Over the years I have become a little cynical about conference opening ceremonies. These are all too often a few formulaic words of welcome from a rather bored civic functionary, a conference chair telling you how wonderful it’s all going to be followed by a worthy but dull recitation of familiar facts from some eminence grise.
However, a bit of passion injected into the proceedings can really help. The bi-annual ISES Solar World Congress is taking place in Johannesburg, South Africa this week. The message that we are in Africa was reinforced by energetic local drummers, singers and dancers interspersed into the opening session and reception. The local organisers also talked passionately about how they valued the presence of the conference in Africa.
It was two of the main speakers though, who reminded me that even when the arguments are familiar, hearing them rehearsed with brio, and with somebody else’s logic and structure, can be inspiring. The first of the two was very familiar – Hermann Scheer (author of our books Energy Autonomy and Solar Economy) who addressed forcibly the dangers of delaying the rapid uptake of renewable energies. In particular, he took apart the various arguments used by proponents of ‘clean’ coal and nuclear power as necessary ‘bridges’ to an all-renewables future. After all, he pointed out, if France was able to grow its nuclear generation from nothing to 60% in just 15 years during the 1960s and 1970s (and it has since increased to 80%) there is no reason why renewable should not be able to do the same wherever they are needed, obviating the need for a bridge of any sort.
The second of the two speakers was Richard Worthington, the manager of the climate change programme at WWF South Africa. Framing the issue as a transition to a ‘climate-safe’ future, he ran over various possible emission scenarios and in particular emphasising the scale of the challenge to industrialised nations if developing countries are going to have any room to grow at all. He outlined not only their recent research on the issue but also the work they had been involved with alongside other NGOs in drafting a possible successor to the Kyoto Protocol, to show that a new treaty could be achieved at the COP 15 in Copenhagen. However, he also made the compelling point that setting targets, and the time and energy that goes into this, can be a massive distraction. In the end, we simply need to get on with developing renewable as fast as possible.
After all, as Hermann Scheer had pointed out, the rise of mobile phones and the internet was not down to painstaking international negotiations, lengthy discussions to set uptake targets and portentous international conferences attended by heads of state to issue targets and carefully-worded final communiques. Rather, it was good old supply meeting good old demand.
Familiar points, perhaps, but engagingly made. I, for one, felt more stirred to action by the passion shown than I had expected to!
