Actualizing the Encyclical Laudato Is

RAEL has part­nered with both the Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­emy of Sci­ences and a num­ber of other groups world­wide that are engag­ing the Vat­i­can and inter­ested part­ners to uti­lize the dia­log around The Encycli­cal to pro­mote equity, sus­tain­able devel­op­ment and cli­mate protection.

Events in this ini­tia­tive include:

RAEL and Vat­i­can pub­li­ca­tions such as:

Novem­ber 2, 2016 roundtable:

Actu­al­iz­ing the Vision of Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Com­mon Home

Kam­men, D. M., Alstone, P. and Ger­shen­son, D. (2014) “Energy for sus­tain­able and equi­table devel­op­ment,” Sus­tain­able Human­ity, Sus­tain­able Nature: Our Respon­si­bil­ity, Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­emy of Sci­ences, Extra Series 41, Vat­i­can City 2014 Pon­tif­i­cal Acad­emy of Social Sci­ences, Acta 20, Vat­i­can City 2014

Videos:

Cli­mate Change, Con­sumerism, and the Pope

Mozersky, Dave

David Moz­er­sky is the Found­ing Direc­tor of the Pro­gram on Con­flict, Cli­mate Change and Green Devel­op­ment. An expert on Sudan and South Sudan, he has been involved in con­flict pre­ven­tion efforts in Africa since 2001, with a spe­cific inter­est in medi­a­tion, nego­ti­a­tion and peace processes. He has worked with the Inter­na­tional Cri­sis Group, the African Union High-​​​​Level Panel on the Sudans, and Human­ity United, among oth­ers. He has writ­ten exten­sively about the con­flicts and peace­mak­ing efforts in the Horn of Africa, and has tes­ti­fied or pre­sented before the U.S. Sen­ate and House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the Cana­dian Par­lia­ment, and South Sudanese Par­lia­ment. David has authored and co-​​​​authored more than two dozen Inter­na­tional Cri­sis Group reports and brief­ing papers, and his writ­ing has appeared in the Har­vard Inter­na­tional Review, Inter­na­tional Herald-​​​​Tribune, Finan­cial Times-​​​​Europe, and other publications.

Strategic siting and regional grid interconnections key to low-​​carbon futures in African countries

Recent fore­casts sug­gest that African coun­tries must triple their cur­rent elec­tric­ity gen­er­a­tion by 2030. Our mul­ti­cri­te­ria assess­ment of wind and solar poten­tial for large regions of Africa shows how eco­nom­i­cally com­pet­i­tive and low-environmental–impact renew­able resources can sig­nif­i­cantly con­tribute to meet­ing this demand. We cre­ated the Mul­ti­cri­te­ria Analy­sis for Plan­ning Renew­able Energy (MapRE) frame­work to map and char­ac­ter­ize solar and wind energy zones in 21 coun­tries in the South­ern African Power Pool (SAPP) and the East­ern Africa Power Pool (EAPP) and find that poten­tial is sev­eral times greater than demand in many coun­tries. Sig­nif­i­cant frac­tions of demand can be quickly served with “no-​​regrets” options—or zones that are low-​​cost, low-​​environmental impact, and highly acces­si­ble. Because no-​​regrets options are spa­tially het­ero­ge­neous, inter­na­tional inter­con­nec­tions are nec­es­sary to help achieve low-​​carbon devel­op­ment for the region as a whole, and inter­con­nec­tions that sup­port the best renew­able options may dif­fer from those planned for hydropower expan­sion. Addi­tion­ally, inter­con­nec­tions and select­ing wind sites to match demand reduce the need for SAPP-​​wide con­ven­tional gen­er­a­tion capac­ity by 9.5% in a high-​​wind sce­nario, result­ing in a 6–20% cost sav­ings, depend­ing on the avoided con­ven­tional tech­nol­ogy. Strate­gic selec­tion of low-​​impact and acces­si­ble zones is more cost effec­tive with inter­con­nec­tions com­pared with solu­tions with­out inter­con­nec­tions. Over­all results are robust to mul­ti­ple load growth sce­nar­ios. Together, results show that mul­ti­cri­te­ria site selec­tion and delib­er­ate plan­ning of inter­con­nec­tions may sig­nif­i­cantly increase the eco­nomic and envi­ron­men­tal com­pet­i­tive­ness of renew­able alter­na­tives rel­a­tive to con­ven­tional generation.

Maushund, Brooke

Brooke’s under­grad­u­ate career was pro­filed in the CNR Newslet­ter.

The Platform for Energy Access Knowledge

The Plat­form for Energy Access Knowl­edge (PEAK) is a project part­ner­ship between RAEL and Power for All,  a global cam­paign to accel­er­ate the market-​​​​based growth of decen­tral­ized renew­ables as the key to achiev­ing uni­ver­sal energy access. The cam­paign, estab­lished in 2014, serves as a col­lec­tive voice for busi­nesses and civil soci­ety focused on off-​​​​grid renew­able solu­tions. The research prod­ucts of this part­ner­ship will pro­vide crit­i­cal evi­dence needed to sup­port wide­spread adop­tion of dis­trib­uted technologies.

PEAK is an inter­ac­tive infor­ma­tion exchange plat­form designed to help aggre­gate and repack­age the best research and infor­ma­tion on energy access into com­pelling data-​​​driven sto­ries for a range of tar­get audi­ences to ensure max­i­mum vis­i­bil­ity, usabil­ity and dis­cov­er­abil­ity of that infor­ma­tion by indi­vid­u­als, orga­ni­za­tions and com­mu­ni­ties work­ing to make energy ser­vices acces­si­ble to all.

The Power for All Cam­paign is directed by Kristina Skierka. PEAK research is directed by Dr. Rebekah Shirley, cur­rent Post­doc­toral Researcher at RAEL.

See PEAK’s Launch Press Release, March 2016

See PEAK prod­ucts here and look out for our web por­tal soon to come.

Recently, PEAK con­ducted a quan­ti­ta­tive analy­sis that exam­ines the poli­cies of five high-​​growth mar­kets striv­ing to achieve uni­ver­sal energy access — India and Bangladesh in Asia, and Kenya, Tan­za­nia and Ethiopia in Africa — and high­lights areas for pol­icy pri­or­i­ti­za­tion in Low Energy Access coun­tries. Our research is cur­rently under peer-​​review. See an unpub­lished, draft/​working ver­sion of our man­u­script and look out for more infor­ma­tion soon.

Shaw, Brittany

Isa Ferrall

Isa Fer­rall is a MS/Ph.D. stu­dent in the Energy and Resources Group and Renew­able and Appro­pri­ate Energy Lab at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. She is inter­ested in the impact of renew­able energy on rural elec­tri­fi­ca­tion, global devel­op­ment, and the domes­tic energy sec­tor. Pre­vi­ously, Isa gained expe­ri­ence on both the tech­ni­cal and applied sides of renew­able energy. She researched inno­v­a­tive energy mate­ri­als at Duke Uni­ver­sity as a National Acad­emy of Engi­neer­ing Grand Chal­lenge Scholar and at the National Renew­able Energy Lab­o­ra­tory as a Depart­ment of Energy Intern. She also has ana­lyzed sys­tem data for Off-​​Grid Elec­tric, a solar home sys­tem com­pany oper­at­ing in east Africa. Isa grad­u­ated Magna Cum Laude from Duke Uni­ver­sity in 2015 with dis­tinc­tion in Mechan­i­cal Engi­neer­ing and a Cer­tifi­cate in Energy and the Environment.

The Human Needs Project /​ Kibera Town Center

For the Human Needs Project full web­site, click on:

http://​www​.human​need​spro​ject​.org

Pro­fes­sor Kam­men, serves as the CTO of the Human Needs Project, high­lighted how the Kib­era Town Cen­ter Project pro­vides basic ser­vices (water, toi­lets, show­ers, laun­dry) and empow­er­ment ser­vices (busi­ness skills train­ing, micro-​​credit, WiFi cafe, health kiosk, green mar­ket­place) to over 800 peo­ple per day. These inte­grated ser­vices pro­vide a holis­tic solu­tion to the chal­lenges of liv­ing in a slum. Together, they can help peo­ple with a road map to cre­at­ing a bet­ter life.

Kam­men demon­strated how clean, local energy can empower vibrant and sus­tain­able com­mu­nity cen­ters. Actress and Human Needs Project Founder and Pres­i­dent Con­nie Nielsen said, “Our vision is to develop a net­work of com­mu­nity empow­er­ment cen­ters them­selves pow­ered by clean energy, which is the most reli­able form of power”

Avila, Nkiruka

Nkiruka Avila is a grad­u­ate stu­dent in the Energy and Resources Group at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia, Berke­ley. She grad­u­ated with Summa cum Laude hon­ors in Petro­leum Engi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­sity of Okla­homa. She has worked in var­i­ous sec­tors of the energy indus­try, from engi­neer­ing design and pro­duc­tion to end-​​use dis­tri­b­u­tion and mar­ket­ing. Her cur­rent research inter­ests include renew­able energy inte­gra­tion, sus­tain­able energy devel­op­ment and rural electrification.

Program on Conflict, Climate Change and Green Development

For a video sum­ma­riz­ing the pro­gram, click here.

The impacts of cli­mate change are already being felt across Africa, lead­ing to greater nat­ural resource scarcity, which has con­tributed to vio­lent con­flict in Dar­fur (Sudan), Mali, and Soma­lia, among oth­ers. This trend is likely to con­tinue, as Africa is pro­jected to be among geo­gra­phies most severely impacted by cli­mate change. Though the path­way from cli­mate change to greater nat­ural resource scarcity to vio­lence is not a direct one, the risks of con­flict will increase as liveli­hoods are threat­ened due to greater scarcity of food, water or arable land. With lower gov­ern­ment capac­i­ties and lim­ited fund­ing to adapt to cli­mate change impacts, and a rel­a­tively weak con­flict prevention/​resolution archi­tec­ture in place, cli­mate change is likely to have an increas­ingly impor­tant impact on future con­flicts in Africa.

This assess­ment neces­si­tates new pol­icy plan­ning and devel­op­ment think­ing. Despite the threats, the broader global inter­est in cli­mate change also presents sig­nif­i­cant oppor­tu­ni­ties to mobi­lize new inter­est and momen­tum for pro­mot­ing green devel­op­ment in Africa. This can con­tribute to an effec­tive con­flict pre­ven­tion strat­egy, and can also drive increased invest­ment and more diver­si­fied economies, improved gov­er­nance and devel­op­ment out­comes, and greater polit­i­cal sta­bil­ity. This project aims to build the the­o­ret­i­cal and prac­ti­cal case for a new model for green devel­op­ment, which can pro­vide both polit­i­cal and eco­nomic returns, while deliv­er­ing both cli­mate sen­si­tive and con­flict sen­si­tive development.

Our 3–5 year goal is to seed and sup­port a suc­cess­ful “green” pilot in a still to be selected geog­ra­phy in Africa. A suc­cess­ful pilot will require polit­i­cal buy-​​in and local polit­i­cal cham­pi­ons, as well as new exter­nal invest­ment to sup­port green devel­op­ment projects. This can serve as a model that helps demon­strate the polit­i­cal and eco­nomic poten­tial of a green approach, the eco­nomic poten­tial of a green frame­work to exter­nal investors, as well as effec­tive con­flict pre­ven­tion. It is our hope that the model, once proven, will be scal­able in other geographies.