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Green strategies for renewable energy sources work at four different levels, said Wim van Acker, managing partner of Roland Berger Strategy Consultants. “First you have to check whether you can avoid consumption of energy in the first place,” van Acker said during a Lunch and Learn Series discussion sponsored by the student-led Management Consulting Group at Charles M. Harper Center October 5.
“Then you have to try to save energy, so you have to be efficient,” he added. “Then you have to pay attention to how you generate this power, using renewable sources. And then you have to offer green products for not only citizens, but also for business customers.”
Europe is decades ahead of North America both in the mindset of consumers and in development of such energy sources, van Acker said. However, the United States has the opportunity to catch Europe because it has experienced many successes and failures, he said.
Among the successes in Europe are the introduction and promotion of wind energy in several countries, the use of cogeneration to help create almost half the generated power in northern Europe, the use of biomass waste incineration for 10 to 15 percent of the fuel in densely populated countries such as the Netherlands, and the ongoing implementation of increased efficiencies and new technologies in the use of coal, van Acker said.
Among the significant failures are the inability to make solar cells sustainable, the collapse of the carbon trading scheme, and the limits of hydropower plants due to space and water shortages, he said. “Some of the failures have occurred in the most idealistic parts of green energy management,” van Acker said. “That’s really a pity, but it’s fact. In the U.S. we can learn from those failures. For example, some of the best performing companies in CO2 output were the worst performing companies in terms of their future plans.”
About 30 years ago, European countries issued a seven-point hierarchy for managing waste that has significantly reduced or reused waste, he said. “Number one is to try to consume so you don’t produce any waste,” van Acker said. “The second thing is if you can’t avoid using something, try to recycle the product. Number three is if you can’t reuse the product, try to reuse as much as possible of the materials used to make the product.”
The final steps suggest burning items for power regeneration or donating them for use as part of road construction, he said. A landfill is the final solution, only if no other possible use is available, van Acker said. “This plan has been used by government agencies to make the population more conscious of what they’re doing,” he said.
Fuel mixes will become one of the key issues in the next two decades, van Acker said. The best fuel must be affordable, reliable, and clean, but no single fuel or power – including hydro, nuclear, wind, biomass, solar, gas, oil, or coal – achieves all three criteria successfully, he said.
“There is no holy grail, or optimum fuel,” van Acker said. “The real issue is finding the best mix. That mix depends on local circumstances. For example, many people in North America argue power generation with natural gas is much cleaner than coal. But the world’s natural gas reserves are in Venezuela, Bolivia, Qatar, and Russia. You’d have to ship it to North America. Imagine the worst-case scenario of a natural gas explosion on a large-scale ship.”
– Phil Rockrohr