U.N. energy conference to meet in August

Press, 29 June 1981, Page 16

U.N. energy conference to meet in August

By

JOHN WILSON

A United Nations conference on new and renewable sources of energy is to meet in Nairobi, Kenya, from August 10 to 21. The object of. the conference is to promote the development and use of such sources of energy so that they can contribute towards the over-all energy requirements of, especially, developing countries.

The 14 energy sources to be studied and evaluated at the conference include solar energy, geothermal energy, wind power, fuel wood and charcoal, ocean energy (thermal gradient, wave power and tidal power), oil shale, tar sands and peat, and energy from draught animals.

Eight technical panels preparing for the conference have already completed two rounds of meetings. Their reports to the conference are to focus on technologies judged immediately applicable and significant, on the main constraints which appear to limit their use in the next one or two decades and on means of overcoming these constraints.

In addition, six groups of experts have examined issues which cut across all energy sources such as financing of energy developments, the flow of information and transfer of technologies, the use of energy in rural areas and in agriculture and the use of energy in transport and the industrial sectors.

A “synthesis group” met in February to put the findings of these technical panels and groups of experts together and to frame ‘ recommendations which will be put to the full

conference. The conference’s main preparatory committee held its last session this month in New York.

There. have also been preparatory national and regional meetings to discuss and highlight issues of particular relevance to individual countries or broader regions. A working group meeting was held in Apia, Samoa, in June, 1980, under the auspices of the Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific. A seminar on geothermal energy, held in Auckland in OctoberNovember, 1980, has been one way in which the New Zealand Government has assisted in preparations for the conference.

Other Asia and Pacific regional preparation for the conference has included meetings, last year and this, in Bangkok on solar science and technology and on firewood and charcoal and also a seminar on the planning, management and economics of energy development in rural areas. The Australian Government contributed $70,000 to E.S.C.A.P. for regional preparations for the conference. Similar regional preparatory meetings have been held in Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Western Asia.

The aim of the conference is not to promote any particular “new” • or “fringe” energy sources. It aims to chart a gradual path to less reliance on oil, gas. coal and nuclear power. The preparatory bodies have - envisaged an initial “quick” shift — over two or three decades.— from oil and gas to solid hydrocarbons (coal, tar sands and oil shale) with nuclear fission, geothermal em ergy and some renewable forms of energy (hydro power,

solar power, biomass and wind) playing a secondary role in this first shift.

The preparatory groups have also anticipated a second energy transition, in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, to breeder reactors, nuclear fusion and large-scale use of solar and other renewable forms of energy which are already “proven” or “promising” as technically feasible and economically viable sources of energy.

Consideration of oil, gas, coal and nuclear power has been deliberately excluded from the agenda of the conference in order to avoid contention over the environmental hazards of certain sources of energy on which the world has little choice but to continue to rely for several years or even decades. The organisers hope the conference will focus on expanding the role of more benign sources of energy in the transition from reliance. on liquid or gaseous hydrocarbons.

At the same time the inclusion of two sources of energy — wood and draught animals — which seem “exotic” or “fringe” sources of energy in industrialised societies, indicates the conference’s conscious bias towards charting future energy developments for the overwhelmingly rural developing countries which have been hardest hit by the dramatic rises in oil prices of the last decade.

New Zealand has participated in various ways in the preparatory work for this conference. No decision has yet been taken in Wellington about a New Zealand delegation to the conference itself, but it is expected that New Zealand will be represented in Nairobi in August.