US professor shares expertise on climate change

Oct 04, 2010 News

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The University of Guyana has teamed up with yet another partner in the effort to bring the Climate Change to mainstream audiences – this time their efforts are being aided by the American Embassy in Guyana.
The event was a lecture by Professor Gerald Braun, Associate Director of the University of California, Davis Energy Institute. The lecture was centered on ‘Climate Change and Renewable Energy’ and presented a synopsis of the research and initiatives California is calling on in their fight to halt the consequences of Climate Change.

On the University end, the programme comes out of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences (SEES) and is part of SEES’ mandate to bring scientific information that will impact the lives of the greater Guyanese population to their attention. On the other side of the partnership is the American Embassy. Professor Braun’s presence here is under a programme called the US Speaker and Specialist Programme. This project provides funding for experts from the US to conduct lectures, workshops and seminars as well as to serve as consultants to those professional audiences in foreign countries where the knowledge being shared by these experts has special relevance.
For a country such as Guyana, poised on the brink of launching a massive operation to free the country, or at least significantly lighten its dependence on fossil fuels, the information disseminated by Professor Braun was well received by the audience of mostly University staffers and SEES students. Present in the audience was Vice Chancellor of the University, Professor Lawrence Carrington, who welcomed the American Embassy’s involvement in the endeavour.  He pointed out that since late 2009, the University has collaborated with the British High Commission here in Guyana on a number of similar events. There were lectures and panel discussions for the Private Sector as well as the general public and a number of speakers drawn from a variety of sources were called upon to share their expertise in the issues surrounding climate change and its consequences on Guyana.
Professor Braun has been undertaking Renewable Energy Research for years at the UC Davis Energy Institute, a task that has seen significant support from what is currently seen as “one of the most forward-thinking states in the union on the issues surrounding climate change” in the words of Professor Carrington. Professor Braun discussed the effects that a rise in global temperature will have on his state, noting that by 2050 it is expected that the temperature will increase by two to five percent, precipitation will drop by some 12 – 35 percent and sea levels will rise some 12 – 18 inches as well.
He spoke of the policy drivers behind his home state’s push to adopt ‘greener’ energy measures. There are a number of new requirements written into the State Legislation circa 2006, most of them technical in nature, but they have been time lined to reach 2020 and follow the basic trend of ‘less bad, more good’. What that translates to is that emissions must be reduced while more of the energy used by the state needs to come from greener sources. There are also provisions to not only reduce emissions commercially but residentially as well with the ultimate aim being “zero net energy”. A ‘Zero Net’ home is one where the energy consumption of the home is equal to its energy production. Although it seems contradictory to those of us who know that energy should come from the power plants and not the other way around, the solution is a simple one. The installation of devices such as solar panels in homes and commercial buildings in California has now been written into the construction laws of California. According to the policies of 2006, all new residential buildings should be zero net energy by 2020, while commercial builders must conform to that challenge by the year 2030.
One of the more interesting policies that the Professor mentioned was Senate Bill One of 2006 or SB -1 of 2006, which demands that builder’s offer Solar Generation as part of their building options. The programme goes under the slogan ‘One Million Solar Roofs in California by 2016!’ and even offers as compensation the option of net metering where residents do not have to pay for energy from the power grid equivalent to that generated by their solar panels.
Professor Braun also spoke of a number or other energy alternatives that could be used – wind, water, thermal and biofuels among them, but more importantly he discussed the feasibility of these options. The UC Davis Energy Institute has, according to the Professor, been engaged in a number of experiments and studies to find out just that about these energy options. The Institute’s findings indicate which of the options can be employed economically at a residential level and which ones are best left for community scale applications. Other areas of research include the meshing of multiple sources of renewable energy to meet consumer demands. Here, Professor Braun indicated that a large part of the funding was coming from a seemingly unlikely source–the power companies, the ones using fossil fuels.

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