Greening Tunisia: Organic Olives and Rooftop Solar Heaters

The Environmental Virtues of Tunisian Organic Olive Groves

Tunisia has the largest amount of land (300,000 hectares) devoted to organic agriculture of any North African country, and almost half of that is in olives. Fueled by growing European demand for organically grown foods, organic olive groves are an expanding presence on the Tunisian landscape. Are more organic olives a good thing for both the Tunisian people and the environment?  Certainly olives are nothing new to the Middle East. For centuries olives have played a leading role in Mediterranean cuisine, and have flourished in the region's semi-arid climate. There is even nothing very new about organic olive cultivation, which only in the last fifty years has given way to more chemically oriented schemes of production utilizing fossil fuel-based fertilizers and pesticides. 

Olive grove cultivation in the Mediterranean region takes place both on irrigated farms occupying gentle slopes and on dryland farms on steep and moderate slopes.  A key regional threat to the sustainability of olive groves is soil erosion, especially on steep slopes, a problem that can be substantially mitigated with temporary plant covers. Such plant covers go hand-in-hand with organic management techniques whose primary local environmental benefits include increased plant biodiversity, reduced erosion, diminished pesticide residues, and increased organic matter in soils.  Eliminating in olive groves the use of fossil-fuel based chemical fertilizers and pesticides and the greenhouse gas emissions they cause benefits both the local and global environment. Unlike many other crops, olive productivity doesn’t respond very well to intensified applications of fertilizers and irrigation, meaning that not much is lost by giving up such practices. Olives themselves are composed mainly of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen and extract very little plant nutrients from soils, making it possible to close the nutrient cycle locally by spreading olive-oil mill wastes and pruning cuttings. Unlike many other crops, organic olives don’t require a huge importation of nutrients and energy from outside the local agroecosystem if wastes are fully recycled. Achieving the capacity to depend on recycled nutrients doesn't happen overnight after conversion to organic production; organic materials, such as compost and manure, will have to be imported to groves for a time until the humus content of the soil builds up. The major pest in olive groves is the olive fruit fly, but fortunately it can usually be controlled through traps, organic pesticides, and a quick collecting of fallen olives. 

The virtues of Tunisian organic olives are simple.  Since less than 10 percent of Tunisian olive groves are currently organic, employment can be increased by a conversion to organic methods because of their greater labor intensity. Organic dryland olive cultivation requires as much as 14-19 percent more human energy than conventional methods, a pattern common to many kinds of organic agriculture. Much of this increase results from the spreading of recycled waste materials and careful attention to ground-cover cultivation. In addition to increased labor incomes, since organic olive oil sells at a premium, conversion could ultimately increase the earnings of olive grove owners once conversion costs are recovered.  Finally, for the sake of the global environment, a conversion to organic olive production reduces fossil fuel consumption and carbon emissions. In sum, organic olive cultivation is good for both Tunisia’s economy as well as both the local and global environment. 

Rooftop Water Heaters in Tunisia: The PROSOL Project

Back in the days of the first energy crisis (early 1980s), installing rooftop solar panels was all the rage, only it wasn’t for generating electricity. To do that, one would need photovoltaics, but those were prohibitively expensive at the time. Rather, individuals on the cutting edge of energy conservation were installing rooftop solar panels for the purpose of heating water. The insulated glass-covered panels consisted of small pipes set in heat-absorbing fins through which liquid circulated for exposure to the sun’s rays.  With the subsequent crash in energy prices, rooftop water heaters went out of fashion, but the technology didn’t disappear. Today rooftop water heaters are back in a part of the world where they truly make sense, the Middle East. In Palestine, 76 percent of households have installed solar water heaters as a countermeasure to the Israeli ability to cut off electricity at any moment. Even if the lights go out, Palestinians still have hot water.

With help from the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and the Italian-led Mediterranean Renewable Energy Program (MEDREP), the Tunisian Government instituted a program in 2005 called Prosol (Program Solaire) to encourage the installation of rooftop water heaters. To get one, a homeowner goes to a solar water heater supplier, fills out an application, presents a utility bill, signs a loan agreement with a bank for a 5-year repayment from the monthly energy cost savings, and makes a 10 percent down payment. Loan payments are added to customer gas and electric bills, and if payments fall in arrears, the utility has the option of shutting off service. In the first two years of the program, interest costs were subsidized partly by banks because of a low risk of nonpayment and partly by the UNEP, and MEDREP funded a 20 percent capital cost subsidy for the heaters. After 2006, the Tunisian government took over funding of the capital subsidy and exempted solar heaters from the VAT tax and a portion of the customs duty on imported units. As of 2010, approximately 356,000 square meters of heater panels have been installed in 119,000 households and the annual installation rate had risen to 80,000 square meters. As a direct result of the program, 1,100 qualified installers found employment, 3,500 total jobs have been created in 50 companies, and households will save a total of $600-1,300 (U.S.) on their energy bills over the solar heater’s lifetime. Conversions to solar heating in Tunisia to date has reduced annual CO2 emissions by 755,000 tons, a number that will rise to 1.95 million tons by 2016 given a projected total of 376,000 installations. 

We normally think of governments as slow-to-change bureaucracies wedded to rule-oriented procedures in the delivery of government services. The Prosol case offers us an interesting example of entrepreneurial social invention by a government. While governments don’t always rise to the need for new ideas in addressing social and environmental problems, in some instances they do, just like socially inventive businesses or nongovernmental organizations such as a SEKEM or a DESERTEC. Like many other governments in Middle Eastern and Africa, Tunisia subsidizes household energy costs for the alleged purpose of alleviating poverty. Economists have long attacked such subsidies for causing wasteful energy consumption, excessive air pollution, added greenhouse gas emissions, and failing to benefit the poor very much. Unfortunately, energy subsidies of this kind are politically challenging to eliminate because doing so raises energy costs for a large portion of the population. By supporting and subsidizing the installation of solar water heaters, the Tunisian government reduced the need to pay out subsidies for fossil fuel energy that would otherwise have been consumed to the tune of $100 million, a figure that will fall to $46 million if a proposed subsidy phase-out plan is actually implemented, but enough to still more than cover the $22 million government outlay for the Prosol program. In short, Prosol provides a special financial benefit to the Tunisian government which undoubtedly helped motivate the program in the first place. Another financial boost equalling $350,000-700,000 annually comes to Tunisia from sales of Prosol generated greenhouse emissions reduction certificates (CERs) to European countries under the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism. Once a projected 376,000 solar heating units are installed by 2016, the annual revenue flow from CERs should triple. If any single agency got the ball rolling for Prosol, it would have to be the UNEP who did the original study setting out all the program's possible benefits.

The simple idea of solar water heating has brought the Tunisian people reduced utility bills, more business activity and employment, reduced government costs, increased revenues from Europe for CERs, and reduced dependency on fossil fuels. Because of Prosol, the planet as a whole benefits from lower` greenhouse gas emissions. Compact clean energy in this instance amounts to economic boon and a true free lunch for Tunisia. Other countries including Egypt have seen the Prosol light emanating from Tunisia and are now starting their own programs.