This column is written from Geneva, where I have just carried out a humanitarian mission that I hope will help show a positive way forward to more than one-and-a-half billion of the world’s poorest and most underprivileged inhabitants. However, before telling you about my activities here in Switzerland, let me say that this visit has given me a still greater appreciation of the excellent work being done by the United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), at whose invitation I was here.

One of the ECOSOC’s ongoing projects is to improve the living conditions in many poor countries across the world, where inhabitants exist in primitive surroundings. To rectify this deplorable situation ECOSOC has what it terms “A Special Program of Action for the Betterment of the World’s Least Developed Countries, Land-Locked Developing Countries and Small Island Developing States”.

One of the most regrettable aspects of poverty-stricken countries is that all lack even the most basic supplies of energy. As a result their people live in a vacuum of misery, condemned to endure the same hand-to-mouth existence as their forefathers. Even worse, this pitiful situation frustrates the lives of more than one-and-a-half billion people across the globe. But if we can get across our message, their lives could be completely transformed into a far more humane existence.

My mission to Geneva springs from the fact I am vice-chairman and secretary-general of the China Energy Fund Committee think tank, which enjoys special consultative status with the ECOSOC. I was therefore given the honor and privilege of delivering an address to its members on how these desperately backward countries might find a cheap and basic source of energy for their people.

In my presentation, titled “Energy for All: China Leads the Way”, I provided guidance on how the simplest solutions to serious problems can sometimes be found at hand in the poorest countries, but unfortunately often go unnoticed and unused.

Here is a trimmed-back version of my remarks, which I hope will prove an eye-opener.

First, it is totally unacceptable that in today’s world the lives of 1.6 billion persons, or 22.5 percent of all humankind, are permanently blighted by energy poverty. Most live in desperately poor countries and the others in isolated pockets unreachable by modern electric grids in developing and even developed countries. Many of these countries possess potential energy assets but sadly their leaders disregard simple bridging solutions for the indigenous rural minorities, and dream of magically acquiring glamorous ultra-modern power resources using cutting-edge technologies.

Second, might I suggest that they learn from China’s experience during the formative stages of its development half-a-century ago. China, too, had a huge rural population hungering for an enriched lifestyle and manifold benefits that accessible and affordable energy would bring them.

Third, the Chinese government adopted a smart and pragmatic solution by leveraging the rich resources for producing biogas that was going to waste in rural communities. Every year, 500 million tons of retrievable agricultural residues, plus 1000 million tons of livestock and poultry droppings were transformed into biogas that would provide rural households with renewable sources for cooking, lighting and heating.

Fourth, thanks to official policies and government subsidies, 26.5 million biogas digesters were in operation by 2007, providing energy to 40 million households and benefiting 155 million people, or one-third of the rural population. By 2011, the total output of biogas across China reached 16 billion cubic meters, accounting for 13 percent of total consumption of natural gas. Furthermore, the recent introduction of new technologies has greatly improved the efficiency of biogas use in China’s rural communities.

Fifth, China’s experience with this very practical and integrated approach should serve as a model for all energy-starved countries. Biogas may be basic, but it supplies cheap and reliable rural energy and serves as a bridging measure until the national grid reaches those areas.

Sixth, the success of such a program can only be assured by a government that is committed at both the central and local levels to fulfill the immediate needs of its people, especially the indigenous and desperate, and not nurture dreams of a one-size-fits-all style of national energy policy based on high technologies and bought with national treasures.

Seventh, we should never forget that energy belongs to the entire human race, and accessibility to it is a basic human right.



Published 24.7.2013
China Daily

The author is deputy chairman and secretary general of China Energy Fund Committee, an independent think tank on energy and China-related issues.