Parallel Workshop Session 1

Report on Parallel Workshop Session 1
Pasha Sohel, M2 Student, Department of Urban Engineering


Parallel Workshop Theme: Energy
Session 1: Management of Clean Energy Development in Asian Countries
Time: March 20 (Monday) 2006, 13:30-17:10
Venue: Riverside 7, Royal Orchid Sheraton, Bangkok, Thailand
Facilitator: Keisuke Hanaki (the University of Tokyo)

Foreword

The aim of the workshop is to discuss management of energy and environment especially in Asian region. Topics include mitigation of expected growth in developing region and sustainable GHG reduction in developed region. Interaction of energy technology with social and economic aspects is addressed. The final goal of this workshop is to provide valuable inputs in order to improve the interim proposal of the new flagship program that AGS is going to launch. The workshop invited 7 speakers in session 1 to provide regional information on management of clean energy development. After the lectures, there was a commentator’s speech on all the presentations of the session. However, the workshop started with the session facilitator’s introductory talk on session topic, scope of the workshop and presentation rules.

Lecture 1
Renewable Energy Development in Asia: Promoting Renewable Energy Technologies
S Kumar, Asian Institute of Technology (AIT)

The Renewable Energy Technology (RET) Program, conducted during 1997-2005, in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Nepal, the Philippines and Vietnam was presented. The program aimed to promote RETs viz. photovoltaics (PV), solar drying and biomass briquetting/ briquetting stoves. Major areas of program activities are development of RETs system components through adaptive research, capacity building on RETs and dissemination of the technology to the potential users and policy makers.

Reference

• http://www.retsasia.ait.ac.th

Q&A

• Was there any viability test, for example, resource assessment for use of RET devices? There was no such study. For instance, measurement of solar energy is not so easy. Renewable energy is assumed to be in abundant in the nature.

• Was there any quality assessment regarding the renewable energy? There was no problem concerning quality.

• Is there any supply side problem regarding silicon for photovoltaic cells? There is no problem in silicon supply. No resource restriction exists.

Lecture 2
Sustainable Bioenergy for India
N H Ravindranath, Indian Institute of Science-Bangalore (IISc)

Rural energy demand has, so far, received limited attention in developing countries. The presentation was about the potentiality of bioenergy technologies as an opportunity to meet all the rural energy needs. Feasibility of commercial scale manufacturing and dissemination, demonstration and implementation of technologies, technical and operational feasibility, acceptability to the rural community has been tried practically in India. However, economic viability is yet to be proven in the field for some of the bioenergy technologies. Research and development capability as well as manufacturing and entrepreneurship capability exist in India. Also land needed for sustainable biomass feedstock production for energy is available in India. Bioenergy technologies such as biomass gasifiers for power generation, biodiesel or liquid fuels for local transportation, biogas and high efficiency wood stoves for cooking can promote economic development in rural areas by providing employment and incomes. In addition, such programs can prevent land degradation, protect watersheds and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Policy, financial and institutional interventions are needed to promote bioenergy programs.

Q&A

• We have seen that there is a lot of energy demand. But still we haven’t seen the impact yet. What are the barriers for promoting bioenergy? Social and economic factors are not allowing to have the benefits of bioenergy. Barriers include: (a)Electricity has traditionally been subsidized in India. So, bioenergy is in competition with subsidized electricity. (b) Technological challenges still exist. (c) Policy barriers are also there.

• Is there any water pollution problem regarding cleaning gasifier engine? Gasifier engine is of complete combustion type with little tork. It does not use lot of water because of its small scale. Moreover, water is used for cooling purpose not for cleaning. That water is recycled.

• What is the price of biodiesel? It costs 25-30 baths to produce one litre of biodiesel and sold at 30-35 baths a litre. So, compared to gasoline or diesel biodiesel is cheaper.

• As for developing bioenergy in rural areas, what is the requirement? Both small fund and labour are available in rural areas. It could be promoted as employment generation program solving the rural employment problem. Thus it can promote economic development in rural areas by providing employment and incomes.

• There is a debate that large scale production of bioenergy is raising the price of fuel. How this could be defended? No good agricultural land will be used for producing bioenergy. No farmer shifts from food to energy. So, no high quality land would go. Non-arable land is still available right now. So, it wouldn’t be a serious problem in promoting bioenergy.

Lecture 3
Development of Japan Law Carbon Society (LCS) Scenarios toward 2050 and Global Challenges
Junichi Fujino, National Institute of Environmental Studies (NIES), Japan

An analysis of possible Japanese energy systems to achieve low carbon society toward 2050 was presented. We might need drastic and early reduction of GHG emissions such as 50% global emissions by 2050 to stabilize GHG concentration at a level that would prevent dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system. The study suggested that Japan might require to undertake greater reductions such as 60-80%. However, current study examined 70% CO2 reductions by 2050 as compared to 1990 level for Japan. It showed that renewable energies may have significant role to realize low carbon society. Therefore, it is important to design feasible roadmap to expand their share and use with long term perspectives. The speaker also emphasized the importance of quantitative verification using simulation models to find consistence and feasible pathways toward achieving low carbon society. Analysis on low carbon society scenarios of some Asian countries like China, India and Thailand has been started.
References

• Japan Low Carbon Society Scenarios toward 2050, http://2050.nies.go.jp.

• LCS Research Booklet No.1 (November 2005), Research Project on “Establishing of Methodology to Evaluate Middle to Long term Environmental Policy Options toward Low Carbon Society in Japan” (FY2004-2008), sponsored by Strategic Research Development Project, Global Environment Research Fund, Ministry of the Environment, Japan.

• Japan – UK Joint Research Project (Feb.16 2006), Developing visions for a Low Carbon Society through sustainable development, MoE Japan/ Defra UK.

• Japan (June 2005), Guidance for Self-sustained Residential, 50% reductions

• UK (February 2005), 40% House, 60% reductions

Q&A

• Existing technology and its barriers have been talked about provided that the new technologies are also in the horizon. So, if you model the long term what are the critical points to convert this low carbon society scenario into reality? We have developed back casting model. If we just hold the trend it will not be of use. How to develop fuel cell technology is also critical. Problem also exists in how to store energy. Somehow storing energy is required but the battery technology is not so well developed. So, the approach is to find the crucial point by setting different scenarios and then think which to do.

• Japanese society is aging rapidly. Does aging make difficult or easier? Aging is not only problem of Japan, especially China also has the same problem. By using population dynamic model it has been tried to understand that what things happen in Lifestyle Model. It is now trend that elder people moving from rural to city area.

• Change of oil price is very strongly affecting alternative fuel production. Is the oil price factor introduced to the model? Hiking of oil price is in a sense good for development of alternative energy. Macro economic model is used to estimate oil price.

• There is a controversy on Fuel Cell Hydrogen vehicles’ energy efficiency. How is it in Japan? At present it is not so good situation regarding FCH vehicles in Japan. How to generate hydrogen is a question.

Negotiation game on Education session

Akihiro Tamai wrote:

I feel really sorry for those who couldn't, and didn't, join this session. It was very well-organized, interesting and fun.
Procedure of the opening was as follows: Mai from UT took the chair, lecture about background by Yumiko, description of the game by Tomohiro.
Now the game started. Group 2 was consist of Stephanie, Amanda, Didac, me, Noriko, Keisuke and (I can’t remember his name).These seven represent six different countries and chairperson of international conference like COP. Each countries choose their preferences on four technological methods of CO2 reduction from accept/ (partly accept)/ deny alternatives. Chairperson offers a set of technology choices as a resolution based on opinion of nations. Each choice is differently scored to each player due to their condition. Sum of scores of four technologies becomes their point. Game will be finished when more than five countries are satisfied to the point and agree to the resolution. If they don’t reach to agreement in the round they will negotiate about their standpoint and repeat voting resolution.
I was arranged to play role of an “Environmentally developed country”, possibly like Germany, who is configured as skeptic to all technological solutions. This country believes that effectiveness of these technologies is uncertain, too easy to declare and would suppress substantial achievement, and some technologies are too risky to apply. The condition was rather difficult to cooperate with other countries since people would see this country as a cynic for measures. ...Well, I’m confessing that I was the negotiator who lost in the first session. This game taught me that clear cooperative attitude on the first step is important for creating cooperative atmosphere to win-win relationship, and difficulty in negotiation. At last of the game, scores of each country were modified by “uncertainty” on our decision by a pair of dice and a list of uncertainties. If the dices show spot as written on an uncertainty card, target countries will get some gain or loss on their point. In our case no major change happened.
What stroke me the most through the game is how the set of score tables are well regulated. This made it clear that there exist many value conflicts although it it’s a bit too clear in some aspects. Game design was well organized and organizers’ message was clearly reflected on the design. This should be a very useful method for education for sustainability to let them feel difficulties and importance of such negotiations because achieving sustainability requires it among stakeholders with different interest.
As was mentioned at the beginning, it’s a pity that many of the meeting participants didn't join this session. Most of them would say they were interested in education. But the reality is like this: they must be actually interested in education but would never be more interested in than their profession even in such a short meeting. At the same time they are too busy to do more than two things. I’m worry about this situation that even aware faculties are like this, how come university education would be promoted toward sustainability with normal faculties.


As I mentioned above, negotiation plays fundamental role to realize sustainability under uncertainty with different concerns. This framework is same as the game intended to show us. And cooperation is crucial to achieve sustainability in democratic decision making process. This is the session's point of view on sustainability.

Report of Parallel Workshop

Report of Parallel Workshop
Risk Governance
20/03/2006 Keisuke Kuroda

In this parallel session, risk governance issues are presented and discussed. The issues include nature of risks, natural disaster management, environmental regulation, infectious diseases, etc.

Firstly, the overall theme is introduced by Prof. Hideaki Shiroyama, from the Univ. of Tokyo. He stated that the main focuses as for risk governance are as follows:
-Phases (analyzing factors and responses): monitoring risk, analyzing risk, information sharing, risk management decision making, implementation
-Process: involving and coordinating with various stakeholders- corporations, NGOs, local communities, local governments, ministries, international organizations
-Corporation: industries as focal point as sources for potential risks and solutions (innovation) for example, environmental performance, environmental risk management, security trade control
He added there’s two aspect of risk: safety and security.
-Environment, emerging and reemerging diseases, tsunami, food are related to safety aspect.
-Bioterrorism, security trade control, nuclear energy, energy security are related to security.

Then, three presenters, Dr. Masaru Yarime, from NISTEP, MEXT, Japan, Prof. Lee, Hong Kong University, and Dr Jim Foster from MIT, gave presentations about Environmental Regulation and Corporate Response. They stated from the past research, that there’re two basic and closely related constraints affecting the capacity of firms to pursue. They are:
-The inflexibility of environmental regulations that may act as a constraint on innovative corporate actions to improve environmental performance
-The lack of understanding across large elements of industry about the competitive advantages and benefits of superior environmental business practices
They underlined the importance of innovation in order to address both problems. Innovation is regulatory regimes; innovation in relationship between regulators, industry and other stakeholders; and innovation in industrial processes and products that enable improved environmental performance.

Then, Prof. Aikichi Iwamoto, from the Univ. of Tokyo, and Dr. Pathom Sawanpanyalert, from National Institute of Health, Thailand, spoke about the Response to Emerging and Reemerging Diseases.
Prof. Aikichi explained emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases, using smallpox as an example of the infectious diseases.
Emergence and reemergence of infectious diseases results form various factors. Population, traffic, industrial development, wild animals, bioterrorism, and insidious but large scale infectious diseases are thought to be major causes of emergence and reemergence of large scale infectious diseases, he stated. The burden of Infectious diseases is still high in developing countries. Moreover, globalization and inadequate introduction of new technologies may trigger unexpected infectious diseases. Concentration of human or animals can provide a platform for large scale infectious diseases. Therefore, continuous effort for diagnosis, treatment and prevention of infectious diseases is mandatory, he concluded.
Then Dr. Pathom spoke about urgently notified diseases by the government and introduced the surveillance and approach to contain potential pandemics being conducted in Thailand. He underlined the importance of surveillance and research in global scale with a partnership of many organizations. At the same time, he mentioned some difficulties in collaboration; for example, few good practices, hardness to achieve good collaboration, and inequality of partners.

Finally, Prof. Amrit Bart, from AIT spoke about Disaster Reponse Management and Restoration. He explained principles to guide risk governance and principles as to how to implement it.
Firstly, he presented six principles to guide risk governance as follows.
1. Respect natural forces
2. Reduce human exposure
3. Allow natural system to work
4. Improve public services
5. Avoid increase in fishing
6. Diversify livelihoods

Then he presented five principles as to how to implement Risk governance
1. Secure commitments
2. Establish clear goals
3. Decentralize decisions
4. Celebrate success
5. Promote accountability

It was a very long session, which lasted from 1pm to 7pm. The topics were very various and diverse, from political actions by governments and corporations to medical issues like bird flu. Though I had expected there must have been more issues about flood, earthquake, and drought, it was still an interesting session to pay attention to. It was a good experience for me and I was very happy to know more about actual actions and countermeasures against infectious diseases from the experts.

Opening Session AGS Annual Meeting

Reporter: K. Kuroda

The keynote speech was addressed by Dr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa, President of the Science Council of Japan. The theme was 'Social responsibilities of scientific community: a perspective of the Science Council of Japan'. He stated why social responsibilities of scientific community are necessary, explaining 'what is Nature?', 'what is Universe?', 'what is Matter?', 'what is Life?' with a great passion. He mentioned the milestones of science with 113 names such as Newton, Einstein, and others. A remarkable opinion of his was that there should be more focus on matters of a majority of people than on specific and detailed issues about few people. He said both governments and researchers should do so in their work respectively.

It was one of the most impressive presentations I have ever had. He explained what we are doing and where we are in the history of human. He mentioned many famous greatest scientists and connect their achievements with our age. His technique of presentation was also remarkable; tones of voice, delivery, jokes, and gestures. He sometimes clicked his fingers during presentation, which attracted the attention of audience effectively. Above all, his passion was the most attracting.

After a short break, Rajendra Pachauri, Chairman of IPCC, gave a speech titled 'Global Sustainability and the Asian Challenge' He cited the words of Lester Brown, 'Communism has faied because it did not tell the truth on economy. Capitalism may fail because it does not tell the truth on ecology' and cited ecological footprint. He wanted climate change to be the theme of AGS 2008. He also underlined adaptation of climate change, as well as mitigation, because rising of seawater level will continue for one thousand years.

Finally came a speech by Kentaro Ogawa, Chairman of the Board, Zensho Co. Ltd. titled 'A global standard for food safety'. ZENSHO is the 3rd largest restaurant chain company in Japan with $1.5 billion in sale. He presented 'Food safety: BSE to vCJD: Variant Creutzfeld-Jakob disease' He explained the symptoms of BSE and vCJD; brain becomes sponge like and loses its function, loss of body function, abnormal behavior, change of personality....with the death rate of 100%. He explained the countermeasures of distribution of BSE, which will be a big issue so far. He underlined prohibition of MBM(Meat and Bone Meal, which contain Prions of BSE disease), implementation of BSE Test, Setting of Global Standard. as conclusions.

Every speech and presentation was very interesting and moving. We learned what the current leaders are thinking as well as their presentation techniques. After all, it was a great experience for us to hear speeches from such big names.

Student's Challenge in Sustainability Education

Reporting for Student's Challenge in Sustainability Education (Students' session)
“Communication for sustainability”
Facilitator: Takashi Hashimoto, Keisuke Kuroda, Akihito Tamai, UT

March23td 9:00 – 12:00
Reported by Mai MURAYAMA

1. Outline of this session
For this workshop, they took “communication gap”, especially for the question “how do we cope with?” as a theme of discussion. Three groups are made for discuss about this theme as a group work.
At the beginning, the speaker mentioned that the communication gap is involved by the diverse participants, such as a nationality, speciality, gender, ect. , citing the experience from IPoS( Incentive Program on Sustainability) which was held last days. There was also an introduction of the workshop that was held few days before, titled “Another COP in Bangkok” as a recent example. One of the participants spoke this experience when she feel the “communication gap”.
The goal of the workshop is explained as a recognizing the communication gaps and an analyzing the causes and the solutions. There are two parts for discussing and there is a presentation about what is discussed. The following program was shown.

1. Group discussion Part 1: 09:40-10:25
Mapping of communication gap (Arranging keywords)
2. Group discussion Part 2: 10:40-11:15
Analyzing the keywords: Think of causes & solutions
3. Presentation 11:15-11:45
Share the results by illustrating map and its essences
4. Wrap Up 11:45-12:00


2. The group discussions
Each group started the discussion talking about each experience of communication gap. The facilitator guided, but the discussion was going forward with the participants.
At first, the participants put separately the keywords related the experience of the communication gap. Once the amount of keywords are gathered, the keywords are compared each other. While comparison is done, they discussed about the keywords deeply so that the essential is extracted.
The outputs of three groups are shown as the pictures below.











3. What is sustainability for this session?
Always the communication gap exists, however when we take care about this, we have to be open and the mind would broad-en. Recognizing the various communications gap is important and when we talk about the sustainability, the communication gap exists also and the same things are needed because sustainability contains the various points of view. There is no determination of sustainability and there is no determination of communication gap also but these two things are same for being required analyzing and thinking.
Essential of the communication gap is the relation of the cause and solution for “communication”. When it is not sustain, there is the cause and the solution is needed but first of all we have to recognizing that it is not sustain. This process is similar with recognizing the communication gap.
Development of this kind of process is needed and necessary for well communicate about sustainability.