CLIMATE CHANGE SUMMIT: CLEAN AS A BREEZE

Over the past five years, a new crop has sprouted across the broad, fertile plains of northern Germany. Sprinkled among the barns and silos are thousands of 100-ft.-tall towers topped by sleek, fiber-glass blades that whirl slowly in the breeze. Functioning as clean, trim powerhouses, these modern windmills turn even gentle currents of air into strong currents of electricity, energizing the region’s businesses and homes without hurting the environment.

Half a world away, on the Indonesian island of Java, hundreds of rural families have mounted small, silvery panels on poles near their homes. Made of silicon semiconductor chips similar to the microprocessors found in computers, the solar cells convert the energy of sunshine into electricity. These almost magical devices make it possible for people living a day’s walk from the nearest power lines to turn on light bulbs, radios and TV sets for the first time.

In Europe, Southeast Asia and all sorts of places in between, something remarkable is happening. New, carbon-free energy technologies that do not rely on fossil fuels are moving from experimental curiosity to commercial reality, economically turning sunlight, wind and other renewable resources into useful forms of energy. Although the new devices provide less than 1% of the world’s energy, they are advancing rapidly. If the negotiators wrapping up their 10-day meeting in Kyoto this week are looking for an engineering solution to the problems of global warming and climate change, these technologies could provide the blueprint.

It’s been nearly a century since the world has had a comparable opportunity. Much of the energy system now in place was created in an explosion of invention that began around 1890 and was largely finished by 1910. Cities all over the world were transformed as automobiles and electric lights replaced horse-drawn carriages and gas lamps. Old technologies that had prevailed for centuries became obsolete in a matter of years, and the 20th century emerged as the age of fossil fuels.

We may be at a similar turning point today. Thanks to a potent combination of government incentives and private investment, technologies that use synthetic materials, advanced electronics and biotechnology are sweeping through the energy industry. They could foster a new generation of mass-produced machines that efficiently and cleanly provide the energy that enables people to take a hot shower, sip a cold beer or surf the Internet. The transition to a 21st century energy system is gathering speed on at least four fronts:

HERE COMES THE SUN The world market for solar cells has gone from $340 million in 1988 to roughly $1 billion in 1991–a growth spurt brought on by a 95% decline in the cost of these devices since the 1970s. Although the electricity they put out is still far more expensive than that produced by conventional generators, solar cells are the least expensive source of power for rural homes not connected to a region’s electric grid. Further advances may make solar power an economically attractive option for many urban buildings within the next decade.

That prospect is stirring excitement around the globe. In Japan, housing companies have introduced a type of dwelling with silicon roof tiles that generate enough electricity to meet most of a family’s needs. Spurred by government incentives, construction of some 70,000 of these houses is expected in the next several years. In Switzerland and Germany, dozens of office buildings have been built with solar cells integrated into the glass of southfacing walls, allowing the windows to produce power while transmitting filtered sunlight.

BLOWING IN THE WIND The global wind-power industry, a $2 billion-a-year business, has seen its market nearly quadruple since 1992. Two decades of research have yielded a thoroughly modern wind turbine with tough fiber-glass blades and electronic controls. The cost of the electricity produced is comparable to that of fossil-fuel power and still falling.

Thousands of wind turbines have been installed in a dozen European countries. This year Denmark has been getting 6% of its electricity from wind power. Developers have started to install windmills in the shallow North Sea, whose winds could one day meet much of Europe’s power needs. The boom is also being felt in Asia, where wind-power companies, in joint ventures with Europeans, are installing turbines in India and China.

NO SMOKE IN YOUR EYES Several companies in Europe and the U.S. are marketing a new generation of micro-power plants small enough to fit in your basement. Not only do they generate electricity, but their excess heat warms the house. These new-age power plants are based on tiny engines and produce electricity less expensively than multibillion-dollar coal and nuclear plants.

An even more advanced technology, the fuel cell, is being pioneered by a small Canadian company called Ballard Power Systems. The fuel cell combines hydrogen and oxygen to generate electricity cleanly and quietly; the only waste it produces is water. Small, mass-produced and without moving parts, the devices are a spin-off of the U.S. space program, which uses them to meet the electricity needs of the shuttle fleet. Fuel cells could one day sit in millions of basements producing power and hot water without fossil fuels.

TAKE THE T-BIRD AWAY After 80 years of dominance by the internal-combustion engine, a new kind of automobile is on the way. Several major auto manufacturers are designing hybrid electric cars that have twice the fuel economy and half the carbon-dioxide emissions of today’s vehicles. The sticker price is admittedly a few thousand dollars higher but is largely offset by lower fuel bills. Toyota plans to bring the first such car to the market in Japan this week, and other carmakers will soon follow suit (see following story).

Like the computer industry, with which it shares many technologies, the clean-energy business is being led by dozens of entrepreneurial start-up companies, many of them financed with venture capital. But as business has boomed in the past two years, major corporations have jumped in. The lure is obvious: the use of wind and solar power is growing more than 25% a year, while the markets for coal and oil are expanding only 1% to 2%.

How quickly the world’s energy systems are transformed will depend in part on whether fossil-fuel prices remain low and the entrenched opposition of many oil and electric-power companies can be overcome. The pace of change will be heavily influenced by the climate agreement that emerges in Kyoto and the national policies that follow. In the 1980s, California provided tax incentives and access to the power grid for new energy sources, which enabled the state to dominate renewable-energy markets worldwide. Similar incentives and access have been offered by European countries in the 1990s. Sometimes such measures are needed to overcome the momentum of a century’s investment in fossil fuels.

Although many economists argue that it will be difficult and expensive to find an alternative to oil and coal–and that we should delay the transition for as long as possible–their position is based on a technological pessimism that seems out of place today. The first automobiles and computers were difficult to use and expensive, but the pioneers persevered and made improvements, and ultimately triumphed in the marketplace.

Just as automobiles followed horses and computers displaced typewriters, so can the advance of technology make today’s smokestacks and gas-powered cars look primitive, inefficient and uneconomical. Unlike fossil fuels, renewable energy never runs out, and geologists will not have to travel to the Alaskan North Slope or the shores of the Caspian Sea to find new sources. The sunlight falling on the surface of the earth each day contains 6,000 times as much energy as is used by all countries combined. Studies show that covering the existing flat-roof space of many cities with solar cells could meet half to three-quarters of their electricity needs. In the U.S., North Dakota, South Dakota and Texas together are swept by sufficient wind to meet the electricity needs of the entire country.

For the negotiators flying home from Kyoto this week with a climate-change agreement that may be less than they had hoped for, the coming generation of new energy technologies offers a ray of hope. In order to wean ourselves from the fossil fuels that are choking the planet, we need reliable alternatives. If anything can be done to accelerate the new technologies, we may all breathe a little easier.

Christopher Flavin is senior vice president at Worldwatch Institute and co-author with Nicholas Lenssen of Power Surge: Guide to the Coming Energy Revolution.