Climate Change

The last time I invoked this French lament, it was in reference to President Bush’s attempted flimflammery on climate change when he announced “….a new national goal: to stop the growth of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 2025.”

Now the Republicans in the Senate have once again blocked the extension of tax credits for renewables. (I’ve written about this a number of times: here and here for instance.) See this story from RenewableEnergyWorld about the proposed legislation and this from Reuters on today’s developments.

The National Governors Association also, spitting into the wind it seems, issued this letter calling for a five-year extension, signed by all 50 governors! They, Democrats and Republicans, seem to have their priorities straight. See also this from Industry Week.

I’m sorry, folks, because I don’t like to see one of the critical issues of our age – if not the most critical – be caught up in a partisan shooting match. But that’s just what it is. When people say “the Senate” did this, or “Congress” didn’t do this, I want them to state the political realities of a particular situation. In the case of progressive energy and environmental legislation, the political reality is that the Republicans have been hugely obstructive. If you don’t believe me, check the votes. Here’s a statement on today’s travesty from the head of the Solar Energy Industries Association. It too fails to reflect the political reality.

It looks like the tax credits are going to run out before the next Congress. It also looks, at this point, as if the American people are going to further punish the Republicans in Congress in November for their obstructionism on these vital matters of energy and the environment, and others, just as they did in 2006. The American people want responsibility, finally, on energy. It looks like the only way to get it from their federal government is to vote for folks who believe as they do. I only wish that all the elected members of our federal government, legislative and executive, wanted to make the clear choices there are to be made to get what people want and the planet needs.

One of the things I taught my international relations students was the importance of regimes.  There are critically important international environmental regimes such as the Montreal Protocol, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, and the Kyoto Protocol, among many others. I also really tried to emphasize to my students the importance of the post World War II liberal democratic order that brought forth the UN, the Marshall Plan, the World Bank and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT).  The GATT, of course, became the World Trade Organization in 1995.  One of the prime reasons why the world went into an economic depression in the early 1930’s was the steady increase of trade protectionism.  Geniuses like John Maynard Keynes knew that international trade disputes needed to be discussed and worked out in order to prevent future depressions and the chaos of world war that was a principal consequence of the Great Depression.  Thus Keynes and his colleagues created the GATT at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944.

The recent WTO talks, focused primarily on agricultural subsidies, have collapsed.  There are many intricate ins and outs but the friction lies in the realm of subsidies.  The US, the EU and Japan spend $300 billion a year on various forms of subsidy to farmers and the developing world feels as if it can’t compete.  There is a large body of evidence to support this view.  It is not, however, the bailiwick of this blog to argue these matters.  Besides, there are more expert analyses out there than mine.

However, it is up to us here to recognize the implications of the failure of the WTO talks for confronting the climate change crisis.  If we can’t get a handle on trade, then what is going to happen on greenhouse gases, deforestation, the poisoning of the atmosphere and ocean with nitrogen from fertilizers, etc., etc.?   See, for example, WTO failure bodes ill for climate change: delegates from the AFP via Yahoo News.  The EU agriculture commissioner, Mariann Fischer-Boel, is quoted:  “If we cannot even manage trade, how should we then find ourselves in a position to manage the new challenges lying ahead of us.”  She meant climate change. 

We have miles to go before we sleep, and there are many positive trends and signals on climate change, but if nations dig in and are not able to find common cause we’re all going to be, in a word, cooked.  

Costs – The Center for Integrative Environmental Research has been doing a series of studies on the economic impacts of climate change and the costs of inaction. Their release from Wednesday says: “Climate change will carry a price tag of billions of dollars for a number of U.S. states, says a new series of reports from the University of Maryland’s Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER). The researchers conclude that the costs have already begun to accrue and are likely to endure.” They are looking at, among other things, sea-level rise, more frequent and more intense storms, and extreme temperatures. This echoes and amplifies the conclusions of the Stern Review on the economics of climate change and the IPCC’s Working Group II report on “Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.”

Biofuels and Food – Another recently released study on the “impact of climate change and bioenergy on nutrition” was jointly written by teams from FAO and the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). I’ve written a good number of times here about the controversies surrounding biofuels. There are many ins and outs to the discussion of biofuels and the paper from FAO and IFPRI looks at what problems it’s causing and what potential it has for contributing to “poverty reduction, food security and sustainable natural resource management.”

Ports – I wrote here recently about some reports on how shipping is producing GHG and other more localized and highly dangerous air pollution. Here’s a story, World Ports Commit to Reduce Emissions, looking at the recent C40 World Ports Climate Conference. The C40 is a superb organization of the world’s largest cities. I attended their conference last year and came away with a real sense that these cities are in the vanguard. See my four reports starting here.

Risks – Here’s another study, “Climate Change Risk 2008/9,” from Maplecroft, a risk analysis group. Their “scorecards” here “… provide analysis on four key issues in the response of society and business to climate change: emissions from energy use and land use change; unsustainable energy; climate change regulation and climate change vulnerability, including unique sub-national mapping, allowing organisations to assess their risk for specific locations and regions.”

I wrote one week ago about Al Gore’s important speech setting a very high bar indeed for renewables. I have believed in 100% renewables for many years but, to tell you the truth, never thought the stars would align as they have to make that vision perfectly realizable. Well, if you’ve read the many posts I’ve done here on renewable energy and energy efficiency, and you look around the world at all the incredible activity, it’s already happening!

There was a particularly off-key op-ed in yesterday’s “NY Times” calling for Solar from Space. (This evokes the old Muppet Show sketch: “Pigs in Space.”) It – very strangely – lumps together everything that’s not Solar from Space into one category, saying: “alternative energy sources — coal, oil shale, ethanol, wind and ground-based solar — are either of limited potential, very expensive, require huge energy storage systems or harm the environment.” Huh? Oh well, maybe the guy drank too much Tang.

In any event, if you’d like to see six minutes of highlights of Gore’s speech, see this:

For the full half-hour speech and transcript you can go here.

In the spirit of my post from a good while back, If You Don’t Like Al Gore, Then …, here are some reactions to Gore’s speech from three Presidential candidates and an EPA administrator under Reagan. (from wecansolveit.org)

Sen. John McCain: McCain said he admires Gore as an early and outspoken advocate of addressing the global warming problem even though “there may be some aspects of climate change that he and I are in disagreement (on).” Of the goals Gore outlined Thursday for generating more electricity with solar and wind resources, McCain said, “If the vice president says it’s do-able, I believe it’s do-able.”

Sen. Barack Obama: “For decades, Al Gore has challenged the skeptics in Washington on climate change and awakened the conscience of a nation to the urgency of this threat. I strongly agree with Vice President Gore that we cannot drill our way to energy independence, but must fast-track investments in renewable sources of energy like solar power, wind power and advanced biofuels …”

Bob Barr: “America responds well to challenges, if it is laid out, if it’s in terms that people can understand and relate to, if it makes sense – and what he’s laid out makes sense.”

Lee Thomas: “Our environment, economy and national security interests are threatened as never before. It’s time for all of us to commit to a comprehensive plan to break free of these threats. Al Gore is challenging each of us to be a part of the solution. I believe it will take this kind of bold initiative and strong national leadership if we are to be successful.”

China – This article from RenewableEnergyWorld.com, talks about the continuing explosion in China’s deployment of windpower and its rapidly growing manufacturing capacity. China was in fifth place worldwide in installed base at the end of last year with 6 GW, heading to 20 GW by 2010, and 100 by 2020. The current global wind installation is 94 GW.

This sort of growth rate for putting windpower in place obviously conduces to manufacturing. The article says “According to Steve Sawyer, secretary general of the Global Wind Energy Council, by 2009 China will become the world’s largest producer of wind turbines.” The article covers a lot of ground on the companies, the financing and the components involved.

Micro Wind – The same issue of RenewableEnergyWorld has a piece written by Jim Fugitte, a manufacturer of micro wind. While stipulating that large-scale renewable projects are important, he says that “The U.S. government, and the renewable energy industry in general … desperately need to reexamine the utility-scale solutions that many see as the only answer.” He points out, for one thing, the difficulties in routing and building transmission lines. His pitch: “The new generation of wind turbines makes distributive wind solutions feasible in urban areas and other settings where wind power is just not an alternative today. And micro-wind research is enabling applications and sites never before considered; meaning consumers, no matter where they’re located, have the potential to harness a new energy resource for themselves.”

The American Wind Energy Association does not seem to disagree. See this area of their website devoted to “small wind.” See also this informative article from CleanTechnica.

Big Solar – Going back to the macro, see Large-Scale U.S. Solar Power Facilities Becoming Commonplace from the excellent weekly newsletter “EERE Network News” (from DOE’s Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy division). According to the article, “…relatively large-scale systems are becoming commonplace” with the trend “most apparent in concentrating solar power (CSP).” The article talks about plans for facilities in California, New Mexico and Florida. Plenty of sun in those places!

CSP, not incidentally, is discussed at some length in the terrific EDF book, “Earth: The Sequel”. CSP, as you no doubt know, relies on a solar thermal approach, rather than photovoltaic. These big projects are all thermal. (Photovoltaics, which are also burgeoning, are applicable much more for distributed generation.)

PV Windows – While we’re on the subject, here’s a promising take on PV, from “DailyTech” - MIT Designs Solar Power Producing Windows, Coming Within 3 Years. Definitely micro and hugely interesting. Excellent article.

DG – So let’s revisit distributed generation (aka distributed energy) or, as the Europeans call it, decentralized energy. It’s simply locally generated power; not generated by an enormous plant and transmitted over long distances. DG has a big contribution to make. It should be, at least in the medium term, complementary to the utility-scale, central-power model. However, there is nothing but potential for locally generated power. Here are a couple of good videos: this from the National Renewables Energy Lab (short and to the point), and this from Greenpeace UK. It’s 18 minutes but it’s a great survey of DG and combined heat-and-power (CHP).

Smart Grid – What do you need to make DG work? The smart grid. The DG power is available to the local user but also needs to be taken up by the local utility if there’s a surplus. Conversely, the consumer needs to be able to draw on the utility when necessary. The importance of the smart grid also lies in the self-monitoring capacity embedded in the system that will help optimize it. I’ve written about the smart grid concept at Green Building, Smart Grids and Renewables. See also this on Boulder, Colorado from WorldChanging and this from the Gristmill. (The comments here, as is often the case, are as interesting as the article.)

SuperSmart Grid – So now it’s time to join the micro and the macro. I wrote the other day about the $5 billion infrastructure upgrade in Texas to bring windpower to the cities. I also wrote in March about an “… 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?!”  See this recent article from “The Guardian” too.

Well, you need High Voltage Direct Current (HVDC) technology to bring all that juice to Europe and, when it gets there, you need to integrate it into the grid. If there’s a simultaneous building out of new infrastructure to accommodate DG, then you need, what else, a SuperSmart Grid. Some very smart people from places like the European Climate Forum and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research are working on this. Here’s a fascinating paper that lays out the rationale for, the shape of, and the obstacles to the SSG in Europe.

The big news from Down Under from last week was Pope Benedict XVI’s visit.  The Vatican has elevated climate change as a concern recently.  See this from the “Voice of America.”  (For something a bit more substantive from The Holy See, see this speech from February at the UN.)

The Pope would be preaching to the choir, as it were, in Australia.  The “Sydney Morning Herald” wrote today that a recent poll revealed that “… 77 per cent believe Australia should press ahead and cut its greenhouse gas emissions, regardless of what other countries do.”  The government released its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme last week to acclaim and opposition.  I wrote last year about the momentous change in government and how it would impact the climate change debate there and internationally.  See Australia Has New Leadership and New Tack on Global Warming.  Australia and Australians are moving ahead. 

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Commonwealth, so are some Canadian provinces.  Ontario is the fourth province to join the Western Climate Initiative.  See Canada’s Ontario Joins US Carbon Initiative from PlanetArk.  The drumbeat for interstate, national, regional and international cap-and-trade continues.  (See last paragraph of “Gore on Energy” below.) 

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On low-cost, sustainable housing, I wrote about some ways to skin that cat at Habitat a few months ago.  See this now from the venerable and still-cutting edge Worldwatch Institute.

I wrote about all the huffing and puffing by the “Alliance to Save Nantucket Sound” in my recent look at the great book, Cape Wind.  One of their arguments is that the windfarm will destroy the view.  Here’s the thing:  I am among a number of folks who think the view of offshore (or onshore) windfarms is fairly magnificent.  I love the picture of the EU Environment Minister, Stavros Dimas, here.

But here’s a really terrific picture.  A tall ship gathering for a race from Liverpool (the 2008 European City of Culture) to Norway juxtaposed on the horizon with the Burbo Bank wind farm.

(credit to Getty Images)

Meanwhile, Texas is looking at a massive transmission infrastructure upgrade to enable wind farms inWest Texas to power much of Houston, Dallas, Austin and San Antonio.  The “NY Times” has a great story today, Texas Approves a $4.93 Billion Wind-Power Project.  I mentioned the astonishing TXU buyout that killed eight coal-fired power plants in Texas with the flourishing of a pen here (with a link to a “Frontline” segment), and highly recommend the documentary Fighting Goliath.  I also wrote here recently about “The Pickens Plan” to provide more windpower to Texas and the rest of the country.  The new lines approved by Texas “… can handle 18,500 megawatts of power, enough for 3.7 million homes on a hot day when air-conditioners are running.” 

I wrote about The Crime of Mountaintop Removal Mining, and Burning the Future, another terrific documentary, in May.  Well it appears that Appalachian Residents Have Found the Antidote to Coal according to the Pacific News Service.  You guessed it!  Wind.  440 MW.  See more information at Coal River Wind.

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind.” 

Al Gore made an important speech today in Washington:  In it he challenged the US to become carbon free in its electricity production in ten years time.  See this from CNN.  Regarding surface transportation, the article quotes him as saying “The way to bring gas prices down is to end our dependence on oil and use the renewable sources that can give us the equivalent of $1 a gallon gasoline.”  (For much more on Gore’s speech, see the blisteringly hard-working Andy Revkin’s piece, The (Annotated) Gore Energy Speech, at his Dot Earth blog.)

Is Gore’s challenge technologically feasible?  Absolutely!  I have written about scores of ways of doing this, including reducing the amount of energy we use in the first place.  Politically do-able?  That’s a maybe, but it’s looking better every day.   

But there’s one more driver, folks, and we’ve been examining it here on a regular basis:  economics.  The cost of not radically cutting our carbon output down is astronomical, according to the Stern Review on the economics of climate change and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, among others.  The Stern Review likens the economic impact of an unaltered, “business-as-usual” energy and development path to be tantamount to another Great Depression or World War II.  Are you on for that?  Me neither. 

With the maturing of the European Trading System, the coming regional American cap-and-trade regimes (Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative and the Western Climate Initiative), the federal cap-and-trade scheme we’ll see come into being in 2009, and the post-Kyoto regime that will be born in Copenhagen in December of 2009, there’s no turning back.

As Kevin Parker, global head of Deutsche Asset Management, says in a really fine op-ed in today’s “FT” the Carbon emitters’ free ride is about to end.  “The effects of a repricing of carbon will be profound. Carbon will take its place alongside oil, coal and gas as one of the most closely followed commodities in the world. This will mark the beginning of externalities at last being priced into the cost of production. [my emphasis]  It will signal that carbon emitters have had a free ride for long enough. Governments – the US’s in particular – will have to join Europe to create a global market for pricing carbon and businesses around the world will have to accept the price the market sets.”

Further to my last post, here are some more looks at transportation issues.

Air Show – This article from the “NY Times” today, The Wild Green Yonder, describes some of the initiatives of the airline industry I touched on the other day:  new materials, new engines, new fuels.  The article refers to a series of test that Boeing is running with major airlines on biofuels as alternatives to traditional jet fuel.  You can go to Boeing’s website covering its environmental programs to learn more about its biofuels R & D and even about its fuel cell test flight – in a plane considerably smaller and lighter than a commercial jet, to be sure, but then every journey begins with a first step. 

New Book – Here’s a timely book, The Limits to Travel - How Far Will You Go?, that looks worth your while.  Take it on the next long flight you’re on. 

Teleconferencing – You can’t take a vacation via telecommunications, but you can probably do a lot of your business that way.  Save time, money, and GHG emissions.  See How Teleconferencing Works from the great website “How Stuff Works” from the Discovery Channel folks.

Trains – Business on the Eurostar service between London and Paris or Brussels has been booming.  A lot of that has to do with more convenient connections.  See this from the “FT” today.   I’ve been on European trains going (way) back to my college-days tour with the second-class Eurailpass through to TGV travel in the more recent past.  European trains are the real deal.  They go everywhere, they run regularly, they’re quick, they’re cost-effective, you don’t have to drive, and the scenery’s good.  What’s not to love? 

Algae – I’m a little in love with algae.  I’ve written about some of the innovations here a few times.  See As planet swelters, are algae unlikely saviour? from AFP via the WBCSD from last week.  Algae has enormous potential as a carbon sink.  It can eat the carbon dioxide right out of your power plant.  It can also be cultivated to produce potentially prodigious amounts of biofuel. 

Arizona Public Service is piloting carbon dioxide capture with algae along with GreenFuel Technologies.   See this from APS.  See also the informative “Oilgae” website.  Stay tuned on algae, fershur.

Biofuel Slowdown – This article from the “FT” from earlier this month, Britain to put brakes on biofuels policy, reveals that in the UK, as elsewhere, that growing concerns about pressures on food prices and the increasingly open secret that biofuels produced from seed crops appear to actually exacerbate global warming are producing action to throttle back.  (I wrote about the growing awareness of the problems at Are Biofuels A Bummer? in February.)  See the UK Transport Secretary’s statement to Parliament in which she says “… the introduction of biofuels should be slowed until policies are in place to direct biofuel production onto marginal or idle land, and that these are demonstrated to be effective.  The detail of these control mechanisms would need to be agreed internationally.”  The Gallagher Review from the UK government generated this level of concern.  See the report and the mandate of the Renewable Fuels Agency here. 

As you no doubt know by now, transportation accounts for about 13% of worldwide GHG.

Figure SPM.3. (a) Global annual emissions of anthropogenic GHGs from 1970 to 2004.5(b) Share of different anthropogenic GHGs in total emissions in 2004 in terms of carbon dioxide equivalents (CO2-eq). (c) Share of different sectors in total anthropogenic GHG emissions in 2004 in terms of CO2-eq. (Forestry includes deforestation.)

In the US, the proportion for transportation is much higher: 29%. In India and China, transportation accounts for about 5% each of total GHG; in Germany, 20%, in Japan, 22%.

Let’s take a quick look at some recent developments.

European Union – Aviation included in EU CO2 trading scheme is the headline from EurActiv last week. The European Parliament voted its approval of moving aviation under its GHG cap-and-trade system in 2012. As the article reports, “The move was immediately criticised by the aviation industry as well as the United States.” However, the EU fully intends to negotiate an international agreement and may attempt to create a bilateral agreement with the US.

The EU has been moving steadily toward bringing down aviation’s emissions. I wrote about this last December at Aviation and the EU. See also my article on sustainability at US airports and a useful video from the EU, both referenced at the December post. Although the burden of GHG emissions from aviation is still only about 3% of the total worldwide, that proportion is growing rapidly.

Airline Industry – As I found when I wrote the article about airports, the industry is also working very hard indeed to get emissions down. One big reason: Cost! With jet fuel prices going up by the day, it behooves the industry to maximize efficiency. That translates into more fuel-efficient planes and engines, faster and more direct routing of planes, better maintenance, and even alternative fuels. The “FT” had a special report yesterday on the aerospace industry. See this from them on the environmental side. Among other things, companies like Virgin Atlantic are experimenting with alternative fuels. They used a biofuel blend in a test flight last winter. See their release. See also Rolls-Royce, British Airways to Test Alternative Airline Fuels from GreenBiz. On air traffic control, you can check out the fascinating video from the EU at my post from just about a year ago.

Shipping – Like aviation, seaborne shipping accounts for a relatively small percentage of GHG, but it is growing. Making Ships Green, in Port and at Sea, is an article from the “NY Times” I’ve been saving for you for a few months. Just as I found in writing my article on airports, ships, like planes, are hooking up to a local electricity supply when they’re in port in order to save power and reduce emissions. In Sweden, where acid rain continues to be a big concern, this approach eliminates the particularly noxious pollutants from marine bunker fuel. They’re hooking up in Belgium, LA and Long Beach too. But acid rain is not the only consideration. The article reports: “James J. Corbett, an associate professor of marine policy at the University of Delaware, is the co-author of a study published in December that attributed 60,000 cardiopulmonary and lung cancer deaths each year globally to shipping emissions and forecast an increase to nearly 85,000 deaths by 2012 under current trends.”  See also this report, “Green Harbours,” from the Hong Kong nonprofit Civic Exchange.  (And try More Cool Stuff from me from March with the picture of the freighter with the kite for supplementary power.)

Transportation of Food – I’ve been sitting on another “NY Times” article from a few months back waiting for the right context to flag it to you. See Environmental Cost of Shipping Groceries Around the World in which one expert, Paul Watkiss, an Oxford University economist, is quoted: “We’re shifting goods around the world in a way that looks really bizarre.” He wrote a recent European Union report on food imports. See Watkiss’s slide show, “Food Miles and Sustainability,” here.

The “NYT” article goes on to talk about regulation, particularly from the EU, being in the offing. There’s also a good little video about the exotic mangosteen and how it finds its way to your taste buds if you’re in Europe or the US.

On the other hand, see also Do food miles matter? from the terrific “Environmental Science & Technology” from April. The study cited says “… that transportation creates only 11% of the 8.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases (in carbon dioxide equivalents) that an average U.S. household generates annually as a result of food consumption. The agricultural and industrial practices that go into growing and harvesting food are responsible for most (83%) of its greenhouse gas emissions.”

More about what we eat and how it affects the global climate system here soon.

Electric Cars – This, my friends, is where the rubber meets the road. We can really, truly have zero-carbon surface transportation with electric (or fuel cell) cars powered by renewables. I wrote about this at Electric Cars Looming on the Horizon in May and at Future Car from April.

Now Renault, Nissan Plan to Electrify Portugal is the word from GreenBiz. The release from Nissan quotes Prime Minister José Sócrates: “Portugal has become a leading country in renewable energy. This agreement with Renault-Nissan will place Portugal also on the front line in terms of sustainable mobility with zero-emission vehicles.”