Intellectual Property and Sustainable Development

Renewable Energy Technologies for Rural Development

With the debate around patents and climate change-related technologies at Copenhagen last December, it became easy to forget that there are many low-cost and clean renewable energy technologies available in the public domain. A recent UN meeting highlighted how these technologies can revolutionize the way of life for rural communities.

Over 90% of rural Africa and 1.6 billion people worldwide are without electricity. Kerosene, firewood, and dried dung are relied upon by rural communities for lighting and cooking fuel. These traditional energy sources pose many health hazards, especially for women. Air quality is a major concern with kerosene and open fires, releasing carcinogens, airborne particles, and greenhouse gasses.   Women are disproportionately exposed to open fires for cooking. Midwives working at night have to rely on a dim, flickering light. In addition, women are also the ones who scavenge for firewood or transport kerosene, often in inhospitable terrain. Thus, besides being a health risk, this is also a tremendous loss of productivity for the village; as women in these villages are forced to spend more and more time in search of diminishing fuel sources.

In the Expert Meeting on Green and Renewable Energy Technologies for Rural Development, organized by the UN Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD), several promising solutions were described for providing electricity and cooking gas for rural communities. These solutions – solar, biomass-to-electricity, biomass digesters, geothermal, micro-hydro and micro-wind power – were each shown to be particularly affordable and technologically promising in a variety of settings.

One of the most important messages to come out of the meeting was that the technologies deployed must be reliable. To ensure a reliable alternative energy supply and to help empower rural women, one man has started a brilliant effort to ensure solar power takes hold in these villages. A major problem with previous efforts in using solar power in rural settings was the inability to maintain and repair the necessary equipment. Training young men as solar engineers proved futile, as they would quickly leave to more lucrative urban markets.

But, Mr. Bunker Roy, founder of Barefoot College of India, has found a solution to this problem: training illiterate grandmothers. From each African village, he brings an illiterate grandmother back to India for a month of intensive training on solar photovoltaic system maintenance and repair. Learning alongside other grandmothers from villages throughout Africa, the newly-trained solar engineers return to their home village with a newfound sense of confidence and purpose. And, most importantly, they remain in their village, providing a much needed service and passing on their knowledge.

With the provision of clean, off-grid electricity from solar panels, the air is cleaner, the village is more productive and women are becoming empowered. What’s more, it makes clear economic sense. The cost of a solar system large enough for several lanterns is roughly the cost of one year’s supply of kerosene. But, solar energy can only solve some of a rural communities energy needs. Other experiences showed that there are other alternatives which can meet the need for sustainable development in rural communities.

In Nepal and Cambodia, biogas has proven to be a clean and reliable source of cooking fuel. Micro-wind and Micro-hydro are being deployed in Vanuatu and Mozambique, respectively. Many countries are experimenting with “mini-grids” to supply the generated electricity. The Zambia is exploring alternative distribution models, rolling out “energy kiosks” in several villages. India has a program to provide efficient cooking stoves to rural areas in an effort to reduce air pollution.

Several countries are re-visiting previous efforts for large-scale alternative energy generation as well. The Zambia is resurrecting a geothermal plant from the 1980’s to help it cope with an increasing energy deficit, which they attribute to climate change, due to lower levels of hydroelectric power production in recent years. Mauritius is revisiting the feasibility of wind turbines, especially recent advancements that allow for them to collapse during cyclones.

But, there are challenges. First, financing is still a challenge, even with the technologies being off patent protection and in the public domain. The Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has provided some funding, e.g. for Biogas projects in Nepal, but the CDM is geared towards large projects and has a cumbersome administrative process. However, promising financing solutions are gradually being offered. There are also cultural challenges. For example, one effective solution for rural China – placing toilets on top of biogas digesters – was suggested as being culturally untenable in at least one country by a speaker. Finally, there is the challenge of education. Accessing knowledge on what has worked and failed in other villages is crucial. An unnecessarily poor experience with a particular technology can retard the adoption of that or other technologies by a village for several decades. In addition, it is necessary to educate villages about health and environment concerns, such as smoke inhalation and climate change, in order to generate further demand for these renewable energy technologies.

Despite these challenges, this meeting showed that there is much promise in bringing clean electricity to rural villages around the world. With electricity, much more will be possible, including the ability to provide irrigation for farming, encourage education, and generally enable human development in the broadest sense.

First published at WorldChanging.com - check it out here: http://www.worldchanging.com/archives/010993.html

China's labor edge in the Green Economy

Feb. 4 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama is spending $2.1 million to help Suntech Power Holdings Co. build a solar- panel plant in Arizona. It will hire 70 Americans to assemble components made by Suntech’s 11,000 Chinese workers.

via www.bloomberg.com

But, cooperation between US and China is the take home message here (see "Green Wars," below). If the manufacturing capitol of the world and the king of global consumption continue to increase their cooperation on developing truly clean technologies, meaningful agreements on climate change seem much more likely.

Shell Makes a Major Move into Biofuels

It was reported today by Bloomberg that Shell has signed an agreement with Cosan SA Industria & Comercio to start a Brazilian ethanol venture to expand its stake in the biofuels market.  This comes after recent announcements by Shell to shift away from Solar and Wind energy. A separate article in Bloomberg states that this is agreement "may give the oil company shared control of the world’s largest sugar-cane processor."

Shell would contribute over US$ 3 billion in cash over 2 years and almost 3,000 service stations for distribution purposes, in exchange for a 49% stake in the venture.  Cosan will have a majority stake in the joint venture and control ethanol operations. Both companies will have the option to buy each other out after 10 years.

Brazilian first-generation ethanol is made from sugar cane, which is calculated as having a slightly (but significantly) lower carbon footprint than corn-based ethanol, from which US ethanol production is based.  However, cellulosic ethanol, a second-generation biofuel, is particularly appealing because is uses inedible biomass.  This avoids some of the concerns over food crops being used for fuel, which has raised the price of food staples like corn and soy in recent years.

There are, however, concerns over deforestation that will likely will accompany increasing demand for acreage devoted to sugar cane and/or biomass production.  Recent studies have exposed a mis-calculation in the carbon footprint of biofuels due to land use changes, such as deforestation from planting crops for biofuels (see earlier blog post).  Activists are also concerned about human rights violations among laborers working in sugar cane fields.

Shell has been investing in biofuel research and development for some time now.  It has invested in Codexis, Inc. and Iogen Energy Corp. for the commercialization of biofuels and the development of cellulosic ethanol.  Thus, Shell's decision appears to be more along the lines of maximizing synergies and profits among its pre-existing liquid fuel infrastructure, rather than a rejection of the long-term viability of wind and solar.  

Other multinational energy corporations have also entered the biofuels market.  Exxon has been showing off its excitement over the promise of algae based biofuels through a splashy marketing campaign, which appears to have ended with the Copenhagen Climate Change conference in December.  Chevron is also pushing research into celulosic ethanol commercialization, forming research agreements with at least 4 major US Universities and a joint venture with timber giant Weyerhauser Co. (Catchlight Energy LLC).  BP is competing with Shell in the Brazilian ethanol market, having previously invested in Tropical BioEnergia SA and pledged US$ 6 billion over the next several years.

World Bank discusses Trade and Climate Change

The World Bank, along with two other NGOs, held a panel discussion today on the trade implications of the ongoing climate negotiations.  The final presentation, on Technology Transfer and Climate Change was the most substantive, as detailed below.  The presentations did not address either labeling schemes, standards, border carbon adjustments, or subsidies.  For an in depth discussion of these topics, please see the 2009 CIEL publication, Is World Trade Law a Barrier to Saving our Climate?, available at: http://www.ciel.org/Publications/ClimateTradeReport_foee-ciel_sep09.pdf

Richard Baldwin began by discussing possible implications of Copenhagen outcomes for the world trading system, and coping policies to minimize conflicts in the trading system.  In order to prevent what he called a "train wreck" in the making, he encouraged Industrialized Countries and Emerging Economies like Brazil, India, China and Russia, to agree upon climate change rules for trade outside of the WTO system.  He especially emphasized not letting the WTO's Dispute Settlement Body take up the issue of climate related trade measures.

Dominique van der Mensbrugghe, Lead Economist at the World Bank, followed with an outline of some of the probable changes in patterns of international trade that rising global temperatures might precipitate.  His primary emphasis was on the implications of climate change on agriculture.  A representative of the World Health Organization (WHO) questioned why the health related aspects, i.e. the human rights implications of climate change, were not being addressed by the presentation, which was not answered by Mr. van der Mensbrugghe.

Aaron Cosbey of the International Institute for Sustainable Development discussed technology transfer and development assistance.  In using the IPCC 4 definition of Technology Transfer, he argued that weakening IPRs to stimulate the transfer of climate technologies is insufficient for the dissemination of these technologies to developing countries.   Rather, Mr. Cosbey emphasized the need for developing countries to have  enabling environments in place for investment.  He suggested learning from the experience of the trade regime, vis-a-vis Aid for Trade, to improve the investment climate in these countries, rather than looking at the experience of the WTO in handling another global challenge - access to medicines - with the Doha Declaration on Public Health.  He cited three reasons for the relative insignificance of IPRs in the dissemination of climate technologies: (1) the requirement for trade-secret protected know-how to implement patented technologies; (2) the significant barrier of a poor investment climate in many developing countries; and (3) the inapplicability of public health and IP lessons to energy-related technologies. 

However, in response to a question posed by CIEL, Mr. Cosbey did acknowledge that his analysis did not account for either patents on the most cutting edge of alternative energy technologies (i.e. cleanest), or the expected emergence of Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) for "Clean[er] Coal."  These advancements will be covered by patents for several years to come, and likely will not have the same level competition enjoyed by current climate technologies.  The World Bank, in its 2010 Development Report, projects that about 25% of the necessary reduction of greenhouse gasses (GHGs) by 2050 will come from CCS technology, which is expected to be an exceptionally concentrated industry. 

Indeed, his hypothesis on the impact of IPRs assumes a sufficiently competitive environment, where alternative suppliers of solar panels, wind turbines, etc, are readily available.  This is the case with older technologies that are in the public domain.  However, in order to reduce greenhouse emissions to 350 PPM, the World Bank, IPCC, and other researchers are united in stating the necessity that more efficient technologies be developed, deployed and disseminated to developing countries.  Thus, it is entirely possible that as advancements in energy generation/GHG reduction are developed (in large part with public funding) the importance of patents held by the private sector will increase tremendously.