scholarly journals Maximizing Benefits from Hydropower: A Nepal Case

2008 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
pp. 29-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janak Lal Karmacharya

Hydropower development is the only development activity that yields multiple benefits and, in many cases, can be an effective agent for poverty alleviation. Apart from being a source of renewable and clean energy, to stabilize the supply of electricity, it helps provide year round irrigation resulting in the increase in the cropping intensity and changing cropping pattern, and it reduces both deforestation and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Nepal has adopted a policy of Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM), by which hydropower projects are developed in conjunction with irrigation, flood control, water supply and navigation components whenever feasible. As an agriculture dependent country, Nepal should maximize the irrigation benefit, by providing year round irrigation through storage projects developed for peak energy generation. Nepal has planned to provide year round irrigation to 67% of the total irrigated area by 2027. Electricity from hydropower projects currently contributes only 1% of energy need, whereas fuelwood contributes 68%, and fossil fuels 8%. Development of hydropower not only helps reduce deforestation, reported at the rate of 0.7% per annum, but also helps reduce GHG emission by substitution of imported fossil fuels. The annual fossil fuel import bill for Nepal 2004/05 was about 310 million USD. Nepal could benefit substantially if consumption of petroleum products were replaced by hydropower. Where the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is effectively used to address the impact on climate change, hydropower gains significance in contributing positively to climate change. Key words: Hydropower, IWRM, maximization of benefit, poverty alleviation, growth, Nepal Hydro Nepal: Journal of Water, Energy and Environment Vol. I, Issue No. 1 (2007) pp. 29-34

Significance The extreme cold comes as the province is still dealing with the damage caused by unprecedented levels of heat and wildfires last summer and then record levels of rainfall and flooding in November. Its experience has focused attention on Canada’s wider vulnerability to the impact of shifting weather patterns and climate change. Impacts The natural resource sectors that are vital to Canada’s economy face an increasingly difficult environment for extraction. Indigenous peoples across the country will see their traditional ways of life further disrupted by climate change. The increasingly evident impacts of climate change on day-to-day life will see voters demand greater action from government. Significant investment in green initiatives, clean energy and climate resiliency initiatives will boost green industries.


Author(s):  
Ifeoluwa Garba ◽  
Richard Bellingham

Access to energy is crucial in tackling many of the current global development challenges that impact on people’s economic, health and social well-being as well as the ability to meet the commitments of reducing carbon emissions through clean energy use. Despite increased attention from multiple governments and agencies, energy poverty remains a serious sustainable development issue in many developing countries. To date, most research have focused on general access to electricity and the generation of clean energy to replace fossil fuels, failing to address the lack of basic access to clean energy for cooking and heating. More people in the world lack access to clean cooking fuels than to electricity. This issue is one aspect of a broader research which investigates the impacts of optimized energy policy and energy business models on sustainable development in developing countries.


Author(s):  
Nick Jelley

‘Why do we need renewables?’ describes the dangers of fossil fuels and explains the importance of renewable energy as an alternative. It shows that the use of fossil fuels causes global warming and climate change, leading to widespread concern, and also to a growing realization of the harm caused by the air pollution from coal burning and from internal combustion engines in cars and lorries. These threats are causing a switch away from fossil fuels to renewables that is gaining impetus from the growing awareness of the increased intensity and frequency of extreme weather seen in recent years. This transition is also being aided by the falling price of clean energy from renewables, in particular, solar and wind farms, which will become the dominant sources. The area of land or sea required for these farms is readily available, as are the back-ups required to handle their variability. Alternative supplies of low-carbon energy are examined. In the Paris Agreement in 2015, it was recognized that carbon dioxide emissions must reach net-zero by 2050 to avoid dangerous climate change.


Significance Despite its promotion of an innovation ecosystem to attract start-ups, Abu Dhabi has overall made little progress in addressing the impact of the clean-energy transition on long-term demand for fossil fuels. As COVID-19 hits private consumption hard, Dubai is promoting expatriate-friendly labour market and legal reforms, with an eye to the troubled real estate sector. Impacts Abu Dhabi’s sovereign wealth funds will increase their exposure to the overseas oil derivatives industry. Dubai will shift attention to taming oversupply in the flagging property market, and developers will be under increased scrutiny. Ambitious oil production targets will increase tensions with Saudi Arabia; a medium-term OPEC exit is possible. Abu Dhabi will prioritise high-profile space and nuclear projects that generate soft power and boost innovation.


Author(s):  
Hartmut Wessler ◽  
Julia Lück ◽  
Antal Wozniak

The annual United Nations Climate Change Conferences, officially called Conferences of the Parties (COPs), are the main drivers of media attention to climate change around the world. Even more so than the Rio and Rio+20 “Earth Summits” (1992 and 2012) and the meetings of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the COPs offer multiple access points for the communicative engagement of all kinds of stakeholders. COPs convene up to 20,000 people in one place for two weeks, including national delegations, civil society and business representatives, scientific organizations, representatives from other international organizations, as well as journalists from around the world. While intergovernmental negotiation under the auspices of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) constitutes the core of COP business, these multifunctional events also offer arenas for civil society mobilization, economic lobbying, as well as expert communication and knowledge transfer. The media image of the COPs emerges as a product of distinct networks of coproduction constituted by journalists, professional communicators from non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and national delegations. Production structures at the COPs are relatively globalized with uniform access rules for journalists from all over the world, a few transnational news agencies dominating distribution of both basic information and news visuals, and dense localized interaction between public relations (PR) professionals and journalists. Photo opportunities created by globally coordinated environmental NGOs meet the selection of journalists much better than the visual strategies pursued by delegation spokespeople. This gives NGOs the upper hand in the visual framing contest, whereas in textual framing NGOs are sidelined and national politicians clearly dominate media coverage. The globalized production environment leads to relatively similar patterns of basic news framing in national media coverage of the COPs that reflect overarching ways of approaching the topic: through a focus on problems and victims; a perspective on civil society demands and solutions; an emphasis on conflict in negotiations; or a focus on the benefits of clean energy production. News narratives, on the other hand, give journalists from different countries more leeway in adapting COP news to national audiences’ presumed interests and preoccupations. Even after the adoption of a new global treaty at COP21 in Paris in 2015 that specifies emission reduction targets for all participating countries, the annual UN Climate Change Conferences are likely to remain in the media spotlight. Future research could look more systematically at the impact of global civil society and media in monitoring the national contributions to climate change mitigation introduced in the Paris Agreement and shoring up even more ambitious commitments needed to reach the goal of keeping global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius as compared to pre-industrial levels.


2012 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 195
Author(s):  
Doug Young

The Clean Energy Act (CEA) and its related legislation received royal assent on 18 November 2011, ushering in a new era for the Australian industry, and for those who deal with it. Building on the 2007 National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme (NGERS), which mandates the measurement and reporting of greenhouse gas emissions and electricity production and consumption, the CEA imposes direct obligations on: individual industrial operations (facilities) that emit more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide, or its other equivalent greenhouse gases, from particular sources, in a year; suppliers of natural gas (at the point of last supply before the gas is burnt or otherwise used), for the emissions that will be generated when the gas is burnt; and, operators of land-fill facilities, such as local councils. While the primary emissions targeted by the scheme are produced by burning fossil fuels, they also include emissions such as the methane released when coal is mined. The obligations include the option of surrendering carbon units for each tonne of emissions, however, if this optional step is not performed, the mandatory payment of a tax, which far exceeds the cost of a unit, is enforced. The Australian Government will sell carbon units at a fixed price for the first three years, starting at $23, after which units will be auctioned for between $15 and the expected international unit price, plus $20. The supply of domestic units will be unlimited for the three fixed price years, but will be subject to a reducing cap in following years, consistent with the Government policy of reducing Australia’s emissions. The Government has created a monopoly for the supply of units for the first three years by prohibiting the use of overseas-sourced carbon units, and by only allowing 5% of the unit surrender requirements to be comprised of Australian generated carbon credits. Thereafter, for the first five of the flexible-charge years, only half the units can be sourced from overseas, with any apparent saving likely to be offset by the various taxes and charges applicable to the use of those units. Certain fuels will also be separately taxed. Entities, however, which acquire, manufacture or import fuels and would otherwise be entitled to a fuel tax credit, may be able to assume direct liability thus enabling them to acquire or manufacture fuel, free of the carbon tax component. Where the imposts will cause competitive disadvantage to industries that compete with entities from other countries that do not have similar imposts, some assistance is provided in the form of allocated units provided at no charge. Assistance is also available to coal-fired electricity generators, producers of liquefied natural gas, operators of gassy coal mines, and the steel industry (not discussed in this paper). This paper also explains, in detail, how liability is created, how to determine which entities are liable, the means of assigning liability to other entities, and the assistance available to various industries to help deal with the financial impact of the scheme on their operations. It also outlines the key concepts that underpin the scheme.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Malgorzata Zdunek

<p>Due to global warming and the worldwide depletion of fossil fuel resources, there is a growing need to transform the energy system toward greater use of renewable sources. In Poland, poor air quality constitutes an additional argument for the necessity of such transition. High levels of pollutants concentrations in many locations, especially in urban and suburban areas are caused by emissions from individual heating systems running on fossil fuels.</p><p><span> Data from recent years show </span><span>that renewable generation forms the largest share of the total generation mix in Europe</span><span>. </span><span>Regarding new installation, solar and wind energy dominate renewable </span><span>capacity expansion, jointly accounting for example in 2019 for 90% of all net renewable additions.</span><span> However, along with the increase in the penetration of these energy sources also increases the sensitivity of the power system to weather and climatic conditions.</span></p><p>The study presents the impact of climate change up to the year 2100 on the photovoltaic power generation potential (Pvpot) in Poland. For determination of Pvpot index a set of high-resolution climate models projections, made available within the EURO-CORDEX initiative was used. Maps showing spatial distribution of absolute values of Pvpot in future climate (30-year average for 2071-2100) and relative changes with respect to current climate (30-year average for 2006-2035) are presented, separately for RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenario. The influence of meteorological conditions (temperature, wind and solar radiation) on PV module performance is taken into account by applying two different formula (Ciulla et. al, 2014 and Davy and Troccoli, 2012). Furthermore, two options for module orientation are considered: horizontal and inclined at an optimal angle.</p>


Author(s):  
Sohana Debbarma ◽  
Geetanjali Kaushik

India's North-East Region has greater demand for road and personalized modes of transport powered by fossil fuels. And due to emissions, there has been evidence of climate change. It has been found that diesel cars cause greater emissions (per kilometer travelled) as compared to petrol cars; therefore, the use of diesel should be discouraged. The chapter suggests that the emissions in case of public transport passenger-km are lesser than other modes of transport. However, in the North-East Region, there is negligible share of public transport due to poor infrastructure and service facilities. Therefore, improvements should be made with regard to public transport system so that considerable number of passengers shifts to public transport modes. Further, it is inferred that use of alternate vehicle or fuel technologies like hybrid electric vehicles, biofuel, biodiesel, hydrogen fuel need to be initiated to mitigate the climate change.


Author(s):  
Nick Jelley

‘What are renewables?’ defines renewable energy and provides a brief history of its use. It focuses on energy generated by solar, wind, and hydropower. These energy sources are renewable, in the sense that they are naturally replenished within days to decades. Only a few years ago, giving up our reliance on fossil fuels to tackle global warming would have been very difficult, as they are so enmeshed in our society and any alternative was very expensive. Nearly all of the sources of energy up to the 18th century were from renewables, after which time the world increasingly used fossil fuels. They powered the industrial revolution around the globe, and now provide most of our energy. But this dependence is unsustainable, because their use causes global warming, climate change, and pollution. Other than hydropower, which grew steadily during the 20th century and now provides almost a sixth of the world’s electricity demand, renewable energy was a neglected resource for power production for most of this period, being economically uncompetitive. But now, renewables are competitive, particularly through the support of feed-in tariffs and mass production, and governments are starting to pay more attention to clean energy, as the threat of climate change draws closer. Moving away from fossil fuels to renewables to supply both heat and electricity sustainably has become essential.


2018 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 79-85
Author(s):  
Raghu Bir Bista ◽  
Khet Raj Dahal ◽  
Ram Prasad Gyawali

This study was conducted in the period of January 2014 to December 2015. The main objective of the study was to investigate the impact of climate change in the water basin and its catchment areas. The method was a survey of relevant literatures. Climate change is a big issue not only in developed countries but also in developing countries. The study found that the temperature is rising with 2.00 C on average per annum in western Nepal. This is relatively 3 times higher than lower temperature increase within the country and significantly higher in comparison to global trend of temperature variation. Over the last 36 years (1975-2010) in western Nepal, temperature is rising on an average of 1.2°C per annum. This is twice as compared to the global increment. This indicates more vulnerability of climate change in hills and high hills of Nepal. The average rise of temperature in Nepal is 0.06oC per year. The climate-induced disasters are; drought, severe floods, landslide, etc. They also have negative effects in agriculture in the hills and high hills of Nepal.HYDRO Nepal JournalJournal of Water, Energy and Environment Issue: 23Year: 2018


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