Why is an Energy Transformation

crucial to stopping the Climate Crisis

Climate change and dirty energy

Good Energy – Bad Energy

• “Our current energy system – the way we produce, distribute and consume energy – is unsustainable, unjust and harming communities, workers, the environment and the climate”

• “corporate and elite power interest outweighing the power of ordinary citizens”

Sasol – largest single source of green house gasses in the world

Key Problems

• Climate Change: It is already happening. Urgent action reducing Green House Gasses emissions is needed now. 57% of GHG is from CO2 released by fossil fuel use.

Key Problems

• Energy Access and Energy Poverty: 1.3 billion people of the world no access to electricity; 2.6 billion not have access to clean cooking facilities. Huge inequalities in 2008: US 7503 kg of oil / China 1598 / Bangladesh 192 (probably where Mozambique is).

• Energy consumption per head of population in the US and Canada is roughly twice that in Europe or Japan, more than ten times that in China, nearly 20 times that in India, and about 50 times as high as in the poorest countries of sub-Saharan Africa.

Key Problems

• Energy Waste: Way we produce and consume energy is extremely wasteful - industrialised countries where energy intensive products are consumed. Central energy systems waste more than 66% of energy input. Wastage on short term disposable products.

• Destructive Impacts of Energy Sources: World is reliant on fossil fuels (coal, gas and oil) and alternatives are misleading (nuclear power, industrial biomass and agrofuel, mega dams and waste-to-energy incineration) – all impact on the community.

Impacts of destructive energy sources

• climate change and the growing risk of runaway climate breakdown

• land grabbing and displacement and impoverishment of small-scale farmers, fisherpeople and rural and indigenous communities

• air pollution and water pollution, water shortages, inadequate clean water and sanitation

• deforestation, biodiversity loss, and the destruction of landscapes and sensitive ecosystems

• rupture or collapse of local economies

Impacts of destructive energy sources

• badly paid, unsafe, insecure jobs far away from people’s homes and families

• health problems and premature deaths in people living close to harmful energy projects and infrastructure or exposed to toxic waste

• human rights abuses of community members, activists and investigative journalists including surveillance, arbitrary detention, violence, torture and murder

• loss of traditional medicines, livelihoods, cultures, traditions and important sites of ancestor worship

• social upheaval and community breakdown

Health

• Health researchers estimate the worldwide health toll from air pollution due to COAL combustion is 210,000 deaths, almost 2 million serious illnesses, and over 151 million minor illnesses per year, not including the effects of climate change.

• Recent update: March 2014 - WHO reports that “in 2012 around 7 million people died - one in eight of total global deaths – as a result of air pollution exposure. This finding more than doubles previous estimates and confirms that air pollution is now the world’s largest single environmental health risk. Reducing air pollution could save millions of lives.”

Other facts

• Dams: > 50% worlds rivers choked 50 000 dams.

• Nuclear: Safe storage of nuclear waste still not available and extremely costly.

• Oil: $7.3 trillion US ‘defending’ US oil supply.

• Fracking: 25% chemicals used causes cancer.

• Agrofuels: Account 66% of landgrabs in Africa.

• Incineration: > CO2 than coal/unit electricity.

Drivers of current energy system

• Energy and neocolonialism, neoliberalism and extractivism … “a political approach which prioritises the profit-making activities of private enterprise above social and environmental concerns, and individual freedoms over collective, public goods.”

• Profits from energy exploitation backed by law … “energy corporations and their state backers use profit-sharing agreements and government-to-government treaties to guarantee continued access to energy resources and the maximisation of profits from these resources.”

Drivers of current energy system

• Export-orientated economic growth … “prioritises the production of goods for export. This comes at a very high environmental and social cost to people living in exporting countries.”

• Energy intensive lifestyles … “Modern life in advanced industrial economies is highly energy dependent … high levels of energy consumption are predicated on the ready availability of energy, and on the environmental and social costs of the production of this energy being borne mostly by people and communities outside of their borders, company’s operation mostly people and communities in the global South.”

Drivers of current energy system

• Energy market liberalisation and energy exclusion … “Energy poverty and lack of energy access is a direct result of governments’ policies and legislative choices in favour of energy market privatisation and liberalisation, involving the sell-off and deregulation of energy infrastructure and services so that energy provision and investment becomes guided primarily by the objective of profit maximisation.”

• Corporate power blocking the energy transition … “In many places, politicians and policy makers have direct connections with and financial interests in destructive and unsustainable energy, and senior executives … powerful positions on government committees …”

Who benefits the most?

• Dirty energy companies, construction companies, energy- intensive companies, especially their senior executives, financiers and investors

• Corrupt political elites in resource-rich countries

• Western industrialised countries• National security forces and private security firms

• Wealthy consumers

Who pays the biggest price

• People in the global South• Women• Indigenous people and rural community

• Ordinary workers in dirty energy industries

• People in poverty

Features of a just, sustainable, climate-safe

energy system • Provides energy access for all as a basic human right

• Climate-safe and based on locally-appropriate, low-impact technologies

• Under direct democratic control and governed in the public interest

Features of a just, sustainable, climate-safe

energy system • Ensures the rights of energy sector workers, and their influence over how their workplaces are run

• Ensures the right to free, prior and informed consent and rights of redress for affected communities

• As small-scale and decentralised as possible

• Ensures fair and balanced energy use and minimum energy waste

Local struggles

• Push back on coal: Vale, Sasol, Eskom, Anglo, Shell

• Places: Tete Province, Petro-chemical areas in SA (south Durban / Sasolburg / Lephalale / Highveld / Vaal)

• How do we get access to energy that is affordable – a key question that has to be asked up front

• We need decentralsed but connected energy systems – so that we can support each other

Alternative

If we want to • supply the energy needs of its people,• respond to unemployment, • avoid catastrophic climate change, • clean up air pollution to let people breath,

• conserve water and prevent the further destruction of whole watersheds, and

• avoid bankrupting itself, Our government should focus national resources on developing renewables under democratic control while shutting down coal plants.