Renewable energy growth

One hundred and forty researchers contributed to the Renewables 2007 Global Status Report, prepared by the Renewable Energy Network for the 21st Century (REN21) in collaboration with the Worldwatch Institute.

The report details the expansion of renewable energy markets, policies, industries, and rural applications around the world. In 2007, global wind generating capacity is estimated to have increased 28%, while grid-connected solar photovoltaic (PV) capacity rose 52%. The renewable energy sector now accounts for 2.4 million jobs globally, and has doubled electric generating capacity since 2004, to 240 gigawatts. More than 65 countries now have national goals for accelerating the use of renewable energy and are enacting far-reaching policies to meet those goals.

According to the Worldwatch Institute's State of the World 2008 report, an estimated US$52 billion was invested in renewable energy sources in 2006, up 33% from 2005, while preliminary estimates indicate that the figure increased to US$66 billion in 2007.

The Renewables 2007 Global Status Report can be downloaded from REN21 <www.ren21.net> or the Worldwatch Institute <www.worldwatch.org>.

UN sets up Climate Neutral Network

The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) launched a new online network in February to help countries, cities and firms aiming to be 'climate neutral' exchange ideas on ways to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Climate Neutral Network will connect people around the world who have committed to become 'climate neutral' by reducing and offsetting their emissions.

Five countries have announced their goal to achieve carbon neutrality under the UNEP project – Monaco, Costa Rica, Iceland, Norway and New Zealand. Four cities also joined the UNEP scheme in February, and five companies. The cities are Arendal in Norway, Vancouver on the west coast of Canada, Vaxjo in Sweden and Rizhao in northern China.

UNEP aims to be climate neutral itself in 2008, with the whole United Nations due to follow.

More information: <www.unep.org/climateneutral>.

EU fuelling human rights disaster in Indonesia

Palm oil production for food and biofuels is resulting in wide spread human rights abuses in Indonesia according to a report released in February by Friends of the Earth (UK), Sawit Watch, and LifeMosaic.

Losing Ground exposes the huge social problems being fuelled by EU targets to increase the use of biofuels in transport. The report says many of the 60-90 million people in Indonesia who depend on the forests are losing their land to palm oil companies. Eighty-five percent of the world's palm oil is produced in plantations in Indonesia and Malaysia.

The report reveals that oil palm companies often use violent tactics to grab land from indigenous communities with the collusion of the police and authorities. Previously self-reliant families, who were able to meet their own needs from the forest around them, complain of being tricked into giving up their land with the promise of jobs and new developments. Instead they end up locked into debt and poorly paid work, while the bounty of the rainforest is replaced with monotonous oil palm plantations. Pollution from pesticides, fertilisers and the pressing process is also leaving some villages without clean water.

The European Commission has recently proposed a target for 10% of road transport fuel to come from biofuels by 2020 in an attempt to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. These targets will fuel a huge expansion in the amount of land used to grow oil palm. The Commission is proposing sustainability criteria for biofuels but they do not include any attempts to address the social impacts of biofuel production.

Meanwhile, a University of Minnesota and Nature Conservancy study, published in Science in early 2008, found that the carbon lost through land clearing for biofuels outweighs the greenhouse gas savings that can come from biofuels.

Losing Ground can be downloaded at: <www.foe.co.uk/resource/reports/losingground.pdf>.

Food crisis

The United Nations warned in February that it no longer has enough money to keep global malnutrition at bay this year in the face of a dramatic upward surge in world commodity prices.

With voluntary contributions from the world's wealthy nations, the UN's World Food Programme (WFP) feeds 73 million people in 78 countries, less than 10% of the total number of the world's undernourished. Its agreed budget for 2008 was US$2.9bn. But with annual food price increases around the world of up to 40% and dramatic hikes in fuel costs, that budget is no longer enough even to maintain current food deliveries.

The shortfall is all the more worrying as it comes at a time when populations, many in urban areas, who had thought themselves secure in their food supply are now unable to afford basic foodstuffs. Afghanistan has recently added an extra 2.5 million people to the number it says are at risk of malnutrition.

The impact has been felt around the world. Food riots have broken out in Morocco, Yemen, Mexico, Guinea, Mauritania, Senegal and Uzbekistan.

WFP officials say the extraordinary increases in the global price of basic foods were caused by a "perfect storm" of factors: a rise in demand for animal feed from increasingly prosperous populations in India and China, the use of more land and agricultural produce for biofuels, and climate change.

Joachim von Braun, head of the International Food Policy Research Institute, said. "I estimate [high income growth] is half the story. The biofuels is another 30%. Then there are weather-induced erratic changes which caused irritation in world food markets. These things have eaten into world levels of grain storage. The lower the reserves, the more nervous the markets become, and the increased volatility is particularly detrimental to the poor who have small assets. The climate change factor is so far small but it is bound to get bigger."

In the three decades to 2005, world food prices fell by about three-quarters in inflation-adjusted terms. Since then they have risen by 75%, with much of that coming in the past year. Wheat prices have doubled, while maize, soya and oilseeds are at record highs.

State of the World

The Worldwatch Institute has released State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy.

The focus of the report is on the innovations that will be needed to make a sustainable economy possible. The report has chapters on seeding the sustainable economy, a new bottom line for progress, rethinking production, the challenge of sustainable lifestyles, meat and seafood – the global diet's most costly ingredients, building a low-carbon economy, improving carbon markets, water in a sustainable economy, banking on biodiversity, the parallel economy of the commons, engaging communities for a sustainable world, mobilising human energy, investing for sustainability, and new approaches to trade governance.

State of the World 2008: Ideas and Opportunities for Sustainable Global Economies is available for purchase at <www.worldwatch.org/stateoftheworld>.