Is Renewable Energy Really Green?

Is Renewable Energy Really Green?

Guest post written by Kamala Vainy Pillai PhD in Forbes Magazine

 

The global green rush to move away from fossil fuel dependence has incontestably led to a plethora of renewable energy initiatives – some sounding sexier and more appealing than others.  From the traditional renewable energy like hydropower, wind, solar and biofuel, today’s alternative renewable energies using disruptive technologies promises innumerable avenues for a host of communities and nations. Anaerobic digestion energy, biomass, geothermal, ocean energy such as ocean thermal, tidal or wave energy, solar thermal and tower power technologies are already joining the bandwagon of emerging stars.  Yet, are Renewables really green?

The concept of renewable energy generally denotes clean energy systems that do not contribute to greenhouse gas emission (GHE) and climate change.  As renewables get into top gear, growing evidence of non-inclusion of social conscience in the name of renewable energy development as well as severe environmental damage is unmasking the dark side of renewables.

In this article, we will look at hydropower.  The global hydropower market according to investment analysts is predicted to expand over the next few years as a less risky and more popular clean energy.  While the predictions sound promising, controversies over mega hydropower dam projects and its socio-environmental sustainability issues present confounding facts.  Mega hydro dams have been successful in Canada, the United States and other industrialized nations; however, the same cannot be said for the tropical regions.   Deforestation and the flooding (inundation) of thousands of hectares of rainforest for mega hydro dam projects in the Amazon and Borneo, which represents the planet’s largest and oldest rainforests have received intense criticisms. According to World Wildlife Fund (WWF), tropical rainforests which serve as our planet’s carbon sink, holds more than 210 gigatonnes of carbon.  Deforestation is responsible for more than 15% of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) – more than any other human activity put together, has a potent impact on accelerating global warming.  In the case of mega hydro dams, the inundation (flooding) of tropical rainforest has triggered a cataclysm.  The slow decay of rich organic rainforest matter flooded in the mega dam is expected to take centuries – consuming more oxygen at any given time, inconvertibly leading to oxygen-deprivation and high acidity of waters. This state has resulted in poor quality of drinking water as well as for household use to communities downstream.  Further, due to the alterations of the composition and density of vectors, incidences of public health problems are on the rise and even death or extinction of animal and plant life as far as 100 km from the mega dam site have been reported.  In 2013, National Geographic expounded on the extinction of endangered migratory fish in the upstream of mega dams in most South American countries like Colombia, Brazil and Paraguay.  Similarly, in Asia, the rare Asian river dolphins like the Indus dolphins and Irrawaddy dolphins have become endangered by the alterations of rivers for mega dams.  Late August this year, International Rivers launched “The State of the World’s Rivers” the first-of-its-kind interactive online database to illustrate the impacts on the health of the world’s river basins as a result of the mega dams.

Continued displacement of the planet’s oldest and largest indigenous communities in the rainforest region of the Amazon and Borneo has drawn global attention and civil society accessions. With growing legal disputes over indigenous land encroachments, mega dam hydro projects in these regions have become controversial as well as complicated for clean energy investors.  The Belo Monte Dam, for instance, expected to be one of the largest after the Three Gorges Dam in China and the Brazilian-Paraguayan Itaipu Dam, continues to be legally disputed by the Kayapos and indigenous communities who have been living there for centuries.  Displaced indigenous communities like the Penans, as a result of the mega Bakun Hydro Dam in Borneo, are reported to be experiencing emotional traumas as a result of the dispossession of their lands and displacement from their centuries-old nomadic way of life.  Remote communities around these sites are reported to be still without electricity, as the grids built mainly serve smelters and industrial operations in the area.

One of the factors cited for this state of affair is the inefficient and inequitable social and environmental impact assessment (SEIA) conducted prior to these projects.  It appears that the SEIA reports have endorsed massive relocation of indigenous communities and offered limited or no consideration of the irreversible impact on wildlife and ecosystems downstream from the mega renewable energy sites.   In 2012, in its sourcebook for “Getting to Green” guideline, the World Bank reiterated that too many environmental impact assessments (EIAs) are being conducted by poorly trained EIA practitioners with limited capacity and environmental information, leading to poor-quality reports.

Although international development funding agencies, energy companies and governments have hit a hard wall due to stalled or underperforming mega renewable projects, they assert that the above competing perspectives would change over time with increased social and economic benefits.  An Oxford study published this year, present a confounding verdict. The study which scientifically analyzed the economics of mega dams from 1934 to 2007, included 245 projects in 65 countries, confirmed that mega dams suffered cost overruns of 96 per cent.  The Oxford researches affirmed that even without social and environmental cost consideration, the mega dams did not make economic sense.  The staggering findings are expected to have a significant implication on the future of energy sector planning.

The deliberation propounds three pertinent points for renewable energy proponents – firstly, large scale renewable energy projects may not be as ‘green and clean’ as prophesied; secondly, with rising pluralism and conscious green consumers, renewable energy projects would be subject to greater scrutiny for societal and environmental impacts and hence, should demonstrate greater social-environmental accountability; and finally, the compelling findings on the mega hydro dams being uneconomic with cost overruns which are too high to yield a positive return, presents a new debate for the renewable energy outlook.