Thru Novel Lenses! New Vision New Perspectives New Ideas New Directions For the New World! Futuring Sustainable Development in the Post Pandemic Planet From Pre School to Policy Making
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Victory for ships’ owners
Victory for ships’ owners | The Trinidad Guardian
With rapidly changing technologies in media, many of our knowledge resources are fast disappearing or becoming inaccessible. We are in the process of digitising our archives representing more than 30 years of contemporary Caribbean development linked to more than 10,000 years of regional pre and post colonial history and heritage. Make contact.
To support, sponsor, collaborate and partners with our digitisation efforts. Or to develop your own legacy initiatives, and safeguard, preserve, multimedia museum, galleries, archives, make contact.
Political parties should discuss women issues during campaign
Is it business unusual for the energy sector?
Triple whammy to hit energy sector
• Rising resource costs • Rising energy costs • Rising food prices
...It’s ‘business unusual’...
For the energy sector, it is not “business as usual,” not only because of supply factors, but also related to focus on more efficient and sustainable uses of energy and climate change-related issues. This is the message from energy researchers, ColinDale Marcelle and Ian Ivey, as heads of governments and policy-makers discuss the global financial crisis at the Fifth Summit of the Americas. “The energy sector does not operate in isolation. The major trends shaping its ‘big picture’ future are coming together for a ‘triple whammy’ effect—rising energy costs, rising food prices and rising resource costs,” said Ivey, of the research group NEXT.
“T&T needs to become far more focused on the opportunities associated with the entire renewable energy sector, because it has invested heavily in the development of considerable expertise in the energy field. “Once the country’s oil and gas fields enter into a decline phase—which may be little more than a decade away—that investment will have little long-term value to the country, unless it is redirected towards future rapid growth opportunity areas in the ‘new energy’ scene. “It is clearly going to be difficult for a small country such as T&T to be an internationally cost-competitive player in renewable energy sectors, such as bio-ethanol and bio-diesel, as the land areas required are vast and the throughput volumes required to justify the capital investments needed are potentially large.
Along with Marcelle, Ivey is the co-author of the recently released Global Foresight Review on renewable energy and Renewable Energy Best Bets Opportunities for T&T (see Niherst.gov.tt), which focus on opportunities and alternatives for T&T outside the oil and gas sector. They were prepared by NEXT Corporation for the National Institute of Higher Education Research, Science and Education.
Increase by 2030
Foresight and innovation research identified several “best bets” for T&T’s energy sector that would lead to greater efficiency in use of existing energy sources and develop businesses built around alternative energy generated from environment-friendly renewable sources. Nine initial potential “best bets” were identified, including developing alternative energy sources by harnessing the power of wave, wind, solar and volcanic energy and growing business by tapping into existing research and technologies. “The potential ‘best bet’ opportunity areas identified could provide the basis of a significant new energy sector focus in T&T,” the authors say. The top three involved use of bio-gas, solar and energy-efficient technologies.
The Global Review cites trends and issues that have an impact on energy markets that point to higher prices for crude oil and natural gas, post the current slump and a 50 per cent projected increase in global energy demand by 2030. Sources referred to include the Annual Energy Outlook, the Medium-Term Oil Market Report of the International Energy Agency, Facing the Hard Truths About Energy Report of the National Petroleum Council and the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change, among others.
The review was prepared to stimulate thinking about how the global sector is likely to evolve over the next ten years, and thus identify associated threats and opportunities for T&T in the long-term, drawn from a big picture view of what the world may look like in the near future, so as to inform decisions that need to be made today with regard to sector opportunities and threats. Among its findings were that the energy sector’s development is being restricted primarily by traditional attitudes and short-term thinking. A lack of understanding of how quickly the “big picture” may change in future years is hindering change to more sustainable alternatives and limiting the amount of investments being made into innovative opportunities.
'Peak oil’
The energy sector is being forced to revise its directions as the result of a growing awareness that current sources of energy are likely to fail to keep up with future demand, as the capacity to supply world demand is almost already at its peak. This was fed by growing pressure for cleaner and more environmentally sustainable energy sources. “People are now starting to realise that ‘peak oil’ is just a few years away, if not already here. This increases the need to speed up moves towards renewable energy alternatives where favourable conditions apply,” say the authors.
Among these favourable conditions are advances in technology, innovators with creative solutions, growing investment into green and sustainable applications (long-term) and decentralisation of the energy sector, down to a point where we may see total sustainable energy solutions in place for communities, or even individual households and businesses. These already exist in European communities, such as Jühnde in Germany and Güssing in Austria. “The global energy scene is now reaching a ‘tipping point.’ It is changing the balance between ‘old energy’ and ‘new energy.’
“It is easy to become blindsided by short-term blips such as the current low prices in fossil fuel prices and reduced investment into renewable energy. But this is unlikely to last long. “Once the world recovers from the current economic downturn, the major underlying trends will be back in play and ‘old energy’ is likely to face a challenging future as the ‘triple whammy’ effect comes back into play and global policy changes adversely affect the competitive position of fossil fuels, particularly in response to climate change and reducing global emissions by up to 80 per cent (eg, the new goal in the USA).”
Dr Kris Rampersad is
a sustainable development multimedia and multicultural consultant.
a sustainable development multimedia and multicultural consultant.
Article published: Fri, 2009-04-17 22:26 — jason
Article Date:
Sunday, April 19, 2009
See more at: http://www.guardian.co.tt/archives/features/life/2009/04/18/triple-whammy-hit-energy-sector#sthash.fbznfMnZ.dpuf
Triple whammy to hit energy sector | The Trinidad Guardian
Skewed development vision in CHOGM concept paper
Skewed development vision in CHOGM concept paper
by
20091129
Dr Kris Rampersad
Despite its very clear identification of Commonwealth challenges, and its theme Partnering for a More Equitable and Sustainable Future, the CHOGM concept paper gives unequal focus to its three key words, 'partnering, equitable, and sustainable.' The paper is heavily slanted to climate change, almost to the oblivion of all else, and even that is skewed to the perspective that all the world's ensuing problems will arise from the climate change phenomenon. This constitutes a business-as-usual, plaster-on-the-sore approach that holds the symptoms for the cause.
It ignores the reality that anticipated challenges from changing climate patterns are really manifestations of the continued imposition of culturally alien financial and other systems on many of the world's communities, unbalanced economic development, neglect of the contributions of women and girls, and inequitable investments in the largely rural-based agricultural sectors in favour of close-to-the-nose urban sectors.
The paper's approach is analogous to the get-rich-quick models that spiraled the financial crisis in the first instance; the failures that have arisen from focus on economic security at the expense of food security; and the disrespect for home-grown, culturally evolved modes of coping with life's challenge that have excluded large segments of the world's peoples from an equal share of development – spring-factors that will exacerbate the impacts of climate change, not the other way around!
The concept can certainly benefit from strengthened emphasis on the need for integrated and multi/cross sectoral approaches that promote balance and equity and that recognise different notions and cultures of development that can add enormously to solutions for the current crises of finance, food security, water and land management, soil conservation, rising temperatures and ocean levels.
As it treats with climate change, there is need in the concept for dedicated attention through paragraphs that:
1. recognise that peoples' cultures are central and pivotal to development around which all else orbits if there is to be widespread buy-in-to the Millennium Development Goals;
2. account for the conditions of and contributions of two-thirds of the Commonwealth–who are women and children–as key starting points (not endpoints) to reversing the horrifying imbalances of poverty, malnourishment, child and maternal mortality that will be aided and alleviated through - not token - but revisionist priority positioning of agriculture, food security and rural in the Commonwealth and others' development agendas.
This would go a long way to help right the lopsided vision in the concept, clouded as it is by climate change as the looming tsunami bearing down on the world, by sharpening its focus on the real subjects of the MDGs: the neglected communities that huddle on tsunami-endangered coastlines, farmers who are squeezed onto precarious hillside to produce the world's food as concrete encroach on prime agriculture lands and the plight of the disadvantaged, including women and children.
1. The CHOGM 2009 Concept Paper: http://www.chogm2009.org/pdf/October%20Concept%20Paper%20Final.pdf
2. Dr Kris Rampersad, a T&T based media, cultural and literary development consultant and international relations director of the Network of NGOS of Trinidad and Tobago for the Advancement of Women, reviews the Concept Paper for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) in the context of status of the global development agenda.
Visit for more https://krisrampersad.com/
Skewed development vision in CHOGM concept paper | The Trinidad Guardian
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Featured Post
Beyond the Hype Hyperbole and Hysteria of AI Big Data and New Tech
Missed me since the Data Crash? Like any under-resourced curious creative scientist, I self-experimented.To see how they meshed with exper...
