European countries placed themselves under the gun to find clean sources of energy by signing the Kyoto Protocol back in 1997 with its goal of globally reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Thirty-seven Kyoto Annex I countries agreed to meet specific emission targets beginning in 2005, but the United States Congress failed to ratify the treaty, and in 2011 Canada withdrew because of a failure to meet its targets, leaving 35 countries with actual emissions caps. Low-income developing countries who signed the Protocol participate by undertaking projects that create certified greenhouse gas emissions reductions through the Clean Development Mechanism. Once created and certified, such reductions can be sold to Annex I countries that in turn use them to help meet their own emissions caps. Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism thus enables Annex I countries to seek out less costly emissions reductions in developing countries to substitute for higher cost reduction alternatives at home. The bulk of the Clean Development Mechanism projects have occurred in China, India, and Latin America, with very few in North Africa and the Middle East.
Despite their modest share of the global volume, the inventory of actual and potential Clean Development projects for Egypt and Tunisia offer a glimpse of the kinds of carbon-reducing activities with a potential for future expansion. Projects fall under several headings, including clean energy production, energy efficiency, switching to less carbon intensive fuels, control of landfill gases, and industrial emissions reductions.
Although it has a lengthy list of potential projects, Tunisia has been slow out of the gate in getting projects actually approved for emissions allowance credit. Two landfill emissions reduction projects have been registered for emission reduction credit under the Clean Development Mechanism as well as a program to install 30,000 residential solar water heaters a year to replace natural gas. The water heater cost to the homeowner is subsidized by the Tunisian government and the loan required for installation is paid off over time from utility bill cost savings. The program not only reduces fuel bills, but expands assembly and installation employment by some 3,500 and decreases natural gas carbon emissions. Funding for the program comes in part from emission reduction sales to European countries. Another 22 Tunisian projects are in the early stages of approval for Clean Development, and most of these either expand clean energy production or improve energy efficiency. They include the installation of wind energy generators, electrification of rural dwellings and water pumps with solar panels, biofuel energy production using olive solid wastes, and a substantial expansion of Tunis’ light rail system. Like Cairo, Tunis is plagued with growing motor vehicle traffic as a burgeoning middle class falls in love with automobile mobility. To provide a more efficient alternative for getting around, the Tunis transit authority wants to add two light rail lines financed in part by the sale of emission reductions to European partners. By shifting to energy-efficient light rail and away from gas guzzling and traffic creating taxis and private cars, Tunisians will cut back on carbon emissions as well as other pollutants and be able to get around the city more quickly. In the long haul, a decent light rail system will spark local high density development and a more compact form of urban living instead of added auto-induced spreading into the suburbs. If implemented, All 25 Tunisian Clean Development projects would reduce carbon equivalent emissions by about 2.7 million metric tons per year and, at an average price of 10 Euros per ton, would generate 27 million Euros in carbon emission reduction sales annually for the country.
Like Tunisia, Egypt has been slow to take advantage of the Clean Development Mechanism. So far, five Egyptian Clean Development projects have been registered for emissions reductions credits and twelve more have been approved for registration. Among the first approved was a program to purchase and scrap aging Cairo taxis and finance their replacement with newer, more fuel efficient models that reduce both visible air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. In addition to vehicle scrapping, the approved projects include increased generating capacity for several wind farms, fuel switching, and waste treatment emissions reduction. Like Tunis, Cairo is looking to the Clean Development Mechanism to help expand its Metro system. Included in Egypt’s list of 76 proposed Clean Development projects is the construction of the city’s Metro line 3 that will connect the Cairo International Airport to downtown as well as extend rail transit to densely packed neighborhoods currently lacking decent public transit. Line 3 will help unclog Cairo’s horrible traffic and put a dent in the city’s air pollution as we as its carbon emissions.
Unfortunately, for Tunisia, Egypt, and the rest of the developing world, the Clean Development Mechanism itself is under threat because the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 and nothing is yet on the horizon to replace it. The 2009 Copenhagen climate treaty negotiations failed to produce a binding agreement on global emission limits and the best negotiators could come up with is an agreement to abide by voluntary emissions restrictions. The 2011 negotiations in Cancun Mexico made little additional progress, save the creation of a Green Climate Fund to administer $30 billion from wealthy developed countries for low-income developing country clean energy and emissions reduction projects through 2012, and future additions rising to $100 billion per year by 2020. Negotiations will continue with the hopes of settling on a binding climate treaty to take effect in 2020.
Although immediate treaty requirements to control emissions are gone, the European Union on its own plans to abide by emission controls that will lead to a 21 percent reduction by 2020 relative to 2005 levels. The key mechanism for accomplishing this goal will be the EU Emissions Trading Scheme whereby emission caps will shrink over time and the number of emission allowances supplied to the market will decline. Carbon emitters, who are required to possess allowances for any emissions, will be competing to buy up increasingly scarce allowances at higher and higher prices, giving clean energy a growing relative cost advantage. To make matters worse, the tsunami that hit Japan in 2011 and resulting nuclear power crisis upset from afar the European energy cart. Japan’s Fukushima nuclear meltdown left in its wake a newly planned German withdrawal from nuclear power and a reluctance by other European countries to continue down the carbon-free nuclear path as a means to supply electricity while satisfying carbon allowance caps. Given the confluence of continuing EU requirement to reduce carbon emissions and the move away from nuclear power, Europeans are scrambling for new clean sources of energy, and they are looking enviously across the Mediterranean to the coasts and deserts of North Africa with their abundance of wind and solar energy. Because the EU allows clean energy to be imported directly into its electrical grid, energy development in nearby North Africa is increasingly attractive to European utilities in the face of tightening caps on emissions.
Judging from recent news about both solar and wind projects in Egypt and Tunisia, the Clean Development Mechanism list for each country only scratches the surface for creating new clean energy sources. One of the most ambitious of these is the TuNur solar project located in the southern Tunisian desert. TuNur will deliver 2,000 megawatts of energy into the Italian electrical grid through a direct current high energy line under the Mediterranean. TuNur is a joint venture between British solar developer, Nur Energie, and the Tunisian company, Top Oilfield Services. TuNur will use a system of large mirrors to concentrate the sun’s energy on solar towers to heat molten salt that in turn generates steam to run electric generators continuously day and night. By recycling the steam, water inputs to the system will be minimal and the impact on the desert landscape modest. The total investment in the project will be nearly $10 billion, and 20,000 local jobs will be created in mirror fabrication and plant construction and maintenance. On completion, TuNur will be the largest solar energy project in the world. Top Oilfield Services’ bread and butter in the past has been servicing the petroleum industry, but ironically its future looks to be in desert-based solar where its historical oilfield experience will be a special advantage. If TuNur succeeds, it will train a generation of Tunisian engineers and technicians in solar energy and set the foundation for a new industry and source of employment in the country’s future.
Tunisia is of course not the only North African country with solar potential. Egypt with its huge expanses of desert possesses an unmatched solar energy resource, receiving an average of 8 kilowatts per hour per square meter per day in solar insulation, almost twice that of California, a center of solar development in the U.S. Yet the country is just beginning to take advantage of this resource. A combined solar-natural gas plant at Kuraymat, 100 kilometers south of Cairo, is just about to come on line with 20 megawatts solar production, and 100 megawatt solar plant is in the planning stages at Kom Ombo. Egypt has a goal of 7,200 megawatts of installed solar capacity by 2020. Despite its solar potential, Egypt so far has made its greatest renewable energy advances in wind, taking special advantage of an abundant Gulf of Suez wind resource. Currently, the country has 550 megawatts of installed wind capacity in the Gulf and looks to develop another 6,600 KW nationwide by 2020.
Advances in solar technology that matter most to the average Egyptian may well be on a much smaller scale than the typical desert solar installation. Just as in Tunisia, Egypt is looking to accelerate the installation of solar water heaters in its urban areas. Heating water for bathing on a kerosene stove in poor neighborhoods of Cairo is difficult and dangerous work which solar water heaters will eliminate. Researchers are also experimenting with simple solar water purification devises, essentially blue plastic bottles that utilize the sun’s ultraviolet rays, affordable to poor Egyptians who otherwise lack access to clean water. KarmSolar, an Egyptian company, has developed a solar technology for high-capacity irrigation pumps that can be used on remote, off-grid farms, expanding the potential reach of irrigation agriculture farther into the desert without have to rely on cranky, polluting diesel power. One of the big problems faced in remote Bedouin desert villages is the lack of a fresh vegetable supply despite a year-around growing season. This can be countered by a solar-powered hydroponic growing system design for use in arid environments, extending the Schaduf rooftop garden idea discussed in an earlier post to localities lacking in electricity. Creative Egyptian researchers are working hard to prove that solar and other innovative technologies are not just for the affluent countries of the world. How could you not love the idea of ‘Bedouin solar powered hydroponics?’
The kinds of clean energy projects underway and on the drawing boards in Tunisia and Egypt possess the side benefit of conserving the human use of space and in the process leaving more for nature. This is most clearly the case for rooftop water heaters, hydroponic gardens, and mass transit projects that stimulate more compact forms of urban living. One might think that petroleum and natural gas are the most space conserving forms of energy of all since they come out of the ground or the seabed through a pipe, but this conclusion would be short sighted. With global warming caused by carbon emissions from fossil fuels, extensive human and natural landscapes will be completely lost. From a sea level increase of just one meter brought on by climatic warming, Egypt alone would loose as much as 4,500 square kilometers of the Nile River Delta. Needless to say, other low-elevation countries of the world could suffer even greater catastrophes from sea level rises. With more heat and drought, desert climatic zones will expand at the expense of grasslands, savannas, forests, and croplands. At the other end of the climatic spectrum, northerly and southerly polar and tundra zones will shrink in extent along with high elevation forest and subalpine vegetation zones. In comparison to these losses, devoting two or three percent of the earth’s deserts to solar energy production and putting up coastal wind farms seems like a minor spatial price to pay.
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