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WITH
ongoing climate negotiations in
Bonn
as backdrop and after years of tough debate with
environmental nongovernment organizations (NGOs), a
policy pronouncement by the Asian Development Bank (ADB)
at the closing session of its third Asia Clean Energy
Forum last week was not entirely unexpected.
Still,
the ADB deserves full kudos for being the first
multilateral financial institution to take the first
step toward a more robust—and intellectually
honest—debate about the region’s energy future.
When it
comes to coal, said the booming voice of ADB vice
president Bindu Lohani, who closed the proceedings,
Asia may have little choice in the foreseeable future but to keep
on using it. Thus, among many other objectives, the
ADB’s goal is to greatly increase the efficiency by
which coal is used to generate energy. However, for this
reason, said Lohani, “let us stop naming things ‘clean
coal’ or ‘cleaner coal’ and just call it what it really
is—more efficient coal.”
It was a
display of unqualified candor that refuted, even if just
for a single afternoon, accusations that the ADB was an
institution closed to outside— particularly
NGO—influence. Lohani’s statement leaves in isolation
other groups such as the World Bank, who continue to
embrace the imprecise notion—for that is all that it is,
a notion, and a false one at that —of “clean coal” along
with its notional benefits.
Explicitly dropping “clean coal” in favor of “more
efficient coal” from the ADB’s roster of terminologies
is far from needless polemic. A bottled teriyaki sauce
of dubious culinary benefit can be found in many
groceries today with the label “with original Chinese
ingredients!” Or, if that sounds too frivolous, then
consider the phrase which has downsized pain and
wickedness—“prisoner abuse”—and how it has come to
replace the clarity of the word “torture.”
Lohani’s
bold move constitutes an ideological victory for green
groups who have long insisted that there is no such
thing as “clean coal” and who have long blasted away at
rhetorical pollution. But it is also a victory of sorts
for the ADB, for it forces NGOs to confront new
quandaries.
By
dropping “clean coal” in favor of “more efficient coal,”
the ADB has, in a way, defanged a big part of the
advocacies of some environmentalists, who will
henceforth be forced to contend with one of the ADB’s
stronger premises: renewable-energy development is all
fine and great—and hopefully the market expansion and
rate of deployment will increase exponentially and
dramatically reduce coal dependence with the right
policy sets in place—but what does a developing country
do with its currently operational but completely
inefficient and highly polluting old coal plants?
And can
developing countries actually meet—with far less coal
dependence—the huge spike in energy demand that everyone
worth their salt in the region knows is coming, and
soon?
Green
groups and new energy institutes have answered yes,
pointing toward the direction of decentralized energy
systems and diligently pursued integrated resource
planning. The ADB disagrees emphatically. However the
debate is resolved—and certainly, this paper will
monitor the process closely—the public can henceforth
expect to enjoy substantive exchanges that can now go
beyond baseless and, dare we say, soon-to-be- fossilized
terms. |
