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Renewable Energy - A World Bank View

Boiling Point
Issue 36 (1995) Solar Energy in the Home
Article	Renewable Energy - A World Bank View
Author	Dennis Anderson, Kulsum Ahmed

For developing countries in particular, solar energy is an abundant and environmentally attractive resource, with enormous economic promise.

Each year, the earth receives an energy input from the sun equal to 15,000 times the world's commercial energy consumption and 100 times the world's proven coal, gas and oil reserves. Modern solar-electric schemes are capable of converting 10 to 20 per cent of the incident energy into a form useful for consumption, and in theory they would need less than 1 per cent of the world's land area to meet all its energy needs - which is less than the land areas now occupied by hydro reservoirs, and not much more than is planted for potatoes. Yet, despite the abundance and attraction of the solar energy resource, only a tiny fraction is used.

The situation, however is changing. The last two decades have seen major technological developments for harnessing solar energy through the use of photovoltaic cells.

[top] [end]Why renewables?

Until recently, the argument for alternatives to fossil fuels - the justification for the nuclear power programs of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s - was that a backstop technology was needed in case we ran out of them.

But the world's proven reserves of fossil fuels are very large, over 800 billion tons of oil equivalent energy (t.o.e.), of which 70 per cent is coal and 30 per cent oil and gas - enough to last a century at today's levels of consumption and for 50 years allowing for the growth of demands in developing countries.

Furthermore, these are only the commercially proven reserves, which have expanded appreciably for many decades. Industry estimates of ultimately recoverable reserves are about 4,600 billion tons, including 1,400 billion tons in oil shales and tar sands - sufficient to last us for the next 150 years or so, assuming continued growth in world demand over the next century.

Thus the old backstop argument is no longer valid. Rather, the case is being made on other grounds. The economic case is that the technologies will eventually compete with fossil and nuclear fuels - and also with hydro-electricity.

[top] [end]Environment

The solar schemes have no net emissions of carbon dioxide, particulate matter, sulphur dioxide, or nitrous oxide. In the case of carbon emissions, solar energy is the only alternative currently available for development for domestic cooking in the Third World and to stabilize carbon accumulations in the atmosphere should the need arise.

[top] [end]Energy policies

What can be done to encourage the development and wider use of renewables in a way consistent with the aims of good policy making?

First, the industrial countries in particular need to diversify their R&D portfolios. Not only does solar energy receive funding that is minuscule compared with fossil and nuclear technologies (about 5 per cent of public R&D in energy) but its share of a declining budget has also been shrinking for the past 13 years. International collaboration on R&D also needs to be promoted, as it is in other areas such as agriculture.

Reprinted from Finance and Development 1993

[top] [end]Contents: Boiling Point 36: Solar Energy in the Home

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Parameters for a Solar Cooker Programme - The Sunstove Solar Box Cooker - Sunstoves in the Republic of South Africa - Gaining Ground in Solar Box Cooking in Kenya - Solar Cookers - A Cause Worth Promoting - Free Energy from the Sun - A Solar Box Cooker with a Reflecting Lining - The Solar Puddle - A New Water Pasteurization Technique - Renewable Energy - A World Bank View - ESMAP study points toward village-level management of woodfuel resources in Chad - Burning Charcoal Issues - A Dangerous Trade - Saving Wood by Burning Coal - Haitis Domestic Fuel Project - Coal briquetting and clays for Zambian stoves - Improving the three-stone fire - Comparative tests of solar box cookers - Parabolic Solar Reflector and Heat Storage Cooker - An Affordable Parabolic Solar Cooker

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