The solution is called Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) and consists of dedicated central lanes for buses serving regular routes. Passengers board the bus through a metro-like station and these fast buses swiftly take the to their destination. By integrating this transport mode with existing rail services and strengthening the first and last mile options to better connect BRT stations, Transjakarta has managed to decrease the congestion levels by 8% according to the TomTom Traffic Index. 

With 260 BRT station spread in 13 corridors and the world’s longest route (251 km), Transjakarta now moves close to 1 million people each day out of the 20 million inhabitants in the city and suburbs. This represents a 4-fold increase in the past 5 years, and the system is accessible (BRT station <500 m) to 77% of the population, with the aim to reach 95% in the next few years. 

But just how did Transjakarta achieve this impressive turnaround in one of the world’s most congested cities? Firstly, by planning and integrating with existing transport such as metro and light rail. Another important measure is the gradual integration of independent cooperative owned minibuses for the first and last miles – and upgrading them to higher quality and comfort standards. The third measure to highlight is the affordability of Transjakarta’s system, with a single ticket costing around 0.3 cents and a 3-hour ticket around 0.50 cents. To encourage the use of modern minibuses they are free of charge. And of course, there is only 1 transport card for all the system. 

What is next for Transjakarta?

After their participation in the International Bus Conference in Brussels, Transjakarta’s CEO, Dr Agung Wicaksono and his team are touring Europe to get to know potential suppliers for their plan of electrifying their bus network. Most buses in the Transjakarta fleet are European, but so far, they are testing 3 Chinese manufactured electric buses. Doubts remain around the performance of European manufactured electric buses’ performance in Indonesia’s tropical climate, which is why Transjakarta’s team is visiting European manufacturers, emphasising that they are first and foremost looking for quality and sustainable vehicles.

Transjakarta’s success in gradually solving a megapolis’ transport crisis highlights the importance of integration of different transport modes, of concertation between authorities and of improving the convenience, efficiency and affordability of public transport. Brussels should heed the lessons learned by these public transport giants and emulate their ambition in solving mobility challenges.

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The number of certificates issued will diminish of the 17% for individual use installations that produce less than 6 kWc and of the 42% for larger installations, allocated in companies, that produce more than 250 kWc. This proposition is slightly more favourable than the one presented beforehand that projected a decrease of 20% and 50% in the number of green certificates.

According to Maron, the new text should be approved by the beginning of 2020, after passing by the Council of State. However, the subsidies’ reduction will not be retroactive. It will only concern the installations entering into service from April 2020, date in which the proposition should enter into force.

“Our goal is to continue to support renewable energy, including solar power, but it is necessary to sustain the support system. In spite of the reduction in the number of green certificates allocated, it will still be very interesting to fit the solar panels. In point of fact, the Brussels Region guarantees a return on investment in seven years maximum,” Maron assured to La Libre Belgique.

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His election winning strategy was built on opposition to the oligarchs and criticising Ukraine’s dependence on the West. Zelenskiy began his presidency by dissolving the Parliament and calling for snap elections. If these turn out in his favour, newly elected MPs would form a pro-presidential majority and fully cement his political dominance.

Although Zelenskiy’s successful election as President seems to have come out of nowhere, his main backer is well established. A major oligarch and billionaire, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, supported Zelenskiy’s campaign by providing both funds and ideas.

For Ukraine’s western backers and financial donors, and in particular for the people of Ukraine, there are already a number of clear signs that the relationship between Kolomoyskyi and Zelenskiy is not as benign as has been suggested. On the contrary, a number of recent decisions clearly demonstrate that Kolomoyskyi is, in an unsubtle way, already consolidating his control over the new President and pushing his agenda.

On day two of his Presidency, Zelenskiy appointed Kolomoyskyi’s private lawyer, Andriy Bohdan, as his Chief of Staff, a vital position for the successful coordination of his political agenda.

Kolomoyskyi is also openly challenging the nationalisation of Privatbank, which he used to own and is today the largest bank in the country. The bank was nationalised in 2016 after it nearly went bankrupt. Considered ‘too big to fail’ the government and the National Bank of Ukraine poured 155 billion UAH (approximately 5 billion euros) of taxpayer money into the bank to prevent its collapse. A Ukrainian court surprisingly ruled in April that the nationalisation was illegal, boosting the chances that Kolomoyskyi could once again win back control of it. The IMF has already warned that reversing the nationalisation of Privatbank would jeopardize Ukraine’s financial aid programme, specifically the 3.9-billion-dollar loan that is expected to be finalised this year.

In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Kolomoyskyi also advised President Zelenskiy not to cooperate with the IMF and to let Ukraine default on its external debt. Such a scenario would have catastrophic consequences for Ukraine’s slowly recovering economy but could be very beneficial for Kolomoyskyi’s bottom line. This from a man whose business mantra is that “only fools pay invoices and taxes.”

The benefit for Kolomoyskyi for Ukraine defaulting on its IMF obligations is that his mining, metal, and ferrous alloys companies are export driven and receive payments in euros, dollars or pounds. If Ukraine were ever to default on its debt, its currency would plummet and wages, taxes and electricity bills would then be paid for in a devalued national currency while Kolomoyskyi’s profits would be kept in foreign currencies. This would give him a massive domestic advantage as it would allow him to buy cheap Ukrainian assets and drive out competitors from the market, eventually monopolising entire sectors of the economy.

Under Poroshenko, Ukraine started to position itself as an attractive destination for international investors. Any backpedaling on cooperation with the IMF and any halting or delay in the ongoing economic and institutional reform process would have terrible consequences for the country’s investment landscape. An eventual default would lead to inflation, loss of jobs, and the mass emigration of Ukraine’s most skilled workers.

Being an owner of the biggest ferrous alloys plant in Europe, Kolomoyskyi is also interested in controlling the country’s electricity power market. Since his plants consume huge amounts of electricity, he would obviously benefit from keeping electricity prices as low as possible. This directly contradicts Ukraine’s commitment to the EU and international financial institutions to liberalise its energy sector and launch a fully competitive electricity market by 1st July 2019.

The implementation of a competitive energy market is of critical importance for Ukraine’s international obligations and is vital to integrate its energy grid with the rest of the EU and increase cross-border electricity trade. In addition, it would create the conditions for the sector to attract sufficient investment to upgrade the country’s soviet-era energy grid – which has a remaining operating life of about 10 years. It would also improve energy efficiency and move towards a more sustainable energy system that reflects Ukraine’s climate change commitments.

While any postponement of this reform may come under the pretext of the need for ‘minor technical corrections’, there is a strong suspicion that Kolomoyskyi’s intention is to push reform back as far as possible, or ensure it never happens. Not only would this damage Ukraine’s ties with the EU, but it would also send a signal to financial and political partners that the current administration cannot be trusted. In the long run, it may even lead Ukraine to turn its back on the West and rely once again on Russia for its energy needs.

Such an open and public intervention of a private citizen into the political and economic life of a country has not been seen since Boris Berezovsky’s intervention in Russia in the early years of Vladimir Putin. While it remains to be seen how much influence Kolomoyskyi will truly have on Zelenskiy’s political agenda, these early warning signs are not encouraging, to say the least, and should raise very serious concerns both with the international community and domestically in Ukraine.

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One of the previous winners of the award and Nobel prize laureate Rodney John Allam, known for his Allam power cycle to convert fossil fuels into mechanical power while capturing CO2, flagged the “depressing” BP Energy Outlook forecasting that the share of the fossil fuel use in the total energy mix would not necessarily change by 2040. According to the most optimistic scenario of the Outlook, in spite of the large increases in the use of renewables, the primary energy demand would still be met by fossil fuel in 2040, especially considering the growing energy demand in countries, such as China and India.

Professor Allam, a Member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), pointed out to recently approved contracts by China to build new coal-fired power stations to produce 259 Gw of energy – the equivalent of the entire energy capacity of the US fleet. Given the long operating life – approximately 40 years – of these power stations, their sustainability could be assured by conversion to power stations using clean technologies, such as oxyfuel, according to the scientist.

Professor Allam is of the opinion that European governments should provide incentives for CO2 storage as they did for renewables, such as wind and solar power. “Given that wind and solar power are volatile and cannot be stored, it would be imperative to develop new technologies for carbon capture, utilisation and storage”, says Allam.

Power plants based on the Allam cycle are already being built in the UK and the US and are expected to be operational in the mid 2020s. This zero-emission plants are expected to produce low-cost electricity estimated at 6 cents per kW. The plants will be run by oxyfuel, created with the injection of a small portion of oxygen into CO2, which circulates in a two-stage compression system under high-pressure with the help of a turbine and a heat exchanger. At the end of the cycle, the CO2 is produced as either a high-pressure fluid for pipeline transportation or as a liquid for shipping in tankers. The British engineer suggests that the liquid CO2 could be exported to oil-exploring countries, which could improve the efficiency of their operations by applying high-pressure CO2 to extract hydrocarbons. The US recently introduced a tax credit to boost the carbon capture and storage or to use CO2 to extract oil from existing wells.

Despite some forecasts claiming that there will be no real penetration for electric cars or hydrogen power cars in the near future, Professor Allam highlighted the possibility to utilise the Allam cycle to produce hydrogen fuel for vehicles. Commending the revolutionary nature of these new technologies, the Nobel prize laureate described them as “individualised power stations” able to provide energy for household and transport needs.

In his view, global protests on climate change led by students might be influential on raising awareness but they would not be meaningful unless sustainable finance to encourage clean investment, including subsidies and tax breaks for CO2 storage, is put in place to keep the global temperature rise below 1,5 degrees Celsius. Especially considering that the rate of the rise in temperatures has been reportedly increasing during the last 4 years.

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Belgium exported €213 million worth of electricity in 2018, thus putting the figure for net imports at €938 million euros – also a new record.

Figures published in January by the network operator Elia also show that 22% of the electricity consumed in Belgium in 2018 came from abroad, compared to 8% in 2017.

These phenomena are explained by the low availability of nuclear power plants in Belgium in 2018 (only one reactor out of seven ran from mid-October to mid-November, and nuclear power produced one third less electricity in 2018 than in 2017), as well as by simple market logic, which pushes providers to import electricity when it is cheaper in neighbouring countries than in Belgium.

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Although Earth Hour is a rather symbolic action, the City of Brussels is also working to save energy each day by insulating its social housing, installing solar panels in its schools, detecting all kinds of leaks, optimising its vehicle fleet or making its streets greener:

• Sustainable development

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Wind turbines running at full speed (due to strong winds), coupled with six out of seven Belgian nuclear power stations being operational, led to the peculiar situation in which large consumers of electricity were effectively paid to consume energy.

Last autumn, Belgium had only one nuclear power plant available, causing a peak in the price of electricity of 500 euros per megawatt hour (MWh) in November. The situation today, however, is radically different. The price traded on the wholesale market is, on average, 13 euros per megawatt hour (Mwh), with costs occasionally even dropping below the zero mark (-5 euros per Mwh).

The law of supply and demand

The strange fact that consumers of energy can effectively receive money to use electricity is actually explained by one of the most basic laws of economics, namely the principle of supply and demand. In short, when the supply of electricity outstrips demand for it, prices go negative.

This situation, as strange as it might sound to an outsider, is actually not that uncommon in the energy market.

« Negative prices are happening more and more often, up to 30 days a year, » says energy entrepreneur and head of Volt Energy André Jurres. « Both nuclear power and wind are not flexible. The nuclear plants are too expensive to turn off, » he said.

Mr Jurres hopes that this fall in the price of electricity will cause the Belgian authorities to react effectively. « It must be a signal to the government that there is an urgent need to identify alternatives to the current system. For instance, we need more flexible gas plants,” he said.

Hydrogen production on a large scale could also be a solution, according to Mr. Jurres, as well as the development of more sophisticated wind turbine technologies. He also sees many advantages in collaborating with the Netherlands, both in the construction of wind farms in the North Sea and in the production of hydrogen.

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While sewers are one potential heat source, there are many other possibilities and cities showing us the way. Copenhagen’s district heating system supplies 97% of the city’s heating needs from waste heat from electricity production and incineration plants. This energy would normally be wasted but is instead redirected to people’s homes, saving them some 1,400 Euros per year in the process.  This also means that individual boilers are relatively rare as most people get their heat directly from the city.

Considering Brussels’ commitment to reduce its Co2 emissions in the coming decades, as well as the recent gains made by the green party in the different « communes », we can hope that this pilot will be followed up by larger scale implementation of these innovative ideas. Political will is essential to tackle the huge challenges ahead. As Belgium’s youth strike is showing, politicians’ hot air will not heat homes or be enough to attract new generations of voters: concrete projects such as this one will pave the way to a more sustainable Brussels and play a key role in future municipal elections.

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This rate is calculated twice a year. The increase would have exceeded 20% for both gas and electricity and affected a disadvantaged public.

The decision takes effect immediately, insisted both the Minister of Energy, Marie-Christine Marghem, and the Prime Minister, Charles Michel.

The cost of the measure is estimated at 13 million euros which will be offset by a dormant fund for heating.

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The estimated impact of this measure is a reduction of some 13 tons of Co2 per year, the equivalent of taking 4 or 5 cars off the road. Other projects on the city’s climate change plan website such as using low consumption lights for the city, greening the city’s vehicle fleet and promoting grouped purchases of green energy add up to a reduction of 65 tons of Co2 per year. The yearly reduction sought for 2020 is around 47 800 tons, of which only 5 600 have been reduced.

There is a timid allusion to improving alternative travelling methods and promoting cycling, but the actions have limited budget and no sense of big picture planning. Looking at the final energy consumption, we note that fossil fuels are by far the highest contributor to the energy matrix, so any meaningful action must radically change the way we move to and in the city. The administrative division of Brussels does not help: while the overall commitment to the covenant of mayors is for the agglomeration of Brussels, the campaign seems to be only for the City of Brussels. To be fair the city has invested close to 1 billion Euros on improving the energy standards of buildings, where most of the reductions come from. But at a time when youth is showing the way and demanding meaningful actions to save the world they will inherit, Brussels’ municipalities need to come together to put forward ambitious plans to drastically reduce the city’s reliance on fossils fuels.

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