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Solar Offers A Future for Kenya’s Youth

Frederick Ouko left western Kenya when he was 20, in search of a college education. Like about a third of Kenya's rural youth, he was unemployed. And like many who move to the capital city of Nairobi, he settled in Kibera.

Kibera is the second largest slum in Africa and home to more than a third of Nairobi's population. Poverty is rampant, and basic services such as electricity, water, and sanitation are scarce. Instead, kerosene lamps pollute the air. "Flying toilets," plastic bags filled with excrement, are discarded on rooftops or along the streets. As much as 45 percent of the population lacks a job. The situation is even worse for Kibera's youth: 80 percent of residents aged 15 to 35 are unemployed, according to the United Nations Development Programme [PDF].

Ouko received a diploma in business communication technology, a rare accomplishment in a country where 92 percent of youth lack any vocational or professional training. But instead of leaving the slums, Ouko decided to stay.

He founded the Kibera Youth Community Programme, an effort to provide alternatives to drug abuse and crime - such as theater productions, HIV/AIDS awareness projects, music recording, and soccer matches. To fund about a third of the youth projects, Ouko turned to a technology that may lead to improved conditions throughout Kibera: solar power.

Ouko employs 16 local youth to manufacture handheld solar devices, which they sell throughout Nairobi and into the countryside. The devices, purchased through the U.K. group BioDesign and sold for 1,500 Kenyan shellings (US$24) on average, are mainly used to power mobile phones or radios. "Some [of the employees] are out of school, still trying to figure out what to do," Ouko said. "Now they have an option for income, and they can...benefit from the skills of their training."

Solar power is a growing energy source in Kenya. If this expansion continues, observers say the sun may hold the answer to the country's stagnant economy. "Green jobs" - well-paying employment in an environmentally beneficial industry - are likely to follow. Whether this growth will trickle down to the frustrated youth of Kibera remains to be seen.

Energy in Demand

Electricity rates are doubling across Kenya, due to the rising price of oil and to a dry rainy season that has reduced hydropower performance. Even before this year's problems, Kenya experienced power outages at least 50 days out of the year. More than anywhere else in Africa, 70 percent of businesses own expensive diesel generators for back-up power, according to a Center for Global Development report. "Governments in Africa are desperate to increase the supply of electricity any way they can," said Vijaya Ramachandran, a senior fellow at the Center.

The rising electricity rates make renewable energy more attractive by the day. A 2007 World Bank report said Kenya has annual solar energy resources equivalent to the discovery of roughly 70 million tons of oil. The country already sells about 30,000 solar photovoltaic (PV) systems each year. "Kenya has a thriving solar industry, without a lot of NGO support," said Robert Freling, executive director of the Solar Electric Light Fund. "It's one of the best examples of where the technology has taken off in the developing world."

Future investments in the developing world's renewable energy technologies will likely trigger further expansion of Kenyan solar. Through the World Bank's Lighting Africa initiative, launched last year, the Bank plans to provide 250 million Africans with clean-energy lighting by 2030, with significant reliance on light emitting diodes (LEDs).

The Economist predicts that if the cost of solar is reduced by 30 percent, PV technology will spread across Africa. "No other part of the world is better suited than Africa," Ramachandran said.

Poor Regions Disadvantaged

Meanwhile, an increasing number of aid organizations are utilizing Kenya's sunny climate to provide electricity to off-the-grid markets, helping to boost employment opportunities. Solar cookers are spreading throughout rural and urban Kenya for individual and commercial use. And microsolar devices, such as those constructed by Ouko's organization, are becoming an affordable option to power small electronics, particularly when the long-term cost of fossil fuel power is considered.

Janet Feldman, director of the Kenya AIDS Intervention Prevention Project Group, plans to purchase the Kibera solar devices for women who have lost their husbands to HIV/AIDS. These women now rely on radio programs to learn how to operate their farms by themselves. "When you have this source of power, you can do so much. They're able to cook, able to read, and carry on a business," Feldman said.

While solar technology is becoming more accessible, solar PV ownership is still dominated by the rural middle class. Most of the estimated 4.2 percent of rural Kenyans who own a solar system have annual household incomes well above $2,000 per year, according to a study published last year in the journal World Development.

Solar opportunities for Kenya's rural and urban poor, meanwhile, are still too few to see widespread economic improvement, said Maurice Odera, the Kenya representative for the United Nations Environment Programme's TUNZA youth initiative. For those who earn less than $1 a day, he said, community-wide solar opportunities would require government subsidies. "Frankly speaking, there are no [green jobs] because most of the government funded projects or initiatives are not long sustained initiatives with evaluations and structuring," Odera said.

Yet leaders such as Frederick Ouko remain confident that despite the Kenyan government's lack of support, community-based programs for solar energy do offer employment opportunities. If the solar industry expands, Kibera's young people may have prospects for a bright future.

Worldwatch staff writer Ben Block and State of the World fellow Ambika Chawla can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

Stay tuned! This fall, Worldwatch senior researcher Michael Renner, in collaboration with Cornell University researchers and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), will release Green Jobs: Toward Sustainable Work in a Low-Carbon World. The report is a joint effort of UNEP, the International Trade Union Confederation, and the International Labour Organization.

British GMO Protests Highlight Global Divide

British opposition to genetically modified crops is on the rise, prompting security concerns at research laboratories across the country. Nearly all 54 U.K. pesticide-resistant crop trials attempted in the past eight years have been attacked, according to media reports. Protesters are destroying the experimental crops to prevent biotechnology companies from spreading genetically modified organisms (GMOs) more widely in Europe and the developing world.

As protests become more fierce in the United Kingdom and more accepted in other parts of the world, this mounting attention highlights stark differences in the acceptance of GMOs. The research sites are the latest battlefield in the fight over GM crops. The biotechnology industry and several government leaders say the crops may provide the solution to global shortages in food supplies. Environmentalists say these promises are unfounded and that the crops instead encourage widespread chemical use that may threaten human and ecosystem health. The alleged vandalism has drawn research to a near-halt in the United Kigndom. Only one trial remains after cyst-resistant potatoes were destroyed at Leeds University last month. In response, researchers are meeting environment minister Phil Woolas next month to discuss a secure research facility for the country's last remaining GM crop trial at the National Institute of Agricultural Botany in Cambridge. European Union legislation requires research facilities to disclose the locations of GM trials to the public. Concerned researchers say such information has allowed anti-GM protesters to destroy these crops during the experimental phase. "We demand the academic freedom to gain knowledge, and a society that doesn't allow scientists to do that has got a problem," said Leeds University researcher Howard Atkinson at a media briefing. Consumer advocates responded that the public should be aware of field trial locations for health and environmental safety reasons. Controversial Crops Gain Heat Beyond the United Kingdom, anti-GMO opposition remains high in many regions. Some 200 South Koreans protested GM crops in May, and 300 Brazilian activists attacked a farm owned by global agribusiness company Monsanto, a developer of biotechnology products, in March. "The people who are responsible for the recent vandalism are acting criminally. Aside from impairing scientific research and damaging property, they are now putting innocent people at risk," said Garrett Kasper, public affairs manager with the company.

Bill Freese, a science policy analyst at the Center for Food Safety in Washington, D.C., said extreme protests are overemphasized by the media, in part due to efforts by the biotech industry to discredit the opposition. "The industry is very anxious that [unfavorable] facts don't get out there. One tactic is to tar any critic as irrational," he said. "It's really tough to get our viewpoints represented in the media." The biotech industry says genetic modification produces crops that have higher yields and are better suited for pest control - advances it says will alleviate hunger in the developing world. Earlier this year, the United Nations' International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (IAASTD), in its sweeping report, agreed that overall crop productivity may improve - for instance through water-resistance. But the report also stated that information about biotech productivity has so far been "anecdotal and contradictory." New GM techniques are developing so rapidly that long-term assessments of environmental and health effects tend to lag behind discoveries, the report said. Critics say the improvements have yet to be seen. "The biotech industry's claims about genetically altered crops are perennially overstated. In truth, agricultural biotechnology has almost nothing to offer to the world food crisis in the short term," said Margaret Mellon, director of the Union of Concerned Scientists' food and environment program in a press release during the peak of this year's food crisis. Instead, farmers now douse the landscape with herbicides in places where pesticide-resistant crops have become widespread, critics say. They point out that the most popular herbicide happens to be sold by Monsanto, the same company that patents most GM crops. In addition, opponents say, the spread of GM crops may lead to the creation of new food allergies and to the disruption of the ecological balance. In its report, the IAASTD also concluded that concentrated biotechnology ownership has driven up the cost of seeds and forced developing nations to buy crops not adapted to their regions if they choose to acquire GM crops. Developing World Plants More GMOs Still, GM crops are on the rise. Farmers planted 114.3 million hectares (282.4 million acres) of biotech crops worldwide last year, an increase of 12 percent over 2006, according to the industry-supported International Service for the Acquisition of Agri-Biotech Applications. While most of this cultivation is consolidated in five countries (the United States, Canada, Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay), more countries are turning to GM crops as food prices rise. Chinese leaders said last month the country must urgently cultivate more high-yielding and pest-resistant biotech crops. Also last month, Malawi became the second African nation to approve GM crops.

Compared to the heated opposition in Great Britain, consumers in the United States generally lack concern about the growth in GM crops. As a result, U.S. environmentalists have not made the issue as much of a priority as in Europe. Freese, for example, works instead to avoid the spread of GM crops in the developing world. Friends of the Earth is among the leaders of the European anti-GMO movement, but the organization's U.S. chapter is focused more on anti-cloning efforts, said Gillian Madill, a genetic technology campaigner. "When GMOs were developed in the U.S., we didn't know what was hitting us. It was in our food service before people understood what GMO meant," Madill said. "By the time GMOs became standard, we had no choice. We couldn't have labeling because it was already happening. By the time it got across the pond, in the UK... they had the advantage of seeing it happen here first." In a Friends of the Earth report, the group says a shortage of rigorous, independent studies prevents consumers from understanding the potential benefits or dangers of GM crops. The field trials that were destroyed in Great Britain were financed by German biotechnology company BASF, leading critics to question the independence of the experiments. But the trial researchers say that if security risks continue, any rigorous research will become even more elusive than before. Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org. For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

U.S. Utilities Advance Solar Projects

Twenty-three electric utilities were represented on the trip to Germany, the world's leading producer and installer of photovoltaic (PV) solar cells. All of them may now advance solar projects in the United States, a trip leader said, further expanding a growing solar market.

"Every single utility would decrease the time they said it would be before solar would be a significant part of their utility mix," said Julia Hamm, the executive director of the Solar Electric Power Association, which organized the trip, covered some participants' travel expenses, and conducted a poll on solar power upon the trip's conclusion.

The tour was an opportunity for utility executives and managers to speak with German utilities and address concerns about how expanded solar energy may affect grid reliability. The trip, which took place in June, was summarized in a Solar Electric Power Association report [PDF] released last week.

Roy Kuga, vice president of Pacific Gas & Electric (PG&E), said his concerns about distribution were put at ease, although the intermittent nature of solar energy may still be problematic. "In a country where solar radiation is sub-par compared to many parts of the U.S., I have to hand it to the progressiveness and commitment [Germany] made to solar," he said. "Their technology advances will later help us."

In Germany, a feed-in-tariff law [PDF] requires utilities to pay customers a fixed rate for any renewable energy they feed into the grid, such as solar power generated from rooftop PV panels. While the policy sets the cost of renewable energy higher than traditional energy sources, the price decreases over time.

Mainly due to these fixed rates, Germany is home to nearly half the world's installed solar cell capacity. About 1,300 megawatts (MW) of new PV capacity was installed in 2007, bringing the country's total to more than 3,830 MW.

In the United States, solar PV is growing. The country ranks fourth for total capacity, with at least 450 MW installed. An assortment of rebates, grants, and low-interest loans is scattered across the states.

Utilities represented on the tour included two of the largest U.S. utility companies, Southern Company and Duke Energy. Represented utilities also included Southern California Edison and PG&E, the U.S. utilities with the most installed MW of solar power and the most overall solar capacity, respectively.

This year, utilities have already announced plans to expand rooftop PV capacity. In June, Duke Energy proposed a $100 million expansion of solar panels on 850 buildings in North Carolina. Southern California Edison plans to install 250 MW of distributed capacity over 65 million square feet (19.8 million square meters) of roofs in the next five years. PG&E plans to help California meet the state's goal of 3,000 MW of customer-installed solar power by 2017. "In the upcoming months, we should expect to hear more from PG&E activities in this area," Kuga said.

Several of the utilities on the tour were less experienced with solar power installation. "Half the utilities on the trip really had done nothing or little [solar installation]," Hamm said. "It was a complete eye-opener for them."

Jim White, a senior energy services engineer with a Washington state public utility, said he was most impressed with Germany's efficient methods of solar installation. For instance, when a PV system is set up, a new electric panel is placed inside homes with a separate meter for solar energy. "It's plug-in and play, literally. You buy a solar panel and put it on your roof...drop down two wires and call the electric utility," White said. "It's an order of magnitude faster than where we are today."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

The Afterlife of German Coal Mining

It was Jochen Seifert's job to adjust a conveyor belt under Germany's largest coal mine one day in 1959. As the 24-year-old locksmith worked, a crack split the rocks along the mine shaft. Walls caved in, and Seifert was trapped below.

"Hey, locksmith! Are you alive?" his fellow miners yelled. Seifert survived, but he recalls others who were less fortunate. Two miners once fell down a 160-meter shaft to their death. Seifert has no lasting illnesses, but a friend has a tracheotomy, likely due to black lung disease. "I really had a guardian angel," Seifert said.

It was the dedicated labor of coal miners like Seifert that fueled Western Europe's industrial revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries. Yet within the coming decade, the legendary coal mines of Germany's Ruhr Valley may be closed forever. The German coal miner is likely to go extinct as well.

The German government is phasing out the 2.5 billion euros (US$3.9 billion) of subsidies it provides to the coal industry by 2018. The move is mostly financial. German coal is often 1,000 meters below ground, making it much more expensive than imported coal, which accounts for 95 percent of the coal burned in Germany.

At the end of 2007, the German coal industry employed 32,800 workers - 76 percent of whom work in the Ruhr Valley. The industry employs about 43 percent fewer people now than in 2000, and 94 percent fewer than in 1959, according to the German Hard Coal Association [PDF]. An association-supported study predicts that unemployment in the Ruhr area will grow about 2 percent on average if coal mining ends. Steel production jobs are on the decline as well, due to mechanization. Unemployment in the Ruhr, already higher than surrounding areas of Western Germany, is now 11 percent on average.

Green jobs may not be the absolute answer to economic decline in former mining economies. However, a greening of the factories and industries that once made a mining town vibrant may be the solution to ending job loss and generating future prosperity.

From Factories to ‘Cathedrals'

Forty years ago, a visitor to the most industrialized areas of the Ruhr Valley might have found it difficult to breathe the air. Pollutants from the hundreds of coal mines, steel factories, and chemical plants floated down the Rhine River and settled across the land. The region inspired many of Germany's sweeping air-quality controls. When many factories eventually closed, the structures remained unused for decades and rusted away.

Now, a visitor is likely to arrive into the Ruhr Valley as an ecotourist. Mountain bikers pedal through the re-grown forests of white birch and willow trees. Abandoned factories have been cleaned out and converted into theaters, art displays, and recreational destinations - it is perhaps the only place where an adventurer is encouraged to climb a gas furnace. The Zollverein industrial complex, formerly the largest and most modern colliery in the world, is now listed as a World Heritage Site, as a testament to modern industrial architecture.

"We're using the spirit of that old site and creating new jobs," said Frank Lohrberg, a German landscape architect. "Artists see the qualities of the site, see it's not ugly, it could be beautiful. Not only a factory, it could be a cathedral."

Former coal miners have found new opportunities in the site's "restoration economy." They are renovating the buildings and helping to create Emscher Park, a series of green spaces that spans 800 square kilometers (497 square miles) of northern Ruhr Valley. Seifert now works as a tour guide in Zollverein.

The German government pumped billions of dollars into the park, in part to recruit new businesses to the region. An Emscher Park consultant's development report [PDF] estimated that 5,000 jobs were attracted to the region, and 7,500 new homes have been constructed. The Economist reported that economic growth in the Ruhr Valley outpaced the other two regions of the state of North Rhine-Westphalia between 2001 and 2005, due mostly to the success of information technology firms.

"We have [significant] employment in the fields of IT, logistics, and nanotechnology. These are the main industries here," said Ralf Löckener, the co-owner of Sustain-Consult, a Ruhr-based development firm. "But that doesn't mean that people who lost their jobs in coal mines and steel workers got new jobs. They're not qualified for these industries."

A lack of opportunity has led many former mining residents to move to Germany's larger cities. A study by the Finland Futures Academy [PDF] predicts that the Ruhr Valley will lose about 5 percent of its citizens until 2020, due mostly to an aging population. A few large companies are moving out as well. Following in the steps of several German producers who cut expenses by moving to Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia, the Finnish manufacturer Nokia uprooted a mobile-phone factory from the Ruhr Valley to Romania earlier this year, leaving 2,300 German workers jobless.

A Renewable Future

Mining towns often survive after their mines have shut down by shifting to an entirely new industry, such as skiing or tourism. But in the Ruhr Valley, the best way to survive may be through reinventing the past.

Many of the components of renewable energy technologies originate from mining technology. Two of the world's leading producers of wind turbine parts, Voith Turbo BHS Getriebe GmbH and IBC Wälzlager GmbH, were originally producers of coal-mining machinery. Siemens once produced conventional coal-fired power plants for the Ruhr area, and now the company is developing biomass generators. Instead of helping companies dig for coal, mining suppliers like TERAMEX are providing drilling machinery for geothermal energy.

If the Ruhr can attract Germany's growing renewable energy market, thousands of jobs are likely to follow. A study commissioned by the German government found that in 2006, the country was home to some 259,000 direct and indirect jobs in the renewables sector. Due to several recent government policies that encourage alternative energy, those jobs are expected to climb to 400,000-500,000 by 2020 and to 710,000 by 2030, the study said [PDF].

In addition to components for renewables, Ruhr engineers may be best suited to improve the efficiency of their own coal and steel industries. For instance, several German entrepreneurs are exploring whether hydrogen can replace the fossil fuels that now power steel production. "That is one of the greenest jobs you could think about. The iron industry is among the biggest contributors to CO2 emissions worldwide," said Löckener of Sustain-Consult.

New employment opportunities may also arise from development that combines renewable energy and other efforts to green the Ruhr Valley. As part of Emscher Park's 2010 master plan, the city of Dinslaken is negotiating with coal company MGG to convert a former mine site into a forest plantation. As much as 10,000 hectares of willows and poplars could be grown for biomass feedstock to provide heating.

In addition to turning a polluted landscape into a forest, biomass processing requires skilled workers, and it pays well. "This will certainly create new jobs for someone who plants, someone who maintains the plantation, and someone who is harvesting the biomass," said landscape architect Frank Lohrberg, who is leading this project [PDF]. "The work is done in the region - that's the advantage of biomass production."

Wolfgang Jung, the vice managing director of the Ruhr's Gelsenkirchen Science Park, and his three-person staff are working to "promote the Ruhr Valley as a new energy region" as they attract renewable energy businesses. The International Economic Platform for Renewable Energies, a German research institute, says 3,100 renewable energy companies [PDF] already exist in North Rhine-Westphalia, and they employ 18,500 workers. Jung estimates that one-third of those companies are located in the Ruhr Valley.

But green jobs are unlikely to replace the thousands of mining jobs that will disappear when Germany's mines close. "The jobs are significant, but it cannot be compared to the job losses in the mining and steel industry," Jung said.

Still, green jobs are renewing the landscape and expanding with a booming renewable energy market. While they cannot be the solution for all the problems in the Ruhr, these jobs offer something often lacking for the valley's unemployed: hope.

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org. For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

Stay tuned! This fall, Worldwatch senior researcher Michael Renner, in collaboration with Cornell University researchers and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), will release Green Jobs: Toward Sustainable Work in a Low-Carbon World. The report is a joint effort of UNEP, the International Trade Union Confederation, and the International Labour Organization.

World Bank Struggles to Prioritize Sustainability

Although the world's largest multinational financer has heightened its focus on mitigating environmental degradation and climate change in recent years, the institution places uneven emphasis on the economic benefits of environmental preservation, the assessment revealed.

The World Bank considers itself among the world's leading advocates for environmental awareness, especially after pursuing a succession of proactive, "do good" projects starting in the 1980s. Yet the assessment, authored by the Independent Evaluation Group, said the environmental impact of many investments is still not a priority. "The Bank needs to improve monitoring, evaluation, and reporting of environmental aspects and results of lending operations at both the project and portfolio levels," the report said.

The evaluation focused on case studies from nine countries that receive nearly half the institution's environmental investments. Throughout these regions, the Bank has been successful in helping countries set their environmental priorities, but it often struggles to address these issues adequately through its lending. For instance, the Bank says the most serious environmental problems in India are water quality, land degradation, and air quality; however, investing in projects related to these challenges is "not a significant priority," the report noted.

The evaluation also compared the success rate of projects across regions and across environmental issues, such as biodiversity or water resource management, over the time period from 1990 to 2007. The region with the highest rating of satisfactory projects was Europe and Central Asia, at 85 percent. Sub-Saharan Africa ranked the lowest, at 67 percent. Land and watershed management operations are more likely to be completed with a satisfactory rating (about 80 percent), while efforts to strengthen environmental management capacity through technical assistance are more likely to fail (65 percent success rate).

Despite these satisfactory ratings, the evaluation concluded that a lack of accountability prevents an accurate assessment. "Even though the World Bank applies environmental due diligence to all of its investment projects, it lacks an aggregate monitoring and reporting system that would allow it to more systematically assess the environmental aspects and results of the projects it supports," the report noted.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the bank's private lending division, adopted a policy in 2006 to orient all of its projects in the developing world toward social and environmental sustainability. However, when impoverished nations seek to develop, these priorities are often in conflict, especially with regard to energy projects.

The struggle between poverty alleviation and emissions mitigation is evident in Bank project financing. While the World Bank has increased its lending for renewable energy and carbon sequestration projects overall, the IFC continues to prioritize coal and oil. IFC investments for fossil fuel projects total $2.2 billion for 2008, a 165-percent increase over 2007, according to a Bank Information Center (BIC) analysis. Two coal-fired power plants, in India and the Philippines, account for one-third of these greenhouse gas-emitting projects.

A major obstacle to assessing the Bank's overall record on sustainability is confusion over the number of projects it classifies as environmental. Environmentally related projects are on the rise, but a complex coding system has allowed the Bank "to overstate the actual volume of resources going directly for environmental improvement," the evaluation said.

The World Bank classifies 2,401 projects, which receive a total of $59 billion, as environment and natural resource management. But only an estimated 680 projects, or $18.2 billion of investments, are focused at least 80 percent on environmental improvement, such as wastewater treatment, the report notes. "A very troubling finding, quite frankly, is that the World Bank does not really know and does not have a way to account for how much money goes into the environment," said Cheryl Gray, director for the evaluation group's World Bank division, at a Bank-organized panel discussion of the evaluation.

In response, Laura Tuck, the Bank's director for sustainable development in Europe and Central Asia, said many investments that could be classified as environmental are now merged with other projects. For instance, infrastructure projects now include mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions into the analysis for how roads should be constructed, the Bank says.

Olav Kjorven, director of the United Nations Development Programme's bureau for development policy, expressed the harshest criticism at the panel discussion. "The [World Bank] Group has failed to truly prioritize environmental sustainability," he said. "We're all busy doing good work on all these issues, but it's not commensurate to the challenge and it doesn't bring out the best in all of us."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

Investors Pressure Corporations to Address Climate

As a result, more publicly traded companies are including environmental risks in their annual reports, which may help investors more accurately judge the physical and financial effects of climate change on these businesses.

The "Call to Action" coalition, which includes the California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) and the California State Teachers Retirement System (CalSTRS), the two largest public pension funds in the United States, is lobbying the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to standardize its rules for risk reporting. The recommended changes would require publicly traded companies to assess the risks and opportunities associated with climate change.

The SEC currently requires companies to disclose as risk any trends, events, or uncertainties likely to cause a material effect on their financial position or performance in the present or foreseeable future. This definition does not yet specify that companies must include the risks inherent in climate change in their filings.

Jim Coburn, a representative of CERES, a network of environmental organizations and investors and a member of the coalition, said the coalition is asking the SEC to clarify that climate change be included in areas of potential risk for companies. Because the SEC already requires companies to assess risks in other areas, he said, an order requiring corporations to include climate risk in their reports would not require any legislation.

A 2007 study by CERES and the Calvert Group, an asset management firm, found that half of the 500 largest U.S. corporations were doing a "poor" job of disclosing the risks of climate change to their investors, mentioning them little or not at all. Many companies, however, have voluntarily chosen to include climate change in their risk assessments. An analysis by the publication Politico found that in the first quarter of 2008, the words "climate change" were mentioned 7,634 times in companies' SEC filings. In the first quarter of 2007, that phrase was used only 536 times.

Companies around the world are facing similar pressure. A global survey by the Economist Intelligence Unit found that, of 320 risk managers questioned, the majority said they are increasing the amount of resources dedicated to environmental risk management, which includes climate change. However, fewer than half of the respondents said they undertake a formal environmental assessment when developing new products or services, and only one-fifth said they do this when considering mergers and acquisitions. In a press release, survey editor Robert Mitchell described many companies as in the "early stages of addressing this issue."

Last October, the U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Securities, Insurance, and Investment held a hearing to address these growing concerns. At this hearing, Russell Read, Chief Investment Officer of CalPERS, described reporting on climate risk as "a legal obligation and a necessity for investors" because of its potential financial effects.

In its recent petition, the Call for Action coalition noted that one of the companies that has not openly addressed the risks of climate change is ExxonMobil, the world's largest producer of petrochemicals. ExxonMobil mentioned climate change only once in its 2007 Form 10-K report to the SEC, saying it is a possible risk that cannot be quantified.

Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for ExxonMobil, described climate change as a potential risk that his company is "unable to quantify" and chose not to analyze. "Our annual filing covers what is required by SEC regulation, so if something is not required by SEC regulation, we don't include it," he said.

Nathan Swire is an intern at the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at nswire@worldwatch.org.

For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

Microloans Pay Off for Planet, Investors

In Windy West Texas, An Economic Boom

This is the first feature in a weekly, three-part series on green jobs in various sectors of the global economy.

Growing up in West Texas, Larry Martin became well accustomed to the challenges of living off the land. Raised on a cotton farm outside the small town of Sweetwater, he recalls defending his family's crops from sandstorms after a hard rain. More often, he hoped the region's brutal droughts would not burn the cotton to death.

Cotton farming in West Texas is a constant battle against the elements. "In college, I saw a lot of farms were going broke," Martin said. "A lot of people work all their life and didn't have much to show for it."

So instead, Martin joined TXU Energy, a regional utility company, and traveled across Sweetwater and greater Nolan County fixing power outages. After nearly 20 years on the job, he took notice when the county's first wind turbines were installed in 2001. By 2006, Texas surpassed California as the U.S. state with the most installed wind energy capacity - West Texas alone produces enough electricity to power 1 million homes. In a region suffering from economic decline, Martin realized the wind was beginning to blow in a new direction.

Martin left TXU and joined three friends to start an energy services company, Wind Energy Turbine Services (WETS), in 2006. Their staff has since grown to include 26 employees, nearly all of whom are Sweetwater locals. "In the future, as we expand, as we get more jobs, we'll need more manpower," Martin said.

In Sweetwater, Martin and seemingly every other business owner is benefiting from the wind energy boom. The population is growing. Unemployment is down. The tax base has swelled so much that Nolan County actually cut taxes last year.

As wind energy continues to expand across the U.S. heartland, rural America is likely to experience a revitalization not experienced since the homestead land grabs of the 19th century. Green jobs - high-quality employment for environmentally sustainable industries - and related spin-off opportunities are proliferating across West Texas. Local leaders predict that the economic growth has only just begun.

The West's Wind Workers

Billions of investment dollars are now being spent on wind energy development across rural America, and the areas with the most wind have yet to be developed. The U.S. Department of Energy estimates that 300 gigawatts of wind energy capacity can be installed throughout the country by 2030. If investments continue to spread, and necessary infrastructure such as new transmission lines are built, wind energy alone could create thousands of jobs, while providing a clean source of electricity.

Nolan County, first populated with the arrival of railway lines in 1881, prospered until the Great Depression devastated the area's cotton economy in the 1930s. While the area was revived during World War II, farm consolidation during the 1950s led to steady population decline across the county and most of West Texas. Even the discovery of oil in 1939 did little to help the local economy - most petroleum industry employees came from other parts of the country, and they left when the oil dried up in the 1990s. In 2004, 20 percent of the population was living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

That same year, the rising unemployment rate reversed itself and began a steady decline. Attracted by a windy climate, high-capacity transmission lines, favorable rules for siting turbines, and a statewide renewable energy standard, wind energy companies, such as General Electric and AES, set up operations in Sweetwater.

Today, workers are pouring in from across Texas to manufacture, transport, maintain, and repair wind turbines. Of Nolan County's estimated 14,878 residents, an estimated 1,124 have jobs directly related to wind energy, according to a study released earlier this week by the West Texas Wind Energy Consortium.

Sweetwater's Economic Revival

The growth in wind energy jobs has been greater than expected, based on industry trends. According to traditional industry estimates, for every 10 or 12 wind turbines, one job is created. But in Nolan County, where 1,572 turbines are projected to be operational by 2009, 480 permanent workers will be required - a ratio of one permanent operations job for roughly every three turbines, or 0.13 jobs per megawatt, the consortium study said.

The wind industry boom has stimulated job growth across the entire local economy. Some 1,500 construction workers are engaged in Nolan County's five major wind energy projects. Building permit values shot up 192 percent in 2007 over 2001 values. Sales tax revenues increased 40 percent between 2002 and 2007. The county's total property tax base expanded from $500 million in 1999 to $2.4 billion this year.

The added revenues are being spent on new roads and several school renovations. One schoolhouse had been in operation since the arrival of the Texas & Pacific Railway in 1881. A new school replaced it in 2005, at a cost of $4.5 million.

To provide training for the growing wind energy industries, the first community college wind energy program in the state began last year. Texas State Technical College-West Texas had rarely attracted many students from beyond Sweetwater before. The 130 students who have enrolled since the program began - ranging from fresh high-school graduates to older transitional workers - come from as far as Corpus Christi, some 400 miles (644 kilometers) away, said Mike Reeser, the college president.

"Typically a program will struggle while word gets out that training is available. This kind of start is extraordinary," Reeser said. "There's a certain cache in West Texas to work in this field.... It is a noble industry."

The majority of U.S. wind projects are being established on privately owned farmland, which has yielded farmers annual compensations between $2,000 and $5,000 per megawatt of installed capacity, according to the American Wind Energy Association. In Nolan County, such royalties have amounted to an estimated $12.3 million into the pockets of private landowners, according to the consortium report.

"I've seen us in good times and not so good times," said Jacque McCoy, the Sweetwater Chamber of Commerce's executive director. "The wind energy has just revitalized Sweetwater, Texas, and really all of Nolan County."

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org. For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

Stay tuned! This fall, Worldwatch senior researcher Michael Renner, in collaboration with Cornell University researchers and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), will release Green Jobs: Toward Sustainable Work in a Low-Carbon World. The report is a joint effort of UNEP, the International Trade Union Confederation, and the International Labour Organization.

Fuel Cell Vehicles 15 Years Away, Research Council Says

The study, which did not include electric vehicles, concluded that hydrogen is the preferred alternative to conventional vehicles to wean the United States off oil and to reduce U.S. automotive emissions. Producing the hydrogen, however, will require increased fossil fuel consumption and worsen the nation's impact on climate change unless a federal policy switches the country to alternative energy sources, the study's authors said.

The researchers analyzed a variety of alternative vehicle technologies - including more-efficient gasoline-powered engines, electric hybrid engines, and biofuels - and concluded that hydrogen fuel cells are the most likely option, unless fuel economy standards rise significantly or a breakthrough in cellulosic ethanol is made. An analysis of electric vehicles was beyond the scope of the study, the authors said.

"The best thing for the U.S. to do is move forward and make sure all these technologies are progressed because they all have technological risks," said Michael Ramage, a former ExxonMobil researcher who chaired the report committee. "But the benefits of hydrogen, while less in the early years, would have a dominant effect."

If the U.S. government and the automobile industry followed the framework envisioned in the research scenario, which assumes government policies that place a price on carbon and create large subsides for fuel cell vehicles, significant economic and environmental benefits could result. U.S. gasoline consumption could be reduced by about 24 percent by 2035, and net annual greenhouse gas emission from transportation could fall 20 percent by the same year, according to the committee's analysis. 

The study was authorized by Congress following longstanding support from President George W. Bush for fuel cell vehicles. Yet consumers are not likely to purchase large numbers of these vehicles in the timeframe the government has envisioned, due to high costs for the vehicles and for the hydrogen, the report said.

The maximum practical number of fuel cell vehicles that the automobile industry could produce would be 2 million in 2020, 60 million in 2035, and more than 200 million in 2050, which would equate to 60 percent of the U.S. automobile fleet that year, according to the report.

A transition to hydrogen-powered cars would require roughly $16 billion in research spending over the next 16 years, 30 percent of which, the report says, the U.S. government should pay. In addition, "a technology-push approach" through government incentives, such as federal tax credits, vehicle subsidies, or a minimum sales quota, is "crucial" to establish a wide-scale fuel cell vehicle fleet.

To meet the vehicles' emissions-reduction timeline for 2035, carbon capture and sequestration or biomass gasification would have to become economically competitive with existing fossil energy sources. Otherwise, natural gas or coal-burning power plants would be relied upon for hydrogen production, and greenhouse gas emissions would continue to rise.

Technologically, the most difficult challenge for fuel cell vehicles is onboard hydrogen storage. The U.S. Department of Energy has set a goal for vehicles to store enough hydrogen for a 300-mile (483-kilometer) drive, but the only options to meet this goal require more expensive storage tanks that lower vehicle fuel efficiency.

Hydrogen-powered vehicles are popular with the petroleum industry because the hydrogen market could replace oil sales. Environmentalists often prefer electric vehicles, which could result in less net greenhouse gas emissions if the electrical grid is powered by renewable energy sources such as solar or wind power.

For the United States to end its "addiction to oil" before oil sources dwindle, a comprehensive approach would be needed, the study concluded. "If you combine [fuel cell vehicles] with biofuel and continuing evolution in combustion engines and plug-in hybrids, you could potentially eliminate all oil from the transport sector," Ramage said. 

Ben Block is a staff writer with the Worldwatch Institute. He can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.

For permission to reprint this article, please contact Julia Tier at jtier@worldwatch.org.

Opinion: U.S. Environmentalists Finally Have a Leader

On Thursday, politician-turned-activist Al Gore called for the United States to rely 100 percent on zero-carbon sources of electricity by 2018. Regardless of the logistical practicality of the goal or of the existence of political will to achieve this target in a single decade, Gore's statements made it clear: the U.S. environmental movement finally has a leader.

In the 20 years since global warming first entered the conscience of environmentalists, the ability to motivate progressive change has been, to put it mildly, a struggle. The opinions of scientific skeptics, supported by the fossil fuel industry, tended to resonate more powerfully in the public mind than the research generated by peer-reviewed international experts. Voters were not getting the message.

Now, that is beginning to change. A groundswell of voices - from Wall Street investors to the urban poor, from evangelical Christians to indigenous leaders, from defenders of national security to activists for world peace - say climate change is a threat and a solution is urgent.

Yet, who will lead? The environmental movement has not had a central, unified message since its inception during the first Earth Day in 1970. Rather than sticking to the core ethos of its foundation, the movement has settled for incremental compromises - for example, attempting to control pollution rather than transform the underlying economic causes.

Climate change will not solve itself with small steps that treat carbon dioxide as just another pollutant. A successful mass movement must set its sights high and settle for nothing less than a new economy. Gore has done just that.   

At a Washington, D.C., event organized by his We Campaign, Gore challenged the United States to generate not a single megawatt of electricity from greenhouse gas-emitting power sources by the year 2018. He says a national push toward renewable energies would lower the prices of these technologies. The goal is "achievable, affordable and transformative," he explained, if it is coupled with the creation of a national electric grid, development of plug-in hybrid vehicles, and vastly improved energy efficiency.

Not only are his messages bold in their very nature, but Gore is connecting the dots in a way the greater environmental movement has often failed to do. The three major problems facing Americans - economic decline, national security, and environmental degradation - are interrelated,  he said. "We're borrowing money from China to buy oil from the Persian Gulf to burn it in ways that destroy the planet. Every bit of that's got to change."

If every major problem facing the United States can be solved with a clean energy revolution, then why aren't environmentalists storming Washington to create change?

Before Gore could even deliver his speech, some members of Congress were describing his statements as poorly timed, due to the rising prices of fuel and food. "Mr. Gore will yet again call attention to the policies called for by radical environmentalists that would result in even higher gas prices," Michael Steel, spokesman for House Republican Leader John Boehner, told The Hill newspaper.

In fact, Gore is offering the only realistic long-term solution to high gasoline prices - reducing America's addiction to oil by developing local energy sources that can be used to power a new generation of efficient, electric vehicles. This is a welcome contrast to those in Congress who are telling the public not to worry, that America can drill its way out of its energy problems. As Gore himself put it on Thursday, "When demand for oil and coal increases, their price goes up. When demand for solar cells increases, the price often comes down."

Instead of cowering to the fearmongering of the fossil fuel industry, the environmental movement must take the lead in embracing the vision of a new U.S. energy economy. By embracing Gore's vision, the United States can lead the world into the post-fossil fuel era of the 21st century, just as the country led the way into the fossil fuel era a century ago. 

When civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. announced to participants during the 1963 March on Washington that he had a dream, his vision was not merely for some of America to live in equality. All men are created equal, King said. When championing for change, an all-or-nothing stance is sometimes the only choice.

Christopher Flavin is president of the Worldwatch Institute. Staff writer Ben Block can be reached at bblock@worldwatch.org.