2009-12-15 - ABB is working with utilities and international business groups to find ways of protecting the environment while sustaining economic growth.
ABB is engaged in the Combat Climate Change initiative (3C) together with the Swedish utility, Vattenfall, and other energy-related companies. During 2009, ABB contributed to 3C's Business Leaders Roundtable in New Delhi and Mumbai, India, with the purpose of engaging a broader range of Indian business leaders in the climate debate.
ABB contributed to 3C's 'commit to combat climate change' initiative, a call to policymakers that was released at the 'major economies meeting' in the summer 2009. The company also engaged in climate discussions with EU leaders in Brussels and U.S. politicians in the U.S. Senate.
ABB is a member of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, a coalition of 180 international companies founded in 1995, and is also one of 40 companies on the Business Environmental Leadership Council of the Pew Center on Global Climate Change.
The groups are looking for ways to solve the conundrum of helping people in the developing world raise their living standards while slowing emissions of greenhouse gases that have induced climate change.
Energy and climate change study
ABB's engagement is helping to support research such as the World Business Council's study on low-carbon technologies for the power sector. The study shows that enough low-carbon technologies exist to help the world avert damaging climate change, but that strong policy is needed to support their rapid deployment.
The report recognizes that some of these changes will take time. It concludes that collaborative action with governments and other stakeholders is the only way to succeed in creating a low-carbon, sustainable energy future.
"It will take years, if not decades to create substitutes for current fuels, but there are many things we can do today," said Peter Terwiesch, chief technology officer at ABB. "Using today's state-of-the-art technologies we can significantly upgrade the efficiency with which we generate, transmit, distribute, and use electricity.
"Not only does that lead to immediate conservation of precious fossil fuel resources and to lower emissions, it is also typically a much better economic return compared to adding new generation capacity, or to continuing to pay high energy bills. This is why at ABB, we often talk of energy efficiency measures as the other alternative fuel."
Global price for emissions
ABB and the companies that have signed up to Vattenfall's initiative on climate change are pressing for the introduction of a global price for emissions of greenhouse gases so that these can be traded worldwide with minimal impact on competitiveness.
They are also urging governments, producers and customers to be open to new solutions and technological developments to ensure the most efficient use of resources and that the options are not limited to those now available.
One of the options for enhancing energy efficiency that ABB has been exploring in Sweden involved testing the financial benefits of connecting small solar power facilities to the electricity grid instead of using the electricity produced in the buildings they are attached to.
ABB, utilities Vattenfall and Malarenergi, solar energy group NAPS and others set up a 25-panel plant producing a maximum of 3 kilowatts (kW), the first solar plant in Sweden to sell all its production to an electricity trader.
There were no technical problems but the experiment found that a solar plant would need to be two to three times larger just to cover the cost of feeding power into the grid, providing a basis for further public debate about the future of solar power.