Marshall Islands sets ambitious post 2020 climate change targets, urges Australia to lead

The nation's Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) was submitted to the United Nations as part of it's commitment to the climate summit in Paris in December 2015. It reflects a commitment to reduce emissions by 32% below 2010 levels by 2025, and a further indicative target to reduce emissions to 45% below 2010 levels by 2030. The Marshall Islands longer-term vision is to move towards net zero emissions by 2050, or earlier if possible.

Speaking to The Age newspaper, Foreign Minister Tony De Brum urged Australia to also take a leadership role and set ambitious climate targets.

"It is important that Australian people understand we are not just playing footsie politics with the leaders of our big neighbour to the south," Mr de Brum said. "We are really serious about its need to contribute to our safety and future security." Brum told the Age.

Christopher J. Loeak, the President of the Republic of the Marshall Islands, said in a media statement:

"I am proud that, despite the climate disasters hitting our shores with increasing regularity, we remain committed to showing the way in the transition to a low-carbon economy. We may be small, but we exemplify the new reality that going low carbon is in everyone’s interests. It improves our economy, our security, our health and our prosperity, particularly in the Pacific and more broadly in the developing world."

"With these ambitious targets, we are on track to nearly halve our emissions between 2010 and2030, en route to becomingemissions-free by the middle of the century. The science says this is what’s required globally. We have now joined the United States, the European Union, Ethiopia and others in setting a long-term decarbonization strategy. When added together in Paris, these strategies will stamp fossil fuels with an expiry date."

"Having an absolute economy-wide target means no-one has to look into a crystal ball to understand what it means for how much CO2goes into the atmosphere. Unlike ‘below business-as-usual’ and ‘GDP intensity’ targets, our numbers don’t rely on unknown variables like size of population and future economic growth. This is the simplest and most robust type of target that a country can adopt. It says ‘we mean business’, and we’re not continuing with ‘business as usual’."

The Marshall Islands is one of the most vulnerable country to climate impacts from rising sea levels and extreme weather events. It's population of about 70,000 people are scattered across 24 low lying atolls in the North Pacific with the average elevation of 2 metres above mean sea level. Typhoons and storm surge are a major disaster threat made worse with projected intensification of tropical cyclones with climate change and more intense and frequent El Nino's predicted later this century as the planet warms.

The country is already implementing urgent measures to build resilience, improve disaster risk preparedness and response, and adapt to the increasingly serious adverse impacts of climate change from extreme weather events and rising seas.

According to the INDC, almost 90% of national energy needs are currently satisfied by imported petroleum products, particularly in electricity generation, sea and land transport, and fuels for lighting and cooking especially on the outer islands. Since 2008 there has been a concerted effort to increase investment in solar as part of the existing diesel powered grids on the main urban islands, supplemented by demand side energy efficiency improvements.

Under these new targets emissions from the electricity generation sector would reduce by 55 per cent in 2025, and 66 per cent in 2030. For transportation, including domestic shipping, the reduction would be 16 per cent in 2025 and 27 per cent in 2030. Reducing emissions from processing waste would amount to 20 per cent by 2030. Other sectors, including cooking and lighting, would contyribute a 15 per cent reduction by 2030.

The INDC submission mentions the potential for developing Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion technology to make the Marshall Islands largely energy self-sufficient.

Marshall Islands interested in Oceam Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC)

Remote island nations where most fossil fuels need to be imported will particularly benefit as the power it displaces will also result in a substantial economic saving. For example, the cost of importing petroleum based fossil fuels for the Marshall Islands amounted to USD 40.7 million in 2009, or 26 per cent of the nation's GDP. Of those petroleum based products, roughly 69 percent were for the land transport sector and 27 percent for the electricity sector.

An OTEC power station of 20-30MW capacity supplemented by other renewables could effectively replace the existing 2 diesel powered power stations (Facilities details) at the capitol of Majuro run by the Marshalls Energy Company.

As well as providing clean renewable electrical power, there are several other benefits that this technology can provide, including:

• desalinated water - useful for island nations as an alternative source to freshwater lenses that become contaminated due to sea level rise and storm surges
• produce hydrogen, ammonia or methanol that can be readily transportable as fuels
• cold water piped ashore for use for refrigeration and air-conditioning
• as a cooling system for soils used for intensive greenhouse agriculture to enhance ability to grow temperate crops
• enhancing aquaculture and mariculture through supplying nutrient rich deepwater
• enabling seawater mining to extract lithium and other rare elements

Unlike solar and wind which are intermittent renewable energy sources, OTEC plants have a high energy production capacity factor (see wikipedia) estimated by IRENA of 90 to 95 per cent able to provide baseload power. According to US Energy Information Administration data annual capacity in 2014 for wind was 33.9 per cent, solar photovoltaic was 27.8 per cent, and solar thermal 19.5 per cent.

The Marshall Islands is ideally suited to this technology being located in the tropics just 7 degrees north of the equator, with deepwater close to shore that provides a stable water temperature differential of up to 24 degrees Celsius.

In fact the Marshall Islands is located at one of the best sites for maximum temperature differential on the planet, allowing up to 30 per cent greater operating efficiency than the OTEC pilot plants tested in the seas near Hawaii.

Initial interest in this technology in the Marshall Islands occurred in 2009 in regard to development of a 10 MW OTEC plant which would also produce 2 million gallons/day freshwater. In 2012 energy experts from Japan briefed Marshall Islands President Christopher Loeak and his Cabinet on this technology.

According to Giles Parkinson writing in August 2013 - Atoll nations at cutting edge of climate and clean energy - the Marshall Islands Foreign Affairs Minister Tony De Brum believes a 20-30MW plant could be in operation before the end of the decade making the nation largely energy self-sufficient and earning income through a power supply agreement with the large US military base the nation hosts.

Marshall Islands Foreign Minister told the Guardian in November 2013, "We're exploring OTEC production. We have a grant from the World Bank, and we want to build an OTEC plant to provide electricity below 25 (US) cents, maybe as low as 16 cents, per kilowatt. It's a new technology, but that's what we need. Eventually we want to produce hydrogen for export. We want to turn around our dependence on petroleum."

The Marshall Islands is one of a group of eight small island countries that export 54 per cent of the world's raw tuna. De Brum said "That's a huge economic bundle that can make our countries prepared for eventualities. In order to exploit that, we need power and water. We can get power from OTEC, which will help our fish exports and will probably make us exporters of energy in a decade or two."

If the Marshall Islands is to develop their ocean thermal energy potential, they will need substantial support internationally to bring this project to fruition. There are a handful of private companies that have developed some expertise in this technology, including: Bell Pirie Power Corp., Bluerise Delft, DCNS France, Energy Island Ltd., Lockheed Martin, Offshore Infrastructure Associates, Inc., Ocean Thermal Energy Cooperation, OTEC International, SBM Offshore, and Xenesys.

While the promise of ocean thermal energy remains, the large up front costs involved in development of commercial scale facilities remains a stumbling block for private corporations to develop without additional low interest financing support, according to this report by Mark Stricherz from December 2014.

Once initial 10MW commercial scale plants are in operation, we are likely to see this technology rolled out further and benefit from economies of scale with operation of larger sized power stations in the range of 50MW to 100Mw.

John Englart (@takvera) and his teenage daughter Tarryn Clancy (@climateteen) will be travelling to Paris to report on the United Nations COP21 climate talks (including for Australian citizen journalist site Nofibs), and in particular what role Australia plays in those negotiations.