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NewSecurityBeat

The blog of the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program
Showing posts from category energy.
  • Resource Nexus Approaches Can Inform Policy Choices

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  January 8, 2019  //  By Stacy D. VanDeveer, Raimund Bleischwitz & Catalina Spataru
    Amazon Rainforest

    The unabated growth of natural resource consumption raises risks that we will outstrip the capacities of ecosystems and governance institutions. At the same time, to achieve important global goals related to poverty alleviation, public health, equity and economic development such as those embodied in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), we will simultaneously need more resources and better management of natural resources everywhere.

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  • Not Practicing What It Preaches: China Invests Heavily in Renewable Energy While Exporting Low-Efficiency Coal Power Plants to Developing Countries

    ›
    On the Beat  //  November 14, 2018  //  By Evan Barnard
    Coal Ship South Africa

    “China can simultaneously be the world’s biggest polluter and the leading developer and employer of clean energy technologies,” said Joanna Lewis, an associate professor of science, technology, and international affairs at Georgetown University’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at a recent event at The Brookings Institute on China’s local and global environmental agenda. “It’s not just megawatts being added, it’s actual investment in the innovation of these [renewable energy] technologies.”

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  • The Dark Side of the Sun: Avoiding Conflict Over Solar Energy’s Land and Water Demands

    ›
    October 2, 2018  //  By Olivia Smith

    The 73-megawatt Lopburi solar power plant in central Thailand is the largest solar photovoltaic project in the world.  It will be central to Thailand's efforts to generate  energy from renewable sources.

    Solar farms—just like regular farms—cover large swaths of land, requiring between 3.5 to 16.5 acres per MW of generating capacity. The largest solar plant in the world, the 648 MW Kamuthi facility in Tamil Nadu, India, covers ten square kilometers. But it will be dwarfed by the 3,450 MW facility under construction on China’s Tibetan Plateau, which will span 298 square kilometers when completed. Building these large plants requires fundamentally changing how the land they sit on is used, which—without careful planning—could have negative impacts on the environment and local communities that could potentially lead to conflict. The backlash could not only derail solar projects, but could also fuel resistance to future renewable energy development.

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  • Green Conflict Minerals: Investigating Renewable Energy Supply Chains in Fragile States

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  September 17, 2018  //  By Clare Church
    bullets on ground with silouhettes

    The shift to a low-carbon economy is not only underway, it is accelerating. Last year, Costa Rica generated more than 99 percent of its electricity using renewable sources;  Germany expanded its onshore wind power capacity by 5,300 MW, and in the United States, more than 62 percent of new power plants under construction will produce renewable energy. What does this rapid increase mean for the countries that supply the inputs required to build these new facilities—particularly those countries that are struggling with fragility or corruption?

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  • Big Dams, Big Damage: The Growing Risk of Failure

    ›
    August 21, 2018  //  By Olivia Smith
    Kariba-Dam

    Last month, a partially completed dam in Laos’ Attapeu province collapsed, washing away people and villages in its path. Hundreds of people are still missing and more than six thousand are homeless. And after last summer’s hurricanes, U.S. citizens in Houston and Puerto Rico escaped death but were forced to evacuate when dams were flooded. Dam failure can be catastrophic for people, property, and power—and the risks are rising, due to lack of investment in maintenance, growing vulnerability to climate change, and the demonstrated potential of cyberattacks.

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  • Like Water and Oil: Fish as a Geostrategic Resource

    ›
    Guest Contributor  //  August 7, 2018  //  By Johan Bergenas

    090309-N-0000X-004 SOUTH CHINA SEA (March 8, 2009) A crewmember on a Chinese trawler uses a grapple hook in an apparent attempt to snag the towed acoustic array of the military Sealift Command ocean surveillance ship USNS Impeccable (T-AGOS-23).  Impeccable was conducting routine survey operations in international waters 75 miles south of Hainan Island when it was harassed by five Chinese vessels.  (U.S. Navy photo/Released)

    Access to and competition over natural resources has been one of the most common triggers for conflict. Throughout the centuries, countries and communities have fought over productive agricultural land, trade routes, spices, textiles, opium, and oil, to name just a few. But the battle over one natural resource—fish—has long been overlooked. As trends in the global fish industry increasingly mirror the conflict-ridden oil sector, fish may become the newest addition to the list of resources driving geopolitical competition. There are five parallels between oil and fish that call for increasing the sustainability of the fishing industry, or we might find ourselves facing what U.S. Coast Guard Captain Jay Caputo has called “a global fish war.”

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  • Energy Innovation in Remote Arctic Communities

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    Friday Podcasts  //  June 29, 2018  //  By Grant Ackerman
    Energy

    Without connections to wider electrical grids, communities in the remote, rural Arctic depend on diesel generators for power—which makes electricity “ten times more expensive” than in the rest of Canada or the United States, said Martha Lenio of the World Wildlife Fund-Canada Arctic Team during a recent Wilson Center Ground Truth Briefing. In addition, spilled diesel “can harm wildlife, impact food and water security, and compromise permafrost integrity,” said Lenio. These challenges have led some communities in the Arctic to seek cheaper, safer, and more innovative energy solutions, said panelists during the briefing organized by the Wilson Center’s Polar Initiative and Canada Institute.

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  • Engineering the Climate—or Deploying Disaster? Applying Just War Theory to Geoengineering

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    Guest Contributor  //  June 25, 2018  //  By Elizabeth L. Chalecki & Lisa Ferrari
    Space_lens

    As the national security ramifications of climate change grow more pronounced, climate manipulation technologies, known as geoengineering, will become more attractive as a method of staving off climate-related security emergencies.  However, geoengineering technologies could disrupt the global ecological status quo, and could pose a potentially coercive (and very serious) threat to peace. Is it possible to obtain the potential benefits of these game-changing technologies, while avoiding spurring violence and conflict?  In a recent article in Strategic Studies Quarterly, we argue that just war theory—which defines the concepts of “right” and “wrong” in warfare—could provide ethical standards for security decision-makers as they consider whether or how geoengineering should be used to address the climate challenge.

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