Basics Initiative Jatropha Hamburg

Basics

Initiative Jatropha Hamburg Basics Prognoses concerning the period of time remaining for world-wide petroleum reserves to get exhausted vary from within the next few decades and, according to optimistic estimates, a minimum of 100, a maximum of 150 years.

The optimists tend to obscure the fact that for a large part of the theoretically known deposits, a drastically increased input of technical and financial recources will be necessary to be tapped, e.g. for shale or deep reserves. In practice, a major portion of the explored oil reserves will remain out of reach of industrial exploitation, simply because of the imbalance between cost and benefits, except the world market would accept a multiplication of the oil price in the near future.

These days we remember a historical past, if we talk about market prices of 18-25 USD/barrel in 2001/2002. But even then the official market price did not represent the actual costs paid by consumers. The hidden costs for environmental damage and military interest policy added, each US American actually paid an average of 45-60 USD/barrel. In 2006/2007 an average of over 100 USD/barrel may be realistically calculated.

A presumably realistic estimate has been published by the Royal Dutch Shell Co.: according to this, the global consumption of fossile fuels would reach its peak by the year 2030, and the transitional development to alternative energy sources would start accelerating.

This is why the development of practicable and profitable energy sources must be promoted now. Functioning model projects will win significance and economic interest in the future.

Biomass as an energy source will play a major role. It may be expected that the UN convention of Kyoto defining international standards for the reduction of global emissions of greenhouse gases will support this development. The Kyoto-Protocol provides, within the frame of emission trade, the instruments of the "Joint Implementation Plan" (JI- trading project-bound emission certificates between industrialized nations) and the "Clean Development Mechanism" (CDM- project-bound emission trade between industrialized and developing nations). In the sense of the Kyoto-Convention, bio energy projects serve the general cause of climate protection in two ways: the combustion of vegetable oils tested as biofuels and biodiesel is "cleaner" than that of fossil products. In particular, considerably less carbon-monoxide is emitted, volatile organic compounds (VOC) and metal compounds do not occur, in general, the emissions of combustion are easier degradable than those of fossil fuels. This makes bio-energy an element reducing the "source" of emissions as defined in the Kyoto-Protocol.

On the other hand, the production of bio-energy is a cyclic process, in which the carbon-dioxide emitted by combustion is consumed and recycled by the producing plants. This is defined as "sink" in the UN-Convention. The significance of these aspects is that these conventional instruments allow industrialized nations to balance their failure to comply with international requirements for emission reduction by investing in bio-energy in developing nations. Another interesting aspect is that the major insurance companies (Münchner Rück, Swiss Re) have recently shown their interest in the development of bio-energy and biodiesel. These people already have quite precise ideas about the costs of climate catastrophes.

Sources: E. Schaltegger, Policy Context of Biomass Fuels and their Economics, in: Gübitz, Mittelbach, Trabi (Hrsg.),

Biofuels and Industrial Products from Jatropha curcas, Graz, 1997; B.R. Bonine u.a.,

Commercial Feasibility of Biofuels in 1997, in:Gübitz u.a., ebd.;

M. Mittelbach,15 Years of Biodiesel Experience in Europe, in: Gübitz u.a., ebd.;CO2-Handel, Symposium Berliner Energietage, 2002.