Environment Ministry officials on Wednesday presented the first phase of
Costa Rica’s plan to be completely carbon-neutral by 2021.
By David Boddiger for the Tico Times
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| Costa Rica is the only tropical country to boast more than half of its
territory is covered in forests. Officials plan to convert land used in
cattle ranching and coffee farming into more forests by planting 7
million trees in coming years as part of its efforts to achieve carbon
neutrality by 2021.Lindsay Fendt |
It may have been a politically ambitious pronouncement
when ex-President Oscar Arias declared in 2009 – his last year in office
– that Costa Rica would become the world’s first carbon-neutral country
by 2021.
Other countries also declared their intentions of
becoming the first carbon-neutral nation, but have since scaled back
those promises or rolled back their target dates. Since 2009, observers
have noted that Costa Rica likely will join them, eventually pushing
back its goal by five to 10 years.
In June 2011, Arias admonished
his successor, President Laura Chinchilla, and her administration for
being soft on carbon neutrality (TT, July 8, 2011). Officials responded
by saying the date of 2021 – the country’s 200th anniversary – wasn’t
important, as long as Costa Rica committed to reaching its goal of zero
net carbon emissions.
Still, in spite of setbacks in the past three years, Costa Rica
is in a good position to meet those goals, once a plan is set in
motion, environmental officials said this week.
On Wednesday,
Environment Minister René Castro made public the first phase of the
administration’s carbon-neutral strategy, which focuses on reducing
emissions in two key sectors: energy and agriculture.
Following
negotiations with players in both sectors, it appears the government is
further along with the former than the latter.
Utopia or Reality?
Last
week, environment officials and researchers participated in a forum
titled “Carbon Neutrality: Utopia or Reality?” They sought to answer the
question on everyone’s mind: Is carbon neutrality possible for Costa
Rica?
Following that forum, a sense of optimism has spread through
the Environment Ministry (MINAET) and the universities participating in
the groundbreaking research required to analyze the country’s current
emissions and set realistic goals to achieve zero carbon emissions. The
ministry is relying on experts at the University of Costa Rica and the
National University (UNA) to help design their strategy.
“The
numbers in black and white show [carbon neutrality] really is possible
for the country. It’s not easy, but it’s possible,” said Marianella
Feoli, executive director of the University of Costa Rica’s
Fundecooperación para el Desarrollo Sostenible (Cooperative Fund for
Sustainable Development), and a researcher collaborating with MINAET on
the carbon-reduction strategy.
Costa Rica currently emits about
14.6 million tons of CO2 annually. By 2021, that number will reach 21.7
million tons, and in order for Costa Rica to reach carbon neutrality, it
will have to offset or reduce emissions by 5.8 million tons in the next
decade.
Based on data from the World Bank, which calculates the
intensity of CO2 released per unit of production in each country, Costa
Rica is one of the best countries in terms of CO2 per unit produced.
According to Castro, despite economic and population growth, Costa
Rica’s CO2 output per unit of production has decreased from 200
kilograms per unit to 170 kg in the past few years.
The country
has another tool: its forests. A recent study concluded that 52 percent
of Costa Rica is forested, up from 21 percent in 1987 thanks to a series
of policies over the decades to invest in forestry conservation. That
means the country has a large percentage of new, carbon-capturing forest
(31 percent in the past 25 years), Feoli said.
Continuing that
trend, the Costa Rican government, in collaboration with the National
Forestry Financing Fund, is working with landowners to plant 7 million
trees on cattle and coffee farms. The trees eventually will be milled
for the national lumber industry and replaced with new forests.
Landowners are offered an attractive 6 percent, 25-year credit for the
project.
Buses and taxis
The
biggest shot Costa Rica has at achieving short- and mid-term goals on
reducing carbon emissions is by focusing on the country’s public
transport sector. Spearheading research on how to do that is Leiner
Vargas, of the National University’s International Center for Economic
Policy for Sustainable Development.
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Popular taxi stands like this one in San José’s Central Park could be carbon-neutral in two years.
Lindsay Fendt
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Plans already are formed to reduce emissions by focusing on
Costa Rica’s fleet of public buses and private taxis. According to
Vargas, Costa Ricans could begin to see dramatic changes in public
transportation within two years, as buses and taxis are converted to
zero-emission vehicles through a mixed policy that relies on market
incentives and stricter emissions regulations.
“What’s going to
happen is we are going to convince 20-25 percent of the [bus and taxi]
fleet to move to carbon-neutral alternatives in the next two years,”
Vargas told The Tico Times.
Researchers at UNA, in collaboration
with the United Nations Development Program and other groups, are
calculating the costs involved in converting the public transportation
sector to cleaner technologies, mapping areas of heaviest traffic, and
building models to convince bus and taxi company owners that converting
to new technologies can be profitable within six years.
On the
government’s end, officials working with the Public Transportation
Council (CPT) will add tougher emissions standards to concessions for
bus and taxi operators, starting in January 2013. Renewing concessions
will require operators to implement tougher standards on sound and air
pollution, Castro said.
“The task is to design the instruments
needed for taxis to really reduce or change from a gasoline-based
vehicle to one that reduces the carbon footprint,” Vargas said. “If we
don’t take steps to change the fleet of buses and taxis, the process [of
achieving carbon neutrality] will take 200 years in the public
transportation sector.”
According to an extensive cost-benefit
analysis of the industry, the most profitable alternative for taxi
companies is natural gas. The second-best option is liquefied petroleum
gas, or LPG, followed by electric or hybrid vehicles.
For buses,
the structure is different: Buses rely more on fuel, especially in urban
areas in heavy traffic. Natural gas and hybrid systems that combine
natural gas or LPG with diesel provide the best alternatives for bus
company owners, according to the cost-benefit analysis, Vargas said.
Public
policy also has a vital role to play in convincing transportation
company owners to make the change as quickly as possible. MINAET will
spearhead that role, but a successful policy will also rely on
municipalities, the CPT and the Public Works and Transport Ministry to
regulate “hot spots,” where buses and taxis congregate, such as San
José’s Central Park, San Juan de Dios Hospital, hotels and other areas.
Municipalities can regulate those areas as “carbon-neutral,” meaning
taxi stands and bus stops can be designated for use by carbon-neutral
vehicles only.
Consumers also will have a major role to play by
choosing zero-emission taxis and buses and helping make them profitable
for company owners.
“I can imagine a taxi with a big green frog
painted on it, and a consumer deciding, ‘I’m going to take this taxi
because I’m contributing to carbon neutrality,’” Vargas said.
One
barrier that has contributed to transportation company owners’
reluctance to invest in cleaner buses and taxis is their higher purchase
cost. According to Castro, officials are negotiating “intensely” with
foreign producers of these vehicles to convince them to bring costs
down, not only for buses and taxis, but also for private consumers.
Officials
also are devising other economic incentives, including negotiating with
national banks to offer financing at better rates for clean technology
vehicles, particularly in the public transportation sector, Castro said.
Private companies – including Toyota – also are laying out plans to
offer more competitive prices to taxi companies on cleaner technology
vehicles to meet the spike in demand as the initiative advances in
coming years.
MINAET also is working with the National Oil
Refinery to improve fuel standards by 2013. Officials have already
eliminated a damaging and harmful additive – MMT – from national fuel
supplies, and other additives such as sulfur will decline dramatically
by next year.
Private vehicles
It
is no secret that Costa Rica has many barriers to converting its fleet
of private consumer vehicles to cleaner technology automobiles. One of
the biggest barriers is a high import tax on zero-emission and hybrid
vehicles.
Another barrier is culture. But researchers are
convinced that once consumers grow accustomed to using
cleaner-technology buses and taxis, demand for lower-emission private
vehicles will increase.
“We Costa Ricans are very conservative,
but if we see a taxi that functions with zero emissions, we’ll realize
that our own vehicles can too,” Vargas said. “But it will be very
important that older vehicles are eliminated from the market, including
rural taxis and cars.”
“Eventually, we’ll have to lower the taxes
that consumers pay [on cleaner-technology vehicles],” the environment
minister acknowledged.
Agriculture and the future
While
Costa Rica’s first step in its journey toward carbon neutrality focuses
on the energy and transportation sector, the second crucial element –
the agricultural sector – is facing setbacks. Negotiations with major
export crop producers have sparked only limited interest, Castro said.
The
biggest contributors to carbon emissions in this sector are large
export-crop plantations and cattle. Fertilizer application accounts for
54 percent of emissions in the agricultural sector, according to Feoli.
Yet
officials have gotten only as far as discussing cost-benefit analyses
with pineapple, banana and coffee exporters, Castro said.
“Some are interested, some aren’t,” he added.
Still,
what once seemed like political posturing by an outgoing president is
starting to show signs of life with scattered advances, “some small,
others quite visible,” Castro said.
Companies like Coopedota, a
Costa Rican coffee cooperative based in Santa MarÃa de Dota, in the
coffee-producing Los Santos region south of San José, which became the
world’s first carbon-neutral coffee producer, may seem like small drops
in the carbon-neutral bucket. But as years advance and policy begins to
solidify, these actors could be remembered as pioneers, serving as
models for other companies.
Coopedota became carbon neutral by
reducing energy use, improving water consumption practices and
generating energy from organic material formerly discarded as waste.
Another
company that has made great strides on reducing emissions is Florida
Ice and Farm Co., Costa Rica’s largest food and beverage company. The
company recently was recognized as one of the top 16 “green” businesses
in developing countries, particularly for its focus on water
conservation.
The
second phase of Costa Rica’s carbon-neutral plan is set for 2014-2018,
and includes improvements in water treatment, more investment in
renewable energies, and newer technologies for waste disposal (such as
converting landfills into energy producers).
From 2018-2021,
administration officials hope the country will focus on advanced energy
initiatives, such as developing an “intelligent” electricity
transmission and distribution grid, as well as sustainable construction
and public infrastructure projects.
Said Castro: “The country will continue reducing its emissions until it reaches a point when it can’t reduce any more.”
Clear rules, consumers key to carbon-neutral goals
Leiner
Vargas, of the National University’s International Center for Economic
Policy for Sustainable Development, is one of the leading researchers
for the government’s plan to make Costa Rica the first carbon-neutral
country. The Tico Times spoke with Vargas on Wednesday about how to make
the goal a reality.
Excerpts follow:
TT: How will this process work step by step?
LV:
As a researcher, what I can tell you is that we’re going to convince
20-25 percent of the current [taxi and bus] fleet to move to
carbon-neutral alternatives in the next two years. This will have a
mirror effect on consumers, who will begin to prefer carbon-neutral
taxis and buses, and it will be an incentive for companies to change
their fleet over time.
We need banks to offer better financing
rates for innovative business owners who are willing to make this
change; we need to declare bus stops and taxi stands carbon-neutral
only; we need municipalities to contribute with financing strategies;
and we need alternative systems, like having only carbon-neutral taxis
in Central Park in San José, or in the center of Heredia, for example,
which forces taxi drivers and owners to decide on their own to upgrade
their technology.
We have to align municipal policy with central government policy, along with the actors who will finance green technology.
Where
are we headed? In 2020-2025, I see Costa Rica with an entirely
carbon-neutral taxi fleet, and a bus fleet that is 40-50 percent
carbon-neutral. How much we achieve by 2014 depends on how much we
advance with [public transport] concessions, and we’re working on that.
We need to bring natural gas, which is an enormously more efficient fuel than diesel or other gasoline.
Much of this plan relies on the market. What role will regulation have?
Clear
rules. We can’t change the rules of the game. There has to be synergy
between environmental policy, or the Environment Ministry, and price
regulation at the Public Services Regulatory Authority. And they’re
working on that with rates to encourage change. We need regulatory
models so that the rules of the game are clear and don’t change for
concession owners. That will help them make the changes that are needed,
because we don’t want to create bad business for them. Everyone who is
working on this issue knows that environmental protection, at the end of
the day, is a much more profitable business than a business that
pollutes, which is what we have today with taxis and buses that burn
gasoline and diesel.
Now, consumers and the government can make
the difference in this process. Clear rules, inter-agency coordination,
and incentives, small incentives but important ones such as lower
interest rates and bus-only lanes in the city, these types of things can
have a big impact on reducing carbon dioxide emissions in Costa Rica.
Since this is a long-term project, how do you convince future administrations to stay the course?
In
1990, there was a big change in our forestry policy. We’ve taken nearly
30 years to solidify that and change the course of environmental
degradation that was happening in the country. In 2010, a very important
political choice was made, and I would hope that in 2025 or 2030, this
process will have become visible on a large scale, as it is today with
our forestry policy. Why? Because in the ’90s Costa Ricans made a
decision, and today, we adore our forests. We refuse to return to what
was happening in the ’80s. I would hope that the same thing happens in
the public transport sector.
This is a technological change that
needs to happen step by step. We can’t do everything at once, but it is
important to include these changes in concessions by 2014 in order to
achieve our goals.
Read the full story in the Tico Times
