Climate Progress: An insider's view of climate science, politics, and solutions

China study urges greenhouse gas caps, peak in 2030

China should set firm targets to limit greenhouse gas emissions so they peak around 2030, a study by some of the nation’s top climate change policy advisers has proposed ahead of contentious talks on a new global warming pact.

The call for “quantified targets” to cap greenhouse gas pollution marks a high-level public departure from China’s reluctance to spell out a proposed peak and date for it.

“By 2008 China had become the world’s biggest national emitter of greenhouse gases and faces unprecedented challenges,” says the preface of the 900-page report, setting aside China’s reluctance to say it has passed the United States as the top emitter of carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas from burning coal, gas and oil.

See also China climate change report sets out options for key proposals of that study, “2050 China Energy and C02 Emissions Report”  — China signals long-term plans to curb GHGs, Cabinet report finds “The large amount of greenhouse gases emitted through human activities is the main reason for global warming leading to extreme weather events” and China softens climate rhetoric, commits to emissions peak (again), shows flexibility on Western reductions.

Study links drought with rising emissions

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Europe made a major commitment under the Kyoto protocol that U.S. conservatives have been telling us for years they would never achieve. It now seems clear they will meet their commitment under the terms of the protocol. It will become increasingly difficult for those who don’t want a U.S. cap-and-trade system to point to the European Trading System (ETS) as an obvious failure — as discussed in this June CP post. CAP’s Austin Davis has some lessons learned for U.S. legislation.

This week the German Marshall Fund of the United States released a useful new analysis of the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) designed to offer powerful and positive recommendations to U.S. policymakers as they debate the design of a potential cap-and-trade program.

The paper’s authors hail from a wide range of prestigious academic and the clean energy backgrounds: Michael Grubb, chief economist of the UK’s Carbon Trust and chair of Climate Strategies; Thomas L. Brewer, research director of Climate Strategies; Misato Sato of the London School of Economics; Robert Heilmayr of the World Resources Institute; and Dora Fazekas of Climate Strategies. Their premise for the report is straightforward:  While American opinion makers and policy makers vaguely know that Europe has a cap-and-trade system in effect, the lessons we can learn from it and its real and substantive benefits are too often ignored in our public debate. This report aims to fix that.

And the reason Americans should know more about the EU ETS is because it’s working. Since 2005, Europe’s cap-and-trade system has established a carbon market worth €40 billion (US$56.6 billion) annually and, despite initial stumbling blocks, has reduced emissions by 50-100 million metric tons of CO2 per year (or by around 2.5-5%). Simultaneously, European businesses benefit from Europe’s transition to a carbon-free economy since “the EU ETS has increased overall profitability in all participating sectors” while supporting a sizeable boom in clean energy jobs in spite of the global recession.

However, Europe’s multifaceted successes required Europeans to carefully evaluate their ETS and reconfigure it on the fly – uncertainties and tribulations that American consumers business can largely avoid. The Europeans divided their cap-and-trade scheme into three phases to provide pause for analysis and reevaluation; this allowed them, for example, to halt the unfortunate practice of European utilities whereby they passed almost all of the costs of carbon onto consumers, reaping huge windfalls from the ETS’s free carbon allocations. While Waxman-Markey effectively shields consumers from these abuses “by giving power sector allowances to distribution companies, which then sell these to generators and have an obligation to use the revenues in part to support energy efficiency programs,” this kind of acumen seems rare among American policymakers and rarer still in the public debate:

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[JR:  I participated in a recent Defense Science Board study of the military's energy use -- and it became quite clear that wasteful use of energy in a war zone means more convoys of fuel trucks, perhaps the prime target for roadside bombs/attacks, which meant more American lives lost.]

US marines in Afghanistan launch first energy efficiency audit in war zone

The US Marines Corps ordered the first ever energy audit in a war zone today to try to reduce the enormous fuel costs of keeping troops on the ground in Afghanistan.

General James T Conway, the Marines Corps Commandant, said he wanted a team of energy experts in place in Afghanistan by the end of the month to find ways to cut back on the fuel bills for the 10,000 strong marine contingent.

US marines in Afghanistan run through some 800,000 gallons of fuel a day. That’s a higher burn rate than during an initial invasion, and reflects the logistical challenges of running counter-insurgency and other operations in the extreme weather conditions of Afghanistan….

He said he was looking to his energy auditors to find ways of cutting back energy consumption at operating bases, and also to pare down the equipment carried by each individual marine. An average marine carries about 9lbs of disposable batteries in their kit to power equipment such as night vision goggles and radios.

One immediate target of the auditors is likely to be climate control. Some 448,000 gallons alone are used to keep tents cool in the Afghan summer, where temperatures reach well over 40C, and warm in the winter, said Michael Boyd, an energy adviser to the Marine Corps.

The marines have been exploring ways to reduce that consumption by spraying tents with a foam coating.

“That’s a huge saving and you are no longer putting trucks on those roads, and tanker drivers in harm’s way and everyone else involved on the way,” Boyd said.

Scientists Warn Restoration-based Environmental Markets May Not Improve Ecosystem Health

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Here’s a followup to “Coal lobby hires top GOP voter-fraud company to run massive ‘grassroots’ efforts to undermine climate and clean energy action“:

Lobby Groups to Use Town Hall Tactics to Oppose Climate Bill

Taking a cue from angry protests against the Obama Administration’s health care restructuring, the oil industry is helping organize anti-climate bill rallies around the nation.

The American Petroleum Institute, along with other organizations such as the National Association of Manufacturers opposed to the climate legislation Congress will consider again in the fall, is funding rallies across 20 states over the August recess.

In template fliers for rallies produced by the API-founded alliance, EnergyCitizens, the public is warned that “Climate change legislation being considered in Washington will cause huge economic pain and produce little environmental gain.”

U.S. CO2 emissions from fuels seen falling 5 percent in 2009

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Mass production expected to lower battery costs, weight

Several automotive industry leaders said Friday they are convinced that the cost of lithium-ion batteries, as well as the size and weight of the battery, will decline substantially once automakers begin to produce them at higher volumes.

Further reducing the size and the cost of the batteries are crucial challenges facing manufacturers as they race to develop plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles aimed at consumers.

Already, GM has found a way to reduce the weight of the lithium-ion battery for the Chevrolet Volt, set to debut in 2010, to 400 pounds, down from 1,200 pounds for the lead-acid battery in the EV1, an unsuccessful electric vehicle that GM introduced in the 1990s, according to Bob Kruse, GM’s executive director of global vehicle engineering….

“If you think about lithium-ion” batteries, “most people don’t know that only 25% of the weight is actually storing energy,” said Ric Fulop, founder and president of A123 Systems Inc., a battery supplier. “I think there is significant room for improvement to take that from 25% to 50% over the next decade … and costs should come down by more than half.”

G.M. Says Volt Will Get Triple-Digit City Mileage

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World’s poorest women will bear brunt of climate change

President Jacob Zuma has identified climate change and its impact on women as a critical area of concern. “Natural disasters affect women directly and severely because of their social roles and the impacts of poverty. When there are floods, cyclones, or drought, women bear the brunt,” he said recently.

In December this year, leaders from around the world will gather in Copenhagen to negotiate a new global climate deal.

If a fair and effective deal is not reached, the poorest women in developing nations like ours stand to suffer the most.

As things stand now it would appear that leaders, especially from industrialised countries, are not putting the needs of the vulnerable and poor on their agenda. They have made very little substantive commitments within the negotiations….

Currently, up to two billion people live in extreme poverty worldwide (which means they live on less that US2 a day).

Two-thirds of these are women. The reality is that climate change will worsen existing poverty, particularly in developing nations that are heavily dependent on natural resources.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the threats to Africa are severe. It is expected that agricultural yields will decrease by 50 percent by 2050, with a total of 75million–250m people exposed to increased water stress, about 70 million people facing the risk of coastal flooding because of sea level rise by 2080, and there will be a significant increase in health impacts.

Psychological Factors Help Explain Slow Reaction To Global Warming

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[JR:  A nice story on a green building I had the pleasure of working in for two years in the early 1990s.  Click on figure for interactive floorplan.]

The Homely Costs of Energy Conservation

A quarter-century ago, in the wake of America’s first energy crisis, a young scientist named Amory Lovins came to the Rocky Mountains and built himself a radical house based on a radical idea. The country could save both energy and money, he believed, by combining common sense and unconventional technology.

Mr. Lovins did achieve substantial energy savings, and many of his innovations, from better insulation to multiple-pane windows to more-efficient refrigerators, eventually became familiar fixtures in American homes….

…Now, Mr. Lovins has completed a renovation that he hopes will demonstrate how much more energy-efficient houses can become. But the project also serves as a reminder of the still-enormous gulf between what is technologically possible and what society is able or willing to pay for….

Some of his proudest advances stem from mundane changes. He installed an electric stove made by a Swiss company that is 60% more efficient than other models he found. The savings stem partly from pots designed specifically for the stove. The pots eliminate warping that typically occurs with copper cookware, wasting heat.

He also has shaved energy use by insisting on an unconventional plumbing design. Typically, residential pipes that carry water would be ½-inch wide and turn at right angles. But that builds up friction, requiring electric pumps to work harder to propel the water. So Mr. Lovins had ¾-inch-wide pipes installed that run diagonally across ceilings and walls to minimize friction.

“If it looks pretty,” he says, “it probably doesn’t save energy.”

Pacific populations being prepared for relocation

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Arctic Ocean may be polluted soup by 2070

Within 60 years the Arctic Ocean could be a stagnant, polluted soup. Without drastic cuts in greenhouse-gas emissions, the Transpolar Drift, one of the Arctic’s most powerful currents and a key disperser of pollutants, is likely to disappear because of global warming.

The Transpolar Drift is a cold surface current that travels right across the Arctic Ocean from central Siberia to Greenland, and eventually out into the Atlantic. It was first discovered in 1893 by the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen, who tried unsuccessfully to use the current to sail to the North Pole. Together with the Beaufort Gyre, the Transpolar Drift keeps Arctic waters well mixed and ensures that pollution never lingers there for long.

To better understand the dispersal of pollution in the Arctic Ocean, Ola Johannessen, director of the Nansen Environmental and Remote Sensing Center in Bergen, Norway, and his colleagues studied the spread of radioactive substances such as strontium-90 and caesium-137 from nuclear testing, bomb factories and nuclear power-plant accidents. Measurements taken between 1948 and 1999 were plugged into a high-resolution ocean circulation model and combined with a climate model to predict Arctic Ocean circulation until 2080.

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Mexico Aims To Bring CO2 Cut Plan To Climate Talks

Mexico aims to put a detailed offer to cut the growth of its own greenhouse gas emissions on the negotiating table at global climate change talks in Copenhagen this year, a senior environmental policymaker said.

“If Mexico can bring a plan for cuts through 2020 to the table with a detailed description of what will be mitigated it would set a positive precedent for the other big emerging economies,” said Adrian Fernandez, the president of the National Ecology Institute, in an interview on Monday.

The plan will likely offer significant cuts in expected emissions growth from Mexico, which currently accounts for 1.5 percent of global emissions, by proposing projects like improving efficiency of power plants or reducing deforestation.

At Old Manufacturing Sites, Renewables Rise

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Yes, the international offset market is an actual market that shrinks when the price drops (see “Do the 2 billion offsets allowed in Waxman-Markey gut the emissions targets?” and “The CDM: Rip-offsets or real reductions?“).

Indian CDM applications fall 30 per cent as carbon credit prices slump

The number of Indian carbon offset projects seeking approval under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme has fallen by 30 per cent due to the global recession, according to an industry consultant.

“Project financing is not available, so people are postponing CDM investment decisions,” Chaitanya Kalia of Ernst & Young’s climate change and sustainability services told Reuters news agency last week.

India’s National CDM Authority used to receive an average of about 60 to 70 applications a month, but now only receives about 40, Kalia said.

The subcontinent has the world’s second-largest number of CDM projects after China, with more than 1,230 approved or awaiting validation, according to UN figures. Nearly 40 per cent are wind farm investments, while biomass accounts for a third of projects.

Electric Car Maker Expects Market to Heat Up

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Exxon Outspends Clean-Energy Industry on Washington Lobbying

Exxon Mobil Corp., the biggest U.S. oil producer, spent more on Washington lobbying during the first half of the year than all clean-energy companies combined, researcher New Energy Finance Ltd. said.

Exxon Mobil, based in Irving, Texas, spent $14.9 million lobbying in the six months, 23 percent more than the $12.1 million laid out by companies that make solar panels or wind turbines to generate electricity, London-based New Energy Finance said today in a note to clients. Oil and gas companies spent a total of $82.2 million on Washington lobbyists, according to the report.

And, of course, this doesn’t count their arguably more influential spending to promote climate denial and faulty economic analysis (see “Another ExxonMobil deceit: They are still funding climate science deniers despite public pledge“).

Warming World, Potent Poppies

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$30B available to jumpstart renewable energy, ’smart grid’ projects

The Energy Department is making up to $30 billion in loan guarantee authority available for renewable energy and electric grid modernization projects.

DOE announced yesterday it was ready to accept applications for about $8.5 billion in loan guarantee authority for advanced renewable energy projects made available in the department’s 2009 spending bill and $3.25 billion provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to cover the subsidy costs that will unleash the billions of dollars in loan guarantee authority for renewable energy, transmission projects and biofuels….

“This administration has set a goal of doubling renewable electricity generation over the next three years,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement. “To achieve that goal, we need to accelerate renewable project development by ensuring access to capital for advanced technology projects. We also need a grid that can move clean energy from the places it can be produced to the places where it can be used and that can integrate variable sources of power, like wind and solar,” he said.

New Energy Injects Hope in a Colorado Steel Town

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Beijing closing coal plants in environmental move

China has taken advantage of a drop in electricity demand due to the global financial crisis to speed up a campaign to close small coal-fired power plants and improve its battered environment, an official said Thursday.

Authorities have closed power plants with a total of 7,467 generating units, meeting a previously announced goal 18 months ahead of schedule, said Sun Qin, deputy administrator of the Cabinet’s National Energy Administration….

Beijing is trying to improve its energy efficiency and reduce surging demand for imported oil and gas by closing smaller, less efficient power plants and encouraging use of wind, solar and other clean sources.

The latest closures will reduce sulfur dioxide emissions that cause acid rain by an estimated 1.1 million tons and carbon dioxide output by 124 million tons per year, Sun said. He said the closures involved moving 400,000 workers to new jobs.

China and the United States are the world’s biggest emitters of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” that scientists say trap the sun’s heat and are altering the climate.  China produced 6.2 billion tons of carbon dioxide in 2006, according to a study by the Netherlands’ Environmental Assessment Agency.

NZ apples sent to UK generate own weight in C02

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U.S. can cut half its transportation emissions by 2050 — report

The United States can cut greenhouse gas emissions from transportation in half by 2050 with strategies ranging from cutting speed limits to imposing road pricing, according to a report released today by federal agencies and environmental and industry groups.

Examining about 50 transportation strategies, the report found transportation emissions could be reduced 24 percent by 2050 by acting to change travel behavior and land-use patterns. The emissions reduction hit 47 percent by adding road pricing techniques, ranging from pay-as-you-go insurance to charging Americans for every mile driven….

John Porcari, deputy secretary at the Department of Transportation, said the report shows that lawmakers looking to recast the nation’s transportation system to curb emissions and fuel consumption will need to look for combinations of policy changes. “There is no magic bullet,” he said. “There is no single strategy that can be pursued to help us turn our corner. We need to look at a number of options.”

Transportation accounts for roughly 28 percent of the United States’ greenhouse gas emissions, and the sector has been one of the fastest-growing in the past two decades — representing nearly half of the nation’s total increase in greenhouse emissions since 1990

A Plan to Cut Carbon Emissions From Deforestation

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China’s three biggest power firms emit more carbon than Britain, says report

China’s three biggest power firms produced more greenhouse gas emissions last year than the whole of Britain, according to a Greenpeace report published today.

The group warned that inefficient plants and the country’s heavy reliance on coal are hindering efforts to tackle climate change. While China’s emissions per capita remain far below those of developed countries, the country as a whole has surpassed the United States to become the world’s largest emitter.

Greenpeace said the top 10 companies, which provided almost 60% of China’s total electricity last year, burned 20% of China’s coal — 590m tonnes — and emitted the equivalent of 1.44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.

The efficiency of Chinese power generation compares unfavourably with other countries. In Japan, 418 grams of carbon dioxide are emitted per kilowatt hour and in the US, the equivalent figure is 625 grams. But most of the top 10 firms in China produce 752 grams of CO2.

Director of Energy at AD Little:  “I think we will reach peak oil demand in the middle of the next decade.”

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If climate change means “billions of people will be condemned to poverty and much of civilisation will collapse,” then it only seems appropriate we wipe out one of the cradles of civilization.  In the photo, drought plus Turkish dams combine to “reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle.”

Fertile Crescent “will disappear this century”

Is it the final curtain for the Fertile Crescent? This summer, as Turkish dams reduce the Tigris and Euphrates rivers to a trickle, farmers abandon their desiccated fields across Iraq and Syria, and efforts to revive the Mesopotamian marshes appear to be abandoned, climate modellers are warning that the current drought is likely to become permanent. The Mesopotamian cradle of civilisation seems to be returning to desert.

Last week, Iraqi ministers called for urgent talks with upstream neighbours Turkey and Syria, after the combination of a second year of drought and dams in those countries cut flow on the Euphrates as it enters Iraq to below 250 cubic metres a second. That is less than a quarter the flow needed to maintain Iraqi agriculture….

Drought has helped precipitate the crisis. The most detailed assessment of the Fertile Crescent’s future under climate change suggests flow on the Euphrates could fall by 73 per cent. “The ancient Fertile Crescent will disappear in this century,” forecasts Akio Kitoh of Japan’s Meteorological Research Institute in Tsukuba, Japan. “The process has already begun.”

SunPower Suggests Solar Emerging From Doldrums

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Ah, the olive groves of balmy England

Subtropical crops such as dates, figs and rice could become staples of British agriculture within 20 years, according to government forecasts.

The assessment, produced by officials at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), outlines future possibilities for British food production based on recent climate data.

The forecasts highlight some of the unexpected benefits of a warmer climate. It means the British diet will in future be able to include produce currently imported from as far away as China and the Philippines, without incurring massive food miles.

However, some existing crops such as potatoes will struggle, as temperatures are predicted to rise by about 2C within 20 years.

Retooling for the next mission

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JR:  This story is a follow up to “Siemens, Munich Re study $555 Billion, 100 GW concentrated solar project in the Sahara.”  The map above comes from Desertec — and looks to me to be the inevitable future for the region in a carbon-constrained world.

Industry lines up behind bold concentrated solar project in hopes politicians will follow

For centuries, Mediterranean countries have found countless ways to disagree — over religion, ethnicity, colonialism and trade. But there are signs the region might yet unite in pursuit of a common goal: renewable energy.

European government and industry have been eyeing tracts of sun-drenched, vacant land in North Africa and the Middle East for some time. And now, officials and business executives are beginning to sweat out the details that could see renewable power sprouting in the desert.

Their vision is ambitious. By 2050, massive solar thermal plants, which concentrate the sun’s energy using mirrors to heat steam-generating media, would sprawl across the Sahara and Middle East, feeding most of their power to their host nations. Leftover energy, meanwhile, would travel north on a new €45 billion grid to meet 15 percent of Europe’s electricity needs….

All the Arab states attended the Paris meetings, and Egypt, in particular, has been a strong supporter. According to Egyptian officials, this is because for the first time, in a Mediterranean detente, Europeans are treating African and Middle Eastern countries as equal partners. This is best seen in the union’s co-presidency, which Sarkozy and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak share….

Costs for solar thermal could eventually come down to about 10 cents a kilowatt-hour as the technology scales up, said the Center for Global Development’s Wheeler, who has written an influential paper on the topic.

That paper is “Desert Power: The Economics of Solar Thermal Electricity for Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.”

Meet Belcha – Europe’s biggest carbon polluter (and it’s about to get even bigger)

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