President Mohamed Nasheed has said the Maldivian people are directly affected by climate change, and steps should be taken to achieve carbon neutrality.
In his keynote address at a London dinner hosted by the Mary Robinson Foundation-Climate Justice (MRFCJ), the President noted that the Maldives sat just two metres above sea level. He said that the low elevation makes the country vulnerable to natural disasters, such as the 2004 tsunami.
Nasheed also noted that over 70 Maldive islands have contaminated water supplies due to sea salt intrusion, and supplying desalination systems to all islands has doubled state expenditures.
Nasheed advocated for a deeper understanding of the climate, and urged stronger preventative measures against climate change.
Reducing carbon emissions was one key solution. Nasheed also urged his audience to develop a legally binding climate agreement.
Nasheed said the Maldives should replace fossil fuel with solar power and other renewable sources of energy as part of its commitment to reaching carbon neutrality.
“I think the green movement needs to take a step back and reassess what it is trying to achieve and how,” Mark Lynas, an adviser to President Mohamed Nasheed on sustainable and environmental issues, has told the Ecologist publication.
In an interview for the ecological publication, Lynas, a British journalist and environmental activist, believes that amidst growing controversy in adopting so-called greener technologies, economies like the Maldives require an ‘engineer’ rather than a ‘propagandist’ to succeed.
Talking of his advisory role to President Nasheed, the journalist claims he aims to try and be practical, rather than idealistic, in pursuing green commitments to help the Maldives meet its ambitions to become carbon neutral by 2020.
“When I’m advising the president of the Maldives, I can’t really say to him ‘Our first job is to confront power and smash corporate control’,” Lynas tells the Ecologist. “I have to say to him, ‘OK, let’s look at getting this amount of solar power on these buildings, this amount of wind on the grid in the capital city, let’s work on this kind of building code for energy efficiency’.”
President Mohamed Nasheed this morning clambered onto his roof and assisted with the installation of 48 solar panel modules on the presidential residence of Muleaage.
“Solar power helps combat climate change, reduces our dependency on imported oil and most importantly cuts our electricity costs,” Nasheed told assembled journalists, in his bright orange hard hat.
Yesterday, US President Barack Obama announced he would be following suit by lining the roof of the White House with photo voltaic cells and installing a solar-powered water heater.
The Muleaage solar system provides 11.5 kilowatts of peak output, enough to power almost 200 standard 60 watt light bulbs, and will save the country US$300,000 over the life of the system. The panels were donated pro bono by LG Electronics, while Sungevity trained local staff to install and maintain the panels.
Moreover, the system is plugged into the city’s grid and any power not being used will be fed back into the system.
The design itself was competed by Sungevity from its offices in Oakland California, without taking even a tape measure to the president’s roof. Using a software algorithm developed by a high school student at Sydney Grammar School in Australia, aerial photographs of Male’ and trigonometry to determine the azimuth of the President’s roof, Sungevity was able to calculate Muleaage’s solar efficiency with a one percent margin of error.
The company is now conducting an energy audit of the building to identify way to cut energy wastage.
“We are proud he chose Sungevity to coordinate the design of a system from halfway around the world,” said the company’s founder, former Greenpeace campaigner Danny Kennedy. “Saving energy and going solar are the keys to unlocking economic growth and energy security.”
The Maldives is presently entirely reliant on imported fossil fuels, and the high cost of electricity – particularly in islands, where it can double – remains a political hot potato, as well as placing the country at the mercy of fluctuating oil prices.
The country’s state-owned power provider, STELCO, faced a loss of Rf547 million (US$43 million) in 2008 and was operating at a daily loss of Rf320,000 (US$25,000), building up staggering levels of debt.
Significant anger was directed at Nasheed’s government when it raised prices to reflect the real cost of providing the utility, culminating in an opposition-led ‘Red Notice’ protest in May which left scores injured.
Following a tense three-hour stand-off, police used water canons and then tear gas to disperse the crowd and took a number of DRP activists into custody. At street-level politics in Male’, the rising cost of electricity comes second only to fears of rising crime and is a key domestic point of contention with Nasheed’s government. It is not uncommon to hear of families paying up to a third of their incomes to STELCO.
This means that unlike many other countries, the Maldives has a strong political as well as economic imperative to drop the cost with proven renewable energy, suggesting Nasheed’s rooftop antics this morning were less of a publicity stunt and more a way of raising the profile of solar technology as a proven alternative.
“The average price in the US is now US$0.24 a kilowatt, which makes solar power already a third cheaper than grid electricity in the Maldives,” noted Danny Kennedy, in an earlier interview with Minivan News.
“The Maldives can move to clean fuel, hedging against fuel price rises while taking on the vested interests of incumbent technology.”
Adopting proven sources of renewable energy such as wind and solar will reduce both the price of electricity in the Maldives and cut down on price fluctuations caused by the expensive importation of fossil fuels, claims Danny Kennedy.
He would know. The former Greenpeace campaigner turned solar power entrepreneur is riding a surge of interest in the renewable technology, spurred by economic rather than environmental imperatives.
“The solar industry grew 40 percent during the recession,” he tells Minivan News.
“The average price in the US is now US$0.24 a kilowatt, which makes solar power already a third cheaper than grid electricity in the Maldives.”
The Australian environmental campaigner ran Greenpeace campaigns across the Pacific in places such as Papa New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Fiji, prior to moving to the United States and founding Sungevity, the residential solar company that is now the third largest such provider in the country after just a few years in operation.
Kennedy is in town to oversee the pro-bono installation of 48 photovoltaic (PV) modules on the roof of Maldivian President Mohamed Nasheed’s house, ‘Muleaage’, which convert solar radiation into direct current electricity using photovoltaic semiconductors.
Nasheed has already agreed to personally help install the units, which Kennedy expects will save the country US$300,000 in electricity over the 25-year warrantied lifespan of the units.
Sungevity calculated the solar production potential of Nasheed’s roof from its office in Oakland California, using aerial images from Microsoft’s mapping software.
The method uses a fiendishly clever piece of trigonometry developed by a young student from Sydney Grammar School in Australia, that takes the altitude of the photographing plane from the image’s metadata then uses trigonometry to calculate the angle and direction of the potential customer’s roof, and then plugs in known quantities such as the area’s solar potential and price of electricity.
The result is that customers can determine the amount of electricity the unit will generate and potential savings, over the internet, “with plus or minus one percent margin of error. That’s better than sending a kid onto the roof with a tape measure, which introduces human error.”
The schoolboy’s innovation stunned the Redmond heavyweight sent over to Sungevity from Microsoft to see how the software worked, who told Kennedy that the company couldn’t have done such a thing “with 300 of our own engineers.”
Installing the units on Nasheed’s roof is now the last phase of the operation.
“We installed the rails today, and we’ll install the PV modules over the next few days. There are still some conduits to install to the generating room, and some carpentry to do,” Kennedy explains.
As the President’s house is connected to the grid in Male’, the solar cells will feed electricity back into the grid and help power the city when Nasheed is not running the air conditioning or using the microwave.
“My sense is that he’s trying to do something symbolic and make a statement about solutions to climate change,” Kennedy said. “He seems to be trying to lead by example.”
Founder of Sungevity Danny Kennedy suggests the Maldives can develop and export its expertise in renewable energy
The light stuff
The driving force behind solar power is now economic, says Kennedy.
While the capital expenditure for a small unit runs to US$30,000, installations in countries like the US are heavily incentivised and banks are increasingly offering ‘solar financing’ so customers can avoid the upfront hit.
“Solar is now about saving money,” Kennedy says. “The US and Australia give cashback on solar installations, while in the EU the model is a feed-in tariff. In Germany the model pays 40 euro cents per kilowatt hour, so if you install a solar system with a 20 year lifespan, you can sit back and let the thing turn a profit.”
As a result, “Germany‘s projected installation this year is 7000 megawatts – by comparison, Male’s powerplant generates 38.76 megawatts.”
The UK is not far behind Germany, with a proposed 31 pence feed-in tariff: “The UK solar market is going to go gangbusters in the next few years,” Kennedy says.
Feed-in tariffs are the fastest way to promote quick adoption of the technology, Kennedy explains, but incentive models – cashback and feed-in tariffs – “take on the vested interests involved in fossil fuels.”
“The Maldives can move to clean fuel, hedging against fuel price rises while taking on the vested interests of incumbent technology,” Kennedy suggests.
The flat and predictable cost of solar power contrasts with that of fossil fuels, he says, which are expensive for a country like the Maldives to import, subject to price flucutations, and vulnerable to Middle Eastern instability.
“While a small system may cost up to $30,000, it will pay itself back tenfold over its lifespan. It’s a safe and predictable return on investment,” he says.
In the US at least, the price of grid electricity is rising by seven percent per annum, Kennedy explains. The cost of solar units is meanwhile plummeting as production of the devices, led by China, skyrockets.
“Every doubling in production of PV modules represents an 18 percent reduction in price,” Kennedy explains.
“The Chinese have noticed this are increasing production massively, and have doubled production twice in the last three years. There has been a 50 percent drop in price in the last 18 months.”
A country like the Maldives with comparatively low energy requirements has the potential to meet much of its energy demands through a combination of solar, wind and wet (tidal) renewable energy generation, Kennedy suggests, as well as create a great many jobs in the sector.
And if the German experience is anything to go by, that expertise is soon going to be in high demand across the world.
“German companies like Bosch said early on that they are going to become better at this that anyone else, and manage the IP (intellectual property). Now, it’s German engineering staff who are running the Chinese production lines.”
The Maldives could develop its own expertise, Kennedy suggests: “the challenges of powering an isolated island in the Maldives are similar to those of a town in the Australian outback,” he notes.
Kennedy sees the future of power generation as working rather like the internet, running as a grid with many small generators feeding into the system rather than the centralised production and distribution of power.
“I’m not a great advocate of large-scale power plant development, solar or otherwise,” Kennedy says. “It risks replicating the mistakes of the past – it’s a Faustian bargain you make, as with Edison: ‘Give us lights in the streets and we’ll give you a regulated monopoly.’”
Because of the pollution profile, plants are also located further from population centres and up to 30 percent of electricity generated is lost in transmission.
“There are new high-voltage DC lines becoming available but uptake is not substantial,” Kennedy says, predicting a future where power generation is controlled by the consumer and with less wasteful transmission.
“Who pays for that bit in lost in the middle?” he asks: “The public purse.”
With 50 percent of the world’s solar installations in Germany, weather is no longer as great a limiting factor of solar technology either, Kennedy says.
The principle obstacle has rather been one of “political will” – which Nasheed will demonstrate when he clambers onto his roof over the next few days to poses for photos with his new PV cells. Clearly a publicity stunt – but nonetheless a bright idea.
Advances in air-conditioning design, and use of solar power, will mean cheaper cooling systems for buildings, according to a report in the Economist.
National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Colorado is developing technology known as “desiccant-evaporative cooling” which requires little power because the hot water can be obtained from solar panels.
The process may consume only about a fifth of the energy of conventional air-conditioners, says Ron Judkoff of NREL.
Australia’s energy grid could run entirely on renewables such as wind and solar power within 10 years, according to a report endorsed by the International Energy Agency (IAEA).
Only technologies that are proven and commercially available are referred to in the report, according to the ABC.
The Japanese Government’s official donor company, Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), has agreed to invest 1 billion yen (US$11.1 million) in the Project for Clean Energy in Malé.
The project would see solar panels capable of providing up to 400 kilowatt hours (kWh) installed in five locations around Malé. By comparison, STELCO’s Malé powerhouse currently has an annual peak usage of 32,618 kWh.
The solar agreement was signed by High Commissioner of the Maldives in Sri Lanka, Ali Hussain Didi, and Chief Representative of JICA, Akira Shimura. The signing took place at the Embassy of Japan in Sri Lanka on 25 March 2010.
Feasibility studies for the project were undertaken by JICA in 2009 and the project is due to begin in April 2011 and is expected to be completed by October 2011.
The five selected locations are the President’s Office, Maldives Center for Social Education (MCSE), State Electricity Company Limited (STELCO), Thaajuddeen School and Hiriyaa School.
According to JICA, the project will “promote the utilization of solar energy as an alternate and renewable resource of energy and undertake adaptation measures against climate change by reducing Green House Gases.”
Research officer and local representative of JICA, Mohamed Aiysh, explained that JICA had a major interest in the development of the Maldives and had been assisting with food aid since the 1980s.
As the largest privately owned multilateral donor organisation in the world, Aiysh said JICA’s assistance to the Maldives, and other countries around the world, was “very important to the international community” and a “benefit to mankind.”
The agreement is the result of a request for aid made by the Maldivian government to the Japanese government as part of the Maldives’ bid to be carbon-neutral by 2020.
Aiysh said the Ministry of Housing, Transportation and Environment (MHTE) is JICA’s “local counterpart” and they will be responsible for implementing and running the project.
According to Minister for Housing, Transportation and Environment Mohamed Aslam, that solar panels are “expected to have a capacity to produce 400kWt of solar energy at any given time,” and the JICA-sponsored project is a “pilot work” expected to cut energy costs in the long run.
He said the ministry has three more renewable energy projects underway, all of them in the feasibility study phase.
A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) has been signed with Indian company Suzlon Energy for a 25 megawatt wind farm in Addu Atoll.
Another MoU has been signed with Winwind, a Finnish company that builds latest-generation wind turbines, to begin work on a wind farm in the Maldives.
The third MoU has been signed with Falck Energy, also for wind-produced energy.
Aslam said “the vision we have is to make all energy in the country renewable by 2020.”
Ali Rilwan from environmental NGO Bluepeace said he didn’t think the amount of surface space required for solar-powered energy would be sufficient to power all of Malé.
“We don’t have that kind of surface. You would need to cover all of Malé [in solar panels] to produce enough energy.”
Rilwan said wind energy was a more feasible and practical option to replace the amount of fossil fuel energy STELCO is currently producing, but he thought the solar panels are “ideal for powering street lights and park lights. Not for buildings.”
Japan has previously donated the sea wall in Malé, the construction of the MCSE, and the reconstruction of Thaajuddeen School and Hiriyaa School, among others.
JICA is currently rehabilitating harbours in seven islands, establishing sewage facilities on three islands, and collaborating with MHTE in the field of sewage systems.
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