REVOLVE #16 - SUMMER 2015

N°16 | SUMMER 15

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Sulfur Mining 35 | Fukushima 52 | Sand Beasts 76

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Energy

Revolve Magazine:

Contributors RUTH GAMANO (‘Fukushima’s Nuclear Fallout’, p. 52) is an independent contributor to Revolve Magazine. Her previous cover features include "Invasive Species" (Fall 2013 Issue #9) and "Japan's Whaling Wars" (Summer 2013 Issue #8).

SARA GUERRINI (‘Agriculture’s Second Life’, p. 26), an agronomist, has worked for over ten years on developing biodegradable materials for agriculture and the sustainability of agricultural systems.

NADIM KEITH (‘The Eastern Mediterranean Gas Debacle’, p. 60) is an independent researcher of EU foreign policy with a special interest in the energy sector. He has an MA in International Studies and an M2 in International Development.

DIRK KNAPEN (Cover: ‘Energy Cooperatives’, p. 20) has worked in the environment movement on energy and climate issues for twelve years. He combines sustainable energy and citizen cooperatives in his work at REScoop.

SUGATO MUKHERJEE (‘Toxic Fumes’, p. 35), is a photographer and writer based in Calcutta.

His works have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Al Jazeera, Yale Journal of International Affairs, Roads & Kingdoms, Lonely Planet and Jet Wings International.

FILIPA ROSA (‘Sand Beasts’, p. 76) is Creative Director of Revolve Media.

(Special Guest Editorial: ‘Accelerating the Energy Transition’, p. 6) is Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Energy Union.

revolve.media Visit our website and discover much more than the magazine!

Water Reports: Events: Revolve partners with energy and water events around the world to highlight the latest technologies and projects leading the energy transition Water: A unique digital portal connecting water and energy with exclusive interviews, photo essays, regional features, the latest news and expert insights

Country Reports:

Reports: Special industry publications for targeted audiences and classy country reports with unique views into developments driving regional hubs

Exhibits: Large photo exhibitions showing the different dimensions of sustainability Run with Revolve: An inspiring Revolve initiative to run in races around the world to raise funds for education projects that show real societal impacts Campaigns: Join the #EnergyPulse campaign and tell us what you do to be energy efficient, what does sustainable energy mean to you, and get published in Revolve Magazine!

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Industry Reports: For only 50€ (international shipping included) and get our special reports and our new Visualizing Energy bags for FREE! Website: revolve.media

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“the green or eco-friendly movement can be largely explained by an evolved tendency that evolutionary psychologists call competitive altruism. This predisposition for cooperative, procommunity behiavors such as philanthropy, buying a Prius, or installing fuel-efficient light bulbs confers the benefits of good reputations among our social peers. Studies have shown these altruistic individuals are more likely to achieve higher status, especially those who display their altruism publicly.”

– Douglas Van Praet on being humans, not consumers, in “Unconscious Branding”, p.38

CONTRIBUTORS Ruth Gamano Steve Gillman Sara Guerrini Nadim Keith Dirk Knapen Erik Ohlsson Filipa Rosa

INNOVATION 10 | Erik Ohlsson and Steve Gillman discover brands that are recycling and reusing discarded materials to make exciting new products.

PHOTOGRAPHERS Joe Catron Yvan Glavie Sara Guerrini Franklin Heijnen Theo Jansen Patrick Kelley Loek van der Klis Carine Lahon Sugato Mukherjee Ze Nahla Hajime Nakano Nicolas Neefs Petr Pavlicek Michel Petillo Giovanni Verlini Casey Ware

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FOCUS 20 | Dirk Knappen explores how citizens involved in renewable energy projects can develop the local economy.

AGRICULTURE

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24 | Sara Guerrini looks at how innovations in biodegradable plastics are giving a second life to agriculture.

COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER

VIEWS

Steve Gillman

35 | In ‘Toxic Fumes’, Sugato Mukherjee that captures the hazardous lives of sulphur miners in Indonesia.

CULTURE & GRAPHIC DESIGN Filipa Rosa RESEARCHER | COORDINATOR

DEVELOPMENT

Marcello Cappellazzi REGIONAL MANAGER | INDIA-ASIA Rajnish Ahuja

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FOUNDER AND CEO

52 | Ruth Gamano takes a look at Fukushima four years on and examines how the fallout is still affecting people.

Stuart Reigeluth

GEOPOLITICS 60 | Nadim Keith explores how the EU is diversifying its gas supply with new offshore reserves in the eastern Mediterranean.

Revolve Media is a limited liability partnership (LLP) registered in Belgium (BE 0463.843.607) at Rue d’Arlon 63-67, 1040 Brussels.

Revolve Magazine (ISSN 2033-2912) is registered in Belgium (BE 0828.676.740) as a subsidiary fully-owned by Revolve Media.

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68 | From training workshops to new ‘passive’ nurseries, Brussels is moving towards a more energy efficient future.

Printed with vegetable-based ink on chlorine-free paper, REVOLVE uses FSC approved paper (for more on how REVOLVE is a sustainable magazine see p.82).

CULTURE

Visit our website: revolve.media Cover image: Westmill Co-op built the first 100% community owned onshore wind farm in the south-east of England. Source: REScoop.

SUSTAINABILITY

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76 | Filipa Rosa describes Theo Jansen’s ‘Strandbeests’, self-propelling beach animals that stroll the sea coast.

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N°16 | SUMMER 2015

.

Source: European Union, 2015

Accelerating the Energy Transition , Vice-President of the European Commission in charge of Energy Union

This is a historic period. The year of 2015 will hopefully be remembered as the turning point in the global fight against climate change and in the European transition towards a low-carbon economy. In December this year, global leaders will

“Smart grids will be the European shale […] the new brain of a new system.”

–

at the 4th annual Innogrid2020+ conference

convene in Paris to negotiate an international framework for reducing our carbon footprint, right before it might be too late.

The EU has set itself ambitious goals for reducing its own emissions, and through diplomatic channels we encourage our global partners to follow a similar path.

What is certain is that 2015 marks the launch of the most ambitious European

Image: (right) Overlooking the 22@Barcelona neighborhood: once the location of textile factories near the port, now an emerging hub for innovation and sustainability.

Source: Revolve Media

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energy project since the Coal and Steel Community of the 1950s. The need to decarbonize, become more energy efficient and to ensure energy supply, along with the necessity to render energy prices more competitive has brought European leaders to a realization that a profound change was needed. In February 2015, the European Commission therefore announced its five-year strategy for creating a viable ‘Energy Union’.

The envisioned common energy market will provide Europe with energy which is secure, competitive, and sustainable. Security will be gained through diversification of sources and suppliers of our energy, more renewables and more energy efficiency. Competitiveness of the market will be reached by removing barriers between energy markets and creating one European market. Sustainability lies in Europe's commitment to cut greenhouse gas emissions by at least 40%; increase the share of renewable energy to at least 27%, and improve energy efficiency by at least 27%.

We are not stopping there. Citizens are no longer passive consumers; they are becoming ‘prosumers’ – or consumers who can produce energy and supply it into the energy grids. This will allow individuals to benefit from lower prices of energy produced by others. With smart grids in place,

a sunny day in Milan should lower energy prices in Nice; and a windy day in Copenhagen should lower energy prices in Vilnius or even in Minsk! The Energy Union does not stop at EU borders.

When it comes to industry, the challenge is to retain Europe's leading role in global investment in renewable energy. But the energy transition is not only about the energy sector; the change we are bringing about will benefit all industries. Current wholesale gas prices are still more than twice as high as in the U.S. This reduces the competitiveness of our industries, especially those which are energyintensive. As if it were not enough that we pay higher prices, we are also highly dependent on too few dominant suppliers, making us vulnerable to disruptions and price distortions.

The third and very important winner of the Energy Union is our planet. And in saving

our planet from global warming and pollution we are saving ourselves from phenomena that are linked to climate change, such as poverty, unemployment, war, and oppression. Reducing our greenhouse gas emissions must therefore be a strategic decision of our generation.

In fact, this environmental cause is not about making altruistic sacrifices. On the contrary: the energy transition has great potential in revitalizing our economy. Other than providing our industries with indigenous resources, European expertise in exploiting sustainable energy sources has tremendous potential around the globe. India and China are both massive markets increasingly interested in sustainable solutions. In a globalized world, the technological solution could come from anywhere: Bangalore or San Francisco, Dublin or Berlin!

The Energy Union is a ‘triple win’ strategy for our citizens, economy, and environment.

The three go hand-in-hand, making Europe a better place to live in. We will make sure that 2015 will be remembered as the year which put us on the right track.

I would like to conclude by inviting readers to attend the 2015 edition of the European Sustainable Energy Week (EUSEW), offering a plethora of activities across Europe throughout the month of June. The EUSEW is an excellent opportunity to meet and exchange ideas and best practices. One of the highlights this year is the ‘Visualising Energy’ photo exhibition in Brussels, featuring some of the industries, companies and people who are pioneers in the global energy transition.

Other than the opportunity for professionals to meet, I hope the EUSEW will also give the stage to new voices and fresh views on how to make the Energy Union a joint success.

Every voice matters, every idea counts. This is your chance to join the discussions and make your voice heard.

Join us in Barcelona for the 2015 edition of the Global Eco Forum on Energy | Cities | Climate on 22-23 October 2015!

Contact us today for more details: www.global-ecoforum.org

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Behind the Scenes of a Green Hotel Located in the European Quarter of Brussels, Thon EU is an eco-friendly hotel that has a proactive environmental policy, training their teams in ‘green’ thinking and encouraging their guests to be as energy efficient as possible.

Opened since April 2012, Thon EU has been awarded with the Green Key Label for its ecological and social efforts.

The Green Key is an international eco-label awarded to tourist establishments for their environmental processes and performance. In the beginning of 2014, the jury from "Entreprise Ecodynamique / Ecodynamische Onderneming" awarded the hotel with two out of three stars and by June 2014 they received their third label - Green Leaders by Tripadvisor.

Thon EU’s green credentials: Energy The hotel has solar panels on its rooftop and has an energy accounting system to ensure efficiency.

It also has low energy lighting with 95% of their light bulbs being LEDs while their flat screen televisions are energy efficient too. There is a We-bike available that converts human power into electricity and generates enough energy to charge plugin devices like mobile phones and PC’s.

Water use is another issue addressed by Thon EU. There is a rainwater harvesting system collected from the roof for watering plantations, rinsing the degreaser and supplying staff sanitation facilities. They have also implemented low-flow taps in the bathrooms and showers to ensure efficient water use.

Guests Can Go Green As a guest, you can reduce your environmental impact. When staying for more than one night, you can hang a green card outside the door if you do not wish the room to be serviced. You will be rewarded a ‘Green Voucher’ (€5 value) to use either at The XII bar and restaurant or to donate to the NGO Good Planet. Last year, guests donated €14,890 to Good Planet.

Nature Discovery The money raised by Thon EU has helped Good Planet on its workshop projects where children get to reconnect with nature. This exchange also promotes an attitude of responsibility and respect for the environment. All outdoor activities are based on the principles of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD).

Green Roof Thon EU welcomes guests from all around the world, including insects. The ‘Insect Hotel’ is on the roof and comprises two beehives as well as butterflies and ladybugs. The bees produce honey for their guests which can be enjoyed in the breakfast buffet as well as the restaurant’s ‘à la carte’ menu. Thon EU also grows its own vegetables and herbs which the chefs will be using in the kitchen soon.

To learn more about Thon EU call: +32 (0)2 204 3911 email: eu@thonhotels.be

The beehives were installed by The Royal Society of Apiculture of Brussels (SRABE).

Brands + Sustainability

www.escamastudio.com

Escama Studio

Innovative start-ups from around the world are recycling and reusing waste to make new products. By incorporating sustainability into their brands, they can provide eco-friendly products that consumers can buy with a clear conscience. Revolve looks at three brands that repurpose the old to create something new.

Escama Studio is a San Franciscobased handbag company that collaborates with artisan collectives in Brazil to create a line of accessories that are sustainable and fair trade. The metallic handbags have the appearance of chainmail, but are made of hundreds of interlocking links of recycled aluminum pop tops and crochet.

From their humble beginnings in 2004, Escama Studio now sells their trendy bags in 30 countries worldwide and in high-end retailers such as MoMA, the Royal Academy of Art London, and Takashimaya department store in Japan.

In the process, the venture has provided a fair living wage to over 80 Brazilian artisans and their families.

“Escama Studio is an ongoing experiment in sustainability,” explained cofounder Andy Krumholz. “We approach our business with the objective of a ‘triple bottom line’ – social, environmental and financial. So far we’re very happy with the way it’s gone. We have a great camaraderie with the artisans and it’s very rewarding.”

‘Escama’, means ‘fish scales’ in Portuguese.

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– Kyle Parsons, President of Indosole.

www.indosole.com

Indosole

“I am happy to see our world moving towards more sustainable practices, and Indosole is happy to contribute by repurposing waste tires and giving them new life as soles for our footwear. We believe that ‘repurposing’ or ‘upcycling’ lies at the core of the sustainable movement and is the future of consumerism. Our goal has been to create a well-rounded business which expands the lifeline of everyday products, reduces carbon footprint, and inspires education worldwide”

Inspired during a surf trip in 2004, the founders of Indonesian-based Indosole set out to transform waste from landfills into functional and fashionable products. Their goal was to create footwear using worn out tires as soles.

Central to the company’s vision, the idea of repurposed products involves finding a new function for old and discarded materials, which have outlived their original purpose.

Indosole has salvaged many thousands of tires from overflowing Indonesian landfills, and transformed them into footwear. The transformation process simply involves washing, sanitizing and cutting tires into the shape of a sole.

Repurposing is generally considered greener than recycling as there is no need for reprocessing.

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www.vinylux.net

Vinylux

Vinylux transforms unwanted and obsolete vintage vinyl records into a whole line of unique, functional new objects. They create bowls, coasters, magnets, ornaments, bookends, mirrors, clocks, journals, keychains, cuff bracelets, and picture frames, all from recycled records. Now in their 12th year of business, the Philadelphia-based company keeps almost 23 tons. of records and album covers from entering landfills every year, and that’s not all:

“We keep our energy usage fairly low by keeping most of our production in-house, which minimizes transportation needs.

Our records are sourced locally, as is our clock packaging, which is made here in Philly,” says founder Jeff Davis.

“Vinylux has a ‘closed loop’ material stream. While we attempt to use as much of the record as possible in our products, when we generate scrap vinyl it is sent to record-pressing plants to be ground up and made into brand new LPs.” Vinylux began when Jeff was a student at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) where he focused on reinterpreting everyday objects. At RISD, he designed the first record bowls and was encouraged by his professors to bring them to market.

Vinylux now sells their products across a range of outlets from museum gift shops to design boutiques, ecoconscious stores, music-themed gift shops, high end department stores and tourist-destination gift stores.

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In Search of Positive Change Revolve speaks with Malcolm McIntosh, author of Thinking the Twenty-First Century: Ideas for the New Political Economy from Greenleaf Publishing (2015), about corporate social responsibility, globalization, the energy transition, resilience and changing society.

Writer: Dr Malcolm McIntosh, FRSA, is Professor and Head of Department of Business and Management at Bath Spa University, UK. He is former Director of the Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise, Griffith University, Australia, and has been a Special Adviser to the UN Global Compact. He is the Founding Editor of the Journal of Corporate Citizenship and the producer and author of more than 20 books and numerous articles.

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To order his book, visit: www.greenleaf-publishing.com/thinking

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What is the myth of sustainability?

Environmental sustainability is merely a reiteration of the human dilemma, writ large and supported by today’s knowledge. It is the ultimate test of our innocence to be told that the very thing that we need to survive is under threat; that it is in fact dying before our eyes. Many climate change scientists have told me that it is necessary to suffer cognitive dissonance when going to sleep at night, or when talking about the future to their grandchildren: such is the enormity of what we now know about the state of “planethome”.

I do not wish to confound or confront the many scientists that I have regular contact with when they tell me the apparent truth about climate change and the coming apocalypse. I do believe their science as far as I can understand it, but I do not believe that we are “living in the end times” as Slavoj Zizek and others would have us believe. I

have become an optimist because if evolution, adaptation and learning means that humanity has a short run, so be it. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, stardust to stardust.

We will have been a brilliant, marvellous miracle. So be it. Let it be.

I do not want to believe in this non-future, and so I won’t. And I don’t think this is what some psychologists would call denial on my part. It is because when I take medium and long-term views back over the history of the planet and our history, I am hopeful of an evolving reality. I don’t even want to delve into the ‘if we don’t do this, then this is inevitable’ discussion. The question that has arisen in my general, but informed, discussions around the world and also with people who are deemed experts in the field, from various intellectual disciplines, is that the signs are good.

The apocalypse is always with us because we think too much and it is easy for our minds to perceive of threats, real and

The corporate responsibility movement has had several elements, all of them well meaning and useful, but fundamentally self-serving and self-absorbing and very rarely systems-changing.

Images: (pp.14-15) "We Can Do It!" is an American wartime propaganda poster produced by J. Howard Miller in 1943 for Westinghouse Electric as an inspirational image to boost worker morale. The poster is generally thought to be based on a black-and-white wire servicephotograph taken of a Michigan factory worker named Geraldine Hoff.

The poster was seen very little during World War II. It was rediscovered in the early 1980s and widely reproduced in many forms, often called "We Can Do It!" but also called "Rosie the Riveter" after the iconic figure of a strong female war production worker. The "We Can Do It!" image was used to promote feminism and other political issues beginning in the 1980s. (this page/left) At Home with the Nuclear Family: a series of images that ran in Life Magazine are from a government film as part of an Atomic Bomb test taken of a house closest to the detonation of the 3/53 Operation Doorstep. (this page/right) Vintage children’s schoolbook illustration 1950s “Stories About Linda and Lee”.

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imagined, and because we are part of nature. There is a sense that sustainability is the child of the Second World War baby boomer generation, from Europe and North America, for whom growing stability, growing economic wealth, increased liberty and participation and lengthening longevity have been the story of their lives. I am one of these people, born into the destruction and chaos of 1950’s England growing up in the magnificent aspirations of the 1960’s and 70’s hippie generation who either went down the altruistic, collective path to social change or down the road to selfish individualism and neo-liberalism. But both these paths have crossed and delivered their separate visions, and become entwined, forty and more years on.

What defines the CSR movement?

Once upon a time, I was deeply engaged in the corporate responsibility movement as a negotiator, activist, publisher and educator. I was a fellow traveller in the UN Global Compact, SA8000, the Global Reporting Initiative, ISO26000 and a whole host of other well-meaning multi-sector, multi-stakeholder initiatives. We were endeavoring to change business behavior on the side of the angels, or so we thought. These were,

Image: (left) The Cover of a 1956 book which emphasizes the immediate necessity of learning survival techniques. (right) Vintage children’s book illustration “The Happy Family” Golden Books 1955.

1860 and was never used by the man often cited as ‘the modern founder of capitalism’, Adam Smith. As Marx, and Smith, were both moral philosophers as much as economists, capitalism is a term associated with the study of political economics rather than what is sometimes referred to as the ‘science’ of economics.

welfare safety net, full(ish) employment and and are, all good things but I now realize growing material prosperity, all within an that they missed the mark by a long way. increase in flourishing democracies.

In fact, it may be that engagement in this discourse and the flood of voluntary corporate responsibility initiatives has been the A few new business initiatives embrace the precursor to some bigger action where we virtues of business and leadership models begin to tackle more fundamental systems that nurture our feminine aspects of caring, issues rather than tinkering at the edges. sharing, nurturing and collaboration. For their There wasn’t, and isn’t, a single person on obvious worth, what these initiatives lack is a the proactive NGO and activist side who didn’t have a progressive agenda and if they [...] the new political economy should be were engaging actively, based on feminine characteristics: the through talk, negotask is to marry the feminization tiation and compromise, their aim was to broker of governance to remodeling deals which would lead capitalism that nurtures social and to a better version of environmental capital. capitalism. It was possible, we thought, for business to be kinder and more caring: to deliver the sort of social coherent model of political economy that marcontract envisaged by the post-WWII settleries the often differing priorities of civil, public ment and the development of the welfare and private society and combines a philosostate, with the private and public sectors phy of life based on an understanding of the acknowledging their separate strengths and co-ownership of planetary resources and our delivering together in a mixed economy. shared social future. I argue that the new political economy should be based on feminine characteristics: the task is to marry the feminiSometimes the public sector needed adjustzation of governance to remodeling capitalism ment, and sometimes the private sector that nurtures social and environmental capital. showed its greed too much. But with checks and balances, in Europe and other parts of the advanced industrial democracies at least, a golden age from about 1945-1980 was reached. We increased equality, growing longevity, universal health care, a good

Capitalism, like justice, education and freedom, is an idea that can’t and won’t go away. It is a term unheard of until the publication of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital in

How many times have I been at academic symposia, street demonstrations and in classrooms and been told that “capitalism is in crisis” or that “capitalism is the devil’s work” or “capitalism is incompatible with equality”? And in response, there is often a reactionary attack against “this attack on capitalism”. Most of the discussions are in reality discussions of political economy and not lambastings of the idea of capitalism.

Also many of the current discussions in the twenty-first century about capitalism are discussions about supra-territorial corporations (STCs) and/or banking. The liberalizations of the 1980’s, driven by Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in the UK and President Ronald Reagan in the USA with the intellectual support of the Chicago School of Economics, allowed banks to create money by creating credit. In the creation of credit the banks countered their avowed monetarist public policies which tried to control money supply.

What's the difference between the growth of globalization and the expansion of globality?

Some of our institutions come naturally – the family, and the village for instance – while many others have developed over the millennia due to the state of our knowledge and environmental conditions – such as tribes, nation-states, corporations, and, in the last few decades, virtual networks. This century means coming to terms with realizing one shared planetary space and I have called this “globality”.

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In this ‘Age of Globality’, and as we look towards the ‘New Space Age’, the biggest impediments to reasonable global governance are nationalism, tribalism and masculinity. Increasingly the units of currency and power are cities and corporations and the issue is how to make them more efficient, more responsive and more accountable. The issues are the same in both cases, but both are subsumed within nation-states and their hold on, literally, inter-national governance regimes.

How can we, as individuals, be both located and grounded in affective communities and yet virtually connected and concerned in effective global communities? How can we be both local and global citizens, and how can government and corporations be responsible to both local and global citizenships?

I have spent a lifetime flying around the Earth, and, due to the wonders of crossing the dateline when flying from Sydney to Santiago in Chile (a fifteen hour flight) you arrive at the same time as you take off. What has actually happened is that you take off and hang suspended in the air as the Earth passes beneath you. You travel nowhere but the world moves on, the engines flailing desperately to keep up in case you would fall backwards to the Earth, and yet, because we want to feel we are making progress, day to day, we believe we are going somewhere. If we stayed up long enough, Sydney would pass beneath us and we could land imagining that we had flown round the world when in reality time and the Earth had flown by. This is relativism and is one way of seeing that the economic and political processes that are collectively called globalization are in reality a subset of the growing sense of globality: one shared space - planethome.

What forces drive the energy transition?

The energy transition – the very necessary transition – is being driven by two forces.

They both concern science and technology.

The science tells us that we have released enough carbon into the Earth’s atmosphere from the lithosphere to change the

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climate: 97% of climate change scientists agree on this. But, the technology is also catching up and increasingly the use of fossil fuels looks like the lazy option. There are new technologies and mass manufacturing techniques that make local energy production easier and more resilient.

The combination of scientific knowledge, new technology and disruptive capitalism mean that, if we can leapfrog the Titanic that is the fossil fuel sector, energy will be cheaper, cleaner and more reliable.

Why do you call for a more feminine society?

caring, sharing, nurturing fellow as at home pushing a buggy as he is wearing moisturizer. If the industrial revolution was a shift from muscle to machine, the current information age is a shift from analogue to digital, with similar disruptive mental shifts occurring. Similarly we are all being feminized – some more slowly than others: the masculine and the feminine are in all of us, and this age is about bringing out the nurturer in us all.

How can we realistically implement more 'resilient' lifestyles?

I argue that five systems changes are happening all around us, and we can either accept and promote them or try to resist the inevitable. If we resist them our chances of surviving this century are slim. These changes There is a sense that sustainability is are nascent and ineluctable. They are also quite the child of the Second World War simple: 1) accept that we baby boomer generation, from Europe share one global space and North America, for whom growing and our connectivity; 2) accept that we don’t know stability, growing economic wealth, everything and take more increased liberty and participation and time to stand and stare; 3) lengthening longevity have been the understand that our survival has been based as story of their lives. much on collectivism as on individualism; 4) come to terms with the fact that new institutional arrangements and orgaernance. It is a fundamental recognition nizational models are naturally arising; that the rise and success of the human and, finally, 5) in an age of instantaneous race is due as much to empathy, sociaeverything, remember that we forget our bility, sharing, and group work as it is to evolutionary past at our peril and that we competition, aggression and masculinity. need to embrace the links between evoWe are in the process of rebalancing the lution, adaptation and learning. We can yin and the yang. realistically implement more 'resilient' lifestyles by changing the way we see the Despite the continuous display of graphic world and going with the ineluctable flow violence and violent news items (through of the five systems changes. the growth of instant electronic communication) the world has been getting more peaceful since 1945. This fact is accompanied by less use of violence and physical force than in any previous period of human history. Also the mechanization of much industrial, building and manufacturing activity has seen tradition masculinity threatened and a new breed of man emerging, the feminized man: a gentle, The rise of empathy and social, perhaps global, cohesion are a natural progression and I call this nurturing spirit the rise of the feminization of decision-making and gov-

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Energy Cooperatives

Local Ownership of Clean Technology Whether it is solar panels, wind turbines or biomass stoves, every household can generate their own power. If citizens cooperate in producing renewable energy they can lower electricity costs while developing the local economy and selling excess power back to the grid. Such power generation has brought modern society to a crossroads: do we go for an inclusive world that respects equality and our environment, based on the sharing of clean energy, or do we remain in a world dominated by financial and political short-term interests, based on control and competition over finite resouces?

Writer: Dirk Knapen

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In the 1970s, to counter the nuclear plans of the Danish government, the people’s university of Tvind, built a 2 MW wind turbine – by hand.

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In 2014, Earth Overshoot Day fell on August 19, marking the date when humanity exhausted nature’s budget for the year and started to accumulate carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. This means there was no space for growth without harming the planet in the future, unless it was based on clean energy.

Renewables are now cost competitive with fossil fuels which has allowed for an increased development and cost reduction of clean energy technologies. Last summer, with crude oil at $100 or €75 per barrel, solar PV was cheaper than crude. In markets with high penetrations of intermittent renewable power supply, like Germany and Scandinavia, wholesale market prices have dropped to €30 MWh or below, making solar power competitive with crude oil at €48 a barrel (1,600 kWh/barrel).

As a result, Norway, with stationary energy demand covered by hydropower, promotes electric vehicles to the extent that they have become the best selling vehicles in the mar-

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ket. As it stands, 20% of new registrations and 2% of all cars in the country are electric. Apart from a major energy efficiency boost in the transport sector, the switch to electricity leads to a reduction of heat, noise and exhaust emissions. In the metropolitan areas in the south of Europe, this would reduce the cooling load and would improve health and quality of life. This is picked up elsewhere in the world. To alleviate local pollution, Tehran introduced 400,000 electric scooters, Indonesia and the Filippines convert tuk-tuks and jeepneys to electric; Jordan installed 3,000 solar PV charging stations while Los Angeles, Amsterdam and Graz announced a switch to electric buses.

These are clear examples of how cheaper clean energy can transform society for the better. However, renewables still come up against old energy infrastructure. In recent years, Australia invested hugely in transmission line extensions. Consumers pay for them through their energy bills, but with more off-grid solutions and cheap solar PV, this leads to a spiral of consumers leaving the market to evade grid costs. In a panic reaction to a similar trend, Spain introduced multi-million fines for consumers going offgrid. This is not solving the problem and only adds to frustration, even despair, of prosumers over retro-active cuts in support for renewables.

Images: (Previous pages/Top) The first sod was cut for the windmill by 400 people including students and teachers from the schools at Tvind 29 May 1975. (Bottom) Hundreds of people cooperated to carry out the wing. The entire windmill was built by teachers at the schools in Tvind, with different people from all over the country and from abroad. Source: REScoop (Below) Group picture of REScoop partners on their visit to the solar panel test plant in loos en Gohelle in October 2014. Source: REScoop (Right) ElektrizitätsWerke Schönau (EWS) campaign: “Ich bin ein Störfall” which means in German “I am a technical incident”, referring to the disaster in Chernobyl. Thanks to the Störfall campaign, two million Deutschmarks were donated in six weeks. Eventually, EWS was able to buy the local grid. Source: EWS

The Case for Cooperation As always in times of collective crisis, individual people find and help each other.

With governments not able or willing to come to their rescue, people cooperate.

Social media helps people connect and organize in ways never known before.

Arab spring, Indignados, the Occupy movement; are all expressions of frustration and resentment of citizens about their respective situations.

After initial frustration, people take matters into their own hands. Eco-villages, co-housing, community gardens, carand bike-sharing, open-source developments, local currencies, time banks – these are all examples of people working together voluntarily for the long-term benefit of their communities. As Elinor Ostrom stated in Beyond Markets and

States, when she received the Nobel Price for Economy in 2009: “the governance of common goods by communities is often more primitive but also more effective than when they are managed by market actors or public authorities.”

In the seventies, to express their protest against the nuclear plans of the Danish government, the community of the people’s university of Tvind, built a 2 MW wind turbine – by hand. They used recycled materials for the drive train and taught themselves how to make the blades. They dug the hole for the foundation, wove the reinforcements and carefully poured the concrete tower, with the help of hundreds of supporters. Forty years after the start of the construction, their turbine is still up and running. The nuclear power plants of Barsebäck in Sweden, across the Sund from Copenhagen that were set up in the same period have been shut down.

After the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster,

some parents in the village of Schönau, in the Black Forest, concluded that the only way for consumers to renounce nuclear was to take over the local grid. They launched a crowd-funding campaign “Ich bin ein Störfall”. With a double meaning in German of “I am a technical incident”, referring to the disaster in Chernobyl, and “I am an annoyance”.

After years of struggling, in and out of court, the ElektrizitätsWerke Schönau (EWS) now supplies clean power to over 100,000 consumers in Germany. They source the power directly from renewables and cogeneration producers, on a real-time basis, to be sure that absolutely no nuclear power is involved. A subsidiary of the group owns and manages seven local electricity and two gas grids. EWS supports energy efficiency measures and the development of new, usually small-scale, green energy generation.

The cooperative also supports the citizen groups in Berlin and Hamburg aiming to take over the grids in their cities.

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Authorities Supporting Citizens The Tvindmøllen is part of a Danish bottomup movement that works with local citizens to help develop their society through wind turbines. In 1985, when the first wind parks were being built, the government decided only to allow wind projects near where people lived or worked. This assured that wind projects were developed taking the considerations of the local community into account. The government also introduced an exemption on paying taxes on revenues up to a relatively small participation in projects. The result was that by the end of the 1990s, 150,000 Danes, representing about 10% of the households, held shares in wind projects.

project. Then people were queueing in front of the local bank to buy shares. Wind energy became a lever for local development.

After reintroducing an obligation for wind energy developers to have a local connection with the community they develop projects in, resistance still persists in many places. A trend has emerged whereby communities only end their resistance when a local actor initiates a project and promises to reinvest the revenues in the local community. An example of this occured in Hvide Sande, a small fishing and surfing community on the west coast of Jutland.

There, the local community refused the installation of wind turbines on the beach, until the local tourist board picked up the

In Güssing, its 4,000 inhabitants used to spend €6 million per year on the purchase of fossil fuels. In little over a decade, the community turned its energy supply around and now harvests €13 million worth of energy from local renewable energy sources. In the process, the community also created 1,000 jobs and attracted 50 businesses.

Similar considerations are seen in many communities that go for a 100% local sustainable energy. The municipality of Güssing in Austria is a typical example. Rural communities see their population decreasing rapidly as young people leave to work or study abroad and the population continues to age. With less children, schools have to be closed, then the municipality has to lay off employees and with less active citizens, municipal income goes down.

The City of Eeklo in Flanders, Belgium, developed a local wind energy plan at the end of the 1990s. The city turned to wind energy after having looked into

solar PV and biogas. While developing the plan, inhabitants were taken for visits to existing wind turbines proejcts. Finally the city launched a tender for wind turbines on two sites it owned. The tender was won by Ecopower, a then still very small cooperative with around 50 members. It opened the project to 100% local participation and offered an extensive communication scheme on sustainable energy and a charging station for electric vehicles. Over time, wind projects have become the basis of a strong long-term partnership between the city and the cooperative.

This boosted the activities of Ecopower.

Within three years the number of cooperative members grew to 5,000. When the electricity market in Flanders was liberalized in 2003, Ecopower became the only citizen cooperative green energy supplier.

Meanwhile, it is the biggest REScoop (Renewable Energy Sources Cooperative) in Europe with 50,000 members and €50 million of equity. From this position, Ecopower started to help young cooperatives. It supplies energy produced by other cooperatives to their members and supports other community green energy suppliers. For example, Ecopower provided the necessary bank warranty to get Enercoop in France up and running. This way it has become the driving force behind the Belgian and European REScoop federations.

REScoop to the Rescue REScoop is a group or cooperative of citizens for renewable energy. As part of the Intelligent Energy Europe REScoop 202020 project, 2,500 REScoops At the end of the 1990s, 150,000 Danes – were traced in representing about 10% of the households Europe. The proj– held shares in wind projects. ect analyzed their business models and financing schemes with the results being applied to 15 pilot projects. Having found each other, a number of REScoops and national federations created the

24

European federation with the aim to valorize the findings. The citizens united in REScoop.eu are able and willing to support the development of sustainable energy across Europe.

The Cyclades Island of Sifnos in Greece was one of these pilots. Like many islands, the memory of being self-sufficient remains strong and, in view of the ongoing economic crisis, the islanders are keen to return to a state of greater autonomy. Sifnos is 74km², has 2,500

inhabitants and one single 9.6 MW power plant with eight engines running on oil. In 2013, the plant produced 16 million kWh at a cost of 38€ ct/kWh. Because of the equalization of the electricity price in the whole of Greece the share in the energy bill of consumers on the island is only 9.5€ ct/kWh. Consumers on the mainland subsidize the difference.

sequent years, cooperatives can then collect money locally to take as much of their energy supply back into their own hands.

The share not used to cover capital costs can be used for the improvement of the quality of life on the island. To set up a well-equiped medical post, organize the recycling of waste or improve connections with neighbours.

Wind and solar can be produced at less than 7€ ct/kWh without financial support. Because of their abundant availability they could easily cover the bulk of the energy needs on the islands. Even renouncing the mainland subsidy, this allows citizens all over Europe to invest, through their local REScoops, in turning the energy supply 100% local and sustainable. They can share the margin with the islanders and use the part to reward their members while generating some operating budget for themselves. In sub-

Inspired by the examples of Samsø and El Hierro, other islands in southern Europe could also add desalination, the purification of waste water or the treatment of waste to the technology mix. On Sifnos, biogas produced from the waste of the local slaughter house, hotels, restaurants and households, cheese and olive oil prodcuers, as well as manure and water purification sludge, all of which could be used in a cogeneration plant supplementing the intermittent production of solar and wind. Replacing combustion engine

vehicles on the islands with electric vehicles would also offer storage capacity for excess power and could increase the attractiveness of the islands in the absence of vehicle noise and exhaust emissions while improving their economy’s income.

Sifnos is not just an example of how a REScoop helps citizens come together; it is also one which shows how cooperation can open new avenues to generate growth for the local economy; and it shows how the potential for other communities to follow suit is there. Energy consumption in the European community is about 20,000 TWh per year while energy supply from the sun is 4.4 million TWh. As more technologies become available for individuals to generate their electricity, the ability to supply our own clean energy only increases and creates a more secure future for ourselves and our planet.

Connecting water and energy around the Mediterranean and beyond

Latest News Special Reports Insightful Features Exclusive Interviews Photo Essays and More Join today and start revolving! www.revolve-water.com Alexandra, Egypt, 2012. Source: Revolve Media

Agriculture’s

Second Green Life

Greenhouse covers, mulching, nets, irrigating hoses, pots for floriculture, silage covers: these are just a few examples of how plastic has become a precious ally to farmers. Over the last 50 years, plastic has led to higher and better yields, reduced the use of chemicals and water for irrigation, and modified the crop cycle to meet increasing production demands. However, not all of these materials are recovered correctly leading to illegal burning or uncontrolled dispersal in the environment. However, new developments in biodegradable materials have given agriculture a second green life – in which no waste is produced and crops can flourish.

Writer/Photographer: Sara Guerrini

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Plastic Films in Agriculture from a few months (lettuce) to a couple of In 2013, demand for plastic films in agriyears (strawberries). culture at a global level amounted to about four million tons, mainly in Asia (roughly The film, at the end of the cultivation 70%) followed by Europe (16%). Out of period, needs to be removed from the the 510,000 tons of agricultural films field and properly disposed of according used in Europe, 40% are concentrated to the general rules contained in European in southern countries (Spain and Italy) for directives dealing with waste manageuse in horticulture (greenhouse covers and mulching). Mulching is a widely-used ment (Directives 99/31 EC, 2000/76 EC, agricultural technique, mainly for growDirective 2008/98/EC). Some countries ing vegetables, as it presents undoubted advantages such Plastic mulch films are mainly made as the containment of weeds, a reduced use of herbicides out of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and an improved quality of the and 80,000 tons are estimated to be product, a reduced amount of irrigating water, etc. used in Europe.

Plastic mulch films are mainly made out of low density polyethylene (LDPE) and 80,000 tons are estimated to be used in Europe. Their average useful life on the field varies in relation to the crop cycle:

Images: (pp.26-27) Lettuce grown using biodegradable film instead of the traditional plastic alternative. (below) Laying biodegradable mulching film. (right) Laying biodegradable mulching film for the tomato industry.

What does biodegradable mean?

Organic substance that can be decomposed by the activity of living organisms. If this biodegradation is completed, it leads to the total conversion of the organic substance into non-organic molecules, such as carbon dioxide, water, methane (that all are beneficial to the environment). In the definition of biodegradable, factors like the environment where biodegradation takes place and the temporal horizon need to be included. It is necessary to define in which conditions and in which time frame biodegradation is expected to take place.

Without the definition of these elements the term biodegradable becomes vague and not very useful, as virtually every organic substance is biodegradable if we do not specify the time frame.

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like France, Germany, the UK and Norway have organized voluntary schemes of collection and disposal of this specific waste; others like Austria, Belgium, Germany and Denmark have banned the disposal of plastic films in landfills.

However, the flows of plastics that enter and exit the agricultural sector in Europe continue to diverge. According to the European project LabelAgriWaste, in Italy and Spain only up to 50% of used plastic films are recovered; out of this 50%, about half are sent to landfills. The most common types of illegal dumping of agriplastics include: burning on the field, dumping by the side of cultivated fields, in illegal dumpsites or alongside waterways, and burying in the soil.

This has to do with the timing and high costs of disposal for this kind of waste, due to the rapid rotation of its usage and it being very dirty (it is estimated that impurities in old films – soil or crop residues – represent up to 80% of the total weight of the material).

Unfortunately, once again the consequences of this gap are borne by the environment.

China, the biggest mulching user (20 million hectares) suffers many problems connected with the improper disposal of these films. Fragments of non-collected plastics have contaminated wide agricultural sur-

faces and it is estimated that the presence of these fragments in the most superficial strata of the soil have caused a reduction in production of about 20%. It appears that the plastics technology defined as “white revolution” in some areas of the world has turned into “white pollution”.

Fragments of non-collected plastics have contaminated wide agricultural surfaces and it is estimated that the presence of these fragments in the most superficial strata of the soil have caused a reduction in production of about 20%.

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Biodegradable Materials in Agriculture The importance of using biodegradable materials in agriculture is evident. These materials can stay in the environment where they end their cycle in optimal conditions without causing damaging effects.

In particular, biodegradable mulch films allow us to tackle a series of problems in a very efficient way: they do not need to be removed from the soil, where after their usage they are biodegraded by soil microorganisms. This helps us save on costs and timing of collection and disposal and make differentiated agriplastics collection cleaner, thus eliminating very dirty and non-profitable materials in the recycling phase.

A 2009 Italian study evaluated the environmental implications of moving from plastic mulch films to biodegradable ones, analyzing the cycle of products with a life cycle assessment (LCA) approach. In relation to CO2 emissions, the use of biodegradable mulch films allows for a saving of 500kg of CO2 equivalent per mulched hectare (considering that 60% of a hectare is covered in film).

agement, agronomical and production characteristics as plastic films. The crops that benefit the most from biodegradable mulch films are those that have a mediumshort agricultural cycle: vegetables and fruit such as courgettes, lettuce, tomatoes, pepper, melon and watermelon. Many companies, such as Unilever, and many territories in Italy and other countries have benefited from this shift.

In the last few years the usage of biodegradable mulch films has gradually increased. These materials have the same performance, man-

If biodegradable mulch films for horticultural produce are a growing reality, there are still new possibilities to be explored for these materials: mulching of deferred high-income crops such as vine, silage covers, nets, covers for round bales, packaging for fruit and vegetables.

These are only some of the many

Images: (above) Strawberries grown on biodegradable film. (right) Lettuce grown on biodegradable film.

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possible uses that can be explored in the near future, thanks to ever more complex products with better performance indicators.

Much has been done in terms of research and development. However, some important steps have also been taken at a

legislative level, an example being the recognition of biodegradable products as instruments of environmental sustainability in agriculture. In the 2007-2013 CAP, films for biodegradable mulching have been included in the environmental measures of the Common Market Organization (CMO) for horticultural crops in

In relation to CO2 emissions, the use of biodegradable mulch films allows for a saving of 500kg of CO2 equivalent per mulched hectare

the most important European countries for fruit and vegetable production (Italy, France and Spain).

The new CAP for 2014-2020, with its strong environmental and innovationpromoting orientation, will certainly provide important instruments of support to biodegradable plastics. It is hoped that in a few years the agricultural landscape will be less populated by those elements that are not only visually disturbing, but also degrading and polluting, and that have little to do with the role of food production and preservation of territory that should characterize agricultural activity.

This feature first appeared in Renewable Matter, Issue #2. www.renewablematter.eu

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“I would be willing to pay more for my electricity if it would be produced in a sustainable way.”

– Max, theatre student and street juggler, Brussels

“I prefer to walk, it helps me stay in touch with the environment too.”

– Kingsley Ali, Barcelona

Max

Kingsley

Jorffy

“I’m a dancer and I take public transport all the time to jump from one gig to another. A good public transport system can make the city more liveable and solve congestion problems.”

– Jorffy, Paris

How are you energy efficient?

WHAT SOLUTIONS DO YOU WANT TO SEE?

Melisande “We don't buy industrial produced meat which is a lot more energy intensive.”

Kristina & Zin aida

– Melisande McBurnie Butcher in Brussels

Djouzf Ayan Noraryr

“At home we use ecological light bulbs and we separate our plastic and paper.”

– Kristina Iodosijeui, Belgium

“When I leave my house I turn down my heating from 23-18 °C.” – Zinaida, Moldovia

“Nowadays products are not manufactured to last more than three years. There is a clear cause and effect relationship between quality of manufacturing and the pollution of the environment with more and more products thrown away that cannot be recycled.”

– Djouzf Ayan Noraryr is an artisan shoe maker in Paris

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“I think here in Brussels they are committed to recycling, but there are a lot of countries that don’t.”

“I used to cycle to school, but then my bike was stolen so now I walk.”

– Adrian, student, Germany/Italy

– Diana, Mexico

Adrian

Diana

Rafael “I use smart metering in my house for heating and insulated my apartment.

I also take public transport.”

– Dana Langa, Romania

Dana

“I try to recycle my waste and I don’t litter.”

– Sandra, Liege

Sandra & Lucia

“I do the simple things that everyone can do – recycle for starters.”

Miriam

– Lucia, Liege

Ine

“I hope the politics in Belgium would focus more on green energy and public transport instead of putting money in oil, cars and roads.”

“I have planted about 600 trees for a small environmental organisation and I try to use only the water I need. I definitely care about the environment, but it is sad to see people in Lebanon who are not that aware or helpful.”

– Miriam Mahroum, Lebanon

– Ine, Brussels

Maris “I try to consume less and recycle waste. I don’t have a car. I would like to see people care more about what they are buying and asking themselves if they really need it.”

– Maris, Estonia

Yvo de Boer

“[...] and as there is more demand for renewable energy or environmentally sound food that is where private companies will go.”

– Yvo de Boer

This campaign is part of Revolve's New Energy Fair :

Send your #EnergyPulse and win a trip for 2 for Hotel in n ho T t a s ht g ni 2 Brussels to visit Revolve's New Energy Fair during y the EU Sustainable Energ Week (15-19 June)

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More information at REVOLVE.MEDIA

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11 - 13 OCTOBER, 2015 ADNEC | Abu Dhabi, UAE

Ecocities in Challenging Environments www.ecocityworldsummit.com

Why Attend?

1,500

100

70

Scan QR code to visit website Important Dates Early Bird Registration Deadline : Late Registration : 4 October 2015 Online Registration :

30 June 2015 11 October 2015

Academic Committee

Innovations Committee Ain Shams University IUSD-Lab

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A photo essay by Sugato Mukherjee

Toxic Fumes

The miners work amid a toxic environment with gas concentration levels that are 40 times the limits. They have little to no protective gear beyond a damp cloth to cover their nose and mouths. Many of them do not care to use proper gas masks because the masks slow them down resulting in less earnings.

However, they are well aware of the fact that such prolonged exposure in the toxic environment leaves them in the high risk zone of poisoned lungs, decreasing their life span. Most of the miners die before they reach 40. Since mining started in the volcano in 1968, gas explosions caused the death of 49 workers in 1976 and another 25 in 1989.

The volcano site contains an acidic crater lake that emits a smoky aura of bizarre beauty. While it looks like steam, the fumes are actually highly concentrated hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide gases that can burn a miner’s eyes; repeated exposure to moderate concentrations of sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide may cause inflammation of the respiratory tract, wheezing and lung damage. The chemicals are also harmful to the reproductive system.

The Kawah Ijen volcano in East Java, Indonesia, has one of the largest sulphur mines in the world and the only mine that is still quarried manually. Hundreds of men from the surrounding areas undertake the task of retrieving blocks of sulphur from the crater of the volcano. They trek down the perpendicular path from the rim of the volcano to the crater below and retrace their steps with a load of 80-90 kg of sulphur. For this arduous task undertaken twice a day by each miner, the pay is $10-12 per day. For each kilo of sulphur, a miner earns 800 Indonesian rupiyah ($0.06). In two trips, if he can carry 150 kg of sulphur he can make $9.5. A farmer in the surrounding rice fields earns about $4 a day. This relative benefit comes at a terrible price. (below) Kawah Ijen has the largest acidic lake on Earth – a long volcanic crater lake that is a rich source of elemental sulphur where about 400 men collect yellow lumps of sulphur daily.

(previous) Miners work in thick fumes of noxious chemical smoke.

(below) Dawn breaks over Kawah Ijen, one of the active volcanoes of East Java. A sulphur basket waits on the roadside to be taken down.

(top/right) In an age where mechanical extraction process is deployed everywhere, miners use iron rods and stones to harvest the sulphur in Kawah Ijen.

(top/left) A group of miners working in the crater with little or no protective gear.

(right) The hike from the road to the crater and back is about 10 kilometers and the gradient is steep and at times almost vertical.

(below/left) Padi worked as a farmer before becoming a miner in Ijen. At $10 per day, he earns twice now but he knows that the relative freedom comes at the cost of his shortened life.

(right) The smoky atmosphere that billows around the mine contains highly toxic concentrated hydrogen sulphide and sulphur dioxide gases.

(left) A miner walks away with his sulphur laden baskets while another goes into the toxic fumes to collect his share.

(right) Umam is 32 but his deep-lined face looks well over forty. Working in the mine since his teens, he says that he does not care to use protective masks as they slow him down in his work.

(above) Sulaiman removes his protective gear and smokes a cigarette. Most workers smoke the local cigarettes with tobacco and cloves to get rid of the foul taste of the toxic gases.

(previous/bottom) The miners carry 80-90 kg loads up a steep path out of the crater and back down the volcano’s outer slopes to a weighing station. The miners make this journey two or three times a day.

(previous/top) A miner pries sulphur chunks from the solidified rocks of the sulphur bed.

(bottom/right) At the makeshift tent near the crater lake, Suharto recovers from the sudden intake of sulphuric gases. Hundreds of miners have died in the crater due to sudden emission of poisonous gases from the vents.

(top/right) At 44, Tariq is one of the oldest miners of Ijen.

Eight of his friends, who had started working with him two decades back, have died in last five years.

(above) Addis, 32, now works as a guide for tourists who go down to the crater. He says that his spinal cord is deformed from years of lugging sulphur loads.

(right) A miner loads his harvest onto the truck to be carried down to a sulphur factory.

(left) A miner weighs the sulphur taken from the crater at the weighing station that doubles up as a resting place for the miners.

(top) An overseer at the weighing station calculates the earnings for the sulphur collect as a miner looks on.

www.alchemypublishers.co.in/ portfolio/an-antique-land/

Sugato Mukherjee is a photographer and writer based in Calcutta. His works have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Al Jazeera, Yale Journal of International Affairs, Roads & Kingdoms, Lonely Planet and Jet Wings International. His coffee table book on Ladakh has recently been published from Delhi.

A recipient of a number of photographic awards, Sugato is currently working on his long-term project on Kashmir. His photographic images and stories are represented by Indian Art Collectors, New Delhi and Diimex Picture Desk, Sydney.

(next page) The bizarrely beautiful sulphur rock surface inside the volcanic crater.

(right) The thin crystals of bright yellow sulphur are broken into pieces before they are transported for commercial use in cosmetics and medicines.

(top) Massive handmade clay ovens are used to melt the sulphur chunks into liquid sulphur.

Fukushima’s

Nuclear Fallout

On 11 March 2011, a magnitude 9.0 earthquake hit 72 kilometers off the coast of Tohoku, Japan. The six minute earthquake and ensuing tsunamis, which were up to 40 meters high and travelled as far as 10 km inland, killed more than 15,000 people and destroyed buildings, roads and other infrastructure. The most devastating aspect of the disaster was the damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. The events in Fukushima Prefecture have slipped out of the mainstream international media and out of the public’s consciousness, but following Prime Minister Abe’s meeting in spring 2015 with President Obama on climate change and greenhouse emissions, the spotlight is being turned back to the Japanese energy industry. What has really happened over the past 4 years? What is happening now in Fukushima? What is the future of energy in Japan?

Writer: Ruth Gamano

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Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant The Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant was designed and built during the 1960s in a location ten meters above sea level.

Scientific knowledge about earthquakes and tsunamis increased and other power plants were built further above sea level and with stronger defences to potential natural disasters. However, no improvements were made to the Fukushima Daiichi Power plant defences. A report from the Japanese Government’s Earthquake Research Committee on earthquakes and tsunamis off the Pacific coastline of northeastern Japan was due for release in

incident at the Fukushima plant has left its operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO), with two major problems:

April 2011. The report concluded that the region should be alerted to the risks posed by tsunamis and could have prompted necessary changes, but its publication came too late.

The initial earthquake did not seriously damage the power plant reactors, only causing them to shut down automatically.

After 41 minutes, the first tsunami hit, followed by a second eight minutes later.

These disabled the power supplies and cooling systems of three of the reactors, leading to the meltdown of their cores. The

Frozen soil wall planned at Fukushima N.°1 nuclear plant N°1 TO N°4 REACTORS

DOZENS OF METERS DEEP

200M EAST-WEST

500M NORTH-SOUTH

1. How to safely decommission the damaged reactors, removing the fuel and other radioactive materials from the site?

2. How to deal with the water that has been contaminated with radioactive materials?

Having melted down, Reactors 1, 2 and 3, contain radiation at levels too high for workers to endure. It was hoped that robots could do the work instead of humans, but in April 2015, TEPCO was forced to abandon a robot after it became stuck while exploring inside Reactor 1.

The complex and dangerous work to remove the 566 rods from Reactor 3 were to begin in 2015, but TEPCO has been forced to delay the schedule until 2025 at the earliest. TEPCO intends to use ‘muons’, a type of cosmic radiation that easily penetrates lighter materials, but is blocked by heavy elements such as uranium, in an attempt to create 3D images revealing the location and condition of the debris inside these reactors.

The plant was built above an underground river which carries an estimated 1,000 tons of water per day, some of which

IMPERMEABLE LAYER

FROZEN SOIL WALL

FREEZING DUCTS

FROZEN SOIL

GROUNDWATER CIRCULATE COOLANTS

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The difficulties in storing and treating the vast quantities of contaminated water are likely to lead to more of it being released into the ocean – a prospect that greatly concerns environmentalists and local fishermen.

flows through the basements of the reactor buildings and becomes contaminated with radioactive materials. Everyday TEPCO pumps 400 tons of contaminated water out of the reactor buildings. The remaining 600 tons flows out to sea and contributes to contamination of the Pacific Ocean.

TEPCO uses various unsuccessful methods to prevent contaminating the sea with the water from flowing through the reactor buildings, such as (1) diverting the water flowing under the plant by using an underground by-pass (with no meaningful results), (2) pumping 25,000 tons of water from 12 wells behind the reactor buildings directly into the sea (with no significant decrease in water flow), and (3) attempting to build an underground ice wall by injecting more than 400 tons of ice and dry ice into underground pipes (stopped in August 2014). Ultimately, a 1.5 km ice wall is planned, to be maintained for seven years. Experts doubt the viability of this ambitious plan.

In the meantime, water continues to flow and contamination levels continue to rise.

On 25 August, 2014, TEPCO admitted that five billion becquerels of Strontium-90, two billion becquerels of Cesium-137 and one billion becquerels of Tritium were flowing into the Pacific every day. The water that TEPCO has been pumping out of the reactor building basements every day since the incident has accumulated in hundreds of thousands of storage tanks, filling the plant site. The tanks are temporary and many already show severe signs of deterioration, with TEPCO admitting some have leaked.

TEPCO intends to release the water into the Pacific after decontaminating it of 62 types of radioactive particles.

To this end, they have employed and abandoned several systems. In January 2015, TEPCO reported successfully treating half of the accumulated water using an Advanced Liquid Processing System, but failed to meet Prime Minister Abe’s demand that all the water be treated by March 2015. Tritium poses a particular problem as no method

(pp.52-53): Protective masks lay ready for members of the IAEA International Remediation Expert Mission to Japan before their visit today to TEPCO’s Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Source: Giovanni Verlini/IAEA (above): IAEA marine experts and Japanese scientists collect water samples in coastal waters near the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station. Since the accident at the plant in March 2011, the Japanese authorities have been continually monitoring the levels of radioactivity in sea water and publishing the results. In an effort to verify the accuracy of these results and increase public confidence in what is being reported, the IAEA is undertaking joint sampling missions. The water samples were shared between the IAEA Environment Laboratories and Japanese laboratories. They will be analyzed independently and the results will be compared to check the quality of the analyses and document the reliability of data.

Source: Petr Pavlicek/IAEA

exists for its removal. The Japanese government has hired three international firms to develop such systems by March 2016, paying each one billion yen for the work. The difficulties in storing and treating the vast quantities of contaminated water are likely to lead to more of it being released into the ocean, a prospect that greatly concerns environmentalists and local fishermen.

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Accurate Contamination Testing?

TEPCO and the Japanese government regularly publish levels of contamination found at various sites around the Fukushima prefecture, the power plant

Controversy surrounds the accuracy of the readings and whether the publication is really as open as it seems.

(below): Volunteer at Minamisoma City, Fukushima prefecture, affected by the tsunami from the earthquake and Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident.

Source: Hajime Nakano/Flickr.

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and the Pacific Ocean. Controversy surrounds the accuracy of the readings and whether the publication is really as open as it seems.

Every week, sea water taken from near the power plant is tested for radioactive contamination. Two analyses are performed; a full ten hour analysis and a less accurate quick analysis. The results of the quick analyses are published promptly, usually showing ‘undetectable’ levels of contamination, while the full analysis results are published, one month later and less publicly.

In December 2014, the Tokyo Shinbun newspaper compared the results, revealing that although the quick analysis results have shown ‘undetectable’ levels of Cesium, the full analysis results have shown levels of up 3.90 Bq/l of cesium in the water.

The Nuclear Control Committee (NCC) denies that ‘undetected’ ever meant ‘zero’ cesium, but this has never been explained to the public, leading to accusations of a cover up.

To counter such accusations, the Japanese government invited the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to conduct its own tests to double check the results published

by Japanese agencies. The IAEA reported that their results were identical and that the Japanese testing was ‘very accurate’.

The Plight of Residents The Fukushima incident is not only an environmental disaster; it is a very human disaster. As events at the power plant unfolded in the days after the tsunami, people in the surrounding area were ordered to evacuate. The government gradually increased the evacuation zone, from 3 km on 11 March 2011 to 20 km on 12 March. On 15 March, after explosions in the reactors, residents living 20-30 km from the plant were ordered to stay inside their homes, finally being instructed to

evacuate on 25 March 2011. Hundreds of thousands of people were forced to leave their homes, possessions, land and jobs.

Livestock had to be abandoned and agricultural land became unfarmable due to the contamination. At the end of 2014, 120,000 people still had not returned home.

In June 2012, officials from NISA apologized for failing to publish radiation dispersal maps for almost two weeks, resulting

The Fukushima incident is not only an environmental disaster; it is a very human disaster

in delays to the expansion of the evacuation zone. In November 2014, half of the 6,000 residents of Iitate village, situated 30 km north-west of the power plant, registered demands for compensation claiming unnecessary exposure to radiation due to this late evacuation order. They also want an increase in the 100,000 yen (approx. $850) per person per month government support for evacuees.

Meanwhile in places, such as Date City, just outside the evacuation zone residents receive no compensation and must decide whether to leave at their own expense or stay at their own risk.

As contamination levels drop, some areas have been declared ‘uncontaminated’ by the government, which offers no further support to evacuees, who must decide whether to risk returning.

Public Health Problems The population around Fukushima have undoubtedly been exposed to abnormally high levels of radiation. Though the Japanese government denies any link between this and apparent increases in public illhealth, there are many dissenting voices.

In January 2015, Chieko Shiina, an antinuclear activist in Fukushima, claimed that Paediatric Thyroid Cancer had increased 6,000% in Fukushima and accused former health minister, Shuichi Yamashita, of lying about the effects on children’s health.

Katsutaka Idogawa, ex-mayor of Futaba City, near the plant, described government plans to move Fatuba evacuees back to Fukushima Prefecture, as a “violation of their human rights” due to the high radiation levels.

In his essay “Why did I leave Tokyo?”, Dr. Shigeru Mita explained how in March 2014 he moved his clinic from Kodaira to

Okayama city, 500 km away. Based on soil samples showing that contamination in east Tokyo is 1,000-4,000 Bq/kg, he claims that “Tokyo should no longer be inhabited”. He has observed patients with wide-ranging radiation induced health problems, as well as a decline in white blood cell counts in children under ten since 2011.

Only one program in the mainstream Japanese media has openly discussed these issues; Hodo Station, a popular nightly program on Asahi Television. Director Masaki Iwaji, travelled to Fukushima to interview people directly affected. Before his follow-up program could be broadcast he died in mysterious circumstances, of an apparent suicide, having previously told an interviewee “If you hear that I died, please believe it was not a suicide […] I will never commit suicide.” His death received no official coverage.

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Consumer Confidence Farmers in north-eastern Japan are struggling to recover their livelihoods. In 2013, only 20% of Fukushima rice on the market sold due to consumer concern about

radiation levels. To raise confidence in Japanese food products, the government made pre-sale radiation tests obligatory, and lowered the legal limit from 500 to

International Radiation Limits DRINKING WATER

MILK

GENERAL FOODSTUFFS

BABY FOOD

10

50

100

50

USA

1,200

1,200

1,200

1,200

EU*

1,000

1,000

1,000

1,000

Japan

Unit: becquerels per kilogram *Only applied to items produced within the EU. Japan’s limits apply to imported Japanese products.

Source: Yomiuri Shinbun newspaper.

100 Becquerels per kilo. Fukushima has set an even stricter limit of 60 Becquerels.

Some shops display cesium readings alongside the prices of their products, especially when promoting produce from Fukushima. Despite these steps, scepticism remains in Japan and internationally. One unintended effect of lowering the limits has been to make safe foods appear dangerous and even to be banned, although they would be legal under normal limits.

A Nuclear Future?

Against this background, Prime Minister Abe’s administration is paving the way for Japan’s nuclear energy program to restart.

In December 2014, the Japanese people went to the polls and re-elected Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in what was widely regarded as an endorsement of his ‘Abenomics’ economic reforms.

He has a large enough majority to push through other policies, including restarting the Japanese nuclear program. The necessary local government permission for restarting the 18 power plants in the 13 electoral seats that they control is guaranteed and moves are underway to restart several reactors.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) said the restart process will entail a review of the “detailed design and construction of the nuclear reactors and related facilities, safety programs […] and procedures for accident responses.” The power stations will have their resistance to earthquakes, tsunamis and typhoons increased. Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) describes nuclear as an “important base-load power source” and aims to provide at least 20% of Japan’s electrical power supply by 2030 with nuclear – not far from the 28% it provided before the Fukushima accident.

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This process took a setback in April 2015, when a court upheld a move by local residents to block the restart of the Takahama plant, Fukui prefecture, claiming it was not secure against earthquakes. Kansai Electric, the plant operator says that the plant meets the new NRA safety standards, but the court described the standards as “lacking rationality” and agreed that assuming there would be no major earthquakes in the area was over-optimistic.

Nuclear power used to provide cheaper electricity than imported fossil fuels in a country with few fossil fuel resources of its own, but Japanese electricity companies want to introduce the Contract For Difference (CFD) system. CFD is being introduced for new nuclear power plants being planned in England. CFD is a system allowing electricity companies to raise prices if demand is too low to cover their costs, passing the financial risks from the companies to the consumers. In December 2014, The Japan Times reported that introducing CFD in Japan could push electricity prices higher than they would be from using either imported fossil fuels or wind power and only one yen per unit cheaper than solar power.

Electricity generated by nuclear power plants used to be considered cheap and

safe. Now it is considered dangerous and destined to become expensive. Meanwhile, Japanese greenhouse gas emissions have been rising steadily since the Fukushima incident due to fossil fuel usage.

The Kyoto Treaty's emission cuts are not being met and new, lower, targets have been announced, which are, according to the Institute for Global Environmental Studies (IGES) far less than the cuts that would have been possible with additional investment in renewable energy. Less than 5% of Japanese power comes from renewable sources, which is being used as another argument for restarting the power stations. Some websites, including Conspiracy Watch, are describing the Fukushima disaster as “the beginning of the end for humanity”. Whether that pessimism is warranted remains to be seen, but clearly, after four years, little real progress has been made.

Exploiting Eastern Mediterranean Gas As the European Union moves to diversify its energy supply, new offshore gas reserves have been discovered in the eastern Mediterranean. In the name of energy security, the EU is advancing the East Med pipeline as one of its Projects of Common Interest, neglecting international law and regional conventions as well as the EU’s own directives for environmental protection.

Writer: Nadim Keith

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Dash for Gas In a bid to reduce dependence on Russian gas, the EU is increasing gas imports from the Caucasus and Mediterranean through a Southern Gas Corridor (SGC) connecting non-EU states to Europe by pipeline. In October 2013, the European Commission identified 15 SGC related Projects of Common Interest (PCIs) to benefit from funding, fast-tracking of licenses and regulatory assistance. They benefit foreign operators who may invest, operate and transit through a pipeline, bypassing EU competition restrictions. The objective of PCIs is to diversify energy sources and secure supply.

Following its support for the Trans-Anatolian Pipeline (TANAP), which began construction in April 2015 to deliver an additional 16 billion cubic meters gas from Azerbaijan by 2019, the EU is considering funding an Eastern

Mediterranean Pipeline (East Med) pipeline to import gas from the Mediterranean, where substantial reserves have been discovered.

The U.S. company Noble Energy, with Israeli partner Delek Group, discovered the largest offshore gas fields in the Mediterranean – Tamar (ten trillion cubic feet) in 2009 and Leviathan (estimated at 22 trillion cubic feet) in 2010. Production for domestic use started on Tamar in 2013 and Leviathan gas could be exported by 2018.

Since 2004, Israel has also been drilling the smaller Mari-B and Noa gas fields which overlap with Palestine’s Gaza Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), and in doing so is already exploiting overlapping sub-sea Palestinian reserves.

In addition, the Gaza marine field, estimated at around 1.4 trillion cubic feet, was discovered in 2000 by British Gas Group (BGG). While

Tamar Leviathan

Dalit

Gas fields Blocks in which hydrocarbons have been found

Pinnacles Noa

Bilaterally agreed delimitation of exclusive economic zone (EEZ)

Mediterranean Sea 62

Gaza Marine

Cyprus’ offshore gas reserves are the second largest in the region. In 2011, Noble Energy discovered an estimated 4.5 trillion cubic feet of offshore gas in its Aphrodite field.

However, drilling has been held back due to Turkey disputing ownership of reserves and while Aphrodite could provide Cyprus with sufficient reserves for security of supply, it isn’t enough to become a major exporter.

For now, only Israel’s reserves are sufficient for export and the least difficult short-term option is for Israeli gas to be exported to Greece via Cyprus. With its Greek and Cypriot partners, Israel has been lobbying the EU for support through the Greek Energy Forum

Disputed area

Aphrodite

Probable EEZ boundaries according to UNCLOS

sufficient to allow energy independence from Israel, the initial agreement between the Palestinian Authority and BGG has been hindered due to political and commercial interference by the Israeli government and the Noble Energy-Delek consortium.

Mari-B

(GEF) – a consortium consisting of European Commission, Greek, Cypriot and Israeli officials and energy sector representatives promoting the East Med pipeline.

The East Med pipeline was listed as a PCI in October 2013. The description includes Israel as a source of supply, indicating that the EU is motivated more by Israeli imports considering reserves are already sufficient for exportation, while Cyprus’ reserves are as yet insufficient for export.

“The quantities of gas discovered thus far in the East Med are modest, and whilst they can enhance energy security for the parties concerned, they will not constitute an alternative source of supply for the EU due to commercial, technical and political difficulties.”

– Karen Ayat at Natural Gas Europe

Images: (pp.60-61) ISS042 image of the western Middle East and the Mediterranean Sea. Source: NASA (top): Israel Defense Forces on the Mediterranean Sea. Source: Israel Defense Forces

An Unrealistic Project of Common Interest (PCI) In late 2014, the East Med PCI was awarded conditional support by the European Commission, which is conducting a feasibility study on the massive costs due to the distance the pipeline would have to cover – 1,200 km over water up to 2,000 meters deep.

Investment was the main topic at the 2030 EU Energy Security: the role of the Eastern Mediterranean conference in December

2014, organized by the GEF, and hosted by the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC). It is the responsibility of EU institutions, such as the EESC, to promote directives for environmental protection in the interests of Europe, but their contribution was mostly limited to speculating on reducing gas prices for consumers.

According to Michael Leigh from the German

Marshall Fund, the East Med pipeline is unviable as the high exploration, extraction and transport costs would end up being paid by European consumers. When asked whether the EU should go ahead with its ambitions to import Mediterranean gas, Karen Ayat at Natural Gas Europe replied: “The quantities of gas discovered thus far in the East Med are modest, and while they can enhance energy security for the parties concerned, they will

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not constitute an alternative source of supply for the EU due to commercial, technical and political difficulties.”

Images: (right) In March 2012, The Union of Agricultural Work Committees (UAWC) rallied on the Mediterranean Sea between the Gaza seaport and Beit Lahia to protest Israeli naval attacks on Palestinian fishermen and demand the return of fishing boats seized by Israel. Source: Joe Catron/Flickr (bottom) The mobile offshore drilling unit Development Driller III (near) is prepared to drill a relief well at the Deepwater Horizon. Source: Petty Officer 3rd Class Patrick Kelley/Deepwater Horizon Response/Flickr

If it is unlikely to meet the stated objective of PCIs, that is to provide energy security, then the East Med pipeline should not have been identified as a PCI. EU support for the development of a regional energy market including non-member states such as Turkey and Israel also raises questions on EU foreign policy in relation to international law.

The development of an eastern Mediterranean gas market has been held back by political instability and lack of cooperation

International Law Disregarded The Union's action on the international scene shall be guided by the principles which have inspired its own creation, development and enlargement, and which it seeks to advance in the wider world: […] the principles of equality and solidarity, and respect for the principles of the United Nations Charter and international law.

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So says the 2009 EU Lisbon Treaty. By this logic, EU funded energy initiatives, such as the Projects of Common Interest with non-EU states, should take into account membership of relevant international and regional conventions for conflict resolution and environmental protection – like the United Nations Convention on the Law

of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the Barcelona Convention for the Protection of the Sea (Barcelona Convention).

The development of an eastern Mediterranean gas market has been held back by political instability and lack of cooperation, issues which should not be disregarded by the EU in

its ambition for energy security. The EU must rely on bilateral cooperation with countries such as Turkey and Israel considering both have ongoing disputes with their respective neighbours over offshore reserves – and are also the only two eastern Mediterranean states not to have signed UNCLOS. In Turkey’s case the dispute is over the sovereignty of gas reserves within the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) of EU member state Cyprus, whose northern side is illegally occupied by Turkey. Cyprus has already agreed on EEZ boundaries with fellow UNCLOS signatories Lebanon and Egypt, but has dismissed Turkey’s call for sovereignty to be agreed on in relation to a bilateral political settlement.

This stalemate has held back Turkish plans for a pipeline from Israel to Turkey, as it would have to pass through Cyprus’ EEZ which Turkey does not recognize.

Israel has gone further in disregarding the sovereignty of its neighbor’s gas reserves.

Its illegal military blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007 can be explained by the Gaza

marine gas field. The presence of the Israeli navy in the Gaza EEZ, which regularly fires on fishermen who cannot work beyond 8-10 miles from the shore, also prevents Palestinians from accessing their offshore gas reserves. Before signing UNCLOS, the Palestinian Authority was already seeking to agree on its EEZ borders in the framework of UNCLOS, but Israel has refused to use the mechanism before national borders are settled.

Israel’s illegal military blockade of the Gaza Strip since 2007 can be explained by the Gaza marine gas field.

With Turkey and Israel not signed up to UNCLOS, or made use of its mechanisms, it can only indicate those states’ unwillingness to resolve their respective disputes with their neighbors under international law. These are issues which the EU should, but does not, address with these partners through foreign policy initiatives such as PCIs.

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No Protection for the Sea The offshore nature of the East Med pipeline raises questions on the extent to which environmental factors and in particular relevant EU directives are taken into account in PCIs, and how these might be applied where non-member states are involved.

Samuele Furfari, writing in favor of Mediterranean natural gas exploitation in a 2014 report by the Egmont Institute and Atlantic Council, highlighted the need for regulation ensuring environmental protection, based on the Barcelona Convention, to be respected in a regional gas market. While the Barcelona Convention has been signed by all states in the eastern Mediterranean,

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events in recent years show that it has been insufficient to compel signatory states to cooperate and behave responsibly.

Take for example the 2006 war between Israel and Lebanon, both of whom ratified the Barcelona Convention in 1977 and 2005. In July 2006, Israel’s air force bombed the coastal power plant at Jiyeh, south of Beirut, causing 15,000 tons of oil to spill into the sea along 150-210 km of coastline.

Prevention of ecological disasters and the ‘polluter pays’ principle are part of the convention, but Lebanon was not prepared for

dealing with such a disaster and Israel has repeatedly dismissed its responsibility to clean-up.

Israel refused to comply with the 2006 United Nations resolution 61/194 calling for it to compensate Lebanon for the environmental damage, and with the December 2014 UN General Assembly resolution calling on it to compensate Lebanon $850 million in damages.

Cooperation between stakeholders in a regional energy market is a fundamental element for regional stability and the prevention of environmental disasters. If international law and conventions such as UNCLOS and the Barcelona Convention are not respected in the region, the EU must itself ensure environmental protection, not only in theory but also in practice through foreign policy tools such as the PCIs.

EU Directives Ignored

the onshore TANAP PCI. More importantly, how would the EIA be applied to the offshore East Med PCI and Israel, which in any case has not signed the Espoo Convention?

According to regulation, PCIs may be bound to respect certain EU directives, such as the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) 2011/92, based on the 1991 UN Espoo Convention ratified by all EU member states and, among others, Azerbaijan – the source of offshore gas for the TANAP pipeline.

Highly relevant to the East Med pipeline, but not taken into account in the PCIs, is Directive 2013/30/EU on the safety of offshore oil and gas operations – the European Parliament’s response to the European Commission’s call for legislation in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico 2010 disaster caused

by British Petroleum (BP) negligence on its Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling platform.

The EIA requires that trans-boundary EU member states cooperate on an environmental impact assessment before building infrastructure. But since EU directives do not apply to non-member states such as Azerbaijan, it is unclear if the EIA applied to

It obliges EU member state operators and regulators to prevent and limit fallout of major accidents through risk assessment and disaster management preparation by attributing to them environmental liability, including the ‘polluter pays’ principle.

Images: (left) Oil skimming vessels work around the clock at the site of the British Petroleum oil leak in the Gulf of Mexico. Biloxi, US, 2010. Source: Spc. Casey Ware /Flickr (below) Oil spill on beach, Lebanon. Source: Ze Nahla

Cooperation between member states and coordination between regulators are fundamental provisions applicable to all parties.

To be effective in the Mediterranean, Directive 2013/30/EU would have to be applied to partner states and foreign operators. In the case of the East Med pipeline it should apply to Israeli regulators as well as those nonEuropean operators present in the region, such as the U.S. company Noble Energy and Israel’s Delek.

After initially agreeing to discuss the East Med PCI, when questioned on whether such directives would be taken into account and how they would include non-EU partners, European officials working on the PCI and the Greek Energy Forum would not comment.

As foreign policy tools, PCIs should abide by the Lisbon Treaty by taking into account international law and conventions for conflict resolution and environmental protection.

At the very least, they should enforce EU directives for environmental protection.

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Brussels:

Building the Future Brussels is known for making its buildings more ‘passive’ or energy efficient. Regulations are in place to meet the highest energy saving standards for constructing new buildings or retrofitting older structures. Brussels-Capital Region also has an effective mechanism in place to train professionals in more efficient building techniques, and has created incentives for young professionals to gain real experience in making more high energy performance buildings. From the training workshops a building contest between schools to new “passive” nurseries, Brussels is moving towards a more energy efficient future.

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Q&A

Céline Fremault

Minister of the Government of the Brussels-Capital Region, Responsible for Housing, Quality of Life, Environment and Energy

What are the main aspects of BrusselsCapital Region’s circular economy?

The financial, economic, social and climatic crises we are facing are opportunities for change that should be seized. We must have the audacity to completely rethink our development model. The overconsumption of goods and services is not a credible or desirable prospect. I wish to foster a development model that is more sustainable, and more humane; one in which economic growth is not an end in itself but a means for a better quality of life. Such are the priorities of the development model I wish to support with my roadmap for the circular economy.

Applied at the scale of the Brussels-Capital Region, this new model aims to direct the economy towards a rational and intelligent management of resources – ranging from raw materials to energy and including water, air and soils – by limiting externalities and developing shorter circuits of economic value chains that can benefit both our companies and our workers. This is also an opportunity for the citizens of Brussels to reconcile economy and environment without dogmatism through new ways of considering the city of tomorrow where the quality of life is ubiquitous, even for those least fortunate among us.

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How can renewables be better integrated in the energy system?

Today, in Brussels, we have very few mechanisms to support the development of sustainable energies. I am in the process of reforming the ‘green electricity promotion’ regulation dating from 2006 and which introduced the ‘green certificates’ system.

In terms of developing renewable energies, this mechanism is the most effective one the Brussels Region has at its disposal.

Practically speaking, for every electrical megawatt hour (Mwh) produced, a predefined number of green certificates are issued, which ensures the amortization and profitability of the installations within seven years, maximum. Guaranteeing the stability of the green certificates market remains my primary concern, given that over two thirds of the green electricity produced in Brussels benefits from the support of the certificates system.

In parallel, I have already submitted to the Government my new Air-Climate-Energy Plan, which puts forth different measures aimed at encouraging public institutions with renewable energies. When it comes to renewable energies, I intend to act as much on supply as on demand.

What is the importance of energy efficient buildings?

The European objectives to address climate change, to which Brussels ascribes, are extremely ambitious in matters of energy and CO2 reduction. Buildings and transportation are the only two sectors upon which Brussels can act to meet these objectives.

Renovating our existing infrastructure is thus a capital dimension, one in which we must put all of our necessary energy, otherwise there is a risk that the European objective will not be reached in Brussels.

This is why any new or assimilated building in Brussels must now meet the PEB 2015 (quasi-passive) norm.

Within this framework, it is now essential to take into account the energy performance and its impacts, as well as the quality and durability of the materials used, plus the building’s life cycle, which must correspond

to the needs of the city’s different functions.

Buildings are our primary living spaces: a house, an office, a nursery or school for our children. This is why we must guarantee the best possible quality in terms of energy performance, management of energy flows, or acoustic insulation.

2. The passive sustainable building contest with schools - 47 students and 18 teachers from eight technical and vocational secondary schools worked with La Cambre-Horta (ULB) architecture students on a sustainable, passive and modular building project that is transportable.

How to communicate better with citizens?

www.cdr-brc.be

There is a certain paradox we can see today: more and more citizen initiatives are being developed while a large majority of the population still gives too little attention to environmental and climate questions.

Since July 2014, I chose to meet the challenge of brining citizens and companies closer to environmental issues. Since then, I have had the opportunity of talking with committed people, who give their time, who engage and search together in order to transform their living conditions towards more sustainable and durable forms that respect our environment. Working on projects together with other citizens creates connections and a dynamic that gives an impetus to collective action, which allows us to go further, to get behind the same objective together.

3. The training platform of the Confédération Construction Bruxelles-Capitale (CCB-C) - a platform set up to analyze companies’ training needs for their employees as well as to develop relevant training modules and to facilitate financial help. www.confederationconstruction.be 4. Brussels Retrofit XL - a platform aimed at sharing technology from research centers to companies in Brussels. It comprises 11 research projects with 13 teams from Brussels universities and research centers. www.brusselsretrofitxl.be 5. Opalis – a website addressed to contractors and architects who wish to buy or sell reusable materials. www.opalis.be 6. Baticréa - a specialized cooperative for all professions linked to the building sector. www.baticrea.be

We must have the audacity to completely rethink our development model. The overconsumption of goods and services is not a credible or desirable prospect.

What are some concrete examples of sustainable projects in the BrusselsCapital Region?

1. The sustainable building week - a plan that will allow participating schools to both conceive and complete a passive construction project that corresponds to sustainable building criteria.

Image (pp68-69): The CDR Construction workshop in Anderlecht provides training in passive building techniques such as insulation and air tightness.

Source: Michel Petillo (left) Céline Fremault

www.cdr-brc.be

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Towards a Circular Economy Among the concrete examples cited by Minister Céline Fremault to support sustainable construction in Brussels, there are numerous activities put in place within the “Alliance Emploi-Environnement” (EnvironmentEmployment Alliance).

Launched in 2010 by the Government of Brussels-Capital Region, the EnvironmentEmployment Alliance is an innovative and inclusive approach that aims to make the act of improving the environment an actual source of economic opportunity and of job creation for the inhabitants of Brussels. The project goes beyond classic consultation and participation by closely associating all the stakeholders to work together in developing green sectors and sustainable jobs.

In Brussels, the building sector represents 25,000 salaried and independent jobs (2011 numbers) and accounts for 70% of the greenhouse gas emissions, thus constituting the

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greatest opportunity for energy savings.

Through the 64 concrete actions planned in the Alliance, the Brussels-Capital Region pledged to help the building sector respond to the growing sustainable construction market.

After four years of impleIn Brussels, the building sector mentation, the Alliance’s first axis (sustainable represents 25,000 salaried and construction) has genindependent jobs (2011 numbers) erated real and significant effects in the sector. and accounts for 70% of the As of now, public and greenhouse gas emissions private operators recognize one another: several solid partnerships have been established

by Brussels Environment in collaboration around concrete projects, each being aware with the Brussels Reference Center for the of the challenges of sustainable building as Construction Center (CDR/BRC). well as the companies’ and sector’s needs.

This type of networking generates real value.

Considering the challenges in Brussels, identified in the new Declaration of the Regional On the next pages, you can discover the Policy (2014), including the improvement of “Passive Sustainable Building Contest”, run the quality of life and economic development,

job creation, training and education, the objectives of the Environment-Employment Alliance remain primordial today. The future Regional Roadmap for the Circular Economy will bring a clear vision to orient the process of co-development inherent in the Environment-Employment Alliance:

Environment-Employment Alliance will pursue this path in Brussels. As this roadmap is one of the commitments of the 2025 Strategy, it will bring better coordination and coherence to the actions of the other policies in Brussels-Capital Region.

(left): A pilot project drawing by Reginald van Oldeneel for the Passive Sustainable Building Contest. Source: CDR (top): Brussels view. (bottom): The Passive Sustainable Building Contest offers students the opportunity to gain real work experience. Source: Michel Petillo

The opportunity exists to reformulate economic development to be more equal and properous for human development, to improve the quality of life in Brussels (for citizens and the city alike) and thus respond to the main environmental and societal challenges confronting urbanization today. The Brussels Government chose to seize this opportunity by pursuing the Circular Economy.

The Circular Economy was the central theme of an international symposium in Brussels at the end of May 2015; this economy aims to highlight the preservation of resources and to diminish the impact of respective sectors on the environment while creating economic opportunities. From now on, the

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The Passive Sustainable Building Contest An interview with Julien Holef, Project Manager of the “Passive Sustainable Building Contest” for CDR/BRC. “The Passive Sustainable Building Contest was carried out in association with the Employment-Environment Alliance and really took shape in September 2013. The aim is to allow students from Brussels building schools to try their hand at completing a real-life building that will be used as a training room.”

Beyond the fact that it is a sustainable building that can be taken apart and transported, the specificity of this competition lies in the variety of people taking part, and in the possibility for the participants to understand and

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take into account the particular challenges construction trades faces.

“Following the project from beginning to end, seeing people who take pleasure in building this pilot building and sharing their enthusiasm, that’s what I am most passionate about,” says Julien. “The schools’ engagement was total, from the students but also from the teachers and the administration.

“It’s a project that one can’t carry alone and it’s thanks to everyone’s participation that we will achieve something that the students can be proud of.”

The participants included 47 students, future building professionals from eight schools in Brussels, and future drawers and architecture students. Combined into two multidisciplinary teams, they each presented their best possible building project.

In February 2015, the participants started building the pavilion in the workshop, then the roofing was completed as well as the module’s partitions. The next big step will be the assembly of the different elements. The project will finish in June 2015. The passive module will then be taken apart, transported and reassembled at another site to serve as a training space.

The participants included 47 students, future building professionals from eight schools in Brussels, and future drawers and architecture students. Combined into two multidisciplinary teams, they each presented their best possible building project.

The Passive Sustainable Construction Contest is a unique opportunity for students and teachers to try their hand at sustainable construction, but also to learn to work together while respecting each one’s tasks and following the construction site’s chronology.

For more information, visit: www.cdr-brc.be

‘Passive’ Nurseries: Exemplary Buildings for Future Generations The Brussels ‘demographic shock’ entails major implications regarding educational, cultural, sports and other civil amenities.

The Brussels Statistics institute expects an additional 32,500 pupils by 2020 and estimates a need for 79 new schools by 2015. This is quite a challenge.

air leakage between the flats (without any thermal consequences), the flats were tested simultaneously by a blower door.

The nursery requires 13 kWh/m2 per year and the flats between 6 and 12 kWh/m2.

Image (left): First meeting between the conceivers and the builders of the projects in February 2014.

Source: CDR (top): Maquette presented to the jury of Phase 1 in June 2014. Source: Nicolas Neefs/CDR (bottom): Saint-François nursery. Source: Yvan Glavie

The Brussels-Capital Region’s call for projects ‘Exemplary Buildings’ (Batex) has encouraged new schools and nurseries to be built as energy-efficiently as possible.

In 2011, a thirteenth nursery adopted the ‘passive’ building standard in Brussels; most nurseries applying these standards use renewable energy sources via solar thermal collectors.

Resulting from competition organized as part of the Méridien Quarter Contracts, the Rue Saint-François nursery, located in Saint-Josse-ten-Noode, has 30 beds and three apartments, and was designed

by O2 Architects. The architects opted for a concrete structure, which gives rigidity and inertia, which is complemented with wooden frame walls assembled and insulated on site.

Airtightness was achieved to neutralize

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Sand Beasts For over 20 years, Theo Jansen has been busy perfecting a “new form of life”. Powered solely by the wind, Jansen’s creatures are made to walk over the beach of the Dutch coast. With dozens of legs, these skeleton-like kinetic sculptures move in ways reminiscent of large insects. Unlike other robots what is striking about the ‘Strandbeests’ (beasts of the beach) is the way they walk in irregular spurts as if thinking, or hesitating, before deciding to go back or forth and keep going about their busy lifes.

Writer: Filipa Rosa

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Born in 1948 in the Netherlands, Theo Jansen began a physics degree but went on to pursue life as an artist. He was a painter until the nineties when the idea of building a creature that would save the Dutch coast from the threat of rising sea levels came to mind. This is when he began working on the ‘Strandbeest’, – a self-propelled creature that would set out with the task of bringing sand from the water’s edge so as to preserve, ad aeternum, the seaside dunes that work as a protective barrier to the Low Countries.

Since then, many generations of beasts have followed each other. Given the right amount of time (“millions of years”) Theo believes he could make the ‘Strandbeests’ arrive at a very sophisticated level of evolution. He likes to imagine that one day

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these species will be able to live, survive and evolve by themselves in herds on the beaches of Holland.

Theo uses ‘poor’ materials such as electricity PVC tubes, lemonade bottles or sails to build ingenious mechanisms that bring his sculptures to life. The principles chosen to move and control these robots seem to be

directly inspired by those of nature. Instead of wheels that we seldom see in nature ‘Strandbeests’ use a system similar to animals’ legs with joints and tendons and muscles. Mimicking other biological principles like lungs, wings or nerves, Theo’s creations, although aesthetically far from any recognizable animal, awaken our sense of empathy.

“Over time, these skeletons have become increasingly better at surviving the elements such as storms and water, and eventually I want to put these animals out in herds on the beaches, so they will live their own lives.”

– Theo Jansen

Each generation has a name and a series of characteristics related to their stage of evolution and with the artist's efforts to improve the mechanisms and systems that will assist these creatures' survival instincts. The periods where these generations evolve have names too: it all started with the Gluton Period (1990-91), which saw the birth of Animaris Vulgaris made out of tubes and tape. However this first creature could only move its legs while lying on its back. It was only with the Chorda Epoch that Animaris Currens Vulgaris developed the ability to stand and walk.

Some Strandbeest generations (a non extensive list): Source: The Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) which will be featuring a Theo Jansen's exhibition in September 2015. www.pem.org/sites/strandbeest.

Animaris Ordis (2006) Evolutionary Highlights : The walking unit for current ‘Strandbeests’ Description : Animaris Ordis walks under wind power, using a sail. It can also be pushed. Connect two Ordises, and you have Animaris Turgentia Vela, about two meters tall and one meter long.

Animaris Excelsus (2006) Evolutionary Highlight : Wheel mechanism Description : This beast is now considered a fossil. When it was alive, Animaris Excelsus could exert a force a hundred times its weight. Jansen has described it as "brains, wind-tank stomach, winch structure, and hammer, everything driven by a wheel mechanism" and calls it "the tall one" (it's about two and a half meters tall).

Animaris Adulari (2012) Evolutionary Highlights : Sweat glands and nose feelers Description : This is the first ‘Strandbeest’ with sweat glands—water distributed by pressure through the beest's joints, so sand won't jam them. Animaris Adulari can walk two ways: powered by wind or pushed by a human. Its nose feelers can detect wet sand, letting the beest know that it's near water. This is one of the smaller beests (about one meter tall and five meters long). It moves low to the ground and, according to Jansen, it looks "like herds of dogs on the beach."

Animaris Apodiacula (2012-13) Evolutionary Highlights : Outrigger poles

“Now the animals have a way of storing the wind. There are wings which go up and down in the wind, and there are pumps connected to those wings which pump air into bottles at high pressure. The pressed air can drive muscles – ski poles that lift the animal and help push it over the soft sand.”

– Theo Jansen

Description : Animaris Apodiacula was the first ‘Strandbeest’ with effective outrigger poles, an evolutionary advancement that made larger beasts more stable. This feature allows a beast to move without toppling. Animaris Apodiacula no longer moves and is considered a fossil.

Animaris Suspendisse (2014) Evolutionary Highlights : Wind stomachs and the ability to sense and walk away from the rising tide Description : The biggest ‘Strandbeest’ to date (four meter high), Suspendisse is equipped to move on its own, using stored air. Sails direct air into pistons, which in turn compress it into plastic bottles—Jansen calls these receptacles "wind stomachs". If wind dies down on the beach, this beest can retreat from the rising tide under its own power.

Animaris Turgentia Vela (2014) Evolutionary Highlights : Sails Description : Combine two Animaris Ordises, and you have Animaris Turgentia Vela. It operates by means of sails in low wind (about 15 kilometers per hour, or seven knots).

Images: (pp76-77) Apodiacula, Silent Beach, The Netherlands, 2013. Source: Theo Jansen (left) Animaris Percipiere and thunder. May 2005. Source: Loek van der Klis

Nowadays, ‘Strandbeests’ are not only capable of walking but also, reversing direction when encountering water or an obstacle; storing pressurized air which they can use when the wind is not strong enough to get back to the dunes; or even anchoring themselves to the sand when sensing a storm approaching.

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In the middle of each Strandbeest is a rotating crankshaft. This rotation is converted by eleven rods into a walking movement. The smoothness and success of the movement is dependent on the ratio between the lengths of the eleven rods. To calculate the ideal ratios between the rods’ lengths Theo Jansen developed a computer model that would generate 1500 legs with rods of random length to assess which of these would result with the ideal walking. The best 100 lengths the computer assessed were “awarded the privilege of reproduction�. After many generations of leg combinations and associations and new computer calculations the result was eleven numbers denoting the ideal lengths of the required rods. This is how Animaris Currens Vulgaris legs were

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created and how the first beach animal was able to walk. Here are the numbers responsible for the way Theo Jansen’s creatures walk their walk: a = 38, b = 41.5, c = 39.3, d = 40.1, e = 55.8, f = 39.4, g = 36.7, h = 65.7, i = 49, j = 50, k = 61.9, l=7.8, m=15.

“Mine is not a straight path like an engineer’s, it’s not A to B. I make a very curly road just by the restrictions of goals and materials. A real engineer would probably solve the problem differently, maybe make an aluminum robot with motor and electric sensors and all that. But the solutions of engineers are often much alike, because human brains are much alike. Everything we think can in principle be thought by someone else. The real ideas, as evolution shows, come about by chance. Reality is very creative. Maybe that is why the Strandbeests appear to be alive, and charm us.”

– Theo Jansen for The New Yorker Images: Exhibition “Generator Strandbeest” in De Electriciteitsfabriek, The Hague, Netherlands, May 2014. Source: Franklin Heijnen/Flickr Drawing: Leg system. Source: Theo Jansen

Each Autumn, Theo Jansen starts working on a new beast; when the development of the previous animal is at its end it’s declared extinct and pushed onto the boneyard. In the boneyard the species 2015 Summer seem to fossilize exposed to the sun Beach Sessions and rain. The artist calls these the fossils of his extinct species, which During the summer you can witness are often exhibited in galleries Theo Jansen’s new beast, Animaris Duabus Caudis, walk on the beach near The Hague. There will also be a talk (in English) and museums alike. by the artist about his work at the beach club.

Before letting the new beasts out onto the beach they first train their steps on a sandpit. By May/ June, the new beast will finally be ready to enter its habitat where the public can watch as it begins its life strolling along the coast.

However the artist cannot guarantee the very specific wind conditions needed to achieve the perfect result as the one you can see in some videos on the internet. (Wind speed: 20 < 30 Km/h; parallel to the coast).

Because of the expected large numbers of visitors you are required to book one of the five sessions that will run between June and August.

To know more about Theo Jansen's work visit the website: www.strandbeest.com And make sure to type in Strandbeest on Youtube to see these wonders for yourself!

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