The Climate Challenge: October 2009

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Some Important New Books

Now or Never: Why we need to act now to achieve a sustainable future, by Tim Flannery. Harper Collins, 2009. A long essential essay by Tim Flannery, followed by responses from Bill McKibben, Richard Branson, Peter Singer, Fred Krupp and Peter Goldmark, Gwynne Dyer and Alanna Mitchell.

Climate Wars, by Gwynne Dyer. Random House, 2008. Gwynne is a geopolitical and military analyst, and these are his thoughts built around some worst-case scenarios of the conflicts that could break out over scarce resources, linked to climate change. Gwynne is thoroughly well-informed, and while it’s not cheery reading, it’s essential that we know the dangers.

Hot, Flat, and Crowded - Why we need a Green Revolution - and How it can Renew America, by Thomas L. Friedman. FSG, 2008. Hot, because its warming. Flat, because democracy and economic growth are happening everywhere. Crowded - because there are 75 million more of us every year. This is a big read, written in Friedman’s easy inimitable manner, spiced with important conversations with people he’s met. He presents with powerful urgency the case for ‘Code Green’ - a rapid retrofit of the US economy based on efficiency, renewables and sustainable technology. Equally valid for any country.

The Truth about Green Business, by Gil Friend. 52 clear and profound “truths’, gathered and distilled down from Gil’s many years of working in the field.

Crossing the Energy Divide: Moving from Fossil Fuel Dependence to a Clean-energy Future, by Robert and Ed Ayres, Prentice Hall 2009.

Climate Cover-Up - The Crusade to Deny Global Warming, by James Hoggan with Richard Littlemore, Greystone Books, 2009

Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Update to Solution #90: Solutions for China

China is aiming to lead the world in the production of hybrid and all-electric vehicles by 2012, reducing China’s GHGs by 19%, and clearing the skies of China’s heavily polluted cities. In 13 Chinese cities, subsidies of up to $8,800 are being offered for taxi fleets and local government agencies to make the switch. The production goal for the end of 2011 is 500,000 hybrid or all-electric cars and buses.

Source: New York Times

China is also accelerating research to grow algae using the CO2 emissions from its coal-fired power plants, using wind and solar energy to extract the CO2. The algae would then be used to make biofuel, fertilizer or animal feed. The Chinese company ENN is encouraged by the results from its trial 10,000 litre algae greenhouse, and planning to expand to a 100 hectare test facility either next to a coal mine in Inner Mongolia, or on the warm-weather Hainan Island. The less encouraging news is that the facility will not be operational until 2020.

Source: Guardian

Update to Solution #89: Build Solar Villages

India is pushing ahead with a huge national plan to advance its use of solar PV energy from almost zero today to 20 GW by 2020, and a target of 200 GW by 2040. This is very big by any current global standard, but when set against India’s population of 1.15 billion people, if each household was to have a 1 kW PV system, they would need 383 GW. The financial details have yet to be sorted out, but are premised on falling solar costs.

Source: Guardian

Update to Solution #86: Scramble! This is Serious

After examining more than 200 ways of reducing carbon emissions, McKinsey and Company has found that the growth in India’s carbon emissions could be halved using known practices and technologies, reducing the growth from 1.6 billion tons in 2005 to only 2.8 billion tons in 2030, instead of a previously projected 5-6 billion tons. The investment needed would be around $1 trillion, or 2% of India’s GDP.

Source: Worldwatch Institute, Sept 2009

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Update to Solution #76: Develop a Sustainable Vehicles Strategy

Germany plans to become a world leader for low-carbon vehicles, increasing production from 2000 units in 2009 to 1 million units by 2020 and 5 million by 2030. Daimler and BMW plan to introduce their first electric cars in 2012; Volkswagen in 2013. To put this in context, Germany has 53 million vehicles, so 1 million low-carbon or electric cars by 2030 would be less than 1%.

Source: Worldwatch Institute, Sept 2009

Update to Solution #73: Reduce the Impact of Food and Farming

Sweden is introducing carbon labeling for food that has on average 25% less climate impact than a similar related product. Sweden has also published guidelines for climate-friendly food choices, recommending that its citizens reduce their meat and rice consumption as a way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Source: EurActiv, October 2009 and EurActiv, June 2009.

Vancouver has produced a major paper on The Economy of Local Food in Vancouver, which looks at ways of expanding the cultivation, distribution and retailing of locally grown food, ad the regulatory barriers that stand in the way.

Source: City of Vancouver, 2009.

Update to Solution #71: Phase Out All Fossil Fuels

In July 2009, the Sierra Club announced the 100^th cancellation of a proposed coal-fired power plant since 2001, keeping 400 million tons of CO2 out of the atmosphere. The 100th plant was a proposed 900-megawatt coal-fired generating unit at the Intermountain Power Plant near Delta, Utah, triggered by Los Angeles’ decision to be a coal-free city by 2020.

Source: Sierra Club

Update to Solution #66: Build a Super-Efficient Nation

The Rocky Mountain Institute has calculated that if the 40 least efficient states in the US were to reach the electrical efficiency of the 10 most efficient ones, national electricity use would fall by one third. This would allow 62% of America’s 617 coal-fired power plants to be closed.

Source: Earth Policy Institute, October 2009

Update to Solution #64: Get Everyone Engaged

The Living Planet City: http://community.wwf.ca/livingplanetcity

10:10 - Cutting 10% of our Emissions in 2010 - a powerful new public engagement initiative form the UK. www.1010uk.org

Update to Solutions #62: Plan for a Climate-Friendly World

Scotland has set the world’s highest target for carbon reduction, aiming at a 42% reduction below the 1990 level by 2020, 50% by 2030, and 80% by 2050 (including aviation and shipping). Britain’s goal is 34% below 1990 by 2022. 80% of Scotland’s reductions must be found within Scotland, and no more than 20% can be bought through overseas offsets. More than 21,000 people commented during the consultation on the draft legislation.

Source: BusinessGreen, June 2009

US carbon emissions fell by 9% in 2007 and 2008. Time will tell how much of this is due to the recession, and how much is due to a real low-carbon transition.

Source: Earth Policy Institute, October 2009

Update to Solution #52: Energy Efficiency

New England’s Community Energy Challenge program accepted its 150th participant in September 2009. Municipalities that join the Challenge pledge to reduce the energy consumption in their municipal facilities by at least 10%. Collectively, the participating communities represent more than 30% of New England’s population.

Source: EPA

Saturday, October 17, 2009

Update to Solution #50: Solutions for Aviation

The world’s aviation industry has pledged to cut its CO₂ emissions to half of the 2005 levels by 2050. They are also proposing:

to make all industry growth carbon neutral by 2020
to improve fuel efficiency by 1.5% each year until 2020
to submit plans for joining a global carbon trading scheme to the UN by November 2010

Source: BBC News, September 2009

Update to Solution #49: Solutions for Shipping and Ports

The Japanese ship maker IHI Group is planning to build the word’s first large electric ferry, using batteries to give the boat a range of 120 km (74 miles). The 30 metre boat will carry 800 passengers, and probably cost 60% more than a regular ferry.

Source: AFP, October 2009

Update to Solutions #24: Encourage Green Mobility

In San Francisco, SolarCity is installing solar-powered electric vehicle recharging stations at offices on Highway 101, anticipating a rapid growth in demand. The fast-charge station costs between $2k to $6k to install, and a recharge takes about 3.5 hours, while a commuter is working. SolarCity has installed about 100 charging stations for Tesla customers.

Source: Grist, October 2009

In Stockholm, the initiative to have 5% of vehicle owners driving “clean vehicles” has been a huge success - by October 2008, 35% of the city’s vehicles were clean, and 100% of the city’s buses operated on biogas or ethanol. The number of people cycling has also doubled over the last decade.

Source: Positive News, August 2009

Friday, October 16, 2009

Update to Solution #13: Solutions For Higher Education

In the 2009 America’s Greenest Campus contest, the University of Maryland - College Park won the prize for having the most participants (2,257). Overall, 20,000 participants took part in the challenge. Rio Salada College, in Phoenix, AZ, won for the highest carbon reduction per participant, with an average 4.4% reduction among 524 students.

Source: PR Newswire, October 2009

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Earth’s Future Atmosphere (page 66)

The Worldwatch Report Mitigating Climate Change Through Food and Land Use looks at the potential for reduced GHGs and carbon sequestration from land-use, involving farming, forestry and habitat protection. The IPCC’s estimates for changed farming methods suggest that between 1.5 and 4.3 Gt a year of CO₂ could be sequestered each year by 2030, and that a changed approach to forestry could sequester 5.8 to 13.8 Gt. Together, these amount to 7.3 to 18.1 Gt, representing 20% to 50% of the total 2008 CO₂ emissions of 36.6 Gt.

Source: Worldwatch Institute, 2009

Earth’s Future Farms (page 62)

In November 2009, the prestigious Worldwatch magazine published a striking critique of the seminal report Livestock’s Long Shadow, in which the authors conclude that the global warming impact of livestock is not 18% of GHGs by 51%. They make a lot of valid points, but two of their big ones are very questionable. To Livestock’s Long Shadows estimate of 7.5 Gt of annual GHGs they add 8.8 Gt for livestock respiration, which the IPCC discounts as invalid because all respiration is, by definition, carbon neutral. They also ask “what if all land used for livestock was growing forest instead?” and add 2.6 Gt of CO₂, but this seems to assume that all grasslands would become forest, which is ecologically not true, and ignores the enormous potential of grasslands to store carbon if we change the way cattle graze (see Solution #43)

Source: Worldwatch Magazine, Nov 2009

Clean Coal - Hope or Hype? (page 60)

Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs has published a major study on the Realistic Cost of Carbon Capture, finding the likely cost of avoided carbon to be $150/tonne, and the resulting cost of “clean coal” electricity to be 20 cents kWh, compared to much lower prices for renewables and efficiency. The only way the cost could be reduced was if carbon capture was used for “enhanced oil recovery” in hard-to-extract oil wells - but this would produce as much new CO₂ from the extracted oil as was buried, rendering the exercise pointless.

Source: Climate Progress, 2009

A study from the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies warned of dramatic unintended environmental consequences that could result from storing large quantities of CO₂ in the Earth’s mantel, including water contamination and unexpected leakage. It noted that coal-plants using the CCS process would require 25-33% more water.

Source: New York Times, October 2009

Nuclear - Hope or Hype? (page 56)

A Vermont Law School analysis found that nuclear electricity would cost 12-20 cents kwh, compared to 6 cents for renewable energy. Adding 100 new nuclear reactors would cost between $1.9 and $4.1 trillion more, over the reactors’ lifetime, compared to efficiency and renewables.

Source: Scientific American blog, June 2009

In Ontario, the only ‘compliant’ quote for two new nuclear power plants that the Ontario government received came in at three times the expected cost, and would have cost $26 billion, wiping out the province’s entire non-nuclear expansion budget for 20 years. Similarly, Turkey’s only bid came in at 21 cents kWh.

Source: Climate Progress, July 2009

Earth’s Future Electricity (page 46)

A paper from Harvard that looked at the global wind energy potential found that a network of land-based 2.5 MW turbines restricted to non-forested, ice-free, non-urban areas operating at only 20% capacity (compared to 40% for most new turbines) could supply more than 40 times the world’s current use of electricity, and more than 5 times the world’s total use of energy. In the United States, specifically in the central plain states, wind could supply 16 times the current use of electricity

Source: PNAS, April 2009

What Targets Should We Adopt? (page 30)

Germany’s Potsdam Institute has found that if we are to keep the rise in temperature below 2C, we can only burn 190 billion tonnes (Gt) of carbon between now and 2050, on top of the 500 billion tonnes we have already burnt. At the current rate of 8.5 Gt a year, we will hit the absolute limit in 22 years. Since we can’t stop suddenly, the world’s nations will need to organize and ration the decline, signing onto a 4-5% annual decrease in their carbon emissions.

The Climate Interactive Scoreboard - an open-source world for climate simulations where you can try out various scenarios. www.climateinteractive.org

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