The Chronikler

Green motoring in bloom

By Christian Nielsen

Lean, green commuting machines will be the new black for Belgian fleet car managers this year.

29 January 2010

“Go, greased lightning, you're burning up the quarter mile. Greased lightning, go greased lightning […] You are supreme, uh ah, the chicks'll cream, uh ah, for greased lightning.”

It’s hard to forget this iconic song from the movie Grease. For a few too many of us, this era of gas-guzzling sports cars still resonates. But with an environmental crisis looming and an economic one still in play, the fast and flash cars that used to turn heads in admiration could soon turn them downward in shame.

Every day, a growing number of the 5 million cars in Belgium crawls into Brussels – most of them still running on fossil fuels. It’s a daily ritual repeated in cities across the European Union – so it’s no surprise that around 12% of EU carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions can be traced back to cars.

The world’s leaders are not blind to this environmental failure. They responded more than a decade ago with the Kyoto Protocol to pressure nations into cutting greenhouse gas emissions, largely blamed for global warming and climate change problems. A raft of national and EU regulations targeting industrial and transport-related pollution then followed.

Despite the lacklustre outcome at the Copenhagen Summit (COP15) in December, the trend towards greener life decisions will continue to gather momentum. More fuel-efficient petrol cars will gradually yield to hybrid electric-petrol cars which will probably be overtaken by next-generation electric cars once the scientists perfect the battery technology and better infrastructure is in place for recharging.

Change you can feel

Belgium is also joining the green car chorus with surprising gusto. For instance, if you drive a low CO2 emitting car, the banking and insurance group Ethias will give you a 10% reduction on the premium. And the Belgian government will pat you on the back as well. As from 1 January this year, it is offering tax concession on personal use of company cars which emit less carbon dioxide (see box).

“We are in favour of modifying the existing fiscal system for business car use,” says Danny Smagghe, spokesperson for Belgium’s automobile club Touring, “providing it doesn’t cost drivers more!”

Touring makes no distinction between hybrids and ordinary vehicles in its service offering, Smagghe says. Its breakdown crews are already well-trained to deal with what he calls “cars of the future”.

Positive signs of change all round, then? Well, not exactly.

It’s a fair bet that diesel fans and petrol-heads would rather have an amputation than be seen driving an electric car, which to them has more in common with a sewing machine than a racing machine. But the way the GPS is heading, these diehards are going to be driven off the road by a combination of spiralling costs and onerous regulation.

So, could hybrids offer a gentle introduction to greener motoring for these holdouts? Hybrids could cruise the highways using their combustion engine and buzz along the byways on electric power.

Prius and proud

It also helps that the hybrid technology is now proven and well-respected. Toyota’s Prius is the hybrid market leader worldwide, but Honda’s Insight will quickly gain ground. European and US carmakers are having to play catch-up, as another Japanese manufacturer Nissan is preparing its 2010 European launch of the zero-emission, fully electric Leaf. Unlike its electric forefathers, the Leaf has power and stamina enough for commuting and longer excursions.

Hybrid owners show consistent loyalty to the technology. Nearly one in three Prius owners buys another one, according to US analysts R.L. Polk & Company. On average, one in five hybrid owners buys the same model again.

Hybrids buck other trends, too. Forecasts by Polk before the economic meltdown of 2008-2009 indicated continued growth in hybrid sales – clearly helped by higher fuel costs and environmental pressures around the world. Western Europe, the study suggests, will see significant sales growth, from less than 1% market share in 2008 up to 5% in 2012.

“You have a lot more environmental and political discussions throughout the EU and a much higher sensitivity [about] CO2 emissions,” notes Lonnie Miller, director of automotive studies at Polk, in an interview on HybridCars.com.

Petrol today, electric tomorrow... where to from there?

In response to demand and with some coaxing by EU laws, carmakers are building more efficient, lower emission vehicles. European motorists are also improving as awareness grows about such things as car-pooling and the links between driving habits and higher emissions.

Meanwhile, scientists are continuing to dream up new fuels, novel energy sources and more efficient engines, in many cases with the help of generous national and EU research funding.

But what happens if these innovations have their own unwanted side-effects?

Battery-powered cars seem like the dream-driving scenario today but soon enough we may discover producing electricity to keep all these vehicles charged could be worse for the environment. Just as questions are being asked today why we are diverting land and water away from food crops to produce ethanol.

(That so many of the world’s population is undernourished and huge tracts of carbon-absorbing rain forest are being cleared to grow such biofuel crops appears to be a secondary matter.)

Where is the logic in all this?

These are pretty big questions and this is a pretty small story about trends in green motoring. All we know for sure is that “grease lightening” is dying, if not dead – and in their love affair with the oil producers, the world’s major carmakers have ignored this truth at their peril.

However, under pressure to remain competitive and to stanch the bankruptcies, the carmakers’ new business mantra will surely be “change we finally believe in”. The sort of change that will drive investment in cleaner fuel sources like hydrogen, new engine designs, and perhaps a whole new way of thinking about the transport mix.

There’s no green bullet to fix the environment and keep economies ticking over at the same time. The reality in Belgium and other densely populated European countries will remain one of traffic jams, noise and plumes of fumes spewing from exhaust pipes for some time to come.

But as the Australian folk singer Paul Kelly once wrote, “from little things big things grow”.

---

^[1] by German Automobile Club (ADAC) and the International Auto Federation (FIA)

This article first appeared in (A)way magazine. Republished here with the author's permission. ©Christian Nielsen. All rights reserved.

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Green shoots in the desert

By Khaled Diab

The Arab world no longer dismisses environmentalism as a western luxury and is gradually awakening to the massive environmental challenges.

9 October 2009

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Forecast: dry, becoming drier

By Khaled Diab

There’s more than enough fresh water in the world to sate our thirst. The problem is getting it to where it is desperately needed.

September 2008

With the depressing torrential rain and flooding at the weekend, water shortages are the last thing on our minds here in these wet, northern climes. In fact, perhaps we need a collective ‘sun dance’ to implore the powers that be to deliver us an ‘Indian summer’.

Despite the misery, we are fortunate, as more and more areas in the world are beset by water shortages. Over the past week alone, the water table in the Pakistani capital Islamabad has fallen to dangerous levels (a common problem across the subcontinent), Kyrgyzstan has cut electricity production to save water, and Californian farmers have complained of lower yields due to water rationing.

The Middle East and North Africa, the driest population centre on the planet, is particularly vulnerable to water shortages. According to the International Water Management Institute, every country in the MENA region suffers from physical water scarcity or is approaching it.

Yemen – fabled for the fertile ancient kingdoms of Arabia Felix – is expected to be the first country in the region to deplete its ground water.

The Sea of Galilee in Israel has reached the lowest levels ever recorded, with fears that, if the government continues to pump it at current rates, the country’s main fresh water reservoir could reach the point of no return.

And the situation is likely to deteriorate, if climate change models prove to be accurate. Earlier this year, the UN released a report estimating that a 3-4°C rise in temperatures could lead to a drop of up to 35% in agricultural output. However, more localised analysis by an Australian scientists suggests that some parts of the region, such as Iraq, may see more rainfall.

Nevertheless, the forecast looks dry for the Middle East. In addition, with around 730 million people, including in the EU, expected to rise to 1.8 billion by 2050, in the world living with water shortages, the future looks bleak.

Not, necessarily, says Jonathan Chenoweth of the Centre for Environmental Strategy. “I believe the looming water crisis is primarily a problem of distribution and management rather than supply,” he wrote in a recent New Scientist article.

In addition to water efficiency and desalination technologies, the major pillar of his strategy would be for arid and semi-arid countries to import “virtual water” in the form of food because agriculture consumes some 90% of water supplies. These countries would shift to less water-intensive sectors, such as trade and services.

Although largely unspoken, this is the direction in which the Middle East has been heading for decades. In fact, the term virtual water was probably coined by Tony Allan of SOAS in reference to the region. Without it, the region may have suffered severe famines by now. For instance, Egypt, with some of the most productive land in the world, imports more than half of its food owing to water shortages and population growth.

Soon-to-be-published research carried out by Chenoweth suggests that “by importing virtual water, a country could offer a high quality of life with as little as 135 litres of water per person per day”.

While this theory is promising at certain levels, it seems to overlook some crucial issues. While the more developed Middle Eastern countries with a smaller population, such as Israel, Lebanon and Dubai are successfully shifting their economies towards trade and service, it is difficult to see how many others will be able to reduce their economic dependence on agriculture and manufacturing.

Egypt, for instance, has a large educated population and its economy has a robust and rapidly growing service sector, including IT. Nevertheless, agriculture accounts for 14% of the country’s GDP and employs a quarter of the labour force. In addition, cash crops and cotton textiles and clothes are among Egypt’s main exports. Moreover, other large sectors of the economy, such as steel, manufacturing and chemicals are heavy water users.

If Egypt, a middle income, relatively developed country has such difficulty shifting its economy towards water-light sectors, what of less-developed countries? Sudan, for instance, overall has abundant water supplies, yet it is unable even to meet food shortages within its own border. The situation is even worse in Ethiopia where I personally witnessed UN food aid being distributed only miles away from the source of the Blue Nile, Lake Tana.

What Chenoweth’s analysis also seems to overlook or understate is that water-rich regions may have an abundance of water but they are already sailing pretty close to the wind in terms of food output. While growth in Middle Eastern agriculture is crippled by the absence of water, it is highly unlikely that largely temperate regions, such as the EU, will be able to translate their water abundance into significantly higher agricultural production, since most of their arable land is already in use.

The current food crisis may be an early indication that we are slowly approaching an agricultural ceiling. In addition, the energy crunch suggests that the kind of globalisation of trade required to shift virtual water effectively may be unsustainable.

Then, there’s the issue of food security. How can countries dependent on virtual water ensure a sufficient flow of food to sustain their populations? What if a more severe crisis in the future forces major food exporters to cut off exports? Alternatively, if wealthy and arid countries, such as the Gulf States, buy up large tracts of farm land in poor countries to ensure their food security, this will help these countries to boost their agricultural output and develop their economies. But we could also be looking at future artificial famines rather like the Irish potato famine which, interestingly, prompted the Ottoman sultan and native Americans to send humanitarian aid to Ireland.

If virtual water is to be successful in feeding the world, we need robust and effective international mechanisms to ensure that this redistribution is implemented equitably and that neither suppliers nor recipients go hungry in lean years. In addition, development programmes in poorer arid countries will need to find ways of reducing dependency on sparse local water resources and controlling population growth.

 

This column appeared in The Guardian Unlimited’s Comment is Free section on 9 September 2008. Read the related discussion.

This is an archive piece that was migrated to this website from Diabolic Digest

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Tags: arab countries, climate change, desertification, drought, global warming, india, middle east, pakistan, virtual water, water shortages

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