke Ling Director Third World Network
This report is an explosion of hope in a world caught in the morass of false and exorbitant solutions to the energy and climate crisis promoted by corporate interests.
The latest science alerts us that 350 ppm atmospheric CO2 is the maximum limit that we must target in order to avoid “irreversible catastrophic effects”. Developing countries with 80 percent of the world population - the vast majority struggling to rise above poverty - are already hard hit by more frequent and intense climate disasters, and any false solution foisted upon them will certainly stress them beyond the breaking point.
Fortunately, tremendous human capacity and technologies for real solutions to the crisis already exist, with more innovation emerging and further possibilities on the horizon, as Green Energies so clearly documents.
The challenge before us is to rapidly adopt renewable energies solutions across communities and nations. Green Energies is extremely timely as governments gather in Copenhagen in December 2009 to renew their commitment to fully and effectively implement the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) forged in 1992. It is our only legally binding global treaty on climate change, and nations small and large stated in the Preamble that they are “Determined to protect the climate system for present and future generations.”
Equity is a pillar of the necessary transformation towards climate stabilization and sustainable development is enshrined in the UNFCCC. It was agreed that “the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries, that per capita emissions in developing countries are still relatively low and that the share of global emissions originating in developing countries will grow to meet their social and development needs.”
Thus it was acknowledged that “the global nature of climate change calls for the widest possible cooperation by all countries and their participation in an effective and appropriate international response, in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”.
Green Energies clearly states: “For the human species, it is the capacity to use natural resources responsibly and equitably, to meet the needs of all in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”
It challenges governments to take a bold step in setting a national target for 100 percent green, renewable energy sources by 2050 that the report shows is possible with the right policies and global cooperation in place. The report is inspiring and realistic. We can do it, and cannot not do it. Climate and our survival are non-negotiable.
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PREFACE
350 PPM THE NEW TARGET
Global warming is happening much faster than the IPPC (Intergovernment Panel on Climate Change) predicted in its latest 2007 report. For one thing, Its climate models failed to account for the rapid summer melting of the polar ice caps that’s been making headlines several years in a row.
The IPCC helped set the 450 ppm maximum of atmospheric CO2 that is supposed to limit the global temperature rise to below 2  ̊C, and prevent “dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system.”
But top climate scientists Jim Hansen and colleagues, using more realistic climate models and key data from the remote history of the earth, showed that 450 ppm is beyond the danger zone, and we must even reduce atmospheric CO2 down from its 385 ppm to 350 ppm, or else face “irreversible catastrophic effects” [1]. The head of IPCC Rajendra Pachauri now agrees [2].
The good news is that we can still do it. It is not too late. All it takes is to stop burning fossil fuels to bring atmospheric CO2 back down to 350 ppm within the next decades. But we must act now, because 385 ppm is already within the danger zone, and we cannot afford to let it remain there for too long, or we push the planet past the point of no return.
That is why we need to commit ourselves to truly green energies as a matter of urgency
WHAT’S TRULY GREEN?
‘Green’ is environmentally friendly, healthy, safe, non- polluting, renewable, and sustainable.
Renewable energy, as defined by British Petroleum (BP) [3], is derived from natural processes that do not involve the consumption of exhaustible resources such as fossil fuels and uranium. But it could include industrial scale biomass, biofuels, or hydroelectric from large dams, none of which is sustainable.
‘Sustainable’ is the key to being truly green. But the word ‘sustainable’ has been hi-jacked so often to mean just the opposite that it needs to be redefined.
To be sustainable is to endure like a natural biodiverse ecosystem for hundreds if not thousands of years, thanks to a circular economy of cooperation and reciprocity that regenerates and renews the whole [3]. For the human species, it is the capacity to use natural resources responsibly and equitably, to meet the needs of all in the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. We have updated the usual Bruntland definition of sustainability [4] to incorporate the overriding lesson from nature that cooperation and reciprocity between the biodiverse inhabitants of the ecosystem are necessary for the survival of the whole; and this applies all the more so to ecosystem Earth.
Unfortunately, our policy-makers are by and large still engaged in confrontational politics, being misled by the Darwinian myth of competition and the survival of the fittest that will surely take us beyond the point of no return. History has taught us why civilisations collapse in the past when faced with ecological crises [5], simply through the failure to take the political decisions necessary for survival. Are we going to repeat history in the present global ecological crisis that has the survival of the entire human species at stake? Or will our political
leaders in the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change learn to cooperate and adopt the most appropriate green energy policies for us to meet the 350 ppm target.
As Germany has demonstrated so well within the past decade, the appropriate policies can trigger a dramatic growth in new renewable energies, with industry offering a variety of distributed, decentralized options that also give people autonomy and independence from big centralised power stations. The global shift to renewable energies is happening, and many politicians and energy experts see no difficulty in achieving a 100 percent of our energy from renewable sources by 2050, which is what Germany intends to achieve [6], as the world’s first major renewable economy.
Green Energies is a follow up on Which Energy?, the first in the series of ISIS’ Sustainable World Initiative reports, and an elaboration of the theme of local food and energy systems presented in Food Futures Now, Organic, Sustainable, Fossil Fuel Free, the second report in the series.
Green Energies provides the public and policy-makers with the evidence for making the right decisions that will enable us to meet the 350 ppm target and 100 percent renewable energies by 2050. Time is running out, as are remaining resources. That’s why it is important at the outset to recognize and reject options that are not renewable or sustainable and dangerous, notably nuclear, carbon capture and storage, and biochar. Our capacity for truly sustainable and renewable energies is growing every day. It is neither necessary nor acceptable to export the burden of cutting carbon emissions to poor developing countries via carbon trading schemes. The developed nations must take responsibility for reducing their own emissions at home, while providing genuine financial and technological assistance to poor nations that have to cope with the worst effects of climate change.
Renewable energy is inexhaustible energy. Wind energy alone can supply 40 times the world’s electricity use or its total energy consumption five times over. An enormous potential also exists for solar energy, and electricity from locally installed solar panels is already as cheap as electricity from the grid. People everywhere are innovating and switching to renewables to save on fuel bills and saving communities as they are saving the planet. In 2008, for the first time, more renewable energies capacity has been added than conventional energies and the trend continues. Local small scale and micro-generation are booming in the developed countries wherever feed-in tariffs have been introduced, giving people independence and autonomy, plus the flexibilities for upgrading as technologies improve.
At the same time, appropriate science at the frontiers has opened up new possibilities for recycling waste heat as electricity, harvesting and storing sunlight by artificial photosynthesis, and solving our nuclear waste problem by low temperature transmutation after we give up nuclear energy for good. These are exciting times. All we need to save the planet is for our leaders follow the way of nature and the will and wisdom of the people.
Mae-Wan Ho and Peter Saunders October 2009


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