Earth Hour Commemoration : I will if wou will

Earth Hour Commemoration : I will if wou will Warief Djajanto Basorie ;  The writer teaches Journalism at Dr. Soetomo Press Institute (LPDS), Jakarta

JAKARTA POST, 23 Maret 2013

  

Walk. Take public transport. Use a reusable cloth bag, not plastic bags for shopping. These are consistently repeated doable messages Indonesians and people throughout the world will get on March 23. On that Saturday night, the 60 minutes from 8:30 to 9:30 pm will be Earth Hour 2013. Office buildings, hotels, malls, street lights and private houses switch the power off to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels. During Earth Hour 2012, one million Indonesians got in the act in 22 cities, 255 communities, 77 schools and four universities. Now in its fifth year in Indonesia, this world movement calls on supporters to go beyond 60 minutes of planet saving action. “I will if you will” is the global tagline. To instill the public with the Earth Hour message, WWF Indonesia has posted a video on YouTube. Just search for EarthHour2011Indo. It shows young men and women in turn holding a blackboard with wording in chalk. “I walk to work,” declares one. “I take public transport,” exclaims another. “I care for the plants,” beams another. The tools used to make these declarations are in themselves an implicit, subtle call for behavioral change: chalk on wood-based blackboard, not chemically-based magic markers on also chemically-treated whiteboards.  Indeed, as the single most significant community act on climate change worldwide, Earth Hour should be a time of reflection about where we are now and where we still have to go. Where we are now is that the Earth Hour campaign has generated greater public awareness on climate change. But the policies, programs and international agreements are still not enough to insure Earth is a safe place for our grandchildren to live in. Where we have to go is to governments finding common ground for a legally binding global agreement on carbon reduction. That is one goal. The “I will if you will” mantra should also be ingrained in the thinking of political leaders and policy makers. With a changed mind-set for a common purpose, they should be able to speed up the glacial pace of climate talks. The longer the delay for meaningful, far reaching decisions, the more precious and scarce time becomes. Time lost cannot be recovered. Rachmat Witoelar, the President’s special envoy on climate change and Indonesia’s chief delegate to the annual United Nations Conference on Climate Change, constantly airs his pique on American refusal to accept an international legally binding agreement.  The US is the one major developed nation that did not ratify the 1997 Kyoto Protocol that obliges advanced economies to reduce carbon emissions. However, at a journalism workshop on climate change in Batam on Jan. 22, the former environment minister was optimistic that the US would make tangible moves after Barack Obama’s inaugural address. “We will respond to the threat of climate change, knowing that the failure to do so would betray our children and future generations. Some may still deny the overwhelming judgment of science, but none can avoid the devastating impact of raging fires, and crippling drought, and more powerful storms,” Obama told the US Congress on Jan. 21. One early response by Obama was on March 4. He nominated Gina McCarthy, an experienced regulator well-grounded in clean air issues, as administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Obama also named MIT physicist Ernest Moniz, a proponent of cleaner energy resources, as energy secretary. With these nominations, it seems that Obama is serious about following through with his pledge to use executive orders and his unilateral authority to reduce climate change if legislation continues to stall on Capitol Hill. Reducing climate change means reducing human-induced carbon emissions. Even if the US and all nations subscribe to a global legally binding agreement to replace the Kyoto Protocol that expires in 2020, this move alone may not be enough. Another move should be changing the energy systems of big fossil fuel consuming countries. Economics professor Jeffrey Sachs offered two ways to counter climate change in a column in The Jakarta Post on March 2, but neither has been employed on a large scale. Solution 1 is to shift massively from fossil fuels to renewable energy, especially wind and solar power. Solution 2 is to capture carbon dioxide emissions for storage underground. But this technology, called carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) is not yet proven on a large scale. To support these two solutions, Sachs proposes a tax on CO2 emissions in all regions of the world that starts low today and increases gradually. Part of the tax revenue should be used to subsidize new low carbon energy sources like wind and solar power.  The bottom line is that everyone, who wants Earth as their place to live for all posterity, will need behavioral change. Everyone means government leaders and policymakers, fossil fuel interests and land developers, NGOs and forest communities, today’s and tomorrow’s schoolchildren, civil society as a whole. That is the intent of Earth Hour — to preserve the good Earth. Nobel Prize in literature winner Pearl S. Buck perhaps could not agree more.  ●

Water : Make it our serious business of tomorrow

Water : Make it our serious business of tomorrow William Yong ;  Head of Business Development and Strategy, South Asia Pacific for Black & Veatch’s Global Water Business

JAKARTA POST, 22 Maret 2013

  

Today is UN World Water Day, and it is followed tomorrow by Earth Hour. As someone in the business of water, I hope that business leaders, government planners and infrastructure experts in Indonesia will think about water on Friday, about energy on Saturday and then about both for the rest of the year.  Given the worldwide focus on these pressing environmental concerns, it is important to note the inter-relationship of water and energy. Water is a fuel, vital for business and every bit as critical to moving our economy forward as energy. Almost a quarter of the world’s limited water supply is already used by industry, and industrial use of water in Indonesia will only grow as the economy continues to develop. A lot of consciousness around water use relates to direct use of water in our homes.  Yet, only 12 percent of water is consumed domestically in Indonesia. The remainder is used by agriculture and industry. Efforts to extend the utility of each drop of water on the individual level should be applauded, but, speaking as a business leader, I believe there is an opportunity to make a difference by paying more attention to water that we use for industry.  By looking at the supply chain and industry’s total water impacts in a holistic manner, big gains, big savings, can be made by Indonesian businesses in years to come. Fortunately, boardroom attitudes to water are changing globally. Water is serious business, especially if there’s too little (or too much). Many of tomorrow’s successful businesses will be those that can capitalize on changing water availability, measure and manage their water use and manage the risks that water shortage (or excess) can pose to their supply chains.  The Carbon Disclosure Project’s Global Water Report 2012 articulates the concerns and challenges facing many large, global companies: “When we view water as a shared resource that we do not own, and not as a compliance or efficiency issue, longer-term and more effective solutions are generated that solve a host of related issues for various stakeholders.” One of those issues is that we as a world are getting thirstier. Water use is outpacing population growth, rapid in and of itself. According to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and UN-Water, we are using our water at more than twice the rate of population increase during the last century.  This thirst has been driven by global trends such as increased migration to cities and rising demand for more and varied goods and services.  As Asia’s manufacturing base swells to supply those goods and services, so does industry’s thirst for water. Columbia University estimated that industry’s use of water in Asia will increase by 65 percent by 2030, and we’re likely to see similar trends in Indonesia.  Electricity production also plays a major role. Large quantities of water are typically required in power production.  But the goal of using more water efficient technologies at many of the conventional power plants already in operation, however, could produce significant gains for electricity producers in Indonesia. Seemingly trivial reductions in water use can multiply to substantial savings when aggregated. Around the world, we’re seeing this happen. We helped Eskom, which generates approximately 95 percent of South Africa’s electricity, adopt air-cooled condensers as an alternative over traditional water-cooling techniques at its 4,800 megawatts Kusile power plant.  When completed, it will be one of the largest power plants in the world using air-cooling technology and save approximately 327,000 cubic meters per day of water — more than 130 Olympic-sized swimming pools — through this one innovation. Reuse is another way the manufacturing sector could make a big impact on their water consumption. Many industrial players, including power producers, should look seriously at closed loop applications, where systems retain and reuse hot water, steam, or cold water for a variety of alternative uses.  Real, long-term operational savings can be reaped from limited capital investments. Recent advances in membrane technology also mean high-quality recycled water could be an option for many future, specialized manufacturers in Indonesia. The close connection between water and energy is also providing new ideas. The beverage industry is beginning to harness biogas, like many water utilities in the wastewater treatment process, to generate heat and energy to power the process from the process itself. I believe it is useful to think of water as not just another resource that needs to be conserved but as another source of energy, a fuel, that can be developed. In the same way that wires can channel electricity efficiently, so water can channel energy.  So, after thinking about how we individually can conserve water and energy on World Water Day and Earth Hour, we should focus on how industry can harness the effective use of water to achieve energy benefits. ●