Climate Change

Yesterday, all over the world, people turned out the lights to dramatize their concerns about global warming.  See this video from the Earth Hour folks:

See also this slideshow, courtesy of Yahoo and Reuters.

I headed up to Columbia University this past week to check out the Earth Institute’s State of the Planet 08 conference.  As usual, I couldn’t devote as much time as I would’ve liked to the conference sessions, but I came away with a few good insights nonetheless.  Thursday, I attended a press briefing with Jeffrey Sachs, the director of the institute and a real force for fostering sustainable development; plus the very worthy Jan Egeland, former UN chief of humanitarian affairs; Carl-Henrik Svanberg, CEO of Ericsson, the cell phone makers; and Vijay V. Vaitheeswaran, a senior correspondent for “The Economist” and an expert on energy and automotives.

One of Ericsson’s emphases is on bringing mobile telephony to the developing world.  This was characterized as the “singlemost transformative technology in the developing world.”  See Ericsson’s CSR pages for a ton of information on how engaged they are.

The discussion came to climate change, not surprisingly, and Sachs emphasized the importance of an integrated approach that would create an “incentive” system (cap-and-trade) along with technology policy.  Egeland said that mitigation is important, but that adaptation is critical at this point.  There are extremely vulnerable populations that need to be buffered from the increasingly intense effects of storms and other climate-induced disasters.  Drought, of course, is another looming specter.  Vaitheeswaran, a compellingly intelligent speaker, has written a new book, ZOOM: The Global Race to Fuel the Car of the Future, and he said we’re looking at a billion cars on the planet soon, with two billion not so far in the future.  That’s the bad news for global warming.  The good news is that the renewable energy revolution could well be driven (pun intended) by a new generation of cars.  (Sadly, I missed Vaitheeswaran moderating a formal debate – “Proposition:  “The United States will solve the climate change problem.”  It was, by all reports, lively and smart.  You and I can see it here though.) 

Well, at the press briefing, I was going to ask about biofuels but before I was called on, Sachs read my mind.  (As you may recall, I’ve been writing about this a fair bit, including this post from last month:  Are Biofuels A Bummer?)  Responding to a question about energy, Sachs quickly segued into a blistering critique of present biofuels policy.  He called US and EU policy in this area “misguided.”  He said that biofuel production is driving up food prices worldwide.  In his talk to the conference on Friday, he outlined a ten-point plan for the next President on sustainability and eliminating biofuel subsidies was one of the points.  Sachs also has a new book:  Common Wealth: Economics for a Crowded Planet. 

I am forced to say that a talk given on Friday left me a little breathless.  Lady Barbara Thomas Judge, an American it turns out, is the Chairman of the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority.  She gave a talk on the virtues of Nukes.  She trotted out a number of the same canards I’ve been hearing, on and off, for over thirty years:  Three Mile Island and Chernobyl weren’t so bad.  People want nuclear power plants in their communities.  You can’t rely on renewables because the power is intermittent and we haven’t learned how to store it.  A new take on the theme of the acceptable risk of nuclear power was the somewhat blithe statement:  “Life is about risk.” 

Another assertion was that 90% of nuclear waste comes from weapons production, not power production.  Sorry, Lady Judge, but that dog don’t hunt.  Here’s just one quote from the US DOE website:  “As of December 2005, the United States accumulated about 53,440 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel from nuclear reactors. In addition, there will be about 22,000 canisters of solid defense-related radioactive waste for future disposal in a repository.” 

You can see Lady Judge’s talk here.  I had the opportunity to talk with her a little later.  I ventured that her pooh-poohing of the role of renewables was not correct.  I mentioned the recent analysis from Daniel Yergin’s Cambridge Energy Associates that there was $7 trillion in business looming just over the horizon.  (See my post here.)  She said that she very much supported renewables but that you needed nuclear power as well.  I said that societies needed to choose and any emphasis on nuclear power would necessarily take a tremendous amount of wind out of the sails, or turbines, as ‘twere, of the renewables industry.  I pointed out that not a watt of electricity would be generated from nuclear power in this country were it not for the Price-Anderson Act that, for all intents and purposes, insulates the industry from liability.  The private insurance industry wouldn’t touch nuclear power with a ten-foot control rod.  Lady Judge was poised and gracious and I thanked her for entertaining my point of view.

The idea that nuclear power is something of a silver bullet for climate change certainly seems to be gaining traction, at least in the UK and in France.  I think that the Earth Institute’s embrace is more-than-a-little off from their prevailing theme of sustainability.  Part of the problem lies in the continuing overemphasis, in my opinion, on the central power generating paradigm.  I think that the world will profit, in every way, from a shift not only to renewables but to the distributed generation model that renewables can empower.

I had time to catch a bit of the panel on “Identifying Energy Solutions for Sustainable Development.”  Paula DiPerna of the Chicago Climate Exchange gave a lucid and illuminating talk on carbon finance.  (I’ve written about that a number of times under Carbon Markets.  This, of course, is a critical part of solving the climate change problem.)

The Earth Institute and many of the participants at this conference are doing groundbreaking work in sustainable development.  It’s exciting to hear so many of these initiatives discussed.  Check out the conference videos to catch some of the excitement.

I have been remiss, in the extreme, in my blogging.  I’m going tomorrow to what should prove to be an exciting conference, State of the Planet 08, at the Earth Institute at Columbia University.  I will report on that soon.  In the meantime, here are a couple of tidbits to keep you fed, if not sated.

Kansas and Coal – I wrote about the ambitious plans for new coal-fired power plants that were nixed by the State of Kansas here in October and then about the nefarious dealings of the plant’s proponents here in February.  Well, the update from Reuters is Kansas Government Vetoes Plan For Coal-Fired Power Plants.  Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed legislation that attempted to brush aside the decision made by her administration last fall to deny the permits.  Here is the good governor’s veto message and also an executive order establishing the Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group.  (Can you say Vice President Sebelius?  I think she’s in the mix for the Democratic party running mate’s job.)

Green Building – Best Bang for the Buck – You know I love green building.  (See any number of posts here.)  Well the terrific folks at GreenBiz have an article telling us how effective it is at reducing GHG emissions - Green Building is Best Bet for CO2 Cuts in N. America: Report.  In addition to lowering emissions, the report they cite, Green Building in North America: Opportunities and Challenges, looks at “… other environmental benefits to green building and its potential to improve worker health and productivity.” 

Man, I am a sucker for innovation, for using your head to come up with designs and systems that mimic nature and produce real energy and real energy savings.  I’ve been reading a new book on renewable energy and alternative fuels and there’s some wild stuff in there:  algae grown using carbon dioxide from power plants and then fueling the same plant; solar power concentrating systems that can, potentially, provide gigawatts of electricity, store heat for power generation in giant thermoses, and be collocated with windfarms; and power-producing buoy systems, among others.  I’ve written about low-tech approaches such as solar box cookers and high-tech methods, for making hydrogen from plants for instance.  (See Green Tech, Low Tech, Clean Tech, New Tech and many other entries under Science and Technology and Renewable Energy.) 

Here’s one that grabbed my attention this morning:  Cargo Ship Completes Maiden Voyage Using Towing Kite.  The US DOE’s excellent weekly newsletter on renewables and energy efficiency talks about how the kite can cut fuel use for ocean-going vessels by up to 20%.  Not bad.

Credit: WINTECC

Low power and small hydro projects are, according to another terrific newsletter at RenewableEnergyWorld.com, on the rise.  See U.S. on the Verge of a Small Hydro Boom?  There’s a realistic potential for 30,000 MW of power from these low-impact, zero-carbon facilities.  “The kind of projects we’re talking about would not involve large dams or any inundation of property.  These would all be run-of-river projects,” says a federal program manager working in this area. 

Geothermal is another source that seems a bit of a no-brainer to me.  See Free Power from the Earth 24/7, also from RenewableEnergyWorld.com, in which we learn that Atlantic Geothermal has a proposal that would equal Hoover Dam’s output.  I wrote about geothermal in April last year and said:  “… a major new report found enormous ‘… potential for geothermal energy within the United States’ and ‘… that mining the huge amounts of heat that reside as stored thermal energy in the Earth’s hard rock crust could supply a substantial portion of the electricity the United States will need in the future, probably at competitive prices and with minimal environmental impact.’ See this from the M.I.T. news service and the report itself. (Big file – 14.5 mb!)”

Speaking of Hoover Dam, and remembering what is driving so much of our efforts – global warming – here’s another piece from DOE:  Report Places Even Odds on Hoover Dam Running Dry by 2017.  A little shocking?  I’d say.  (See also my recent look at water stress in the American West.)

I really do love the coverage in the “Financial Times.”  It goes deeper than a lot of sources to give you stories that really mean something, rather than just the latest media frenzy over some political brouhaha or celebrity gossip.  It also lives in the critical interface between commerce, public policy and international relations.  (You may need to register.  If so, go here.  You get 30 articles a month for free.)

Oil Sands – Here’s a bit of a bombshell:  The new energy law that the US passed in December may bar the US government’s purchase of petroleum from Canadian oil sands.  Canada warns US over oil sands is the recent “FT” headline.  The story says that a “narrow interpretation” of The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007, section 526 to be precise, would limit government procurement of alternative fuels that have lifecycle GHG emissions greater than conventional fuels, as oil-sand derived petroleum clearly does.  (Elizabeth Kolbert, the pathbreaking “New Yorker” writer, had a characteristically great article, Unconventional Crude, on the Alberta tar sands in November.)  The “FT” has even given us a copy of the letter from the Canadian ambassador in Washington to DOD Secretary Robert Gates, cc:  the US secretaries of Energy and State.  One energy expert said:  “The Canadians do, in fact, have something to worry about, particularly from a Democratic administration.”  A Canadian authority said:  “Classifying fuel from the oil sands as non-conventional fuel … would unnecessarily complicate the integrated Canada-US energy relationship.”  Yeah, but it might improve the world’s chances of avoiding catastrophic climate change.  Does that count?

Jatropha – I’ve been pointing out studies that pinpoint biofuels as another badly misplaced priority – except, of course, for those making a great honking profit and the elected officials that profit politically from furthering bad policy.  (See any number of posts under Biofuels and Agriculture.)  The “FT” has a good piece on a non-edible plant that thrives on generally non-arable land:  India finds cheap energy may be an easy nut to crack.  (I wrote about jatropha’s promise here in September.)  India hopes to radically accelerate the cultivation of jatropha for biodiesel over the next several years.  The pilot projects they’ve been doing have been successful and, not surprisingly, they have no wish to displace food crops from productive land for biofuels cultivation, a strategy that has been increasingly identified as a recipe for disaster on several fronts.  Shailendra Shukla, director of Chhattisgarh Renewable Energy Development Authority, is quoted:  “If you’re growing soya for biodiesel, you’re wasting your time, money and land.”  The project is also about providing power to the countryside.  As the article says, “Alternative energy dovetails with the government’s aims to develop rural areas - including electrifying villages - to narrow a widening divide between rural and urban India.” 

Gas Flaring – This is nearly universally practiced in the oil industry, yet it wastes truly enormous amounts of energy and adds prodigious amounts of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.  ( I wrote about this in September here.  The post also includes a very instructive video from the World Bank’s Global Gas Flaring Reduction.)  Qatar, Kuwait and Oman, according to the “FT” here, are getting on board the World Bank’s program.  The total annual loading worldwide is 150bn cubic meters, producing 400m tons of CO2.  “The three Gulf states set to join the World Bank’s partnership together contribute 7bn cubic metres a year …”  Not chopped liver. 

According to CoalSpeak, The Official CoalRegion Dictionary, the above term refers to “tuberculosis, or some virulent strain of TB. Consumption was a common word for tuberculosis many years ago (‘consuming’ the lung tissue). ‘Galloping’ refers to the speed at which the disease progresses.”  Ironic, perhaps, that I’m using this term to illustrate one of the thornier problems associated with global warming – ironic because of its association with coal, and coal’s association with runaway global warming. 

Jared Diamond, professor of Geography and author of the hugely popular Guns, Germs and Steel:  The Fates of Human Societies and Collapse:  How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, wrote a terrific op-ed for the “NY Times” early in January:  “What’s Your Consumption Factor?”  In it he noted that the developed world has consumption rates roughly 32 times that of the developing world.  “If the whole developing world were suddenly to catch up, world rates would increase elevenfold. It would be as if the world population ballooned to 72 billion people (retaining present consumption rates),” Diamond wrote.  It would be difficult to suppose that world resources, strained as we are today with a world population of 6.5 billion, could support those levels of consumption.  Consider, while we’re at it, the output of GHG and the further destruction of ecosystems from industrial agriculture and fishing, overdevelopment, and conventional water and air pollution from such galloping consumption.  Are we thus doomed?  Diamond’s answer:  “No, we could have a stable outcome in which all countries converge on consumption rates considerably below the current highest levels.”  But then we would have to reduce our access to labor-saving devices (driven by electricity, for the most part), and infant mortality would go up, gains in nutrition worldwide would evaporate, and literacy rates would plummet.  Right?  Wrong.  Diamond reminds us, if we had forgotten, that “…living standards are not tightly coupled to consumption rates.” 

The seminal Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change, published in October of 2006 by the UK government, warns, in its Executive Summary, (and available in 22 languages other than English), of catastrophic economic consequences if climate change is not confronted fully, vigorously, and now.  It also says:  “Tackling climate change is the pro-growth [my emphasis] strategy for the longer term, and it can be done in a way that does not cap the aspirations for growth of rich or poor countries.”

Are you still with me?  Now today an op-ed from the “Wall St. Journal” came in over the transom to me from the esteemed editor of this and my sister Foreign Policy Association blogs, Robert Nolan.  (See the right margin for links to these many, diverse and interesting blogs.)  Sins of Emission, by Oxford professor of energy policy Dieter Helm, notes that “… the U.S. and the EU together account for nearly half of world GDP. And it is consumption, not production, that matters. This means that if global warming is to be limited, the U.S. and Europe will have to take much more drastic action to reduce those emissions embedded in their own consumption. Their appropriate emissions-reduction targets will have to be based on the consumption of goods that cause those emissions in the first place.”  I’ll buy that, as it were.  But Helm makes what Diamond, the Stern Review, and many, many others conclude is a false assumption:  “It will probably mean living standards will have to be cut if our consumption is going to be environmentally sustainable.”

Economic growth, according to a growing number of analysts, will be stimulated by how we confront climate change.  I wrote, for instance, in February about a new analysis that said that our response to global warming can “… spur $7 Trillion in Clean Energy Investment by 2030.”  (See Trillions for Renewables! here.) 

Getting back to consumption:  How do you get at it?  One way was detailed by Yale professor Judith Chevalier in an another op-ed from the “NY Times” in December:  a tax on carbon consumption.  I wrote about this here and described it thus:  “So, if you can’t get China or some other recalcitrant to restrain GHG emissions through some international protocol (to which the Bali meetings were supposed to point the way), then take it out of their exchequer by creating barriers to products created in high-GHG economies.”  Professor Chevalier explains it more lucidly than that, but you get the idea.

Can we reduce our dangerous rates of consumption and maintain and improve our standards of living worldwide?  You bet.  Making Peace with the Planet will also make us happier.  You can take that to the bank.

Solar Thermal – One of the pleasures of teaching a class on climate change is that students come up with some interesting, stimulating things.  In papers recently submitted on renewables, and in following up with a little web surfing, I’ve come across some further information worth sharing here.  I’ve also been reading a new book, Earth:  The Sequel, from Environmental Defense Fund President Fred Krupp, and Miriam Horn.  The book talks a lot about new renewable technologies and jibes nicely with what I’ve been hearing from my students and seeing elsewhere.  (Much more about the book in a forthcoming post.)

One paper discussed solar thermal.  A few days later, the venerable Matt Wald had this, Turning Glare Into Watts, at the “NY Times.”  Solar thermal captures the heat from sunlight and uses that heat to drive turbines that turn generators, as conventional power plants do.  This is in contrast to solar photovoltaic which captures sunlight and turns it directly to electricity.  One seeming advantage which the thermal developers are touting is the inherent capability to be generating juice during the day, peak consumption time, plus the ability to store the heat for generating power during evenings and cloudy days.   One of the companies mentioned in the article, and discussed at some length in the book, is Ausra,.  Ausra’s website has some terrific graphics, well worth seeing, and some fun speculation:  “Solar Thermal Power Could Supply Over 90 percent of U.S. Grid Plus Auto Fleet.” 

Meanwhile, I want to mention another exciting prospect:  the idea of supplying virtually limitless amounts of power from solar arrays in the Sahara Desert.  The Europeans and some of the North African and Middle Eastern states are working on precisely this.  See the Trans-Mediterranean Renewable Energy Cooperation (TREC) project.  See also this informative UK website on this concept.  Solar power for massive desalinization projects?  Why in the world not?!

New Hydropower – Another student did a nice job on ocean power.  There’s also huge potential here, and it’s being rapidly researched, developed, and brought on line.  There’s going to be a Global Marine Renewable Energy Conference in NYC in April and I expect to be there.

One of the companies that caught my eye recently was Bourne Energy.  See this useful little article, One Dam Thing After Another For The Hydropower Industry, courtesy of CarbonFree.  Bourne’s website has some excellent graphics as well, describing their technology and how they want to “change energy’s DNA.”  Catchy!

It’s been a year since the Foreign Policy Association and I started this blog.  There have been 140 posts before today covering a range of topics from developments in legislation, to international relations, to renewable energy, to all sorts of business initiatives, and much more.  It’s been an education for me and, I hope, for you, dear reader.

Looking back at my first post, Welcome to the FPA on Climate Change, I’m glad to say that I’ve stayed on course fairly well.  I wrote then “The parlous state of our planet’s health is being addressed, albeit in fits and starts, but the recognition of the terrible problem we’ve created is deepening and solutions are being actively sought.”  I said there was “… going to be a lot of news from Washington.”  There sure was.  I said:  “Hopefully, we are in what Thomas Kuhn would call a ‘paradigm shift’ and there are going to be more and more positive developments in renewable energy and energy conservation, land use, and transportation.”  There have been many positive developments indeed and the pace of them seems to be accelerating.  I summed up my views of 2007 in December with this post, Year in Review. 

I’ve noted the feeling that has come over me more than once during the year in which I feel as if I’ve woken up from a long sleep, as Rip Van Winkle did, to find a world that I previously might not have dreamt possible.  The extraordinary viability and continuing growth of these positive developments is something I hoped would come true when I strolled along Fourteenth St. in Manhattan on the very first Earth Day almost 40 years ago.  My youthful hopes were severely battered along the way and, to tell you the honest truth, I despaired of our ever being able to aspire to half of what we’ve got cooking now. 

Yet, here we are, truly truckin’, and we can look to Mr. Natural, courtesy of Bob Crumb, to know that we simply need to “Keep on Truckin’.”

The Heartland Institute organized a gathering of the clans this week in New York City.  Skeptics of various shades and stripes sat in on panel discussions and heard speakers make pronouncements along a spectrum of opinion.  “Registration for the event exceeded 550…” according to one of several press releases I received.  I had hoped to go for a few hours, but other priorities won out – plus I’m under the weather, as it were, with a cold.  Andrew Revkin, the “NY Times” climate change beat reporter (and the author of Dot Earth, the popular blog), wrote this article today:  Cool View of Science at Meeting on Warming.  (I’ve written about the skeptics before here.  I reference a terrific article there by Sharon Begley at “Newsweek” - The Truth About Denial.)

Revkin writes that “The main targets at the meeting were former Vice President Al Gore, who has portrayed global warming as a ‘planetary emergency,’ and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which has issued four sets of reports assessing the human impact on climate over 20 years.”  You know how those uppity Nobel Peace Prize winners are.  Al Gore truly is one of the most popular “targets” of modern times.  I’ve also written that, at least as far as climate change goes, there are any number of prominent folks in the world, who will tell you what Gore tells you, and sometimes more.  See If You Don’t Like Al Gore, Then …

Revkin’s story on the conference was preceded on Sunday by Skeptics on Human Climate Impact Seize on Cold Spell.  The “hook” here is a blog post from one Marc Morano, communications director for the Republican minority on the US Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee, in which he claims that Earth’s ‘Fever’ Breaks: Global COOLING Currently Under Way.  Michael Schlesinger, a scientist quoted in the “NY Times” piece, is skeptical about the skeptics:  “…any focus on the last few months or years as evidence undermining the established theory that accumulating greenhouse gases are making the world warmer was, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a harmful distraction.”

‘Nuff said.