Climate Change

I’ve been so jazzed by the coup d’état in the House of Representatives (see last two posts below plus this from early this month) that I’ve neglected some other big stories.  There are some great ones out there. 

GHG Cap in the UK – MPs pass landmark climate change bill is the story from AFP.  Parliament is mandating an 80% reduction from 1990 levels.  This is the target that President-Elect Obama and environmental leaders in the Congress are seeking.  Not incidentally, the story reports that “Climate change minister Joan Ruddock said she had recently spoken to officials in the US Congress and they had praised the way British lawmakers worked together on such an important issue.”  Ruddock heads the brand new Department of Energy and Climate Change.

The implications for this include the notion that Britain and the US, along with others, may go to Copenhagen next year very well prepared to negotiate serious GHG reductions for the international community as a whole.  The upcoming Conference of the Parties in Poland will be a critical stepping stone to the meetings in Copenhagen in December of 2009. 

Canada – Meanwhile in another key realm of the British Commonwealth, and a G7 country to boot – not to forget, the call has come out, finally, for a cap-and-trade regime.  Even better, Canada wants to create a single North American system.  See this from Reuters.  The Western Climate Initiative already includes four Canadian provinces as partners and one as an observer.  In addition, six Mexican states are observers.  (See the lists.)

It makes sense, given the existence of NAFTA and the groundbreaking work of the WCI that a full North American compact come into being.  Again, as with the British, should this take shape prior to Copenhagen, it’ll be another convincing argument for a robust international agreement.

Macedonia – This small proud country, one of the former Yugoslavian states, made a bold statement this week.  Macedonians Plant Six Million Trees In Single Day is the scoop, also from Reuters’ consistently excellent PlanetArk newsfeed.   Opera singer Boris Trajanov initiated this superb investment in his country’s future and wants to expand the project to other Balkan countries.  He said:  “If Macedonia, a country of two million people, can plant six million trees, we can only imagine how many trees can be planted in other, bigger countries.”  Bravissimo!

UNFCCC – The Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, Yvo de Boer, has lauded Barack Obama’s recent remarks supporting strong energy and climate change legislation.  (See November 18 just below.)  In talking to, once again, Reuters, de Boer said of Obama’s remarks:  “I think that will have a very positive influence on the negotiations.  He indicated that he intends to show national and international leadership.  I think that that statement will be seen as a huge signal of encouragement to the international community.”  See the whole story here.

This is another instance of how the world is embracing the change in tone on international issues, from the world economy to energy and the environment, as we transition from the last days of the present administration to Obama’s.  You’ve been seeing this in the international press consistently from Election Day.

Forests – I don’t think I’ve adequately covered the subject of forest loss and its extraordinary impact on warming.  20% of warming induced by people comes from forest destruction.  I mentioned the extraordinary losses in Borneo in the last post below.  We’ve also touched on some incredible potential for carbon sequestration in the heart of the Amazon rainforest in the nurturing of “terra preta” here in August.  We also looked at the REDD movement – “Reducing emissions from deforestation and ecosystem degradation.” – here and here in June.  The IPCC also looked at the GHG mitigation potential for forests here in their Fourth Assessment Report last year.

I mentioned the World Conservation Union’s meetings in October here in the context of species loss.  At the meetings, some important principles on forest loss, protection and restoration were also enunciated by an international coalition known as the Forests Dialogue (TFD).  In TFD’s press release, they claimed consensus had been reached by “250 representatives of governments, forestry companies, trade unions, environmental and social groups, international organizations, forest owners, indigenous peoples and forest-community groups in a series of meetings over 10 months.”  See also this article from the Worldwatch Institute. 

Critical momentum has been building for some time on addressing forest loss.  Although the Kyoto Protocol did not address this key issue, the negotiators at the key international meetings in Bali last year did.  See Bali delegates agree to support forests-for-climate (REDD) plan.  Meanwhile, as I noted in my post on the House Energy and Commerce draft climate change bill here:  “Another noteworthy point is that the draft makes international reforestation and afforestation projects eligible for offsets.”  These two key constituencies, the UNFCCC negotiators and John Dingell’s powerful House committee, are going to have an awful lot of influence on the shape of federal and international law in the next couple of years. 

Cities – I had a lot to say in May of 2007 on the C40 Large Cities Climate Summit.  This was a great conference with one smart, motivated, focused heavy-hitting speaker after another.  (Start here.)  The C40 group aims “…to create long-term international collaborations among large cities in order to drive down carbon emissions and encourage cities to work with businesses and national governments to accelerate action on climate change.”  They’ve done great work in only just a few years.  They’ve been having a series of meetings this year in anticipation of the next summit, taking place in Seoul in May.  The latest meeting took place in Tokyo in October to discuss adaptation measures for cities.  See also this AFP piece:  Cities pledge action on climate change. 

The C40 had a World Ports Conference in Rotterdam in July which I mentioned here.  (Shipping is a big issue and I talked about it here as well.)  The C40 also convened a workshop on airports in April in LA.  (I wrote about sustainability at airports for “Planning” last year.  See the article here.)

The C40 is not alone in their focus and effectiveness.  I mentioned the U.S. Conference of Mayors in my post below from October 26 and ICLEI - Local Governments for Sustainability has been doing great work for years, including with their Cities for Climate Protection (CCP) Campaign. I’m an old urban environmentalist and so I pay attention to these initiatives. So should you because there’s so much bang for the buck in our cities.

P.S.  The site of the next C40 summit, Seoul, is embracing bicycles in a big way.  See this from AFP.

European Union – The leaders of the 27-member EU met in Brussels last month and one of the critical discussions centered around climate change.  Keeping the EU’s ambitious renewables and climate change trajectory moving onward and upward is going to be difficult in the precarious economic times we’re in now.  Reuters put it this way in this article:  “The meeting in Brussels had been expected to focus on how the EU would reach its goal of cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020, but was overtaken by failing banks, plunging stock markets and warnings of recession.”  The EU issued a progress report on how the countries are doing on meeting the Kyoto targets saying they’re on track. 

But it’s going to be very tough for some countries, particularly those in Eastern Europe that rely on coal.  See Uphill struggle for coal-fired Poland from the “FT.”  At the summit in Brussels, these concerns were taken into account.  “…European officials argue that they have already taken into account the challenges faced by Poland and other members of the “coalition of the unwilling”. For example, the climate package calls for 10 per cent of the trading scheme’s auction revenues to be redistributed to poorer countries.” 

I’ve belabored the point rather more than I perhaps should have here, but I’m going to do it again:  We have enormous opportunity now to change how we do business.  The sooner we make the transition to renewables and a low to zero-carbon world, the sooner we’re going to ease all sorts of economic and geopolitical pressures.  (Do a search at the blog on the word “opportunity” and you’ll see.  I do love that word!)

Here are some great stories from major media that merit a look.  Beyond these stories, these publications have consistently great coverage on climate change and matters directly relevant to our subject.  There’s also a book here for your consideration.

National Geographic – This old and universally respected magazine has had an increasingly high profile on critical environmental stories over the past several years.  Here is one startling and, frankly, depressing article about the decimation of Borneo’s rainforests in the service of producing palm oil for junk food.  At the NGM page for Borneo’s Moment of Truth, you will find a video, some of the stunning photography, and the article itself.

Borneo seems a microcosm of much of what’s wrong in the world:  our appetite for energy and cheap consumer goods, our disdain for biodiversity and the lives of indigenous peoples, and our indifference to rainforest destruction and how that relates to global warming.  The photographs and video remind me of the havoc wreaked in Appalachia, another breathtakingly wild and diverse environment, by mountaintop removal coal mining.  (See last post below.)

For more on palm oil, see this report from Greenpeace:  Forest destruction, climate change and palm oil expansion in Indonesia.

© Greenpeace / Natalie Behring Chisolm

There’s another compelling story at NGM, on light pollution:  Our Vanishing Night.  The excellent environmental writer, Verlyn Klinkenborg, writes about the surprisingly enormous burden imposed on wildlife by the lights of cities and industrial complexes – even fishing fleets.  As an urban dweller (a small metropolis called New York City), I can attest to the fact that we’ve got too much light.  The article references the work of the International Dark-Sky Association, a nonprofit “dedicated to protecting and preserving the nighttime environment and our heritage of dark skies through quality outdoor lighting.”  See also the Dark Sky Society.

I’ve noted the amazing, now-annual phenomenon of Earth Hour.  Light pollution not only disrupts the natural cycles of wildlife, it also sucks thousands of megawatts of  power, unnecessarily, from our grids, hugely exacerbating global warming.  Simple stuff, it seems to me.

Update:  See this article from the “NY Times” on efforts in the Big Apple to cut down on unnecessary lighting. 

The NY Review of Books – This eminently intelligent and readable periodical has had, like NGM and many others, more and more to say about climate change.  Their go-to environmentalist is the incomparable Bill McKibben.  (See any number of references I’ve made to him and his writing at the blog, including talking about the “Step It Up 2007” campaign.)

In the most recent issue, McKibben reviews Tom Friedman’s new blockbuster Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution—and How It Can Renew America.  The review is titled “Green Fantasia.”  McKibben both praises the book for some of its emphases and damns it for an overabundance of conventional thinking.  Indeed, the review opens by saying:  “Thomas Friedman is the prime leading indicator of the conventional wisdom, always positioned just far enough ahead of the curve to give readers the sense that they’re in-the-know, but never far enough to cause deep mental unease.”  Ouch.

An example of praise:  “His basic policy guidelines, and most of his specific suggestions, for managing this crucial transition are sound.”  McKibben here notes another useful insight:  “Friedman knows that innovation in the financial services industry will be almost as important as progress in engineering.”   But McKibben also derides Friedman for, for all intents and purposes, dismissing the important arena of international climate regimes:  What was finalized in Kyoto and what will be, ostensibly, finalized in Copenhagen in December 2009 to replace the existing protocol, are of utmost importance. 

He also gets to the crux of the title of his review here:  “Does it ever occur to him, in the grip of a fantasia like this, that if the sun is shining brightly, or the breeze is blowing steadily, you could dry your clothes on a $14 piece of rope strung off your back deck, or for that matter on a foldable rack in the apartment hallway? And that since most of the world already knows how to do it, we might be smarter moving in their direction instead of insisting that they buy into our entire high-technology suburban dream?”

That’s been one of my thoughts, and occasionally an argument here:  Why don’t we try to get more bang out of the low-tech buck?  Solar-box cookers and, indeed, hanging the laundry out to dry!  I wrote about Galloping Consumption a while back.  I said then, in conclusion:  “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.” 

Great review.  Check it on out.

“Der Spiegel” – This venerable German periodical has a most useful section devoted to Climate Change here.  For a particularly good and well-informed look at what’s going on in Germany and Europe, you should check in here from time to time.

DK – Dorling Kindersley has a fabulous series of “Eyewitness” books that illustrate all sorts of important subjects with interesting text and eye-catching, vivid graphics.  When I visited the AMNH exhibit on climate change (see post below from Oct. 20), I picked up their new volume Eyewitness Climate Change.  This is great for kids, particularly, but it’s perfectly great reading for adults too.  It’s quite informative, very good at making some complex ideas accessible.  With a CD-ROM of clip art, and a great poster too, you can’t miss.

We were talking about the ocean.  Now let’s talk about the earth.  More specifically, let’s focus on the soil – that which gives us the food that all of us need.

There is a truly terrific piece in the latest “National Geographic,” Our Good Earth.  It looks at all manner of good news and bad news in how we use the earth.  In the developed world, one way we degrade our food-producing soil, among a number of ways, is through compaction by great honking harvesters and other gargantuan machines.  In the developing world, we cut down the forests and grasslands for cropland.  This practice, of course has enormous implications for exacerbating global warming.  See Are Biofuels A Bummer?  But let’s stick here now to the impacts on agricultural productivity. 

The NGM article says “In the first—and still the most comprehensive—study of global soil misuse, scientists at the International Soil Reference and Information Centre (ISRIC) in the Netherlands estimated in 1991 that humankind has degraded more than 7.5 million square miles of land. Our species, in other words, is rapidly trashing an area the size of the United States and Canada combined.”  The article details some of the practices that have led to this massive degradation.

It also looks at some extraordinarily hopeful developments like the Keita Project in Niger sponsored by the Italian government, the use of cordons pierreux (long lines of fist-sized stones) to trap rainwater and silt, and the use of zaï – foot deep holes in the fields that are then salted with manure.  Read this great article and also see NGM’s companion “geopedia” on soil for more information.

Perhaps the most fascinating focus in the article is on the terra preta do índio – the “black Indian earth” of the Amazon.  Wim Sombroek, the Dutch soil scientist, went to Amazonia in the 1950s and found hugely fertile pockets of soil in oases amid the acidic, poor soils of the rainforest.  Sombroek was something of a giant in his field, becoming director of ISRIC for a time and SG of the International Union of Soil Sciences (IUSS).  He devoted much of his life to studying the terra preta and fostering a movement to adopt the same approach to soil enrichment.   

What is terra preta?  It’s the result of an ancient Amazonian practice of using charcoal and other carbon-rich inputs to build up the soil.  This soil retains its richness for centuries and is stunningly productive.  In an outstanding article from “Nature” in August of 2006, Black is the New Green, we learn all about the ins and outs of terra preta.  “Everyone agrees that the explanation lies in large part with the char (or biochar) that gives the soil its darkness. This char is made when organic matter smoulders in an oxygen-poor environment, rather than burns. The particles of char produced this way are somehow able to gather up nutrients and water that might otherwise be washed down below the reach of roots.  They become homes for populations of microorganisms that turn the soil into that spongy, fragrant, dark material that gardeners everywhere love to plunge their hands into.” 

Sombroek saw so much potential in this that he created a movement for terra preta nova.  Research into this area has exploded since his book in 1966 on Amazonian soils, and scientists and others have been gathering force to help promote this approach not only for the wholesale restoration of degraded soils all over the world, but to sequester massive amounts of carbon.  In this Cornell University “Science Brief,” Terra Preta:  Soil Improvement and Carbon Sequestration, we note that “Bio-char (biomass-derived black carbon) is highly stable in soil and can persist hundreds and thousands of years. It is much more stable than even the most stabilized carbon in soil.  It therefore constitutes a much longer carbon sink than most other sequestration options such as no-tillage, manure applications, or afforestation.”  Cornell scientist Johannes Lehmann is doing a lot of work in this field.  For more, see his website.

Eprida, a “technology development company and social purpose enterprise,” is doing cutting-edge work in developing this sort of approach not only to sustainable agriculture but to renewable energy production and carbon sequestration.  See their flash animation on the “Eprida cycle.”  See also this “Scientific American” special report from last year.

This is but one more way for us to mimic nature’s way.  As Stewart Brand noted in the Whole Earth Catalogue a good many years ago now, “We are as gods, and we might as well get good at it.”  It has always seemed to me that the “godlike” approach to life is the simple one.  As you will have noted at this blog, the low-tech, decentralized, KISS (keep it simple, stupid) approach wins my heart more often than not.  (See my posts, for instance, on Habitat; Green Tech, Low Tech, Clean Tech, New Tech; and Black Carbon and Solar Cookers.)  I am, after all, one of those old hippies still dreaming of Aquarius and all that happy jazz.  But as no less a personage than Kevin Hydes, the chairman of the World Green Building Council, pointed out to me, the counterculture produced a tremendous amount of creative thinking that has borne fruit in many ways. 

Senate on Climate Change – In the US, the Senate began debate yesterday on legislation to address climate change. The “SF Chronicle” reports here that the opponents and proponents were so eager to start bare knuckling over the bill that they voted 74-14 to proceed to debate. The bill “…would require about 2,100 major U.S. emitters - mostly coal-fired power plants, oil refineries and chemical plants - to pay for the right to emit carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Proceeds from selling or trading those permits could total over $6 trillion over the next 40 years, and would be reinvested in renewable energy and rebates to consumers.” Here’s a graphic from the “NY Times” illustrating the geography of carbon emissions in the US.

S.3036 has been the focus of much debate already, both on the Hill and off. Here’s one analysis of some of the policy and politics from the Center for American Progress. Another CAP, the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP), a grouping of industry and environmental groups, agrees on six principles, but differs internally on critical issues such as to what extent permits will be given away or auctioned to industries.

As I’ve noted recently, we’re not going to have a climate change law in the US this year. The debates on this legislation now are important, though, for staking out various positions, and putting the issue out before the public.

Solar Power Economics – The “FT” had a nice story the other day on the Silver lining in solar power storm clouds. (Remember, you may have to register, but it’s free and otherwise painless.) The line that caught my eye was that, according to one industry analyst, “…the global capacity for production of photovoltaic equipment - the biggest section of solar power technology which converts sunlight directly into electricity - is set to increase ‘dramatically,’ from 3 gigawatts last year to 15 to 20 gigawatts of production in 2010. Much of the growth is coming from China.” 2010 is right around the corner!

Take note also that “Abu Dhabi’s Masdar Initiative intends to spend more than $2 billion to build a thin-film solar manufacturing subsidiary,” according to the Dow Jones news service here. (I wrote about the Masdar project here last month.)

Two Important Conferences – The first of these is the meeting in Bonn that began yesterday. “More than 2,400 participants, including government delegates from 172 countries and representatives from business and industry, environmental organizations and research institutions are attending the two-week meeting of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC),” reads this release. The AP reports “The Bonn talks are to go into the details of an agreement to be concluded in December 2009 and signed in Copenhagen, Denmark. The talks are based on an accord reached in Bali last December when the United States, India and China indicated they would take part in a post-2012 arrangement,” said the AP here. You can follow all the proceedings at the UNFCCC website and at the International Institute of Sustainable Development (IISD) here. (I highlighted the IISD’s “knowledge management project,” Climate-L.org, on May 29 below.)

The other conference is the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) that began today in Rome. Billed as the “World Food Security Summit,” there were more than 40 world leaders gathered at the emergency meeting and UNSG Ban Ki-Moon told them hunger breeds “social disintegration, ill health and economic decline,” according to the “LA Times” here. See also this release from the FAO with details of their Director-General Jacques Diouf’s impassioned speech. Diouf said “The structural solution to the problem of food security in the world lies in increasing production and productivity in the low-income, food-deficit countries.” (I referenced the new, comprehensive report, “OECD-FAO Agricultural Outlook 2008-2017,” in the context of the food-biofuel controversy on May 30 below.) In the context of issues that we’re looking at here, Diouf also said: “Nobody understands how a carbon market of 64 billion dollars can be created in the developed countries to offset global warming but that no funds can be found to prevent the annual deforestation of 13 million hectares, especially in the developing countries whose tropical forest ecosystems act as carbon sinks for some 190 gigatonnes,” and “Nobody understands how 11 to 12 billion dollars in subsidies in 2006 and protective tariff policies have had the effect of diverting 100 million tonnes of cereals from human consumption, mostly to satisfy a thirst for fuel for vehicles.”

The somewhat ubiquitous IISD is also in Rome. See their coverage here. Their coverage, by the way, can be found not only in English, but in French, Spanish and Arabic as well.

REDD – I referenced the movement for “reducing emissions from deforestation and ecosystem degradation” in my last post below. Here’s a little more insight from “The Economist” going back to March. They mention projects that are trying to prevent rainforest destruction through various approaches to “voluntary” credits.

The smart money, though, is on a post-Kyoto, UN-administered system that will grant offset credits for forest projects. I wrote in my review of an important new book, Earth: The Sequel, “A post-Kyoto international regime that set a reasonable price on carbon ($30 a ton) would allow Brazil alone to realize $168 billion profit from protecting its rainforests while preventing emissions of six billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to the Woods Hole Research Center. (Pop quiz: After the US and China, which two countries are the biggest contributors to global warming? Brazil and Indonesia - because of rainforest destruction.)”

I sat in on the last day of this event in New York City on Friday, hearing two fascinating panels discuss “Corporate Strategies For Carbon Reduction” (in the context of federal cap-and-trade legislation) and Clean Tech’s role in getting GHG’s down.  The main sponsors of the summit were EcoSecurities, one of the world’s largest developers and suppliers of emission reductions, and Baker & McKenzie, a law firm with a well-developed practice in renewable and carbon offset projects.  The event was run by Infocast.  They’re covering an awful lot of ground these days on energy, the carbon markets, renewables, and other things. 

The focus of the first panel was how industry sectors are going to respond to federal climate change legislation.  The panelists represented the power production, transmission and distribution industry; the natural gas production and distribution industry; and insurance.  There has been a lot of analysis done in these industries, as you would expect, on the implications of a cap-and-trade regime in the US.  (See my notes on May 29 on the vehicle that’s going to be discussed this week in the Senate, “Cap-and-Trade Bonanza” from May 16 below, and also Good Grief, More Carbon Markets from a year ago.)

The director of AIG’s Office of Environment and Climate Change, Alice LeBlanc, was supportive of the idea of including reforestation and agriculture initiatives as eligible offsets in a US law, these areas accounting for nearly 40% of GHG emissions.  Bruce Braine, the Vice President for Strategic Policy Analysis of American Electric Power, talked about carbon capture and storage.  AEP is, by Braine’s own admission, the largest coal-fired producer of electricity and carbon dioxide emitter in the US – so CCS would be high on their agenda.  See Braine’s powerpoint on this from last fall at a UN meeting.  Nate Hanson, Florida Power & Light’s VP in charge of renewables, noted that there is no real CCS system available now and so public service commissions are looking askance at new coal-fired projects.  FPL has, not incidentally, the largest portfolio of renewables in the US power sector.  (Go here for information on their environmental and sustainability programs.)  CCS – or more precisely the lack thereof – was the subject of the “NY Times” lead article I cited in my previous post below. 

The discussion of the climate change bill in the Senate by the panel revealed what seemed to me to be an alarming disconnect on the Hill between what the bill offers now and both what the international community has already created via the Kyoto Protocol and what’s being negotiated now for a post-Kyoto regime.  I noted the other day that nobody realistically thinks legislation is going to be passed by this Congress, and that they’re gearing up for a bill in 2009, but I was a bit shocked to see the lack of conformity to where the international community has already been and where we’re going.  Witness LeBlanc’s comment, for example, on the need to incorporate principles being ironed out on REDD – “Reducing emissions from deforestation and ecosystem degradation.”  The critical UN meetings in Bali in December accepted the principle and there continues to be a lot of activity.  Let’s hope the next Congress and the next President figure out the considerable bang for the buck in this.  They need, clearly, to think about all the international ins and outs of climate change. 

During the break, I asked EcoSecurities’ US director, Eron Bloomgarden, about this.  He said that there were Congressional staffers who’d gone to Bali and they are aware of the international initiatives.  He also flagged the Presidential Climate Action Project to me.  The PCAP, modestly, “… has developed a bold, comprehensive and non-partisan plan for presidential leadership rooted in climate science and designed to ignite innovation at every level of the American economy.”  In talking to LeBlanc privately, she noted that the international community is itself very closely watching what’s happening now on the Hill.

The other panel I heard had some fascinating insights on clean tech.  (See Green Tech, Low Tech, Clean Tech, New Tech and any number of posts on Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency.)   One of the panelists was Frank Alix, the CEO of Powerspan, a company that has advanced pollution control technologies for power plants.  They’re developing a carbon dioxide control technology, not surprisingly.  Mitch Tyson is the CEO of Advanced Electron Beams.  AEB deploys its clean energy technology across a wide range of industrial applications, including pollution control.  Tyson is also involved in a number of regional initiatives including the New England Clean Energy Council and the Massachusetts High Technology Council.  He’s extremely knowledgeable, as you’d imagine, about his industry, and passionate.  So is Al Forte, Director of Carbon Practice for Nexant, a high-tech provider to the energy and petrochemical industries.     

Forte talked about what he characterized as the best Renewable Portfolio Standard program in the country – Connecticut’s.  It very effectively fosters renewables and energy efficiency, including the issuing of energy efficiency credits for eligible projects.  See the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund and the Connecticut Energy Efficiency Fund.  In the same vein, Tyson talked about the Cambridge Energy Alliance.  These folks are also fostering a considerable effort on reducing energy use.  This is all on the general theme of demand-side management.  Tyson pointed out that Massachusetts is moving to “decoupling” in which utilities are given incentives to promote energy efficiency.  I pointed out that New York State used to have it and it lapsed.

Another nugget:  Forte at one point said that there’s 800 GW of generating capacity in the US and it’s operating at an average of 28% efficiency.  He more or less characterized this as criminal and wondered why there isn’t more use of cogeneration.   

For more, see Energy Efficiency and Energy Efficiency for Fun and Profit, items I’ve had here recently on this subject.

A truly classic quote, as reported in the Year in Review, came from Fred Krupp, influential president of the Environmental Defense Fund, in referring to the White House talks on climate change in September: “It was a lost opportunity. America needs to lead, and we can lead, but now the spotlight shifts to the Congress because the president has refused to accept the only path that’s ever solved an air pollution problem — and that’s mandatory legal limits.”

Krupp and EDF have been a powerful force in getting the mainstream environmental movement more in tune with the realities of the private sector. Instead of always confronting big business on issues of energy and the environment, they have very often worked with business to effect positive change. That does not mean, in any sense, that organizations as powerful as EDF, and the Natural Resources Defense Council, which bears many of the same attributes as EDF, don’t take their shots at irresponsible and dangerous actions by industry in the courts and in the offices and lobbies of government when industry’s actions merit it. It does mean that EDF recognizes the value of getting business to act responsibly in whatever ways are effective. Hell, even Greenpeace works with Coca-Cola and Unilever these days. (See that story toward the end of this from July.)

Krupp and EDF made an enormous breakthrough in February of 2007 when they negotiated the shelving of eight coal-fired power plants in Texas. Former EPA administrator William Reilly and Krupp were the architects of a deal that permanently altered the map of power production in this country. You can see this segment from Frontline’s “Hot Politics” to get a bigger picture.

Now Krupp and the journalist Miriam Horn have come out with a book, Earth: The Sequel – The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming. It looks at some amazing initiatives that are being aggressively pursued: the use of “concentrators” to intensify the sunlight directed at solar thermal arrays or photovoltaics, colocating solar and wind farms to get the maximum generating potential of those two, bottling heat in giant thermos-type containers as a storage mechanism, using biotechnology to produce biofuels and nanotechnology to radically improve the properties of silicon for use in PV cells, power-generating buoys, geothermal units that can be deployed all over the world to take advantage of the crust of the earth’s tremendous heat and also the hot water that comes up with oil at wellheads, and underground coal gasification, among many others.

My favorite is the pilot in Arizona that is using carbon dioxide from coal-fired power plant stacks to feed algae which, in turn, can then be converted to a potent biofuel. The process is water-intensive but it can tolerate wastewater so that is another waste stream that is incorporated. This scheme would also use nitrogen from the emissions as fertilizer. Eventually, the coal in the plant could be replaced by the algae, leading to a carbon-negative situation. (See also this recent piece from Matt Wald at the “NY Times.”) I’ve been writing about Renewable Energy since the beginning of this blog and I continue to find these ideas and initiatives, as Mr. Spock would say, “Fascinating.”

One of the leitmotifs of the book is the entrepreneurial, even frontier spirit of the innovators bringing some of these solutions into being. Venture capitalists get their due here. But what drives capital? The promise of a return on its investment. What then is the single-most important driver in the quest to realize a good “return on capital”? Krupp and Horn iterate (and reiterate) it’s setting a price on carbon. Why? To “level the playing field” with the fossil fuel and nuclear suppliers of energy. What’s the best mechanism for doing this? A cap-and-trade system. This brings us back to Krupp’s quote above regarding the necessity to institute “mandatory legal limits.” That’s the cap. The trade part is what you do when you’ve gone below your capped emission limit and can then sell the difference between what you’ve achieved and what you’ve been mandated to achieve. (I’ve written about this mechanism a number of times at Carbon Markets.)

EDF, led by economist Dan Dudek, was one of the pioneers of cap-and-trade back in the 1980’s in order to effect dramatic reductions in acid rain precursors. (I had the privilege of working with one of their senior scientists, Michael Oppenheimer, back then on the acid rain problem when I was an activist with the Sierra Club. Michael has been a critical figure in bringing the science of global warming to the fore. He was right there with James Hansen at that epic hearing in Washington in the summer of 1988 that brought global warming fully into view for the American public. See from about 2:45 in this segment from “Hot Politics.”)

Earth: The Sequel also discusses other critical approaches to confronting global warming such as halting tropical rainforest destruction. A post-Kyoto international regime that set a reasonable price on carbon ($30 a ton) would allow Brazil alone to realize $168 billion profit from protecting its rainforests while preventing emissions of six billion tons of carbon dioxide, according to the Woods Hole Research Center. (Pop quiz: After the US and China, which two countries are the biggest contributors to global warming? Brazil and Indonesia - because of rainforest destruction.)

The book also notes the critical importance of energy efficiency. (See my post Energy Efficiency for Fun and Profit.)

The book is engaging, informative, and hopeful. It gives us the perspective of those scientists, policy innovators, entrepreneurs and, in some cases, visionaries, who are going to make the earth a safer, more prosperous, smarter, and more equitable place for us all to live. It’s a stimulating read, to say the least.

For more, go to the book’s website and also see the trailer.

Tropical Forest Loss – Following on my last post (see below) about the destruction of hugely productive carbon sinks for conversion to cropland for the production of biofuel feedstocks, it is relevant to see the testimony from three very worthy leaders in the fight against rainforest loss.  The House of Representatives’ Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held a hearing last week, Fire and Rain: How Destruction of Tropical Forests is Fueling Climate Change, in which Thomas Lovejoy (Heinz Center), Stuart Eizenstat (Sustainable Forestry Management), and Stephanie Meeks (Nature Conservancy) all gave expert testimony. 

Nuclear Waste – I wrote about Nukes last month and thought you should see this article, As Nuclear Waste Languishes, Expense to U.S. Rises, by the excellent “NY Times” reporter Matt Wald.  Wald has been on the nuclear power beat, among others, for many years, and always has an important story to tell.  Yucca Mountain, the government’s proposed repository for the long-term storage of radioactive waste, is decades behind schedule.  (See the DOE’s Office of Civilian Radioactive Waste Management [OCRWM] for more on Yucca Mountain.)  Aside from the dangers of storing waste in temporary storage at 122 sites in 39 states, there’s the cost owing to the fact that the federal government has to pay the utilities for its not receiving the waste long-term as it had promised to do years ago. 

Carbon Dioxide to Gasoline – Scientists Would Turn Greenhouse Gas Into Gasoline is the headline for this “NY Times” article about how two Los Alamos alchemists, I mean scientists, would make gold from lead, I mean gas from carbon dioxide.  “The idea is simple,” we are told.  “Air would be blown over a liquid solution of potassium carbonate, which would absorb the carbon dioxide. The carbon dioxide would then be extracted and subjected to chemical reactions that would turn it into fuel: methanol, gasoline or jet fuel.”  The energy demand for this process, perhaps not surprisingly, would be enormous.  There is an interesting post and some useful comments at “Dot Earth,” the fine blog by “NY Times” reporter Andrew Revkin.  One of the comments seems on the mark:  “We would get a lot more bang from just using the electricity their system requires to directly power vehicles than using that electricity to make a liquid fuel.”  And we could do it without coal or nuclear power plants.  I’ve heard Jim Gordon, Cape Wind’s developer, say that, on a good day, not only would the wind farms produce enough electricity for all of Cape Cod’s and the Islands’ needs, but that there would be excess to power electric vehicles.  I have been dreaming about precisely this since the first Earth Day.

Smart Grid – “The Toronto Star” had a thoughtful column on this yesterday.  (I wrote about smart grids here in December.)  With the burgeoning of wind and solar projects in Ontario, there’s a move to get the grid there, as well as in North America and the rest of the world for that matter, more responsive to renewable energy projects.  As the article notes, “Managing the power coming from a dozen or so massive plants is relatively easy compared to a ‘distributed generation’ model that essentially involves thousands of mini power plants contributing electricity to the grid at different times of the day.”  As one consultant is quoted:  “Any kind of distributed energy needs some kind of connectivity and two-way communications.”  (For more on DG, see this from the DOE.)

I’ve written about biofuels a number of times.  You can check out the various posts under the category Biofuels and Agriculture.

Now two recent important studies, published in “Science,” are saying that biofuels are causing quite a bit more harm than good.  The A.P.’s H. Josef Hebert wrote this article (appearing in “USA Today”) on one of the studies.  “The researchers said that farmers under economic pressure to produce biofuels will increasingly ‘plow up more forest or grasslands,’ releasing much of the carbon formerly stored in plants and soils through decomposition or fires. Globally, more grasslands and forests will be converted to growing the crops to replace the loss of grains when U.S. farmers convert land to biofuels, the study said.”  The German Marshall Fund, one of the sponsors of the research, led by Tim Searchinger, one of their fellows and a scholar at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, has a link devoted to this research.  Searchinger says in a policy brief that “…switching from gasoline to corn ethanol doubles greenhouse gas emissions for every mile driven.”

The other study, “Land Clearing and the Biofuel Carbon Debt,” from The Nature Conservancy and the University of Minnesota, has similar and complementary conclusions.  It asserts, among other things, that “Converting rainforests, peatlands, savannas, or grasslands to produce biofuels in Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the United States creates a ‘biofuel carbon debt’ by releasing 17 to 420 times more carbon dioxide than the fossil fuels they replace.”  The Nature Conservancy has a lot of excellent material on this study here, including an interview with the lead scientist for the report, Joe Fargione, the report itself, and an arresting slide show depicting some stark scenes of lands burned out for biofuel crop cultivation.  Fargione tells us that “Most people don’t realize that globally there is almost three times as much carbon in the plants and soils as there is in the air. Our natural ecosystems provide an incredibly valuable service of carbon storage and climate stabilization if they are left intact.”  (A critical new initiative that came from the Bali talks in December was a new emphasis on protecting and enhancing forests.)

Christopher Flavin, president of the venerable Worldwatch Institute, had this take on the reports and work his institute has done:   Time to Move to a Second Generation of Biofuels.  WI and The Sierra Club issued a report last fall, Destination Iowa - Getting To A Sustainable Biofuels Future, in which they recommended a number of policy directions including (a) accelerating development of cellulosic biofuel technologies and the infrastructure to harvest, transport, and process the new crops, (b) supporting farmers who want to invest in sustainable fuel crops such as perennial grasses or fast-growing trees, and (c) reducing tax subsidies for food-based biofuels and increase subsidies for fuels with a low-carbon footprint, such as waste and cellulose-derived biofuels.  WI had another highly useful commentary in January in which they said, among other things, that “The benefits of biofuels can be many: reducing dependence on oil, keeping money and jobs in the local economy, and reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, to name a few. But not all biofuels are created equal, and their benefits in fact vary wildly depending on the feedstock, how it is grown and harvested, where it is grown, and how it is processed.”

An AFP story from January, courtesy of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development’s newsfeed, reports Internal EU report casts doubts on its biofuel strategy.  The article says that the Joint Research Centre, the European Commission’s in-house scientific body, “criticises an EU plan to boost the use of biofuels in transport, concluding that their costs outweigh the benefits.”

There’s a mountain of damning evidence piling up here.  Will policymakers heed it?  That’s always the $64,000 question on matters of energy, the environment and particularly climate change.  The “Washington Post” had a terrific article last week on these two analyses in which the reporter, Juliet Eilperin, notes that they “…could force policymakers in the United States and Europe to reevaluate incentives they have adopted to spur production of ethanol-based fuels.”  She references a letter sent by ten senior scientists working on climate change to President Bush and congressional leaders urging them to reconsider the present path in light of the new studies.  “There is an urgent need for policy that ensures biofuels are not produced on productive forest, grassland or cropland,” the scientists wrote. 

Water in the West – This is a subject of intense and enduring interest.  There is a magisterial treatment of this in the book, Cadillac Desert, from 1986.  A new analysis of data from researchers at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography “shows that climate change from human activity is already disrupting water supplies in the western United States.”  Reuters has their coverage here. 

“National Geographic” has a great story, Drying of the West, in their most recent issue.  There are some arresting issues being discussed here such as the prolonged drought the West has been suffering, the extraordinary diminution of water levels from key sources like the Colorado River and the shrinking snowpack, the devastation from fire and insects preying on drought-weakened forests, as well as the continuing explosion of development and the waste of water. (See my recent post on Arizona.)  Being “National Geographic,” there are also stunning pictures.   

Warming Oceans – Researchers in London have quantified the relationship of sea-surface warming and hurricane activity.  This press release reports on the research, telling us “…that a 0.5°C increase in sea surface temperature can be associated with a ~40 per cent increase in hurricane activity.”

Meanwhile, however, there was a lot of play recently on a paper that said that warming oceans might mean fewer hurricanes hitting the U.S.  This blog item from “Nature” sums up the research and gives some insights from others.

I wrote in Hurricane Season last August about a number of angles and some good resources for a further look at this critical subject.

There’s another story out about the relationship of ocean warming to the food chain.  See this from the website of  the National Geographic Society.  A recent study “…shows that as temperatures warm, the growth of single-celled ocean plants called phytoplankton slows at Earth’s mid and low latitudes. The plants’ growth increases when the climate cools.”  You can find an abstract of the study itself at “Nature.”