The World Renewable Energy Assembly 2005 (WREA) just finished up in Bonn, Germany, and one of the documents emerging from the conference is something called "The Human Right to Renewable Energy." It's a communique that manages to be both awkward and inspiring, as its old-style 20th century activist prose doesn't quite match some of the document's more provocative and forward-looking ideas. The communique captures the transition now underway for global environmentalism, the shift from demanding a cessation of problems to encouraging the development of solutions.
Follow the link to read the text of the communique. It's brief, just about 700 words, and raises some very interesting issues even as it rallies against traditional environmental bugbears.
In the spirit of focusing on solutions rather than problems, I'd like to explore a bit several concepts raised by the communique that I think merit greater consideration: a "Renewable Energy Proliferation Protocol;" micro-finance for renewable energy in the developing world; and the concept of renewable energy as a human right.
The Renewable Energy Proliferation Protocol: Among the proposals emerging from the WREA is an addition to the existing Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Article IV. The NPT currently calls on nuclear nations to supply technical aid to non-nuclear states for the development of nuclear energy. The proposed addition would call on signatory nations to fulfill this obligation through the provision of renewable energy technologies instead, thereby further reducing the possibility of nuclear weapon proliferation.
The NPT currently seems to be one of those international treaties considered by some nations to be "quaint;" adding a line suggesting that nations give renewable energy technologies rather than nuclear power tech strikes me as very much a window-dressing idea.
However, I was intrigued by the concept of a stand-alone Renewable Energy Proliferation Protocol (not addressed in the WREA discussion, as far as I can tell). Many international treaties fall into the "don't do this" category -- don't emit cholorfluorocarbons, don't dump waste in the oceans, don't pass out nukes to your buddies, etc.. The treaties that call on signatory nations to do something positive or pro-active are less visible, but arguably more fundamentally important -- the standardization of telecommunication protocols, the hotline agreements, the "open skies" treaty, and so forth. (For a full list of treaties the United States is signatory to, see this page at the US Department of State -- commenters, please feel free to add links to similar pages for other countries.)
Imagine a Renewable Energy Proliferation Treaty (REPT) that required the signatory nations to provide renewable energy technologies to other nations. The underlying mechanism could take a number of forms, from structured markets to out-and-out obligations. The version most likely to generate support would be one that provided rewards for proliferation; unfortunately, the most reasonable rewards are credits against CO2 emission limits, which drops us back into the Kyoto scenario.
Arguably, the Clean Development Mechanism of the Kyoto Treaty is something of a Renewable Energy Proliferation agreement. This makes me wonder: how would the CDM have worked if it applied to all other countries, not just developing nations? Transfer the renewable systems and tech to any other country, and you can choose between getting financial rewards or REPT credits. Better still, imagine if you could get credits against non-carbon costs for renewable proliferation -- how long would it take the US to pay down its foreign debt by transferring renewable energy systems?
Micro-finance for Renewable Energy: One of the appealing aspects of many renewable energy technologies is that they can be deployed in a distributed fashion. There's no such thing as a distributed coal-fired power plant; conversely, solar and, to a lesser extent, wind and micro-hydro work quite well spread out among a multitude of users. (There are efficiency issues with distributed power, which is why centralized power won out a century ago; some/many of these issues are mitigated with smart networks, which is why utilities and regulators are looking again at distributed power.)
It can make sense, then, for micro-finance to support the deployment of renewable power systems, both for home energy generation and for energy entrepreneurs. There are myriad forms the latter could take, from village utilities to quick-recharge points for mobile devices. Indeed, as fuel prices climb back up and diesel generators (standard in villages around the world) become more expensive to operate, micro-power vendors could become commonplace.
Imagine this as a mash-up of the Grameen Village Phone and the Barefoot Solar Engineers.
Renewable Energy as a Human Right: Now for the heart of the matter.
At first blush, many of us would probably dismiss the concept of renewable energy as a human right; after all, most of the broadly-acknowledged human rights concern issues of social treatment, not access to technology. Free speech as a human right yes, free TV as a human right no.
But not all human rights are expressions of community relations. Most people would recognize access to clean water and shelter as human rights, and while the provision of these definitely has a social aspect, they are fundamentally issues of (for lack of a better term) infrastructure. As it's essentially impossible to be a participant in the global society, economy and culture without energy, typically electricity, it starts to make sense to argue that access to energy would rank with water and shelter.
Once we've taken that logical step, it's not far to renewables.
Arguably, a fundamental aspect of human rights is that they are -- or should be -- inherently available to all people, and not subject to control or limitation by others. Even water, which is typically provided as a utility service for a fee in much of the world, fits when we consider rainfall as a free resource. (There are many reasons why that doesn't work in much of the world, of course.)
If this is the case, then access to energy limited by both political/market control and issues of geology makes for a weak right. Renewable power, which needs just the initial generation device such as the wind turbine, or solar panel, or stirling engine, makes for a stronger form of the right. Not perfect, but better than a right to energy meaning ongoing access to diesel or coal power.
This is mostly a thought exercise; we're unlikely to see access to renewable energy added to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights any time soon. Still, thinking about energy and renewables in the context of human rights forces one to engage with the question of what should be fundamentally available to every person on the planet in the 21st century. One could argue with some justification, for example, that modern human rights should include access to information, even access to the Internet. Others may wish to add control over one's own biology, including ownership of one's genome.
Perhaps someday, soon, we'll be discussing the adoption of a fundamental human right of universal access to a nanofactory.
