1. My Reasons for working with renewable energy
I am not an expert in geotherapy. My experience has been as a hobbyist devising biogas apparatus and using it in Kenya and Nigeria.

My original motivation in Kenya was curiosity and a desire to find energy sources which did not need imports. This was supplemented by a realisation that fossil fuels are likely to run out whereas renewables are permanent. I have never liked the idea of nuclear power. For the past two years I have been using photovoltaics to do most of my domestic lighting for about 9 months of the year as a token reduction of the use of nuclear power. In Britain we have about only 15% of our electricity coming from nuclear. In France the situation is much worse. My motivation in Nigeria was that I needed to substitute for bottled gas which was hard to buy.

My original reasons for working on non-carbon energy systems had nothing to do with the possible greenhouse effect. They were first that I was interested in finding a source of energy for rural people in Kenya that did not require imports - and plain curiosity. But there are some other reasons we might consider. An important one is a pessimism about the future of present world energy systems. The publication of The Limits to Growth (see this page in 1969 made a large number of people aware of the finite nature of world resources and the accelerating rate of consumption. The supply of a fuel like kerosene for cooking is vulnerable to war and other international disturbance and even to internal disturbance. This has recently been demonstrated by the Kuwait War. Only a small extension of this war, into Saudi Arabia, could have greatly increased the price and reduced the supply of the fuel to everyone. It is unwise to become addicted to such a substance.

2. Biogas
When I was working in Nigeria from 1977-80 I found myself in a place where cooking gas was not easy to obtain. The middlemen who brought it from the refinery tended to double the price. So I had an incentive to make it myself, just to make my life easier in a place where finding the necessities of western life was a struggle. I designed the oildrum digester to solve a personal problem as well as to demonstrate the principle to my secondary school students.

I have described a cheap biogas apparatus which western volunteers working in African countries could build. I would like large numbers of these to be built in order to show people that it is possible. So far I have not succeeded in getting volunteer organisations interested in it. If there was enough interest it would be possible to make up a kit for volunteers who are going to work in the rural areas to take with them.

One of my former students in Cameroon has said he intends to build one.

How likely is it that large numbers of people in rural Africa will build and use biogas apparatus? That is hard to estimate, when so few installations are in use. A considerable cultural change is required. It is said to have taken several centuries for the iron age revolution to occur with the replacement of bronze by iron weapons and tools. The modern technologies of radio and tape recorder are penetrating village societies quickly but these do not need detailed knowledge of operation. They do not necessarily cause other changes. Although a biogas plant is comparatively simple, it needs more knowledge to work it correctly than a radio.

Rural Energy Problems
I am much attracted to the idea that rural people should be able to provide their own energy needs from their own land. They would thus become once again immune to the effects of the oscillations and uncertainties of the world energy market - which is, in any case, mainly concerned with urban and industrial peoples.

Within village societies energy for cooking comes almost entirely from firewood or charcoal. Charcoal is also an important urban fuel in Kenya. As it is not produced in efficient carbonising apparatus this is a waste of wood. The problem of the fuel needs of rapidly increasing urban areas is something else. An aspect of the rapid growth of urban areas is the lack of investment in rural activities so that people feel they have to leave.

As the forests disappear there is a need to replace firewood by another fuel. People really can't afford kerosene from their limited money incomes, most of which goes on school fees and food. Luckily people in Africa are not yet reduced to burning cowdung, as in India, but this is a future possibility or threat.

Intensification of land use
Related to the problem of fuel is the intensification of agriculture. When populations were smaller, people moved about to find new land and left the old land to recover by being left fallow, perhaps for a generation. Now people have to cultivate the same land year after year. The result is erosion and loss of fertility. I have observed this in West Kenya where I have seen the forest and isolated stands of trees disappear over the last 25 years. Land hunger is becoming more and more acute as the population increases at about 4% per year. The frequency of flooding increases in the plains below the denuded highlands. There is therefore a need to make the existing cultivated land produce more food without mining its organic and inorganic resource. It would also be good for the people if numbers stopped increasing so rapidly - but that is another aspect of the total problem we can't go into here.

Composting is the permanent answer to this problem of land degradation, and it requires few cash inputs. The most useful aspect of biogas production is that the fuel can be thought of as a bribe to encourage composting. The animal and vegetable wastes which come out of the process can have a dramatic effect on the fertility of soil. I turned a barren garden consisting of laterite into a productive source of maize and vegetables after one season of biogas output. The local people assumed I had been using chemical fertiliser or government sponsored hybrid maize.

Social and Economic effects
The social and economic effects of large numbers of small farmers using biogas would be beneficial. It would not increase their cash incomes directly but it would increase their non-cash resources considerably. If they had previously been using kerosene they save the cash spent on kerosene. If the women are spending all day looking for firewood, biogas would increase the time available for them to do other things, including perhaps saleable craft work.

Disadvantages of GNP as a measure of well-being
We might question here whether development agencies take enough account of non-cash incomes. Thus if the installation of a large number of biogas plants in an area greatly improved the ease of cooking it might not appear on some measures of GNP (Gross National Product - French PNB Produit Nationale Brut) and therefore such agencies as the World Bank or FAO would not see it as a success. This question has been dealt with by Ben Jackson# who, like myself, has spent some time actually observing what people do in African villages. Much activity takes place without money changing hands. It is true the cost of building biogas plants must be paid partly in money and therefore will appear in calculations of GNP. More importantly, someone will have to find the money. Each region will be different here and one can't say in general where the money should come from. Jackson proposes that GNP be replaced or supplemented by a measure called Human Development Index (HDI) - pioneered by the UN Development Programme. Some such change in the measure needs to be applied to industrialised countries too. The GNP includes the production of wealth and also the clearing up of waste products, or the rebuilding of damaged buildings The GNP can rise while the wealth represented by cars is preventing the pleasure of smelling the flowers, or creating ill health which will also increase the GNP by the money spent in hospital.

The alternative to biogas and composting is industrial agriculture. But this is connected to the oil industry and cannot be a permanent solution. When cheap fossil fuel comes to an end so would oil-derived fertiliser. As the current issue of The Ecologist# points out, FAO policy is devoted to (or at least having the effect of) increasing the use of pesticides and fertilisers. There is some evidence that fertiliser usage is increasing nitrogen oxide emissions and therefore atmospheric warming. The use of Biogas and its organic fertiliser would therefore have some effect here.

Unfortunately, as far as I know, I have not succeeded in getting a single farmer to use biogas. I regret that I did not show my apparatus to women. (I had been working in boarding schools for boys). As it is the women who will most benefit from the use of biogas it is they who should be taught about the process and even shown how to build the apparatus.

There are areas of the world where there has been some success in getting people to make biogas. India and China are probably the two areas where there has been most success. However, neither of these countries have tapped the full potential for biogas production.

In India there is an unfortunate effect. In some areas the richer farmers have installed biogas but have so monopolised the supply of vegetable and animal wastes that the poorer people are in fact worse off and are beginning to eat their food raw as a result. In China reports are suspect as the descriptions of the number of biogas plants are in some cases fictitious. Moreover, the privatisation of agriculture and the break up of communes and co-operatives may have had the effect of ending the social conditions in which the existing biogas plants were built and designed.

I happened to switch on the tv the other day and noticed a programme on biogas. A man in India said he had given up using the device he had after two years. The suggestion seemed to be that he was too lazy to fill it in the morning. I wonder what was really going on there. People are not "too lazy" to do what they truly value. Perhaps his wife had no say, or perhaps he thought the use of gas made the women uppity in some way by giving them free time not now devoted to finding fuel. These are questions to think about. Biogas must be controlled by the people who will benefit. It is not a World Bank type of project. Biogas devices must be designed with the users taking part at every stage so that they understand what they are for. As soon as possible it must be the users who demand it. True success would be achieved when it becomes part of the ordinary commercial life of the area with companies who will build when they get orders.

In every area where there has been great pressure from an increased population there is a need for biogas or some other alternative fuel; but these are the areas where people probably can't afford to buy the plant.

Atmospheric effects
What would the effect of an increasing amount of biogas production have on greenhouse emissions? Not a lot, if we add up tons of carbon saved. I have noticed that the total amount of biogas I have burned in several years of operation is burned in one oil well "waste" burner in a few seconds. It is true that the individual effect of every non-fossil fuel source installed, including wind, solar and biogas is a small one but it creates the opportunity to imagine the phasing out of fossilised carbon burning by creating an alternative. Thus if the rural areas begin to be based on a permanent local fuel source we can imagine their future advantage over the urban societies still at the mercy of oil politics and economics. An important world problem at present is the migration of people to cities without employment.

Recent events in Sudan, Somalia, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Iraq, Liberia, Cambodia and several other countries show that the post-colonial structures set up on "independence" are very fragile. All these countries have lost the modern structures and economies and have returned to a very low level of organisation. I have a fear that the real world order is unravelling. (I don't refer to George Bush's (1988) propaganda which seems to be proposing an American military empire.) Every new war which breaks out is eating away the fabric and leaving people disconnected from what we think of as the world economy.

I don't know how biogas can be promoted in Africa, but I don't think any agency is seriously trying to introduce the process on a large scale. University science departments often build demonstration models but these have no effect on the people who need to learn the process. There may have been some success in Kenya# but I am not in touch with the project. There has been some success in India but there too not as much biogas plant has been installed as is possible and many people are not using it. The Indian reports of socially undesirable results, show that nothing is entirely good.

I suspect that, as with many well-meaning programs, people are being shown technology they don't understand. Another factor may be that most of the alternative technology being suggested is too expensive. Even the oildrum digester had a cost of about £100 (Ffr.1000) ten years ago. As it had an estimated life of about three years even this is a high cost for someone whose cash income is limited.

I don't want to make claims that one can save the world by getting everyone to use biogas. Nevertheless I think it would be beneficial if more people used it, and if people in such areas as rural Africa came to know it as a technique available to them, at least as ordinary as the use of kerosene. Once people are aware of the technique any rise in the price of kerosene due to an increase in world fuel taxes (or future oil wars), would cause an increase in the amount of biogas used. That is, I think it useful to "plant" the idea now so that future emergencies could allow it to grow.

3. A non-Carbon energy Culture
I believe we have to encourage the adoption of a non-carbon energy culture. That is, every new and existing use of energy must be assessed to see if it can be supplied by technology which does not emit carbon-dioxide.

The strategy of altering the world's energy usage away from carbon-based fuels must include the so-called Third World. At present the industrial countries are moving extremely slowly towards a realisation that burning carbon fuels is bad for us. But in those countries which live on the edge of poverty governments are doing little thinking about these problems. All the money has to go into maintaining conventional systems. Moreover, western corporations are eager to sell them conventional energy systems. In addition, people fear that unconventional systems, such as wind, solar and biomass, are inferior because they are not much used in the west. There is almost no money for independent development of technology.

A desirable end result of energy policy and planning would be a cultural attitude to energy to the effect that burning of fossil carbon becomes relegated to special occasions while all the daily activities of life are energised by some form of solar energy including: wind, waves, biogas and other biomass, and direct solar energy for heating and electricity. My personal hope is that nuclear power, either fission or fusion, will have no future role in providing energy. India is the only third world country with a significant amount of nuclear power. There are serious radioactive pollution problems there (as there are in Britain and the United States, and of course eastern Europe). As for fusion research, we already have a quite adequate fusion reactor situated at a safe distance and we should learn to use it (though we ought not to damage the shielding - the ozone layer).

Unlike Mrs. Thatcher I don't think that monetary or pricing policy should be the only means of influencing energy use. Earlier societies have used taboo as a means of maintaining the environment. This was an apparently irrational prohibition which prevented some kinds of action. For example, I have heard it said that in Maori culture before a tree could be cut to build a canoe (a major investment decision) it was necessary to conduct an elaborate ceremony with feasting and gifts. That is, although there were many trees in the forest the price of using one was raised by a social custom. Presumably this had the effect of discouraging the use of trees. Western society recognises only monetary constraints, except in some cases such things as planning permission from the bureaucracy. Could we devise a modern equivalent of the non-monetary prohibition on the use of oil products? I have no suggestions. I would like to be able to smell the flowers in the summer but I can't because the whole area round my semi-rural house is flooded with petroleum fumes. The price of oil does not reflect my desire to smell flowers. No-one is paying me a compensation for losing this right.

Perhaps the price of carbon fuel ought to reflect three things: the cost of extracting it from the ground; the cost of the damage it causes to the oceans in transport, to the atmosphere when burnt; and the fact that it is a capital rather than income resource. The pollution portion should be collected as a tax at the oil field. How can the financial system be made to recognise the fact that it is a capital asset being depleted? I don't know. I am not a financier. At present the price of oil reflects only the cost of extraction. Taxes are arbitrary and depend only on governments' desire to raise money. Thus the United States and most oil producers have low taxes, whereas others have high taxes. There is no world energy tax.

If we start with the desire to restrict the energy use of mined carbon deposits then we have to develop alternatives as fast as possible. Because this attitude is new to the industrial world not enough has been invested in research into non fossil fuel energy (other than nuclear).

4. Wind Power
In the United States, especially in California, the government has devised a financial regime which encourages the use of wind and other non-conventional energy sources. I have written a sketch# of how these policies might be adapted for Kenya in order to develop a source of wind energy, in the Rusinga Island area, I first noticed in 1968. But I have not discovered how to persuade any official body to take this plan seriously. I believe there are several wind energy systems of the same kind surrounding Lake Victoria. I have noticed another on the western shore at Bukoba in Tanzania. The Rusinga wind regime has been studied by a Dutch wind survey team#.

The wind around Lake Victoria can balance nicely the hydroelectric generating from the Tana river in Kenya, and perhaps the Owen Falls dam in Uganda. When the wind is blowing, demand is high and water power can be turned down. But wind power on a scale large enough to affect the country's economy and oil imports is going to be a capital intensive project on a similar scale to a hydroelectric project. I think Kenya could not raise this capital itself. Few farmers could afford a wind power system, especially as the cost per installed watt reduces with increasing size. Small systems cost more than large ones. Unlike biogas this is a large scheme which might need the assistance of bodies like the World Bank, and certainly the Kenyan government. I myself haven't discovered how to interest people of this kind. The largest wind power construction company in Britain has shown no interest.

5. Solar Electricity
The problem is cost. It would be nice if solar electricity could be a lot cheaper than it is at present. In a magazine article# describing my experience with a photovoltaic system I show that at the present prices of these devices electricity is much more expensive than conventional sources. Can the cost be brought down? Some people believe it can but I suspect not enough money is being put into the research and development. There is an analogy with the case of the inventor of the Salter's Duck device (for wave power). He was asked in 1978 when he expected his device to be put into service. He replied: "By about the mid nineties, or five years after the next serious nuclear accident". He failed to foresee the limitless stupidity# of the British government which cancelled the project in 1981 just before it showed signs of being viable. It has been suggested that the nuclear enthusiasts sabotaged it because they were afraid it would provide a realistic alternative to nuclear power. The government referred the assessment of wave power to the Energy Technology Support Unit (ETSU), which was based at Harwell, the nuclear research centre, and composed almost entirely of nuclear engineers. They increased the wave power designers' costs so that the wave devices appeared to be more expensive than nuclear power. Nuclear power itself was costed in a generous way that omitted many of its most serious costs.

Salter also failed to realise that a serious nuclear accident in the Ukraine wouldn't agitate people enough, even though I think it likely that many western Europeans will die early from its effects. (The director of the clean-up at Chernobyl, himself dying of the effects of radiation, estimates that up to 10,000 Soviet citizens have already died)#. The problem with solar electricity may be the same. There is no sense of urgency and only the nuclear people can get unlimited money. Everyone else has to fight for every penny. Solar electricity has no military uses.

One problem is that the people with the best sun live mostly in the third world. They don't have any money for research. Only the Australians have both the money and the sun. But they don't have an energy problem so they don't have the incentive to work hard at developing a cheap solar system.

I think we can imagine a civilisation based on solar energy distributing the power perhaps in the form of hydrogen from dissociated water, both through pipes and in vehicle storage tanks. In Sweden, the United States and West Germany there are working vehicles using Titanium-Vanadium hydride storage tanks#. Unfortunately, the storage tank costs as much as the car. So even before we start to estimate the cost of the hydrogen there is a cost problem. It is not very likely that any government would set a carbon tax high enough to allow this kind of hydrogen vehicle to compete on equal terms. Possibly the cost of storage can be reduced.

Our problem is that although we can imagine a culture using only renewable energy, it is very difficult to imagine the transition from our present culture. First coal and then oil have become so ingrained in the economy that we can't change easily. Millions of people have the belief that they are entitled to move about as much as they like. Large cities like Los Angeles would become impossible if they couldn't use oil or a similar cheap energy source. Higher cost energy implies that they wouldn't move as much as they do now. We value the ability to turn an electric switch and get as much as we wish. With biogas and solar power you need to know that the amount is limited. When I used biogas I could see the tank fall as I did my cooking. When it was empty I had to wait until it filled again. With solar electricity I have enough to use in the evening but there would be no point in leaving everything running all day. The batteries would become exhausted.

The same tv programme which showed the problems of biogas in India also showed a comprehensive solar electric system installed in a Zimbabwe hospital by a French company or aid institution. The people had given up using it because they didn't know how to maintain it. Apparently the batteries had been allowed to go flat and needed to be replaced but the cost was too high (tens of thousands of Francs I would imagine). So they went back to firewood and so on. This suggests that when a complete package is supplied from outside it is unlikely to work unless people understand it thoroughly. This too is an endemic problem. I have seen similar problems with the supply of sophisticated water treatment plant in Nigeria, when no training was requested by the local government.

5. The Problem of visiting architects and other experts
I don't have much to say on this other than what I mentioned in the abstract. I have noticed some examples of visiting experts who made decisions which I think they might have altered if they had spent longer in the area. There is a need for decisions to be taken by people who have all the information, technical, environmental and cultural. For this, time is needed so that all concerned can make themselves aware of what is needed.

The use of solar water heating is growing though curiously slowly. Many buildings are designed by architects from the North (or trained there) and they don't appreciate the ease of solar water heating, so don't specify it. The result is buildings which use electrically heated water. If the electricity depends on oil fuel this is a totally unnecessary generator of carbon dioxide. Even if the electricity is generated by water power, as it mostly is in Uganda and Kenya, it is still a waste to use electricity for heating water when the sun is available. The electricity should be used for lighting and turning motors where its qualities cannot be substituted.

The same problem is true of wind power. I once came across an architect who specified a diesel pump at a health centre site on Rusinga Island where there is excellent wind every day from 11.00 a.m. until sunset. His excuse was that the site was too far above the water. He had misread the contours and thought the building was 4000 feet above sea level. It was, but Lake Victoria was only 30 feet below. In the same area in Siaya District visiting western "experts" failed to realise that the wind in this region was predictable and not like British wind - variable. So another set of diesel pumps were specified. Visiting experts often don't have time to know the area and they give bad advice as a result.

Although these are small quantities in the context of the total world emission of carbon dioxide, every decision of this kind adds to the "mind-set" or cultural habit of continuing to use carbon-emitting energy.

From World Info#
"Problem": Climate Change