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INNOPATHS article featured in Research Highlights in Nature Human Behaviour and Nature Climate Change

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An article published by INNOPATHS researchers Benjamin K. Sovacool, Andrew Hook, Mari Martiskainen, Andrea Brock and Bruno Turnheim has been featured in the Research Highlights sections of recent issues of both Nature Human Behaviour and Nature Climate Change. The article, The decarbonisation divide: Contextualizing landscapes of low-carbon exploitation and toxicity in Africa, analyses the ‘decarbonisation divide’ between low-carbon transition and patterns of waste extraction. The decarbonisation divide (Nature Human Behaviour) highlights the potential environmental and human cost of supply chains for low-carbon technologies, whilst Dark side of low carbon (Nature Climate Change) focusses on the analysis of the impact of the rising demand for low-carbon technologies on countries responsible for extraction of raw materials and disposal.

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Large impact of efficient technologies and behaviours on energy demand in buildings

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The energy-consuming activities carried out in buildings are extremely diverse. Examples spread from boiling water for a cup of tea in the UK and working on a computer in an American bank to using an air conditioner in India or cooking with traditional biomass in Africa. Due to this diversity, there will be no one-size-fits-all solution to decrease energy demand in buildings. Instead, reducing energy demand requires a flurry of solutions to be explored, mixing both technological and behavioural approaches. In a recent study, we analyse the manifold opportunities that buildings offer to reduce energy demand, and compute their potential at the global level.

Reducing demand for space heating and space cooling can take many forms. Improved insulation and the use of efficient air conditioners or heat pumps have the greatest potential to reduce energy consumption for these purposes. Currently, only a small proportion of buildings are properly insulated and the standard materials used to improve building shells are much less efficient than state-of-the-art materials. Similarly with air conditioners and heat pumps: these appliances remain far from their theoretical maximum efficiency. By using best-practice insulation practices and improving the efficiency of heating and cooling technologies, a lot can be achieved. Additionally, by reducing the indoor temperature in cold climates or increasing it in hot climates, energy consumption can significantly fall. Decreasing the demand for floorspace also has an impact, but it remains modest in comparison to the other factors.

Figure 1 The figure shows three scenarios for global energy demand in buildings and their outcome in 2050 and 2100 (grey columns). In the Low and Very Low energy demand scenarios, we assumed ambitious measures to decrease energy demand. The coloured area attributes the reductions to individual actions. The red line shows the level of global demand in 2015.

Hot water plays an important role in our daily tasks, be it for personal hygiene or washing clothes and dishes. By reducing the number and length of showers, our energy requirements can be lowered notably. Hot water needs can also be reduced by using efficient showerheads with a flow of only 2.8 L/min compared to the current US standard of 9.5 L/min. Other ways of reducing hot water needs include using more efficient washing machines and wearing the same clothes more often before washing them.

Overall, we show that energy demand could be halved in the long term by taking advantage of the numerous opportunities to cut down the need for energy in buildings. Because of the ambitious measures assumed in this study, we consider this potential to be close to its maximum.

The future might be bright for energy efficiency in buildings, but there are also important reasons for concern. Some of the measures mentioned above require new technologies to break efficiency thresholds: for instance aerogels or vacuum-insulation panels are very promising materials for insulation, but they are currently at development stage in laboratories. A huge effort in research is needed to bring very efficient technologies onto the markets, and supporting schemes will be necessary to raise their market shares and reduce their costs. Unfortunately, the construction sector is not famous for its propensity to innovate; it is one the most conservative sectors in the economy, investing a very low share of its revenues in research and development. Considering top companies alone, the construction sector spends around 1% of its gross turnover on R&D, only a tenth of what companies in pharmaceutics and information technologies invest.

Changes in behaviours and practices also bear their level of challenges. It is difficult to think of policies that could have a significant and sustainable effect on people’s preferences and habits. For instance, experiments have been conducted to measure the impact of alternative energy bills on electricity consumption, but the effect was modest and not sustained in time. Furthermore, these policies touch on sensitive ethical issues: to what extent should decision-makers try to influence citizens’ preferences?

Despite these caveats, the potential for energy demand reduction is large and concerns many activities carried out in buildings. There is a lot of freedom in the way people arrange their energy practices, combining technologies and behaviours, and individuals as well as policy makers should make use of it.

Levesque A., Pietzcker R. C., Luderer G. (2019), Halving energy demand from buildings: the impact of low consumption practices, Technological Forecasting and Social Change

Sustainable minerals and metals for a low-carbon future

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Climate change mitigation will create new natural resource and supply chain opportunities and dilemmas, because substantial amounts of raw materials will be required to build new low-carbon energy devices and infrastructure (1). However, despite attempts at improved governance and better corporate management, procurement of many mineral and metal resources occurs in areas generally acknowledged for mismanagement, remains environmentally capricious, and, in some cases, is a source of conflict at the sites of resource extraction (2). These extractive and smelting industries have thus left a legacy in many parts of the world of environmental degradation, adverse impacts to public health, marginalized communities and workers, and biodiversity damage. We identify key sustainability challenges with practices used in industries that will supply the metals and minerals—including cobalt, copper, lithium, cadmium, and rare earth elements (REEs)—needed for technologies such as solar photovoltaics, batteries, electric vehicle (EV) motors, wind turbines, fuel cells, and nuclear reactors. We then propose four holistic recommendations to make mining and metal processing more sustainable and just and to make the mining and extractive industries more efficient and resilient.

Written by Benjamin K. Sovacool, Saleem H. Ali, Morgan Bazilian, Ben Radley, Benoit Nemery, Julia Okatz and Dustin Mulvaney.

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The decarbonisation divide: Contextualizing landscapes of low-carbon exploitation and toxicity in Africa

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Much academic research on low-carbon transitions focuses on the diffusion or use of innovations such as electric vehicles or solar panels, but overlooks or obscures downstream and upstream processes, such as mining or waste flows. Yet it is at these two extremes where emerging low-carbon transitions in mobility and electricity are effectively implicated in toxic pollution, biodiversity loss, exacerbation of gender inequality, exploitation of child labor, and the subjugation of ethnic minorities. We conceptualize these processes as part of an emerging “decarbonisation divide.” To illustrate this divide with clear insights for political ecology, sustainability transitions, and energy justice research, this study draws from extensive fieldwork examining cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), and the processing and recycling of electronic waste in Ghana. It utilizes original data from 34 semi-structured research interviews with experts and 69 community interviews with artisanal cobalt miners, e-waste scrapyard workers, and other stakeholders, as well as 50 site visits. These visits included 30 industrial and artisanal cobalt mines in the DRC, as well as associated infrastructure such as trading depots and processing centers, and 20 visits to the Agbogbloshie scrapyard and neighborhood alongside local waste collection sites, electrical repair shops, recycling centers, and community e-waste dumps in Ghana. The study proposes a concerted set of policy recommendations for how to better address issues of exploitation and toxicity, suggestions that go beyond the often-touted solutions of formalisation or financing. Ultimately, the study holds that we must all, as researchers, planners, and citizens, broaden the criteria and analytical parameters we use to evaluate the sustainability of low-carbon transitions.

Written by Benjamin K. Sovacool, Andrew Hook, Mari Martiskainen, Andrea Brock and Bruno Turnheim

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Beyond cost and carbon: The multidimensional co-benefits of low carbon transitions in Europe

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The paper explores the myriad potential benefits of four low-carbon transitions beyond those in the environmental or economic domain. Drawn from a rich set of original mixed methods data—across expert interviews, focus groups, and public internet forums—we examine the presumed multidimensional, qualitative co-benefits to nuclear power in France, solar photovoltaics in Germany, electric vehicles in Norway, and smart meters in Great Britain. We cataloged 128 identified prospective co-benefits to these four European low-carbon transitions, 30 for nuclear power, 30 for solar photovoltaic panels, 26 for electric vehicles and 42 for smart meters. Tellingly, 37 of these collective benefits are identified as economic and 14 environmental, but the remaining ones illustrate a broader spectrum of technical benefits (31 in total), social benefits (30 in total) and political benefits (16 in total). After presenting this body of evidence, the paper then discusses these benefits more deeply in terms of complementarity, temporality, scale, actors, and incumbency. We conclude with insights for energy and climate research and policy more broadly.

Written by Benjamin K. Sovacool, Mari Martiskainen, Andrew Hook and Lucy Baker

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Central banking and the energy transition

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Continuous renewable energy deployment may be less certain than previously thought. If interest rates rise, the cost of renewable energy is disproportionately affected compared to fossil fuel alternatives. Thermostatic policies can help ensuring renewable energy deployment in such environments.

Image above: Continuous deployment of wind farms may be less certain than previously thought. Aerial take from a wind farm. Photo by Thomas Richter on Unsplash

Unfortunately, no rooftop bar in Singapore and no conference dinner in the foothills of Tuscany mark the beginning of this research project. Instead, the development of this paper demonstrates the gradual nature of research. Over the last two years, we spent an awful lot of time discussing the role of finance in the energy transition as part of the EU Horizon 2020 research project INNOPATHS. We met with investors to try to understand their behaviour, we interviewed policymakers to figure out what their intentions and constraints were in designing policy and we collaborated with academics to find out what exactly we already know about the enabling role of finance in energy transitions.

In this process, we discovered the pivotal role of experience in the financial sector, which led to a paper in Nature Energy (free read-only) demonstrating that decreasing financing costs contributed a large share to making renewable energy cost competitive with fossil fuel alternatives. In fact we discovered not only the importance of experience, but even more so the decisive role that general interest rates play in determining the competitiveness of renewable energy. Our analysis showed that lower general interest rates decreased the levelised cost of electricity (LCOE) by 4% to 20% for utility-scale German solar photovoltaics and onshore wind respectively between the period of 2000-2005 and 2017. Soon we asked ourselves; to what extent does large-scale renewable energy deployment depend on extremely expansive monetary policy as we have seen it in the aftermath of the 2008/09 financial crisis?

So we set off to find out. In a new paper in Nature Sustainability (free read-only), we looked at the same two technologies, onshore wind and solar PV, in Germany and developed three scenarios. A flat scenario, where interest rates stay at the current record-low levels. A moderate scenario, where interest rates recover with the same speed as they declined after the financial crisis. And an extreme scenario, where interest rates rise to pre-crisis levels at twice the speed they declined before. In the extreme scenario, LCOEs for the two technologies increase by 11% (solar photovoltaics) and 25% (onshore wind) over just five years (2018 to 2023). Even in the moderate scenario, the higher financing costs outweigh the expected decreases of hardware cost for onshore wind (LCOE +9%) and almost entirely eat up these technology cost reductions due to learning (LCOE -2%) for solar photovoltaics. As a result, we show that adding new renewable energy capacity becomes economically unviable compared to hard coal power plants takes a severe hit if interest rates rise again.

In light of the recent EU decision to scrap binding renewable energy deployment targets for member states these results may announce difficult times for renewable electricity deployment and hence climate targets. However, one may ask, are these scenarios realistic? The temptation is to respond with a sounding no. Just this month, the European Central Bank confirmed record-low interest rates, its president Mario Draghi openly speaks of evaluating new ideas, such as venturing more into fiscal domains using the Modern Monetary Theory, and there is an ongoing debate about expanding the toolkit of central banks to provide cheap liquidity. In the United States, the central bank acted differently: it steadily increased interest rates since December 2015, until it changed course in August 2019 and lowered the interest rate twice. Some commentators see more structural factors (e.g., aging population, low immigration, few investment opportunities) behind the ongoing struggle to unleash economic growth and judge expansionary monetary policy as the wrong remedy for the curse. Proponents of the secular stagnation, like Larry Summers, would favour rising interest rates in combination with rising government spending in education and infrastructure and potentially more liberal immigration laws.

Image 2: The decision hub for European monetary policy – and renewable energy policy too? Night shot of the European Central Bank’s headquarters in Frankfurt. Photo by Paul Fiedler on Unsplash

In sum, the discussions around appropriate monetary policy and hence future interest rate levels are far from being resolved. While interest rates currently remain low in the European context, it is far from certain that this will be the case in the future too. Consequently, climate policy and renewable energy policy in particular need to keep an eye on interest rate developments. Ideally, thermostatic policies would be in place that automatically adjust given the current interest rate environment. In the short run, renewable energy auctions fulfil this criteria and counter potential cost hits on renewables due to interest rate increases. In the longer run however, a transition away from renewable specific support policies seems likely. In such a case, existing emission trading schemes, such as the EU or the Californian ETS, could be equipped with a price floor to ensure renewable energy deployment even in high interest rates environments.

Unfortunately, even countries such as Germany, which used to be known for progressive renewable energy policies, remain rather far from this ideal. For example, to reach its Paris target, Germany would need to install about 5 new wind turbines a day, but only connected 35 to the grid so far this year. A natural next step for research would hence be to investigate, how significant interest groups can be formed to support thermostatic policies and how these policies can be designed in order to survive government changes after elections. Comparing the results of our paper with reality, we circle back to the start and find the next exciting research question… Perhaps we should have a kick-off meeting at a fancy place this time!

Originally published on the Nature Sustainability Research Community page, Wednesday 25th September 2019.

Why matter matters: How technology characteristics shape the strategic framing of technologies

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Previous work stresses that actors use strategic technology framing—i.e. purposeful language and rhetoric—to shape technology expectations, persuade stakeholders, and influence the evolution of technologies along their life-cycle. Currently, however, the literature predominantly describes strategic technology framing as a sociopolitical process, and provides only limited insights into how the framing itself is shaped by the material characteristics of the technologies being framed. To address this shortcoming, we conducted a comparative, longitudinal case study of two leading research organizations in the United States and Germany pursuing competing solar photovoltaic (PV) technologies to examine how technology characteristics shape the strategic framing of technologies. We show that to frame PV technologies in their own favor, executives made use of four framing dimensions (potential, prospect, performance, and progress) and three framing tactics (conclusion, conditioning, and concession). Moreover, we show that which framing dimensions and tactics actors selected depended on the maturity and evolution of the technology they pursued, respectively. By highlighting how technology characteristics shape strategic technology framing, we contribute to the literatures on social movements, institutional entrepreneurship, and impression management. Additionally, by providing a coherent framework of strategic technology framing, our study complements existing findings in the literature on the sociology of expectations and contributes to a better understanding of how technology hypes emerge.

Written by Joern Hoppmann, Laura Diaz Anadon and Venkatesh Narayanamurti

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Bias in energy system models with uniform cost of capital assumption

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Several studies have recently evaluated the feasibility of 100% renewable energy-based energy systems in different world regions. In a recent article, Bogdanov et al.1 contribute to this literature, by using an energy system model that takes into account the unique conditions of 145 global subregions, including factors such as renewable energy (RE) resource conditions, structure and age of existing capacities, demand patterns, etc. Based on their results, they discuss transition pathways and calculate the 2050 levelized cost of electricity generation (LCOE) of 100% RE-based energy systems in those 145 subregions. While the paper provides a new high-resolution analysis of 100% RE systems, we believe that it falls short of adequately considering large differences in the cost of capital (CoC) when comparing the LCOE between countries. As a result, Fig. 2 in Bogdanov et al. shows the lowest LCOEs for solar photovoltaic (PV)-based systems in countries such as the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Sudan, which seems at odds with the high investment risks and very low installed capacity in both countries2. Accounting for CoC differences between countries changes the results dramatically, as we show in Fig. 1. We therefore argue that using uniform CoC can lead to distorted policy recommendations.

Written by Florian Egli, Bjarne Steffen and Tobias S. Schmidt

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Unheard voices across the lifecycle of digital technologies and low-carbon transitions

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Lived experiences of cobalt miners in the DRC and e-waste workers in Ghana

We are living in a society that relies heavily on digital technology, and these technologies have become so engrained in our everyday lives that we rarely question where they come from, whose labour contributes to their existence and what happens after we dispose of it. Some technologies, such as electric vehicles, solar panels, and heat pumps, also rely on both degrees of digitization and many of the same metals, minerals, and components as digital technologies.

How many of us have thought about purchasing an electric vehicle, or installing solar panels on our home? Or, perhaps more commonly, how many of us have found ourselves automatically agreeing to an “upgrade” with our phone network provider after our smartphone stopped working shortly after the end of a two-year contract?  

A transition to a more sustainable economy will require joint efforts from corporations and governments to work towards a circular economy, to decrease the impact of products on our planet across their lifecycle, starting from what raw materials we use to how waste is handled. But how will this impact people working at different stages of the product’s lifecycle—especially the front end (mining and extractive industries) and back end (recycling and waste management)— in parts of the world with weak governance structures and lack of policy enforcement and accountability?

A set of two recent twin studies have looked at cobalt mining in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and toxic electronic waste  (e-waste) processing in Ghana. These two studies set out to humanise the challenges of both these sectors by revealing the lived experiences of cobalt miners and e-waste workers.

Cobalt miners and scrapyard workers in the DRC and Ghana, 2019

The photo on the left shows an artisanal cobalt mining team near Kolwezi, mining on the Kasulu concession in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Note the young age of most of the miners, the use of manual tools as well as the lack of any women present. The photo on the right shows a scrapyard worker at Agbogbloshie, near Accra, Ghana, using fire to melt down electronic and digital appliances so that copper can be extracted. Note the lack of any protective equipment as well as the thick black smoke.

Giving a voice to people whose experiences are rarely considered in decision-making processes put the impact of our addiction to digital technologies into stark light.

The Democratic Republic of Congo produces roughly 60% of the global supply of cobalt, which is used in our phones and computers, as well as other technologies such as electric vehicles, wind turbines and solar panels. Despite having vast natural resources, 63% of Congolese citizens live below the national poverty line of less than $1 per day.

In the DRC, corporate firms and mining associations operate with perhaps as much power as government actors, with miners finding themselves at the bottom of the hierarchy of interests. Many of these miners work in conditions that harms their health and even endangers their life. In many cases they have no protective equipment or tools to work with, so they have to dig by hand. There are no trade unions to protect their interests or cooperatives that could fight for improved conditions.

The situation is similar with toxic e-waste workers in Ghana. Negative health impacts among scrapyard residents and workers, child labour and environmental pollution are ubiquitous.

Unheard voices can also help highlight the other side of the story. People trapped in poverty in areas with almost no opportunities for formal employment have lower expectations when it comes to working conditions. Cobalt mining in the DRG and work on the scrapyard in Agbogbloshie, Accra have provided a route out of poverty for the community. When you are offered two and a half times above the average income of informal economic workers in the country and you have a family to feed, you don’t think about the health impacts.

Many workers we spoke as part of our research showed pride in their work, which has become a key part of their cultural identity. One of our expert interviewees in Ghana explained

“We call it e-waste, but people on the ground do not call it that … Scrap dealers do not identify as waste managers, they instead see themselves as harvesting commodities as part of a lively value chain. They are community stewards”.

Discontinuing cobalt mining or e-waste processing in these countries without thinking about the people who will be impacted on the ground will have disastrous consequences. We don’t have to look too far to see, how, phasing out certain industries without thinking about providing alternative employment opportunities can destroy a community.  

A thoughtful response to a challenging situation is needed. Our research explores what policy makers can do at a global as well as national level to tackle the challenges arising. One thing is key: when thinking about a sustainable future, we need to remember the unheard voices, lives sacrificed at the altar of consumerism. Solutions need to consider their future and how we can shift away from harmful practices while also offering alternative pathways out of poverty in a way that preserves the community’s pride and identity.

Finally, you might ask, what we can do as consumers. We can remember that our phones and EVs don’t come from nowhere and don’t just go away. The “away” is a very real, living, breathing, suffering “place”). But also, it is a place with pride.

The research summarized here is published in the following two studies, both peer-reviewed academic journals, and both a part of the INNOPATHS project:

Sovacool, BK. “The precarious political economy of cobalt: Balancing prosperity, poverty, and brutality in artisanal and industrial mining in the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Extractive Industries & Society 6(3) (July, 2019), pp. 915-939.  Available at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1ZjZH_,52Irqxfa. 

Sovacool, BK. “Toxic transitions in the lifecycle externalities of a digital society: The complex afterlives of electronic waste in Ghana,” Resources Policy 64 (December, 2019), 101459, pp-1-21.  Available at https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1ZrGM14YFwvkMb. 

Political acceptability of climate policies: do we need a “just transition” or simply less unequal societies?

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This blog post is partly based on the policy paper “Job Losses and the Political Acceptability of Climate Policies: why the job killing argument is so persistent and how to overturn it.”

Concerns for a “just transition” towards a low-carbon economy are now part of mainstream political debates as well as of international negotiations on climate change. Key political concerns centre on the distributional impacts of climate policies. On the one hand, the “job killing” argument has been repeatedly used to undermine the political acceptability of climate policy and to ensure generous exemptions to polluting industries in most countries. On the other hand, the rising populist parties point to carbon taxes as another enhancer of socio-economic inequalities. For instance, the Gilets Jaunes (Yellow vest) movement in France is a classic example of the perceived tension between social justice and environmental sustainability. 

Demand for a fairer distribution of carbon-related fuel taxes and of subsidies for electric vehicles mirrors the political demand for income compensation to ‘brown sector’ workers displaced by climate policies. Such increased demand for redistribution depends on the fact that main winners of climate policies (e.g. those with the right set of skills to perform emerging green jobs or with enough income to consider buying a subsidized electric car) are fundamentally different from the main losers (e.g. those who work in polluting industries and drive long distances with diesel cars). Importantly, the identity of the winners and losers coincides with that of the winners and losers of other, more pervasive, structural transformations, such as automation and globalization. Indeed, the winners are wealthier, more educated and living in nicer neighbourhoods than the losers. The spatial sorting of winners and losers polarizes not only the perception of the costs and benefits of climate policies, but leads also to the emergence of apparently irrational behaviour. In several cases such as Taranto in Italy or Dunkirk in France, employees in polluting activities, whose families are the first to be exposed to such pollution, are willing to accept health risks to preserve their jobs.

Absurd as it may appear, such opposition against ambitious climate policies from the left-behind is the tip of the iceberg of more fundamental problems of our societies, namely, the enormous increase in income inequality. For both the left-behind and an increasingly fragile middle class, it may be more important to satisfy basic needs such as “work”, “food”, “shelter”, “communicating” than eating organic food or supporting climate policies. For a given level of income per capita, citizens’ support for green policies is likely to be significantly lower the more unequal the society because the median voter’s income may be just enough to satisfy the basic needs mentioned above. Likewise, a lower level support for climate policies is concentrated in regions that depend more on carbon-intensive industries.

Fortunately, there are well-known solutions to restore the right support to an ambitious plan to fight climate change. Politicians can easily identify the right amount of subsidies to neutralize the distributional effects of climate policies either on displaced workers, or on most affected consumers. Several solutions have been discussed and implemented ranging from direct transfers of the revenues of a carbon tax to recycling schemes to reduce taxes on labour and capital. In its operational definition, the just transition is thus a policy package whose aim is to mitigate the negative distributional effects of climate policies for those at the bottom of the income distribution.

There is, however, a powerful ethical argument that undermines the viability of these well-known solutions. Why should a worker displaced by a carbon tax have more rights than a worker displaced by a robot? The ethical bases to justify the special status of any policies inspired by the just transition are at best weak, and special policy solutions for brown sector workers may fuel the resentment of those left behind by automation and globalization. An alternative and far more radical solution appears to be to think at the high level of inequality of our societies as a main constraint to fight climate change. The threat posed by growing tension between inequality and environmental sustainability should thus push reforms of our welfare and fiscal systems that protect the workers left behind by trade, globalization and climate policies, thus weakening one of the main constraints to ensure a broad political support to the low-carbon transition.