UN scientists are to consider moves such as putting mirrors in space and sprinkling iron in the sea in an attempt to cut global warming, the head of the IPCC said.
Speaking at the climate change conference in Cancun, Dr Rajendra Pachauri said the next report on global warming by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) will not only look at the threat of rising temperatures but so-called "geo-engineering" options that could actually reverse warming.
The announcement implies that scientists are losing faith in a global deal to stop temperature rise by limiting emissions.
There are already low expectations for the latest round of UN talks being held in a luxury beach resort on the east coast of Mexico.
More than 190 countries are meeting at the heavily-guarded Moon Palace Hotel to try and find a way to limit emissions so that temperatures rise stays below 3.6F (2C).
The IPCC is responsible for setting out the scientific basis on which the talks are based.
Addressing the opening conference, Dr Pachauri said if mankind continues to pump out greenhouse gases at the current rate the world could experience catastrophic warming within the next fifty years.
He said the threat is so great that the fifth assessment report (AR5), due to be presented to the UN in 2014, will look at "geo-engineering options".
"The AR5 has been expanded and will in future focus on subjects like clouds and aerosols, geo-engineering and sustainability issues," he said.
Later this year IPCC "expert groups" will meet in Peru to discuss geo-engineering.
Options include putting mirrors in space to reflect sunlight or covering Greenland in a massive blanket so it does not melt.
Sprinkling iron filings in the ocean "fertilises" algae so that it sucks up CO2 and "seeding clouds" means that less sunlight can get in.
Other options include artificial "trees" that suck carbon dioxide out of the air, painting roofs white to reflect sunlight and man-made volcanoes that spray sulphate particles high in the atmosphere to scatter the sun's rays back into space.
Many have argued that the process could make climate change worse through unintended consequences.
Earlier this year the IPCC was forced to undergo a review after it was revealed that the last report to the UN, the AR4, included the mistaken claim that the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035. Critics called for the chairman to resign.
But Dr Pachauri insisted the review made the panel stronger than ever.
"We are confident that the IPCC will emerge stronger as a result of this exercise and live up to the expectations of the global community," he said.
The UN talks in Cancun are designed to find a way to limit global emissions in order to prevent global warming. However at the moment a treaty is unlikely as the world's two biggest emitters, China and the US, will not agree to legally binding targets.
Chris Huhne, the Climate Change Secretary, has already warned that a global deal is unlikely this time, although he insists the talks can make progress by agreeing on different aspects of the agreement such as forestry and climate finance.
Opening the talks, Felipe Calderón, the President of Mexico, insisted it was still possible for the world to reach a deal.
"Climate change is already a reality for us," he told delegates. "During the next two weeks, the whole world will be looking at you. It would be a tragedy not to overcome the hurdle of national interests."
Tuesday, 30 November 2010
Ed Miliband's green energy targets 'unrealistic'
Ed Miliband signed Britain up to "unrealistic" green energy targets without ''clear plans'' of how they would be hit while he was energy secretary, a committee of MPs said.
A ''greater sense of urgency and purpose'' is needed at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) to help meet targets agreed while Labour were in power, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said.
Britain signed up to a legally binding European Union target to supply 15 per cent of all energy from renewable sources by 2020 when Mr Miliband, now Labour leader, was in charge of the department.
Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP and PAC chairwoman, said progress on renewable energy targets had been ''unacceptably slow'' over the last decade, highlighting that the proportion of the UK's electricity from renewables rose from 2.7 per cent in 2000 to just 6.7 per cent last year.
This is ''well short'' of a 10 per cent target set for 2010 but which will not be delivered until 2012.
That raised doubts about the UK's ability to hit the 2020 EU target, she said, while longer term carbon reduction goals were also in doubt.
''New, and substantially more demanding, targets are now in place,'' Ms Hodge said.
''The department will have to have a greater sense of urgency and purpose if it is to achieve the dramatic increase in renewable energy supplies needed to meet them.
''We are concerned that the department agreed to the legally binding EU target to supply 15% of the UK's energy from renewable sources by 2020 without clear plans, targets for each renewable energy technology, estimates of funding required or understanding how the rate at which planning applications for onshore wind turbines were being rejected might affect progress.
''As for meeting the longer term 2050 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80%, the department has yet to set out the timescale against which innovations in renewable energy technology will be required.''
The report also found Decc does not know whether spending on renewable energy has achieved value for money, is taking too long to review subsidy rates and lacks a clear strategy for reducing carbon emissions.
More than £180 million set aside to support renewable energy technologies was left unspent – described as a ''wasted opportunity – and Decc does not control swathes of funding despite being responsible for meeting targets, the MPs said as they proposed a series of recommendations.
The MPs said Decc was relying on a ''massive growth'' in wind power and needs to take account of a 40 per cent attrition rate at the planning stage.
A renewable energy strategy was only published last year and work on a detailed delivery plan did not begin until January 2010, with publication not due until April next year.
The lack of a ''coherent plan'' meant the department ''does not know whether value for money has been achieved from previous spending on renewable energy technologies''.
The committee called on Decc to be more flexible with its review of subsidy rates, saying: ''The department will need to act more quickly in response to changing circumstances, which may require it to move away from rigid review timetables that could result in delayed investment or increased costs for the bill payers who fund the subsidies.''
And it urged the department, now led by Lib Dem Secretary of State Chris Huhne, to build up a clearer picture of what funding has been channelled through other bodies it does not control.
Tory committee member Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) said: ''It is clear that over the past 10 years there has not been a consistent plan to tackle climate change
''Given the priority that everyone attaches to this, it is critical that the Government turns that around.''
A ''greater sense of urgency and purpose'' is needed at the Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) to help meet targets agreed while Labour were in power, the Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said.
Britain signed up to a legally binding European Union target to supply 15 per cent of all energy from renewable sources by 2020 when Mr Miliband, now Labour leader, was in charge of the department.
Margaret Hodge, the Labour MP and PAC chairwoman, said progress on renewable energy targets had been ''unacceptably slow'' over the last decade, highlighting that the proportion of the UK's electricity from renewables rose from 2.7 per cent in 2000 to just 6.7 per cent last year.
This is ''well short'' of a 10 per cent target set for 2010 but which will not be delivered until 2012.
That raised doubts about the UK's ability to hit the 2020 EU target, she said, while longer term carbon reduction goals were also in doubt.
''New, and substantially more demanding, targets are now in place,'' Ms Hodge said.
''The department will have to have a greater sense of urgency and purpose if it is to achieve the dramatic increase in renewable energy supplies needed to meet them.
''We are concerned that the department agreed to the legally binding EU target to supply 15% of the UK's energy from renewable sources by 2020 without clear plans, targets for each renewable energy technology, estimates of funding required or understanding how the rate at which planning applications for onshore wind turbines were being rejected might affect progress.
''As for meeting the longer term 2050 target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80%, the department has yet to set out the timescale against which innovations in renewable energy technology will be required.''
The report also found Decc does not know whether spending on renewable energy has achieved value for money, is taking too long to review subsidy rates and lacks a clear strategy for reducing carbon emissions.
More than £180 million set aside to support renewable energy technologies was left unspent – described as a ''wasted opportunity – and Decc does not control swathes of funding despite being responsible for meeting targets, the MPs said as they proposed a series of recommendations.
The MPs said Decc was relying on a ''massive growth'' in wind power and needs to take account of a 40 per cent attrition rate at the planning stage.
A renewable energy strategy was only published last year and work on a detailed delivery plan did not begin until January 2010, with publication not due until April next year.
The lack of a ''coherent plan'' meant the department ''does not know whether value for money has been achieved from previous spending on renewable energy technologies''.
The committee called on Decc to be more flexible with its review of subsidy rates, saying: ''The department will need to act more quickly in response to changing circumstances, which may require it to move away from rigid review timetables that could result in delayed investment or increased costs for the bill payers who fund the subsidies.''
And it urged the department, now led by Lib Dem Secretary of State Chris Huhne, to build up a clearer picture of what funding has been channelled through other bodies it does not control.
Tory committee member Matt Hancock (West Suffolk) said: ''It is clear that over the past 10 years there has not been a consistent plan to tackle climate change
''Given the priority that everyone attaches to this, it is critical that the Government turns that around.''
US energy secretary warns of 'Sputnik moment' in green technology race
Steven Chu says US must invest urgently in research and innovation to keep pace with China and other countries
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 November 2010 21.15 GMT
The United States faces a "Sputnik moment" in the global clean energy race and risks falling far behind advances by China and other countries, the US energy secretary, Steven Chu, warned today.
Hours before the opening of the United Nations climate summit in Cancún, Chu said that the US urgently needed to invest in research and innovation – much as it responded to the Soviet Union's launch of the world's first space satellite in 1957 – if it wanted to remain a leader of innovation.
"We face a choice today. Are we going to continue America's innovation leadership or are we going to fall behind?" Chu said in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington.
Chu, a Nobel prize winner in physics, said his own career had been shaped by the orbit of that first space satellite. But, he said, over the last 15 years the US had steadily been losing ground to China and India in research and hi-tech manufacturing.
For the first time last year, the majority of US patents were awarded to inventors based outside America.
Meanwhile, China had emerged as the world's largest producer of wind and solar power, and was breaking ground on 30 new nuclear reactors. It now has the fastest high-speed trains in operation, with running speeds of 220mph.
Gao Guangsheng, a senior Chinese official for climate change policy, told a conference in California this month that China was gearing up for even bigger investment in clean energy technology in its next five-year plan.
Gao went on to tell the conference, which was hosted by California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, that China had reached its goal for wind power 10 years ahead of schedule.
"We set up a concrete conception of low carbon development," he said. But he doubted America could profit from China's example: "I am afraid China's experience of green development may not be useful for the United States because of different domestic situations."
Chu, however, in his speech today said the US could recapture its leadership position with investment in research and incentives for clean energy manufacturing.
"America still has the opportunity to lead in a world that essentially needs a new industrial revolution," he said. "But time is running out."
In his two years as energy secretary, Chu has served as Barack Obama's top salesman for clean energy technology, directing some $80bn (£51.3bn) of last year's economic recovery package to investment in advanced batteries, plug-in cars, and the smart grid.
He also touted the government's efforts to build research hubs for clean technology. "What I am trying to tell the American public is that this is an economic opportunity," he said. His comments echoed those of David Cameron at the weekend. Writing in the Observer, Cameron said: "I passionately believe that by recasting the argument for action on climate change away from the language of threats and punishments and into positive, profit-making terms, we can have a much wider impact."
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent guardian.co.uk, Monday 29 November 2010 21.15 GMT
The United States faces a "Sputnik moment" in the global clean energy race and risks falling far behind advances by China and other countries, the US energy secretary, Steven Chu, warned today.
Hours before the opening of the United Nations climate summit in Cancún, Chu said that the US urgently needed to invest in research and innovation – much as it responded to the Soviet Union's launch of the world's first space satellite in 1957 – if it wanted to remain a leader of innovation.
"We face a choice today. Are we going to continue America's innovation leadership or are we going to fall behind?" Chu said in a speech to the National Press Club in Washington.
Chu, a Nobel prize winner in physics, said his own career had been shaped by the orbit of that first space satellite. But, he said, over the last 15 years the US had steadily been losing ground to China and India in research and hi-tech manufacturing.
For the first time last year, the majority of US patents were awarded to inventors based outside America.
Meanwhile, China had emerged as the world's largest producer of wind and solar power, and was breaking ground on 30 new nuclear reactors. It now has the fastest high-speed trains in operation, with running speeds of 220mph.
Gao Guangsheng, a senior Chinese official for climate change policy, told a conference in California this month that China was gearing up for even bigger investment in clean energy technology in its next five-year plan.
Gao went on to tell the conference, which was hosted by California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger, that China had reached its goal for wind power 10 years ahead of schedule.
"We set up a concrete conception of low carbon development," he said. But he doubted America could profit from China's example: "I am afraid China's experience of green development may not be useful for the United States because of different domestic situations."
Chu, however, in his speech today said the US could recapture its leadership position with investment in research and incentives for clean energy manufacturing.
"America still has the opportunity to lead in a world that essentially needs a new industrial revolution," he said. "But time is running out."
In his two years as energy secretary, Chu has served as Barack Obama's top salesman for clean energy technology, directing some $80bn (£51.3bn) of last year's economic recovery package to investment in advanced batteries, plug-in cars, and the smart grid.
He also touted the government's efforts to build research hubs for clean technology. "What I am trying to tell the American public is that this is an economic opportunity," he said. His comments echoed those of David Cameron at the weekend. Writing in the Observer, Cameron said: "I passionately believe that by recasting the argument for action on climate change away from the language of threats and punishments and into positive, profit-making terms, we can have a much wider impact."
Climate talks: We must not allow Cancun to turn into Can'tCun
Rich, industrialised countries have warned us to keep our expectations low, but we will insist that they aim higher, says Bolivia's UN ambassador Pablo Solon
Pablo Solon
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 30 November 2010 08.00 GMT
As climate talks start this week in Cancun, the common refrain that pervades the media and some negotiators is of "low expectations." I wonder whose expectations they are talking about. Do they think the one million people in the Bolivian city El Alto, who face increasingly chronic water shortages from the disappearance of glaciers, have low expectations? Do they think Pacific islanders whose homelands will soon disappear beneath the rising sea have low expectations? I believe that the majority of humanity demands and has high expectations that our political leaders should act to stop runaway climate change.
The reality is that the talk of "low expectations" is a ploy by a small group of industrialised countries to obscure their obligations to act. They are playing politics with the planet's future. If the Cancun talks set sail with no wind, then no-one will be angered when they stall. Sadly, rather than express moral outrage, much of the media and even some environmental organisations have subscribed to this cynicism of the powerful. Last year we had Hopenhagen and worldwide public outrage when the richest nations failed to act. This year will it be Can'tCun and a whimper?
Visible evidence of climate change is all around us.It can be found almost daily on the TV screens of people in rich countries – Pakistan's floods, Russia's heatwave, the unprecedented Arctic snow melt – in Bolivia, we are struggling to cope everyday with limited resources and ever more unstable weather. This year a drought throughout Bolivia meant we had to provide emergency food aid to hundreds of thousands of people. As we see our high Andean mountains, revered as apus or spirits by our indigenous peoples, lose their white peaks, we feel a visceral loss of our culture and our history.
Every year we fail to act will only worsen an already serious crisis – and mean any measures we have to take must be even more radical. Yet in looking at how to break the logjam in Cancun, one constantly comes up against the US. Not only does the US have the largest historical responsibility for carbon emissions, its political leaders are also the least prepared to act. While developing countries like China are imposing electricity blackouts to meet climate targets, many in the US are still debating whether climate change exists.
Unfortunately the US responsibility goes further than just inaction; it effectively sabotaged international progress on climate change. At Copenhagen and in the year since, the US has been the prime instigator behind attempts to end the Kyoto Protocol, the only binding mechanism on climate change. Instead they harangue, bully, and insist that any climate negotiations must be based on the non-binding Copenhagen Accord which would take us backwards in the fight against climate change. Analysis by the UN of the pledges made so far under the Copenhagen Accord show that temperatures would rise by four degrees Celsius – a level that many scientists consider disastrous for human life and our ecosystems. Countries like mine that have refused to accept this death wish have had our climate funding withdrawn by the US.
It is important to remember that we have been in a similar situation before. In the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol in the 1990s, the EU proposed relatively ambitious targets of 15% emissions reductions by 2010, and argued rightly then that domestic action should be the main means of achieving emissions targets. The US at first opposed any targets or timetables, then pushed for lowering overall targets for developed countries to 5% cuts by 2012, and insisted on allowing fraudulent carbon trading mechanisms to meet the targets. Their bullying prevailed, but it was all for nought, as the US Senate failed to ratify the Protocol and in 2001 President Bush formally withdrew. The rest of the world bent over backwards to involve the US, and even then they failed to act.
We can't allow this to happen again. It is wrong for a small handful of US Senators to hold the rest of humanity hostage. If the US cannot do what is right, it must step aside. Meanwhile, developed country blocks, such as the EU, must stop hiding behind US intransigence. They must commit urgently to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% before 2017.
Earlier this year, Bolivia held a Peoples' Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which brought together more than 30,000 people from 140 countries to advance effective proposals on climate change in the wake of the Copenhagen fiasco. It was inspiring because of the passion and commitment of the delegates, and because it was completely focused on tackling climate change and its root causes. Too often, subjected to intense lobbying by big corporations, the UN conferences on climate change are more preoccupied with inventing new market mechanisms to make money rather than stopping climate change. Against these powerful interests, Bolivia believes the only way forward for saving Mother Earth and its people is mass popular pressure. We must insist to our political leaders that we have the highest expectations from Cancun, because nothing less than the future of our grandchildren and our planet depends on it.
• Pablo Solon is the Bolivian ambassador to the UN
Pablo Solon
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 30 November 2010 08.00 GMT
As climate talks start this week in Cancun, the common refrain that pervades the media and some negotiators is of "low expectations." I wonder whose expectations they are talking about. Do they think the one million people in the Bolivian city El Alto, who face increasingly chronic water shortages from the disappearance of glaciers, have low expectations? Do they think Pacific islanders whose homelands will soon disappear beneath the rising sea have low expectations? I believe that the majority of humanity demands and has high expectations that our political leaders should act to stop runaway climate change.
The reality is that the talk of "low expectations" is a ploy by a small group of industrialised countries to obscure their obligations to act. They are playing politics with the planet's future. If the Cancun talks set sail with no wind, then no-one will be angered when they stall. Sadly, rather than express moral outrage, much of the media and even some environmental organisations have subscribed to this cynicism of the powerful. Last year we had Hopenhagen and worldwide public outrage when the richest nations failed to act. This year will it be Can'tCun and a whimper?
Visible evidence of climate change is all around us.It can be found almost daily on the TV screens of people in rich countries – Pakistan's floods, Russia's heatwave, the unprecedented Arctic snow melt – in Bolivia, we are struggling to cope everyday with limited resources and ever more unstable weather. This year a drought throughout Bolivia meant we had to provide emergency food aid to hundreds of thousands of people. As we see our high Andean mountains, revered as apus or spirits by our indigenous peoples, lose their white peaks, we feel a visceral loss of our culture and our history.
Every year we fail to act will only worsen an already serious crisis – and mean any measures we have to take must be even more radical. Yet in looking at how to break the logjam in Cancun, one constantly comes up against the US. Not only does the US have the largest historical responsibility for carbon emissions, its political leaders are also the least prepared to act. While developing countries like China are imposing electricity blackouts to meet climate targets, many in the US are still debating whether climate change exists.
Unfortunately the US responsibility goes further than just inaction; it effectively sabotaged international progress on climate change. At Copenhagen and in the year since, the US has been the prime instigator behind attempts to end the Kyoto Protocol, the only binding mechanism on climate change. Instead they harangue, bully, and insist that any climate negotiations must be based on the non-binding Copenhagen Accord which would take us backwards in the fight against climate change. Analysis by the UN of the pledges made so far under the Copenhagen Accord show that temperatures would rise by four degrees Celsius – a level that many scientists consider disastrous for human life and our ecosystems. Countries like mine that have refused to accept this death wish have had our climate funding withdrawn by the US.
It is important to remember that we have been in a similar situation before. In the negotiations for the Kyoto Protocol in the 1990s, the EU proposed relatively ambitious targets of 15% emissions reductions by 2010, and argued rightly then that domestic action should be the main means of achieving emissions targets. The US at first opposed any targets or timetables, then pushed for lowering overall targets for developed countries to 5% cuts by 2012, and insisted on allowing fraudulent carbon trading mechanisms to meet the targets. Their bullying prevailed, but it was all for nought, as the US Senate failed to ratify the Protocol and in 2001 President Bush formally withdrew. The rest of the world bent over backwards to involve the US, and even then they failed to act.
We can't allow this to happen again. It is wrong for a small handful of US Senators to hold the rest of humanity hostage. If the US cannot do what is right, it must step aside. Meanwhile, developed country blocks, such as the EU, must stop hiding behind US intransigence. They must commit urgently to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 50% before 2017.
Earlier this year, Bolivia held a Peoples' Summit on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth, which brought together more than 30,000 people from 140 countries to advance effective proposals on climate change in the wake of the Copenhagen fiasco. It was inspiring because of the passion and commitment of the delegates, and because it was completely focused on tackling climate change and its root causes. Too often, subjected to intense lobbying by big corporations, the UN conferences on climate change are more preoccupied with inventing new market mechanisms to make money rather than stopping climate change. Against these powerful interests, Bolivia believes the only way forward for saving Mother Earth and its people is mass popular pressure. We must insist to our political leaders that we have the highest expectations from Cancun, because nothing less than the future of our grandchildren and our planet depends on it.
• Pablo Solon is the Bolivian ambassador to the UN
Monday, 29 November 2010
Cancun climate change talks: 'last chance’ in the snakepit
As climate-change talks get under way, negotiators are filled with a sense of foreboding, reports Geoffrey Lean in Cancun.
Gathering clouds: Eildon Hills, Melrose, photographed by Daily Telegraph reader Curtis Welsh Photo: Curtis WelshBy Geoffrey Lean 6:32AM GMT 29 Nov 2010
Maybe the name has something to do with it – Cancun means “nest of serpents” in the original Indian language of the area – but it would have been hard to pick a less propitious place to host a conference widely hailed as the last chance to get international negotiations to combat climate change back on track.
For this Mexican resort has an unrivalled record in consigning such talks to the compost heap of history. In 1981 it was here, at one of Ronald Reagan’s first summits, that global negotiations on tackling world poverty went off the rails, even if it was the intransigence of developing countries rather than the old ham himself that was to blame. Beside these same azure seas 20 years later, the current round of world trade talks went awry and have yet to recover.
A sense of foreboding is one of the few points of general agreement among the 15,000 participants congregating for the next two weeks on this long thin strip of land, marooned between a wide lagoon and the Caribbean Sea. Jairem Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, sees it as the “last chance” for climate change talks to succeed; Connie Hedegaard, the EU’s climate chief, believes a disappointing outcome would “put the whole process in danger”; and American and Canadian politicians are thinking of moving negotiations to other, more selective, meeting places. No wonder Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, says that Britain’s main goal over the next two weeks will be “keeping the show on the road”.
In truth, this resort is fittingly named to host the giant climate conferences that take place at the end of each year. They do indeed resemble snakepits – the mutual hissing of competing camps laced with a fair amount of poison. Last year’s in Copenhagen was the worst of them all: in addition to the snakes, there was a liberal sprinkling of tarantulas and serpent-headed Gorgons that turn living things to stone. So high were the expectations for that summit in the Danish capital that its failure and the disappointments it engendered have petrified the process.
Twelve months ago, world leaders turned up expecting a triumph, only to have to scramble to prevent complete breakdown. It was a traumatic experience – so much so that dealing with global warming has slumped sharply and alarmingly down the international agenda.
Public support – long arrogantly taken for granted by environmental activists – has also eroded on both sides of the Atlantic. The hacked emails from the University of East Anglia may have had something to do with it, though – despite all the hype from climate sceptics – they did nothing to dent the science that underpins global warming. Nor, for that matter, did the occasional, inexcusable, errors over the predicted effects of climate change unearthed soon afterwards from the 3,000-page report produced by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change. Further damage was inflicted by the blustering and bombastic responses from the panel’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, who still clings obstinately to office despite a broad hint from the official investigation into the affair that he should go. But the main cuplrit, according to opinion polls, was the cold winter in Britain and much of North America: that did more than any of the “climategate” furores to sow doubt in the public mind that the world was heating up.
This is why some sceptics – who rightly denounce anyone who claims that a temporary heatwave is a confirmation of global warming – will doubtless soon be claiming that the present cold snap denies it, however inconsistent and opportunistic such an assertion would be. As it happens, there was unusual warmth last winter in places ranging from Alaska to North Africa, East Asia to much of continental Europe. Worldwide, 2010 is set to be either the warmest or second warmest year on record.
Individual hot or cold spells prove nothing. What counts is the overall temperature trend over many years and, though this appears to have increased more slowly over the past decade, it remains remorselessly upwards. Indeed, a Met Office report published last week concluded that, even as public and political resolve to tackle global warming has waned since Copenhagen, the evidence that humanity is heating up the planet has become “even stronger”.
Earlier this month, Karl Rove, the American political strategist, exulted that “climate is gone”, meaning that it was no longer the potent issue it once was. Most scientists might agree with his comment – but not in the way Rove meant it. What they fear is that the benign conditions under which humanity has grown and prospered over the past 11,000 years are rapidly disappearing. Already, the people at the sharp end – principally the Third World rural poor who depend intimately on nature – are struggling to cope with the shifting seasons. An Oxfam report, published today, concludes that 21,000 people died as a consequence of weather-related disasters such as floods and droughts in the first nine months of this year.
Far worse is to come, scientists believe. The Royal Society is publishing a set of papers today that paint a bleak picture of a world that has warmed by an average four degrees centigrade – double what most scientists agree would trigger disastrous effects. The reports conclude that, if policies do not change, then this grim future will be upon us far faster then we realise – by the 2070s, within the lifetimes of our children.
Yet this is not inevitable. It can still be stopped. If progress is made at Cancun, the rise in global temperature could be kept to beneath the critical two-degree threshold. As the United Nations Environment Programme has recently pointed out, the Copenhagen summit may have failed to live up to expectations, but it did stimulate some 80 countries, those jointly responsible for 80 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, to announce targets for bringing them under control.
Taken together, these could get the world nearly two thirds of the way to limiting global warming to just two degrees. The gap could then be filled by additional measures, such as reducing the enormous subsidies pumped into fossil fuels, cutting emissions from shipping and aircraft, which are uncontrolled, and addressing other causes of climate change, such as the black carbon puffed out by diesel engines and Third World cooking stoves, and HFCs, widely used as ozone-friendly refrigerants.
But there is a catch. Many countries are pledged only to achieve their most ambitious targets if other nations do the same. Ever since Copenhagen, they have been playing a game of climatic “after you, Claude’’, waiting for others to go first. Above all, they have been waiting for the United States, and they are likely to do so for a long time yet. The big Republican gains in the mid-term elections have put paid to the already slim prospects of US climate legislation for the foreseeable future.
That is one reason why no one expects a breakthrough at Cancun. Another is a long legacy of mistrust between rich and poor countries, aggravated by last year’s carry-on at Copenhagen. With that in mind, the conference’s Mexican hosts, who are much more competent than the dire Danes whose appalling leadership contributed to the failure 12 months ago, are lowering their sights. They are concentrating on trying to achieve accord on subsidiary issues, such as an agreement to reward countries for not felling their forests and setting up a big fund to help poor nations cope with the effects of global warming. In this way they hope to build trust and lay the foundations of an eventual agreement.
But, while breakthough is highly unlikely, a breakdown remains very much on the cards. Some old hands here – such as Yvo de Boer, the UN’s chief negotiator at Copenhagen – can glimpse similar tell-tale clouds gathering over the sea. If they are right and the storm breaks, this may well turn out to be the last set of serious UN climate negotiations for many years. The snakepit will have claimed another victim.
Gathering clouds: Eildon Hills, Melrose, photographed by Daily Telegraph reader Curtis Welsh Photo: Curtis WelshBy Geoffrey Lean 6:32AM GMT 29 Nov 2010
Maybe the name has something to do with it – Cancun means “nest of serpents” in the original Indian language of the area – but it would have been hard to pick a less propitious place to host a conference widely hailed as the last chance to get international negotiations to combat climate change back on track.
For this Mexican resort has an unrivalled record in consigning such talks to the compost heap of history. In 1981 it was here, at one of Ronald Reagan’s first summits, that global negotiations on tackling world poverty went off the rails, even if it was the intransigence of developing countries rather than the old ham himself that was to blame. Beside these same azure seas 20 years later, the current round of world trade talks went awry and have yet to recover.
A sense of foreboding is one of the few points of general agreement among the 15,000 participants congregating for the next two weeks on this long thin strip of land, marooned between a wide lagoon and the Caribbean Sea. Jairem Ramesh, the Indian environment minister, sees it as the “last chance” for climate change talks to succeed; Connie Hedegaard, the EU’s climate chief, believes a disappointing outcome would “put the whole process in danger”; and American and Canadian politicians are thinking of moving negotiations to other, more selective, meeting places. No wonder Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, says that Britain’s main goal over the next two weeks will be “keeping the show on the road”.
In truth, this resort is fittingly named to host the giant climate conferences that take place at the end of each year. They do indeed resemble snakepits – the mutual hissing of competing camps laced with a fair amount of poison. Last year’s in Copenhagen was the worst of them all: in addition to the snakes, there was a liberal sprinkling of tarantulas and serpent-headed Gorgons that turn living things to stone. So high were the expectations for that summit in the Danish capital that its failure and the disappointments it engendered have petrified the process.
Twelve months ago, world leaders turned up expecting a triumph, only to have to scramble to prevent complete breakdown. It was a traumatic experience – so much so that dealing with global warming has slumped sharply and alarmingly down the international agenda.
Public support – long arrogantly taken for granted by environmental activists – has also eroded on both sides of the Atlantic. The hacked emails from the University of East Anglia may have had something to do with it, though – despite all the hype from climate sceptics – they did nothing to dent the science that underpins global warming. Nor, for that matter, did the occasional, inexcusable, errors over the predicted effects of climate change unearthed soon afterwards from the 3,000-page report produced by the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change. Further damage was inflicted by the blustering and bombastic responses from the panel’s chairman, Rajendra Pachauri, who still clings obstinately to office despite a broad hint from the official investigation into the affair that he should go. But the main cuplrit, according to opinion polls, was the cold winter in Britain and much of North America: that did more than any of the “climategate” furores to sow doubt in the public mind that the world was heating up.
This is why some sceptics – who rightly denounce anyone who claims that a temporary heatwave is a confirmation of global warming – will doubtless soon be claiming that the present cold snap denies it, however inconsistent and opportunistic such an assertion would be. As it happens, there was unusual warmth last winter in places ranging from Alaska to North Africa, East Asia to much of continental Europe. Worldwide, 2010 is set to be either the warmest or second warmest year on record.
Individual hot or cold spells prove nothing. What counts is the overall temperature trend over many years and, though this appears to have increased more slowly over the past decade, it remains remorselessly upwards. Indeed, a Met Office report published last week concluded that, even as public and political resolve to tackle global warming has waned since Copenhagen, the evidence that humanity is heating up the planet has become “even stronger”.
Earlier this month, Karl Rove, the American political strategist, exulted that “climate is gone”, meaning that it was no longer the potent issue it once was. Most scientists might agree with his comment – but not in the way Rove meant it. What they fear is that the benign conditions under which humanity has grown and prospered over the past 11,000 years are rapidly disappearing. Already, the people at the sharp end – principally the Third World rural poor who depend intimately on nature – are struggling to cope with the shifting seasons. An Oxfam report, published today, concludes that 21,000 people died as a consequence of weather-related disasters such as floods and droughts in the first nine months of this year.
Far worse is to come, scientists believe. The Royal Society is publishing a set of papers today that paint a bleak picture of a world that has warmed by an average four degrees centigrade – double what most scientists agree would trigger disastrous effects. The reports conclude that, if policies do not change, then this grim future will be upon us far faster then we realise – by the 2070s, within the lifetimes of our children.
Yet this is not inevitable. It can still be stopped. If progress is made at Cancun, the rise in global temperature could be kept to beneath the critical two-degree threshold. As the United Nations Environment Programme has recently pointed out, the Copenhagen summit may have failed to live up to expectations, but it did stimulate some 80 countries, those jointly responsible for 80 per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide emissions, to announce targets for bringing them under control.
Taken together, these could get the world nearly two thirds of the way to limiting global warming to just two degrees. The gap could then be filled by additional measures, such as reducing the enormous subsidies pumped into fossil fuels, cutting emissions from shipping and aircraft, which are uncontrolled, and addressing other causes of climate change, such as the black carbon puffed out by diesel engines and Third World cooking stoves, and HFCs, widely used as ozone-friendly refrigerants.
But there is a catch. Many countries are pledged only to achieve their most ambitious targets if other nations do the same. Ever since Copenhagen, they have been playing a game of climatic “after you, Claude’’, waiting for others to go first. Above all, they have been waiting for the United States, and they are likely to do so for a long time yet. The big Republican gains in the mid-term elections have put paid to the already slim prospects of US climate legislation for the foreseeable future.
That is one reason why no one expects a breakthrough at Cancun. Another is a long legacy of mistrust between rich and poor countries, aggravated by last year’s carry-on at Copenhagen. With that in mind, the conference’s Mexican hosts, who are much more competent than the dire Danes whose appalling leadership contributed to the failure 12 months ago, are lowering their sights. They are concentrating on trying to achieve accord on subsidiary issues, such as an agreement to reward countries for not felling their forests and setting up a big fund to help poor nations cope with the effects of global warming. In this way they hope to build trust and lay the foundations of an eventual agreement.
But, while breakthough is highly unlikely, a breakdown remains very much on the cards. Some old hands here – such as Yvo de Boer, the UN’s chief negotiator at Copenhagen – can glimpse similar tell-tale clouds gathering over the sea. If they are right and the storm breaks, this may well turn out to be the last set of serious UN climate negotiations for many years. The snakepit will have claimed another victim.
EPA Says Fuel Economy Showing Slight Improvement
By Jonathan Welsh
Getty ImagesFuel efficiency is improving for new cars and light trucks, but car makers will have to increase the pace to keep up with tightening federal standards. According to a report from the Environmental Protection Agency, the average 2010 model-year passenger vehicle goes 22.5 miles per gallon, up from 22.4 mpg in 2009.
The agency says vehicles also improved slightly in tailpipe emissions, to 395 grams of CO2 per mile, compared with 397 last year. The results are part of the EPA’s annual report “Light-Duty Automotive Technology, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 through 2010”.
The report provides data on the fuel economy, CO2 emissions and technology characteristics of new light-duty vehicles, which includes cars, minivans, SUVs and pickup trucks.
The year-to-year improvement seems modest in light of the federal corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, target of 35.5 mpg by 2016. The Obama administration has been looking at ways to further increase fuel economy to as high as 62 miles per gallon by 2025.
Two factors seem to brighten the outlook for meeting government goals. First, the overall trend looks better when stretched out over several years. According to EPA data, fuel economy has increased each year beginning in 2005 for a total improvement of 3.1 mpg. The recent upswing reverses a trend of decreasing fuel economy and increasing CO2 emissions from 1987 through 2004.
The agency also notes that while its fuel-economy estimates are based on “real world” data consistent with the ratings that appear on new-car window stickers, a different standard is used to calculate fuel economy under the CAFE-compliance system. EPA says its estimates are about 20% lower on average compared with the CAFE figures. So the car makers are closer than they appear to meeting federal targets.
Getty ImagesFuel efficiency is improving for new cars and light trucks, but car makers will have to increase the pace to keep up with tightening federal standards. According to a report from the Environmental Protection Agency, the average 2010 model-year passenger vehicle goes 22.5 miles per gallon, up from 22.4 mpg in 2009.
The agency says vehicles also improved slightly in tailpipe emissions, to 395 grams of CO2 per mile, compared with 397 last year. The results are part of the EPA’s annual report “Light-Duty Automotive Technology, Carbon Dioxide Emissions, and Fuel Economy Trends: 1975 through 2010”.
The report provides data on the fuel economy, CO2 emissions and technology characteristics of new light-duty vehicles, which includes cars, minivans, SUVs and pickup trucks.
The year-to-year improvement seems modest in light of the federal corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE, target of 35.5 mpg by 2016. The Obama administration has been looking at ways to further increase fuel economy to as high as 62 miles per gallon by 2025.
Two factors seem to brighten the outlook for meeting government goals. First, the overall trend looks better when stretched out over several years. According to EPA data, fuel economy has increased each year beginning in 2005 for a total improvement of 3.1 mpg. The recent upswing reverses a trend of decreasing fuel economy and increasing CO2 emissions from 1987 through 2004.
The agency also notes that while its fuel-economy estimates are based on “real world” data consistent with the ratings that appear on new-car window stickers, a different standard is used to calculate fuel economy under the CAFE-compliance system. EPA says its estimates are about 20% lower on average compared with the CAFE figures. So the car makers are closer than they appear to meeting federal targets.
Gillard Pledges to Push Climate Change, Health Care
By RACHEL PANNETT
CANBERRA—Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard vowed Monday to press ahead with economy-shaping initiatives on climate policy and health care in 2011 despite her center-left Labor Party's fragile grip on power.
Climate change issues have been given a fresh start in Australia after an August federal election narrowly returned Ms. Gillard's government to office on the back of support from rural-based independents and a Greens party lawmaker who are pushing for action.
Australia is the biggest per capita polluter in the developed world because of its reliance on fossil fuels, mainly coal, for electricity generation.
Ms. Gillard's renewed drive to green up the resource-rich 1.1 trillion Australian dollar (US$1.06 trillion) economy comes at a time of scant international support, however. The push to cap greenhouse-gas emissions is all but dead in the U.S. and few observers are confident of a breakthrough when world diplomats meet in Mexico this week to try to eke out a less-ambitious attack on global warming.
At a two-week United Nations climate conference in the Mexican resort city of Cancun, negotiators will focus not on the stick of mandatory emissions limits but on the carrot of tens of billions of dollars in subsidies from industrialized countries to help developing nations grow on a greener path.
Still, motivated by domestic political forces—with the environmentalist Greens party set to control the balance of power in the upper house Senate from July 1 next year under Australia's electoral system—Mr. Gillard has made it increasingly clear she intends to use the new alliance between her minority government and independents to accelerate moves to green up the economy.
That reverses an election pledge not to push for any form of tax on greenhouse-gas emissions during the current three-year parliamentary term.
In a major policy speech Monday to mark the end of the Parliamentary year, the prime minister said lawmakers must decide in 2011 on a way to price greenhouse-gas emissions that is "supported by a broad enough consensus that it can be legislated."
"No responsible decision maker will be able to say next year that they need more time or more information on climate change," she said in the Sydney speech.
Labor, which convincingly won a first term in office in November 2007 on a wave of popular support for its climate-change policies, triggered a major voter backlash when it shelved a cap-and-trade plan in April after failing to push it through a hostile Senate.
The Greens argued that plan was too lenient on big polluters, while conservative lawmakers believed it was too harsh and would harm key industries like coal mining and steel making. The Greens now want Australia to introduce a carbon tax as an interim measure before introducing a full carbon trading plan once a global agreement is reached.
Businesses also have lent support to the idea of a carbon tax, including BHP Billiton Chief Executive Marius Kloppers, who has said it would provide certainty for future investment.
Monday's speech comes as a Victorian state election at the weekend threw into doubt another key Labor reform: Plans for the federal government to assume majority funding for public health care from the states.
The health initiative, to be paid for by slashing the flow of goods and services tax revenues to state governments by up to half, is designed to improve aging hospitals that have long wait lists and too few doctors.
Like the August national poll, Saturday's election failed to deliver a clear victory to either of the state's major political forces. With the final count continuing, it looks most likely the conservative Liberal-National coalition will emerge as victor over the 11-year state Labor government of John Brumby.
Victoria state Liberal leader Ted Baillieu has threatened to tear up a health agreement reached with all states and territories except Western Australia earlier this year.
Legislation underpinning the health agreement is currently before the federal parliament. Ms. Gillard reiterated Monday she is committed to increasing Canberra's share of public hospital funding to 60% from July 1.
Write to Rachel Pannett at rachel.pannett@dowjones.com
CANBERRA—Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard vowed Monday to press ahead with economy-shaping initiatives on climate policy and health care in 2011 despite her center-left Labor Party's fragile grip on power.
Climate change issues have been given a fresh start in Australia after an August federal election narrowly returned Ms. Gillard's government to office on the back of support from rural-based independents and a Greens party lawmaker who are pushing for action.
Australia is the biggest per capita polluter in the developed world because of its reliance on fossil fuels, mainly coal, for electricity generation.
Ms. Gillard's renewed drive to green up the resource-rich 1.1 trillion Australian dollar (US$1.06 trillion) economy comes at a time of scant international support, however. The push to cap greenhouse-gas emissions is all but dead in the U.S. and few observers are confident of a breakthrough when world diplomats meet in Mexico this week to try to eke out a less-ambitious attack on global warming.
At a two-week United Nations climate conference in the Mexican resort city of Cancun, negotiators will focus not on the stick of mandatory emissions limits but on the carrot of tens of billions of dollars in subsidies from industrialized countries to help developing nations grow on a greener path.
Still, motivated by domestic political forces—with the environmentalist Greens party set to control the balance of power in the upper house Senate from July 1 next year under Australia's electoral system—Mr. Gillard has made it increasingly clear she intends to use the new alliance between her minority government and independents to accelerate moves to green up the economy.
That reverses an election pledge not to push for any form of tax on greenhouse-gas emissions during the current three-year parliamentary term.
In a major policy speech Monday to mark the end of the Parliamentary year, the prime minister said lawmakers must decide in 2011 on a way to price greenhouse-gas emissions that is "supported by a broad enough consensus that it can be legislated."
"No responsible decision maker will be able to say next year that they need more time or more information on climate change," she said in the Sydney speech.
Labor, which convincingly won a first term in office in November 2007 on a wave of popular support for its climate-change policies, triggered a major voter backlash when it shelved a cap-and-trade plan in April after failing to push it through a hostile Senate.
The Greens argued that plan was too lenient on big polluters, while conservative lawmakers believed it was too harsh and would harm key industries like coal mining and steel making. The Greens now want Australia to introduce a carbon tax as an interim measure before introducing a full carbon trading plan once a global agreement is reached.
Businesses also have lent support to the idea of a carbon tax, including BHP Billiton Chief Executive Marius Kloppers, who has said it would provide certainty for future investment.
Monday's speech comes as a Victorian state election at the weekend threw into doubt another key Labor reform: Plans for the federal government to assume majority funding for public health care from the states.
The health initiative, to be paid for by slashing the flow of goods and services tax revenues to state governments by up to half, is designed to improve aging hospitals that have long wait lists and too few doctors.
Like the August national poll, Saturday's election failed to deliver a clear victory to either of the state's major political forces. With the final count continuing, it looks most likely the conservative Liberal-National coalition will emerge as victor over the 11-year state Labor government of John Brumby.
Victoria state Liberal leader Ted Baillieu has threatened to tear up a health agreement reached with all states and territories except Western Australia earlier this year.
Legislation underpinning the health agreement is currently before the federal parliament. Ms. Gillard reiterated Monday she is committed to increasing Canberra's share of public hospital funding to 60% from July 1.
Write to Rachel Pannett at rachel.pannett@dowjones.com
How to Change the Global Energy Conversation
Forcing countries to agree to emissions caps will never work, argue Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger. Instead, they say, the focus should be on technology innovations
By TED NORDHAUS and MICHAEL SHELLENBERGER
It's time for a rethink on climate change.
For two decades, world leaders have been trying—and failing—to hammer out a workable deal on global warming. Now they're meeting once again, this time in Cancún, Mexico, to kick around the same issues one more time—and, inevitably, stumble over all of the same roadblocks.
At the heart of it, these deals all come down to mandating emissions cuts, which means paying a lot more for energy. Some greens deny it, but clean energy still costs vastly more than fossil fuels. Significantly raising energy costs slows economic growth—something no country wants to do.
As a result, every country has an incentive to point the finger at someone else, while trying to game the system: sheltering key industries, understating emissions and overstating reductions.
There is a better way. Nations should focus on lowering the cost of clean energy, not raising the cost of fossil energy. The goal? Make clean energy cheap enough to become a viable option for poor as well as rich nations. Until that happens, emissions will continue to rise, and no effort to regulate carbon can succeed.
How do we accomplish that? Stop subsidizing old technology that will never compete with fossil fuels and create incentives for innovation. Along with ramping up support for research, governments should buy cutting-edge clean-energy technologies, prove them—and then give away the intellectual property, so others can improve on it.
At the same time, wealthy nations shouldn't try to hammer out these kinds of agreements in the United Nations, where they get bogged down in politicking with smaller nations. Big countries should work through the G20 and the World Trade Organization—forums that are, however imperfect, focused on economic and trade issues.
Finally, until clean energy becomes much less costly, there are relatively cheap fixes we can make to curb emissions, such as closing the most inefficient coal plants. And we should change how we look at climate-related aid to developing nations, focusing on better roads, housing, sewage and electrical systems.
Here's a closer look at these ideas, and how they can get us past the current deadlock.
PUSH FOR INNOVATION
Our highest goal should be to make clean energy radically cheaper and truly competitive with fossil fuels through innovation. That's where governments should focus their efforts.
Emissions cuts have overshadowed technology innovation for so long in part because of a widespread myth—that today's clean-energy sources are either ready or almost ready to replace fossil fuels. They are not. It will take much more innovation to make them cost-competitive.
And the impetus for that needs to come from governments. Virtually all demand for clean-energy technology is a result of states subsidizing companies to make clean tech and consumers to buy it. Governments will continue to be the central driver of clean-energy innovation for the foreseeable future; without public support, the technology isn't close to being cost-competitive with fossil fuels.
Because policy makers have not fully come to terms with this reality, nations simultaneously spend too little and too much on clean tech: too little on research, development and demonstration of new technologies, and too much subsidizing the commercialization of older technologies that will never be cheap enough to stand on their own. If clean-tech companies can profit making uneconomic, but subsidized, technologies, why invent anything better?
Public investments in clean tech should work more like military procurement of new defense technologies and less like federal crop supports. What we need is competitive deployment.
Governments should solicit bids for projects or technologies within a given class—say, a next-generation nuclear reactor or a new solar-panel technology. Once a new technology with the lowest cost is proved, it should be set as the benchmark for another round of bids—all with an eye toward ever-newer, ever-cheaper technologies.
The military has used this method for decades to drive down the costs and improve the performance of critical technologies. A decade of Pentagon procurement drove the price of microchips to $20 a chip by the mid-'60s from over $1,000 in the late '50s.
At the same time, the military heavily invested in government, university and industrial research labs to deliberately create knowledge spillover—the sharing of intellectual property—which is crucial to rapid innovation.
The money for this new regime could come from various sources. The obvious source is redirecting existing energy subsidies. We might also impose a small fee on oil imports, or dedicate revenue from new oil and gas leases, as has been proposed by a number of Republican lawmakers. A low carbon tax might also help—one that might generate roughly $25 billion annually, but not so high as to slow the economy.
PROTECT—BUT SHARE
National investments in innovation won't happen if they are motivated solely, or even primarily, by the desire to achieve global emissions-reduction goals. They need to serve more immediate national objectives, such as reducing reliance on fossil fuels and getting a piece of a rapidly growing global energy market.
This will mean pulling off a balancing act. Nations will have to protect, at least partially, their domestic clean-tech industries. There is no clean-tech industry without state subsidies, and there is no incentive for states to subsidize those industries without good reason to think that those subsidies will in large part benefit domestic companies.
Yet nations should not entirely block foreign businesses from accessing their clean-tech markets—or else they'd become too dependent on home-grown ideas and technologies. That's a bad bet. Radical innovation requires that ideas spill over—quickly—between nations and companies.
In fact, governments should make the sharing of clean-energy intellectual property an explicit part of the competitive-deployment system. The companies that win bids to deliver the next generation of solar panels and nuclear plants at the lowest cost would have to share their intellectual property with competitors—and quickly move on to compete for the next aggressive benchmark.
Bids in such a system would reflect the value of both intellectual property and technology and so might cost a bit more. But probably not much; the reality is that clean-tech IP is massively overvalued. There is little real value in intellectual property that allows a company to produce clean energy at several times the cost of fossil fuels.
The only value of present-day clean-tech intellectual property is as a public good, not a private one. Governments support clean tech in the hope that subsequent iterations of present-day intellectual property will be substantially cheaper and hence scalable without the need for government subsidies. Paying to procure cutting-edge clean-energy IP along with the technology it creates is more than worth it in order to accelerate the spillover of new knowledge among clean-tech firms, even if it costs marginally more.
In reality, strong financial incentives for commercialization of clean-energy technologies are more than sufficient to spur private-sector innovation, even without strong intellectual-property protections. Witness tech firms the world over rushing to take advantage of China's epic state investments in new clean-energy technologies—despite China's cavalier attitude toward intellectual property.
In short, the competitive advantage for companies would be not today's intellectual property, but rather the ability to rapidly and repeatedly create new intellectual property to win competitive contracts. Such a strategy will strengthen America's innovation system and help U.S. businesses capture intellectual property developed abroad—all while encouraging precisely the kind of knowledge spillover between nations and businesses that is in everyone's interest.
FORGET THE U.N.
The U.N. is the wrong place for hammering out the details of an international agreement on clean-energy innovation. The venue is too big and too rancorous. Small countries use the U.N. as a platform to push historical grievances against big ones, and nothing gets done.
Instead, the focus should shift to the relatively few nations that are responsible for the vast majority of emissions—and that have the resources to do something about it.
Look at the numbers. There are 192 members in the U.N. But two nations, the U.S. and China, produce more than 40% of the world's emissions. If you broaden that to the G-20 countries, you've accounted for 80% of total global carbon emissions—as well as 85% of global GDP, 80% of world trade and two-thirds of world population. The best way to address climate problems is to work through existing forums for these big countries, like the G-20 meetings.
As the recent meeting showed, the G-20 hardly guarantees agreements among nations over vital matters like currency manipulation. But it is still an easier forum than the U.N. General Assembly. And focusing on technology innovation to make clean energy cheap—instead of on polarizing measures like emissions cuts—will make it easier still.
DO THE SMALL STUFF
It will take years and maybe decades before clean energy becomes cheap enough to replace fossil fuels. What can countries do in the meantime?
For starters, wealthy nations can help poorer ones address other factors that are contributing to global warming. Black carbon—the incomplete combustion of cheap, dirty fuels in places like India—accelerates warming and can be reduced by replacing old diesel generators and primitive wood stoves with more-efficient alternatives.
These actions are economical, delivering more energy for less fuel, and bring an immediate public-health benefit—fewer respiratory illnesses and deaths from breathing dirty stove smoke. Methane, too, a potent greenhouse gas, can be cheaply captured in places like dairy farms and landfills and burned for energy.
There are other relatively easy things the U.S. and other rich nations can do. The U.S. could better enforce the non-carbon standards of the Clean Air Act, shutting down the country's oldest and most inefficient coal plants and replacing them with natural gas or clean-energy technologies produced through a competitive-deployment process. Over the next decade, such a strategy could quickly reduce mercury and asthma-causing pollutants, as well as cut carbon emissions from U.S. coal plants by as much as 10%—all while advancing the goal of inventing ever-cheaper low-carbon energy technologies.
HELP EMERGING COUNTRIES ADAPT IN A DIFFERENT WAY
Finally, we should immediately change how we distribute climate-related aid to developing nations.
First, we should stop talking about that aid in terms of climate change. It's impossible to tell if floods, droughts and hurricanes are caused by climate change—and that's unlikely to change for many decades. Trying to draw a distinction between disasters caused by climate change and "natural" disasters serves a political purpose, not a scientific one: justifying climate "reparations" from rich too poor countries.
Rich nations should focus instead on helping small nations deal with problems related to natural disasters in general. Aid should be spent on better roads, water and sewage systems, and housing—an infrastructure that can, in short, stand up to everything from earthquakes to big storms, whether caused by increased warming or not.
The proper institutional home for those efforts should be well-established international development agencies, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Agency for International Development—not the U.N. They're not perfect, but these institutions have a better track record of underwriting global development, collectively spending upward of $150 billion annually on international development efforts. Loans and aid for infrastructure development have traditionally created new markets, and what's more likely to win the support of Western countries in tough economic times, appeals to environmental guilt or to economic self-interest?
Beyond that, the best route to helping nations absorb natural disasters is to broaden access to energy. Wealthy societies can handle disasters a lot better than poor ones, and access to cheap energy is crucial for building wealth.
Fossil fuels alone won't cut it. They're still too expensive for about a third of the world's population, and will get pricier still as demand rises. If there is to be universal access to energy, there must be a global commitment to developing alternatives.
So we come back to the beginning. Energy that is cheap, clean and available to all should be understood as a fundamental public good and should be the central objective of climate policy. It's the best way to align national interests with the global one, economic benefits with environmental ones and emissions reductions with adaptation.
It's also the best approach for America. The U.S. has taken a pounding over the past decade as a global laggard on climate. Much of this was unfair—Europe manipulated the Kyoto treaty's accounting to start in 1990 and 1997 so it could count emissions reductions from the collapse of Communism. But it is also the case that the U.S. has not offered a suitable alternative to the U.N. framework.
The new climate framework we're proposing plays to America's strengths. It offers the country the chance to move from being the global scapegoat to the global leader. We are an electric nation born of invention—one that has long used technology to overcome tough challenges. With that as our mandate, we can do a lot to help the world solve this one.
—Ted Nordhaus and Michael Shellenberger are co-founders of the Breakthrough Institute, a public-policy think tank in Oakland, Calif. They are co-authors of "Break Through: From the Death of Environmentalism to the Politics of Possibility." They can be reached at reports@wsj.com
Oil companies and banks will profit from UN forest protection scheme
Redd scheme designed to prevent deforestation but critics call it 'privatisation' of natural resources
John Vidal, environment editor, in Cancun guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 November 2010 19.58 GMT
Some of the world's largest oil, mining, car and gas corporations will make hundreds of millions of dollars from a UN-backed forest protection scheme, according to a new report from the Friends of the Earth International.
The group's new report – launched on the first day of the global climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, where 193 countries hope to thrash out a new agreement – is the first major assessment of the several hundred, large-scale Redd (Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation) pilot schemes. It shows that banks, airlines, charitable foundations, carbon traders, conservation groups, gas companies and palm plantation companies have also scrambled into forestry protection.
While forestry is billed as one issue where significant progress could be made at the talks, over the weekend David Cameron, Chris Huhne, the climate change secretary, and the government's chief scientists all played down the prospect of a global deal to cut carbon emissions.
"British ministers are going to Mexico this week with an approach that is both realistic and optimistic," the prime minister wrote in the Observer . "Realistic, because we don't expect a global deal to be struck in Cancun, but optimistic too, because we are viewing this as a stepping stone to future agreement."
Huhne, who will attend the second week of the talks, was more blunt: "No one expects a binding deal on climate change in Cancun." But he said deforestation and longer-term climate finance were areas where progress could be made.
The Redd scheme is central to slowing, or halting, deforestation, which causes huge releases of carbon dioxide. But critics say that the scheme amounts to privatisation of natural resources.
FoE's report shows, for example that the Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell has linked with Russian gas giant Gazprom and the Clinton Foundation to invest in the Rimba Rey project, 100,000ha of peat swamp in Indonesia. The project is expecting to prevent 75m tonnes of carbon being emitted over 30 years, which could earn the three groups $750m at a modest carbon price of $10 a tonne.
It also says that an investment of little more than $10m by the bank Merrill Lynch, the conservation group Flora and Fauna International and an Australian carbon trading company could generate more than $430m, over 30 years, from a project to protect 750,000ha of forest in Aceh province, Indonesia.
The "Redd rush" is limited to voluntary carbon offsets for now but is expected to become a stampede if the 193 countries meeting this week reach an outline forestry protection agreement that would allow governments to offset national emissions against forest conservation. It could result in eventual cash flows of $30bn a year from rich countries – who need to offset emissions – to poor countries, where most of the world's endangered forests are.
But the report's authors say great social risks attached to the schemes must be addressed. "There are significant risks that Redd will lead to the privatisation of the world's forests, transferring them out of the hands of indigenous peoples and local communities and into the hands of bankers and carbon traders," they say.
Many of the world's greatest stretches of forests are the traditional home of indigenous peoples, and millions of others may be dependent on access to forests, say the authors, who urge that ownership of land and carbon rights must be resolved. "Many Redd-related disputes are now unfolding. Respect for indigenous peoples' rights seems to be a missing element," says the report. "A Redd race is under way. Redd is emerging as a mechanism that has the potential to exacerbate inequality, reaping huge rewards for corporate investors whilst bringing considerably fewer benefits or even serious disadvantages to forest dependent communities. It could become a dangerous distraction from the business of implementing real climate change cuts."
One major concern is that the weak legal definitions of "forest" and "degraded land" would let the powerful logging and palm companies carry on business as usual by persuading governments to redefine what constitutes a forests.
Greenpeace claimed last week that Indonesia planned to class large areas of its remaining natural forests as "degraded land" in order to cut them down and receive $1bn of climate aid for replanting them with palm trees and biofuel crops.
However some observers, including Lord Stern, say the Redd schemes offer the best opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They say thatmore technologically sophisticated options, such as carbon capture and storage, could take several years to come into large-scale operation, and they are more expensive.
A spokesperson for Shell said the company could not yet comment on the Friends of the Earth report.
John Vidal, environment editor, in Cancun guardian.co.uk, Sunday 28 November 2010 19.58 GMT
Some of the world's largest oil, mining, car and gas corporations will make hundreds of millions of dollars from a UN-backed forest protection scheme, according to a new report from the Friends of the Earth International.
The group's new report – launched on the first day of the global climate summit in Cancun, Mexico, where 193 countries hope to thrash out a new agreement – is the first major assessment of the several hundred, large-scale Redd (Reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation) pilot schemes. It shows that banks, airlines, charitable foundations, carbon traders, conservation groups, gas companies and palm plantation companies have also scrambled into forestry protection.
While forestry is billed as one issue where significant progress could be made at the talks, over the weekend David Cameron, Chris Huhne, the climate change secretary, and the government's chief scientists all played down the prospect of a global deal to cut carbon emissions.
"British ministers are going to Mexico this week with an approach that is both realistic and optimistic," the prime minister wrote in the Observer . "Realistic, because we don't expect a global deal to be struck in Cancun, but optimistic too, because we are viewing this as a stepping stone to future agreement."
Huhne, who will attend the second week of the talks, was more blunt: "No one expects a binding deal on climate change in Cancun." But he said deforestation and longer-term climate finance were areas where progress could be made.
The Redd scheme is central to slowing, or halting, deforestation, which causes huge releases of carbon dioxide. But critics say that the scheme amounts to privatisation of natural resources.
FoE's report shows, for example that the Anglo-Dutch oil firm Shell has linked with Russian gas giant Gazprom and the Clinton Foundation to invest in the Rimba Rey project, 100,000ha of peat swamp in Indonesia. The project is expecting to prevent 75m tonnes of carbon being emitted over 30 years, which could earn the three groups $750m at a modest carbon price of $10 a tonne.
It also says that an investment of little more than $10m by the bank Merrill Lynch, the conservation group Flora and Fauna International and an Australian carbon trading company could generate more than $430m, over 30 years, from a project to protect 750,000ha of forest in Aceh province, Indonesia.
The "Redd rush" is limited to voluntary carbon offsets for now but is expected to become a stampede if the 193 countries meeting this week reach an outline forestry protection agreement that would allow governments to offset national emissions against forest conservation. It could result in eventual cash flows of $30bn a year from rich countries – who need to offset emissions – to poor countries, where most of the world's endangered forests are.
But the report's authors say great social risks attached to the schemes must be addressed. "There are significant risks that Redd will lead to the privatisation of the world's forests, transferring them out of the hands of indigenous peoples and local communities and into the hands of bankers and carbon traders," they say.
Many of the world's greatest stretches of forests are the traditional home of indigenous peoples, and millions of others may be dependent on access to forests, say the authors, who urge that ownership of land and carbon rights must be resolved. "Many Redd-related disputes are now unfolding. Respect for indigenous peoples' rights seems to be a missing element," says the report. "A Redd race is under way. Redd is emerging as a mechanism that has the potential to exacerbate inequality, reaping huge rewards for corporate investors whilst bringing considerably fewer benefits or even serious disadvantages to forest dependent communities. It could become a dangerous distraction from the business of implementing real climate change cuts."
One major concern is that the weak legal definitions of "forest" and "degraded land" would let the powerful logging and palm companies carry on business as usual by persuading governments to redefine what constitutes a forests.
Greenpeace claimed last week that Indonesia planned to class large areas of its remaining natural forests as "degraded land" in order to cut them down and receive $1bn of climate aid for replanting them with palm trees and biofuel crops.
However some observers, including Lord Stern, say the Redd schemes offer the best opportunity for cost-effective and immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. They say thatmore technologically sophisticated options, such as carbon capture and storage, could take several years to come into large-scale operation, and they are more expensive.
A spokesperson for Shell said the company could not yet comment on the Friends of the Earth report.
Madagascar Oil brings tar sands project to London market
The Voahary Gasy an alliance of Madagascan environmental groups complains that the government has released very little information
Tim Webb The Guardian, Monday 29 November 2010
The arrival of Madagascar Oil on the Aim market today allows investors to buy into what are likely to be among the dirtiest oil sands projects – benefiting from the lowest tax rates – anywhere in the world.
Oil has been seeping through the ground in the impoverished and politically unstable African island, which rebuffed another attempted coup this month, for centuries. But Madagascar has never before produced oil in commercial quantities. Until now the oil sands were considered uneconomical, moreover companies were put off by the risks involved in doing business there.
Higher oil prices make the projects viable and the government is desperate to get production going, possibly as early as next year. It is ready to entice Madagascar Oil and French partner Total with an extremely generous tax regime. Operators are being offered 99% of the revenue for the first ten years while they recoup their costs, with just 1% for the government. Platform, a campaign group which monitors oil companies' activities around the world, said the offer was "unheard of".
An area of 29,500 sq km covers five main oil sands blocks. Extracting the fuel is controversial because it uses far more energy and water than more conventional production processes.
The most advanced project is Tsimiroro – owned and operated by Madagascar Oil – holding a "best estimate" of almost 1bn barrels. It could produce 90,000 barrels a day for 30-40 years and breaks even at just under $50 a barrel. The larger field, Bemolanga, holds a best estimate of just under 1.2bn barrels of oil, and could produce a much larger amount, although costs are higher. Operated by Total, with Madagascar Oil holding a 40% stake, they would have to spend about $9bn (£5.7bn) to build the upgraders and other facilities to get production started.
Madagascar Oil's stock market valuation of £183m is more typical of small oil explorers than a company holding such quantities of proven reserves. Madagascar Oil's chief executive Laurie Hunter described the company as "an execution not an exploration play".
It's unlikely to be plain sailing. The World Bank ranks Madagascar as 138th out of 193 countries in its "ease of doing business" ranking. Corruption is rife and the country is unstable. The government came to power in a military backed coup last spring which overthrew the democratically elected leader.
The companies have negotiated an extremely attractive deal. At Tsimiroro, after the first ten years taking 99% of the revenue, Madagascar Oil is being offered 80% during the second decade, with the government taking 20%, followed by a 70%-30% split the following decade and so on.
For a country ranked 170th poorest out of 182 by the IMF, these revenues will be much needed, but Mika Minio-Paluello from democratic and environmental campaign group Platform said the government's take should be much higher. "Oil companies go into these kinds of chaotic situations and negotiate immensely profitable terms. It's understandable that companies want to protect their investment but this goes much further and Madagascar could be stuck with these contracts for decades."
Environmental regulations are also unlikely to be onerousin an island famed for its biodiversity. The Voahary Gasy an alliance of Madagascan environmental groups complains that the government has released very little information. But the first projects are likely to use up more energy than the world's only other existing oil sands projects, in Alberta in Canada. The Tsimiroro project will use an "in-situ" method, which involves injecting vast amounts of steam into the ground to heat up the oil and allow it to surface. According to industry estimates, to extract five barrels of oil at Tsimiroro will burn up one barrel of oil, although any excess electricity produced to generate steam could be used at the other project. According to environmental group the Pembina Institute, for every barrel of oil used in similar oil Canada projects in Alberta, about 5.5 barrels of oil are produced on average.
The Bemolanga field, one of the world's largest untapped oil sands fields, could also be more energy - and carbon - intensive than equivalent projects in Alberta. The project would use open cast mining to dig out the oily sand and rock. Because the material's bitumen content is lower at 5.5% – compared to 11% in Alberta – it would be harder to separate. However, it is thought that a higher proportion of the oil in Bemolanga could be recovered than in Alberta, so this would reduce the comparative energy intensity.
In Canada, the federal government has threatened to force companies to use carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reduce emissions although it's not clear if this will ever become law. Hunter said Madagascar has "a very attentive environmental regulator" but admits: "Requirements to use CCS at some time in the future has not come up in conversation. The Madagascar government is very keen to get on with production with the fields."
Tim Webb The Guardian, Monday 29 November 2010
The arrival of Madagascar Oil on the Aim market today allows investors to buy into what are likely to be among the dirtiest oil sands projects – benefiting from the lowest tax rates – anywhere in the world.
Oil has been seeping through the ground in the impoverished and politically unstable African island, which rebuffed another attempted coup this month, for centuries. But Madagascar has never before produced oil in commercial quantities. Until now the oil sands were considered uneconomical, moreover companies were put off by the risks involved in doing business there.
Higher oil prices make the projects viable and the government is desperate to get production going, possibly as early as next year. It is ready to entice Madagascar Oil and French partner Total with an extremely generous tax regime. Operators are being offered 99% of the revenue for the first ten years while they recoup their costs, with just 1% for the government. Platform, a campaign group which monitors oil companies' activities around the world, said the offer was "unheard of".
An area of 29,500 sq km covers five main oil sands blocks. Extracting the fuel is controversial because it uses far more energy and water than more conventional production processes.
The most advanced project is Tsimiroro – owned and operated by Madagascar Oil – holding a "best estimate" of almost 1bn barrels. It could produce 90,000 barrels a day for 30-40 years and breaks even at just under $50 a barrel. The larger field, Bemolanga, holds a best estimate of just under 1.2bn barrels of oil, and could produce a much larger amount, although costs are higher. Operated by Total, with Madagascar Oil holding a 40% stake, they would have to spend about $9bn (£5.7bn) to build the upgraders and other facilities to get production started.
Madagascar Oil's stock market valuation of £183m is more typical of small oil explorers than a company holding such quantities of proven reserves. Madagascar Oil's chief executive Laurie Hunter described the company as "an execution not an exploration play".
It's unlikely to be plain sailing. The World Bank ranks Madagascar as 138th out of 193 countries in its "ease of doing business" ranking. Corruption is rife and the country is unstable. The government came to power in a military backed coup last spring which overthrew the democratically elected leader.
The companies have negotiated an extremely attractive deal. At Tsimiroro, after the first ten years taking 99% of the revenue, Madagascar Oil is being offered 80% during the second decade, with the government taking 20%, followed by a 70%-30% split the following decade and so on.
For a country ranked 170th poorest out of 182 by the IMF, these revenues will be much needed, but Mika Minio-Paluello from democratic and environmental campaign group Platform said the government's take should be much higher. "Oil companies go into these kinds of chaotic situations and negotiate immensely profitable terms. It's understandable that companies want to protect their investment but this goes much further and Madagascar could be stuck with these contracts for decades."
Environmental regulations are also unlikely to be onerousin an island famed for its biodiversity. The Voahary Gasy an alliance of Madagascan environmental groups complains that the government has released very little information. But the first projects are likely to use up more energy than the world's only other existing oil sands projects, in Alberta in Canada. The Tsimiroro project will use an "in-situ" method, which involves injecting vast amounts of steam into the ground to heat up the oil and allow it to surface. According to industry estimates, to extract five barrels of oil at Tsimiroro will burn up one barrel of oil, although any excess electricity produced to generate steam could be used at the other project. According to environmental group the Pembina Institute, for every barrel of oil used in similar oil Canada projects in Alberta, about 5.5 barrels of oil are produced on average.
The Bemolanga field, one of the world's largest untapped oil sands fields, could also be more energy - and carbon - intensive than equivalent projects in Alberta. The project would use open cast mining to dig out the oily sand and rock. Because the material's bitumen content is lower at 5.5% – compared to 11% in Alberta – it would be harder to separate. However, it is thought that a higher proportion of the oil in Bemolanga could be recovered than in Alberta, so this would reduce the comparative energy intensity.
In Canada, the federal government has threatened to force companies to use carbon capture and storage (CCS) to reduce emissions although it's not clear if this will ever become law. Hunter said Madagascar has "a very attentive environmental regulator" but admits: "Requirements to use CCS at some time in the future has not come up in conversation. The Madagascar government is very keen to get on with production with the fields."
Sunday, 28 November 2010
Countries Pare Ambitions for Talks on Climate Change
By JEFFREY BALL
With the push to cap greenhouse-gas emissions all but dead in the U.S., world diplomats will meet in Mexico starting Monday to try to eke out a less-ambitious attack on global warming.
Few observers are confident of a breakthrough.
At a two-week United Nations climate conference in the Mexican resort city of Cancun, negotiators will focus not on the stick of mandatory emissions limits but on the carrot of tens of billions of dollars in subsidies from industrialized countries to help developing nations grow on a greener path.
Almost all growth in global greenhouse-gas emissions in coming years is expected to come from developing countries. The subsidies likely would, among other moves, help China build more-efficient coal-fired power plants, Brazil preserve forests, and an array of developing countries build wind farms and solar projects.
Diplomats pledged the incentives at a U.N.-sponsored climate summit in December in Copenhagen. They promised $30 billion in climate funding for poor countries by 2012, and another $100 billion annually, expected to come largely from private investment, starting in 2020.
But negotiators left for another day the task of hashing out the details of how to deliver on those funding pledges. The day has come, but the details have prompted yet another standoff.
Many developing countries say the U.S. and other rich nations are in some cases cutting as much money in other parts of their foreign-aid budgets as they're adding in what they call climate aid—basically shuffling rather than enlarging their foreign-aid budgets. They say the billions of dollars in new climate aid should be in addition to that already-existing assistance.
The U.S. rejects the argument that only climate funding that adds to past years' total amounts of foreign assistance should qualify toward such pledges, Todd Stern, the Obama administration's top climate negotiator, said in an interview. "There are very sharply differing views on what is new," he said.
No one suggests the incentives would bankroll emission cuts large enough to put a major dent in global greenhouse-gas output.
But the fight over these subsidies is a "concern, because, quite frankly, everyone has to start doing things now" to make deeper emission cuts down the road more possible, Robert Orr, the U.N.'s assistant secretary-general for policy planning, said in an interview.
Yet expectations of any major emission cuts over the next decade or two are dimming. In recent months, Congressional leaders in the U.S. have made clear they don't intend to take up the issue of a nationwide emissions cap anytime soon. China has said repeatedly it doesn't intend to accept a mandatory cap.
The U.S., China, and many other countries pledged voluntarily in Copenhagen to curb the growth in their emissions by specific amounts. The fitful economic recovery makes it easier to notch progress on those pledges, because a slower economy requires less growth in fossil-fuel consumption. Fossil fuels contribute to climate change, many national scientific academies say. And many countries, including China and India, are implementing policies that nurture domestic makers of renewable-energy and energy-efficiency equipment, hoping to promote new export industries.
But the International Energy Agency said in a report this month that even if countries met the emission-reduction pledges they made in Copenhagen, greenhouse-gas output probably would rise enough to push average global temperatures more than two degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com
With the push to cap greenhouse-gas emissions all but dead in the U.S., world diplomats will meet in Mexico starting Monday to try to eke out a less-ambitious attack on global warming.
Few observers are confident of a breakthrough.
At a two-week United Nations climate conference in the Mexican resort city of Cancun, negotiators will focus not on the stick of mandatory emissions limits but on the carrot of tens of billions of dollars in subsidies from industrialized countries to help developing nations grow on a greener path.
Almost all growth in global greenhouse-gas emissions in coming years is expected to come from developing countries. The subsidies likely would, among other moves, help China build more-efficient coal-fired power plants, Brazil preserve forests, and an array of developing countries build wind farms and solar projects.
Diplomats pledged the incentives at a U.N.-sponsored climate summit in December in Copenhagen. They promised $30 billion in climate funding for poor countries by 2012, and another $100 billion annually, expected to come largely from private investment, starting in 2020.
But negotiators left for another day the task of hashing out the details of how to deliver on those funding pledges. The day has come, but the details have prompted yet another standoff.
Many developing countries say the U.S. and other rich nations are in some cases cutting as much money in other parts of their foreign-aid budgets as they're adding in what they call climate aid—basically shuffling rather than enlarging their foreign-aid budgets. They say the billions of dollars in new climate aid should be in addition to that already-existing assistance.
The U.S. rejects the argument that only climate funding that adds to past years' total amounts of foreign assistance should qualify toward such pledges, Todd Stern, the Obama administration's top climate negotiator, said in an interview. "There are very sharply differing views on what is new," he said.
No one suggests the incentives would bankroll emission cuts large enough to put a major dent in global greenhouse-gas output.
But the fight over these subsidies is a "concern, because, quite frankly, everyone has to start doing things now" to make deeper emission cuts down the road more possible, Robert Orr, the U.N.'s assistant secretary-general for policy planning, said in an interview.
Yet expectations of any major emission cuts over the next decade or two are dimming. In recent months, Congressional leaders in the U.S. have made clear they don't intend to take up the issue of a nationwide emissions cap anytime soon. China has said repeatedly it doesn't intend to accept a mandatory cap.
The U.S., China, and many other countries pledged voluntarily in Copenhagen to curb the growth in their emissions by specific amounts. The fitful economic recovery makes it easier to notch progress on those pledges, because a slower economy requires less growth in fossil-fuel consumption. Fossil fuels contribute to climate change, many national scientific academies say. And many countries, including China and India, are implementing policies that nurture domestic makers of renewable-energy and energy-efficiency equipment, hoping to promote new export industries.
But the International Energy Agency said in a report this month that even if countries met the emission-reduction pledges they made in Copenhagen, greenhouse-gas output probably would rise enough to push average global temperatures more than two degrees Celsius (or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.
Write to Jeffrey Ball at jeffrey.ball@wsj.com
Fuel bills: turning up the heat
New powers to force energy companies to disclose their wholesale trades could give energy regulator Ofgem teeth
The Guardian, Saturday 27 November 2010
And so returns that hardy yuletide perennial: a story about high energy prices and empty threats from the regulator.
Here is this year's version, as launched yesterday. Annoyed by the rise in energy firms' profit margins (up 38% over the past two months alone, which makes the mark-up on a standard dual-fuel tariff £90), the gas and electricity watchdog has announced a probe into pricing. Ofgem's review will be wide-ranging and even quite aggressive, going by the warning from top regulator Alistair Buchanan that he wants to "ask if companies are playing it straight with consumers".
Promising stuff. There is just one snag: as watchdogs go, Ofgem is among the tamest of the lot. The last time it conducted a big review of the energy market – as fuel prices were soaring in early 2008 – the conclusions could have been filed under T for Timid, revolving around making more information available to the savvy consumer. Former chartered accountant Mr Buchanan makes an unlikely firebrand; up until very recently he made all the leave-it-to-the-market noises conventional among British regulators – at least until the great banking crisis forced them to update their catechisms. And despite all the talk among observers about how Ofgem has been monitoring rising fuel prices with rising alarm, the fact remains that this review has been launched at the back end of November and will not conclude until next spring – by which time all the usual seasonal anger about big bills will have dissipated.
Still, there are some grounds to be more hopeful this time around. The most important is the political climate: fuel bills are going up sharply just as British households enter the age of austerity. VAT rises to 20% just as the new year sales begin – then the sharpest cuts in public spending in decades start. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have been wondering whether to sling Ofgem onto their great bonfire of the quangos. One of the recurrent suggestions is that the coalition could strip Ofgem of its consumer powers and hand them to the Office for Fair Trading. It is in Mr Buchanan's interest to bare his teeth.
If so, they will be teeth fitted in Brussels. Next March an EU directive comes into force that will enable states to get energy companies to disclose all of their trades in the wholesale market – and by implication how much it costs them to supply fuel to households and businesses. At the moment, Ofgem has to estimate these costs – a tricky job, and one that makes regulatory oversight difficult. These new powers bestowed by Brussels could allow Mr Buchanan's team to go much further in protecting customers. Let us hope they use them well.
The Guardian, Saturday 27 November 2010
And so returns that hardy yuletide perennial: a story about high energy prices and empty threats from the regulator.
Here is this year's version, as launched yesterday. Annoyed by the rise in energy firms' profit margins (up 38% over the past two months alone, which makes the mark-up on a standard dual-fuel tariff £90), the gas and electricity watchdog has announced a probe into pricing. Ofgem's review will be wide-ranging and even quite aggressive, going by the warning from top regulator Alistair Buchanan that he wants to "ask if companies are playing it straight with consumers".
Promising stuff. There is just one snag: as watchdogs go, Ofgem is among the tamest of the lot. The last time it conducted a big review of the energy market – as fuel prices were soaring in early 2008 – the conclusions could have been filed under T for Timid, revolving around making more information available to the savvy consumer. Former chartered accountant Mr Buchanan makes an unlikely firebrand; up until very recently he made all the leave-it-to-the-market noises conventional among British regulators – at least until the great banking crisis forced them to update their catechisms. And despite all the talk among observers about how Ofgem has been monitoring rising fuel prices with rising alarm, the fact remains that this review has been launched at the back end of November and will not conclude until next spring – by which time all the usual seasonal anger about big bills will have dissipated.
Still, there are some grounds to be more hopeful this time around. The most important is the political climate: fuel bills are going up sharply just as British households enter the age of austerity. VAT rises to 20% just as the new year sales begin – then the sharpest cuts in public spending in decades start. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have been wondering whether to sling Ofgem onto their great bonfire of the quangos. One of the recurrent suggestions is that the coalition could strip Ofgem of its consumer powers and hand them to the Office for Fair Trading. It is in Mr Buchanan's interest to bare his teeth.
If so, they will be teeth fitted in Brussels. Next March an EU directive comes into force that will enable states to get energy companies to disclose all of their trades in the wholesale market – and by implication how much it costs them to supply fuel to households and businesses. At the moment, Ofgem has to estimate these costs – a tricky job, and one that makes regulatory oversight difficult. These new powers bestowed by Brussels could allow Mr Buchanan's team to go much further in protecting customers. Let us hope they use them well.
Friday, 26 November 2010
Forget the cold – the world is warmer, says Met Office
Amid the most widespread November snow in 17 years, scientists warn that temperature records provide climate change evidence
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Friday, 26 November 2010
Despite a snowy November and last winter being the coldest for more than 30 years, evidence for a warming planet caused by human actions has grown even stronger in the last year, the Met Office said yesterday.
There is "overwhelming" evidence of warming in a wide range or climate indicators, not just surface temperature, Met Office scientists said, although the rate of warming in the last 10 years has slowed compared to the rate over previous decades. The Met Office released its new report as motorists battled with hazardous conditions on many roads yesterday, especially in northern and eastern Britain, as the most widespread November snowfall for 17 years gripped the country. There were falls of 15cm (6ins) in Aberdeenshire, 12cm in the Scottish Borders and 10cm in Durham, and the freezing conditions are likely to spread south and west and last over the weekend, with the weather in general "turning increasingly wintry".
The icy conditions highlighted the Met Office's explanation yesterday of why the rate of climate change seems to have slowed, a phenomenon sometimes seized on by climate sceptics as evidence that man-made global warming is overstated or not happening.
It can be explained by the natural variability of the climate, Met Office researchers said, while other factors causing it may include a decrease in solar activity, and the increase in atmospheric aerosols – fine particles of substances such as sulphur, emitted from power stations, which reflect back the sunlight and so cool the planet. Aerosols have risen because of growing industrialisation in Asia.
Since the 1970s, the long-term rate of global warming has been around 0.16C per decade, but that has slowed in the last 10 years to between 0.05C and 0.13C, depending on which of the three major temperature record series are used.
But, according to the latest data, the decade since the millennium was clearly the hottest on record, and after being more or less on a plateau during the decade, the warming trend is now resuming its upward path, with 2010 likely to prove either the world's hottest or second-hottest year on record.
British figures, produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in association with the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, are indicating that this year will probably be the second hottest, but figures produced by Nasa in the US show it may break all records. A definitive statement will be made next week by the World Meteorological Organisation at the UN Climate Conference in Cancun, Mexico, which begins on Monday. Asked how a shivering pensioner could look at the present icy weather and remember the freeze of last winter, yet be convinced that the world was warming, Dr Vicky Pope, the Hadley Centre's head of climate science advice, said yesterday: "What's happening here now and what happened here last winter are a vivid illustration of natural climate variability. To understand global warming we have to look at the global picture."
While last winter in the UK was very cold, many other parts of the world were unnaturally warm at the same time, she said. "And we are starting to see a trend of fewer cold winters and more heatwaves in Britain, which we can link to global warming." Dr Pope added that new analysis of the data indicated the warming trend of recent years has been underestimated.
Ice warning on roads
The AA said it had attended more than 11,000 breakdowns and expected to be called out to 14,000 by the end of the day – a 50 per cent increase on normal call-outs. Paul Leather, the AA's patrol of the year, said: "Our concern is black ice. If possible, people should stick to the gritted main roads and keep their speed down. In case of any problems, at the very least, carry plenty of warm clothing and a fully charged mobile phone."
The AA said the worst-hit areas were Aberdeen, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and North Yorkshire where breakdowns went up by 60 per cent to 70 per cent. The A170 at Sutton Bank was badly affected by snow, as was the B1249 at Staxton Bank near Scarborough.
A spokesman for North Yorkshire County Council said six village primary schools had been forced to close due to the snow. Aberdeenshire Council said 121 schools in the area were closed or partially closed because of snow.
Police said all roads in the Grampian region had snow and ice, and those closed included the A93 at Glenshee, the A939 to Ballater, and the A957 Crathes to Stonehaven at the Slug Road.
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Friday, 26 November 2010
Despite a snowy November and last winter being the coldest for more than 30 years, evidence for a warming planet caused by human actions has grown even stronger in the last year, the Met Office said yesterday.
There is "overwhelming" evidence of warming in a wide range or climate indicators, not just surface temperature, Met Office scientists said, although the rate of warming in the last 10 years has slowed compared to the rate over previous decades. The Met Office released its new report as motorists battled with hazardous conditions on many roads yesterday, especially in northern and eastern Britain, as the most widespread November snowfall for 17 years gripped the country. There were falls of 15cm (6ins) in Aberdeenshire, 12cm in the Scottish Borders and 10cm in Durham, and the freezing conditions are likely to spread south and west and last over the weekend, with the weather in general "turning increasingly wintry".
The icy conditions highlighted the Met Office's explanation yesterday of why the rate of climate change seems to have slowed, a phenomenon sometimes seized on by climate sceptics as evidence that man-made global warming is overstated or not happening.
It can be explained by the natural variability of the climate, Met Office researchers said, while other factors causing it may include a decrease in solar activity, and the increase in atmospheric aerosols – fine particles of substances such as sulphur, emitted from power stations, which reflect back the sunlight and so cool the planet. Aerosols have risen because of growing industrialisation in Asia.
Since the 1970s, the long-term rate of global warming has been around 0.16C per decade, but that has slowed in the last 10 years to between 0.05C and 0.13C, depending on which of the three major temperature record series are used.
But, according to the latest data, the decade since the millennium was clearly the hottest on record, and after being more or less on a plateau during the decade, the warming trend is now resuming its upward path, with 2010 likely to prove either the world's hottest or second-hottest year on record.
British figures, produced by the Met Office Hadley Centre in association with the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia, are indicating that this year will probably be the second hottest, but figures produced by Nasa in the US show it may break all records. A definitive statement will be made next week by the World Meteorological Organisation at the UN Climate Conference in Cancun, Mexico, which begins on Monday. Asked how a shivering pensioner could look at the present icy weather and remember the freeze of last winter, yet be convinced that the world was warming, Dr Vicky Pope, the Hadley Centre's head of climate science advice, said yesterday: "What's happening here now and what happened here last winter are a vivid illustration of natural climate variability. To understand global warming we have to look at the global picture."
While last winter in the UK was very cold, many other parts of the world were unnaturally warm at the same time, she said. "And we are starting to see a trend of fewer cold winters and more heatwaves in Britain, which we can link to global warming." Dr Pope added that new analysis of the data indicated the warming trend of recent years has been underestimated.
Ice warning on roads
The AA said it had attended more than 11,000 breakdowns and expected to be called out to 14,000 by the end of the day – a 50 per cent increase on normal call-outs. Paul Leather, the AA's patrol of the year, said: "Our concern is black ice. If possible, people should stick to the gritted main roads and keep their speed down. In case of any problems, at the very least, carry plenty of warm clothing and a fully charged mobile phone."
The AA said the worst-hit areas were Aberdeen, Newcastle, Middlesbrough, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and North Yorkshire where breakdowns went up by 60 per cent to 70 per cent. The A170 at Sutton Bank was badly affected by snow, as was the B1249 at Staxton Bank near Scarborough.
A spokesman for North Yorkshire County Council said six village primary schools had been forced to close due to the snow. Aberdeenshire Council said 121 schools in the area were closed or partially closed because of snow.
Police said all roads in the Grampian region had snow and ice, and those closed included the A93 at Glenshee, the A939 to Ballater, and the A957 Crathes to Stonehaven at the Slug Road.
Spanish firms race UK to build world's largest offshore wind turbine
BusinessGreen: Gamesa says it will lead €25m project to build turbine even bigger than massive 'Britannia' machine
BusinessGreen guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 November 2010 11.29 GMT
A group of Spanish firms have kick-started an initiative to build a massive 15MW wind turbine in a bid to tackle the technical and financial difficulties afflicting the offshore wind energy market.
Turbine manufacturer Gamesa yesterday confirmed it is leading the project, dubbed Azimut, alongside 11 wind and engineering firms and 22 research centres. It added that the research project will require a total investment of €25m over the next four years.
The main responsibilities will be divided between five firms, with Gamesa heading work on wind capture, Acciona Windpower responsible for electricity conversion, Alstom Wind managing the substructures, Acciona Energía heading up construction, operation and maintenance at offshore sites, and finally Iberdrola Renovables developing the grid connection.
The timetable of the project is slated to be finalised in 2013, but the Azimut group said it hopes to have established the technological groundwork to build the machine by 2020.
The project, which is backed by the Spanish government's Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology, is designed to help the industry overcome some of the technical and financial hurdles currently limiting the rollout of offshore wind energy.
"The most pressing of these obstacles are availability, turbine foundations and energy delivery to land," said Gamesa in a statement. "And [also] narrowing the gap between offshore energy's cost and required investment and those of onshore wind energy sites."
If built, Azimut's wind turbine will be significantly larger than any wind turbine currently planned. US firm Clipper Windpower tops the league at the moment, with plans to build the 10MW Britannia offshore machine in the North East of England, although it is thought that the company is unlikely to deliver a commercial turbine from the project in time for the next wave of Round 3 offshore wind farms.
BusinessGreen guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 24 November 2010 11.29 GMT
A group of Spanish firms have kick-started an initiative to build a massive 15MW wind turbine in a bid to tackle the technical and financial difficulties afflicting the offshore wind energy market.
Turbine manufacturer Gamesa yesterday confirmed it is leading the project, dubbed Azimut, alongside 11 wind and engineering firms and 22 research centres. It added that the research project will require a total investment of €25m over the next four years.
The main responsibilities will be divided between five firms, with Gamesa heading work on wind capture, Acciona Windpower responsible for electricity conversion, Alstom Wind managing the substructures, Acciona Energía heading up construction, operation and maintenance at offshore sites, and finally Iberdrola Renovables developing the grid connection.
The timetable of the project is slated to be finalised in 2013, but the Azimut group said it hopes to have established the technological groundwork to build the machine by 2020.
The project, which is backed by the Spanish government's Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology, is designed to help the industry overcome some of the technical and financial hurdles currently limiting the rollout of offshore wind energy.
"The most pressing of these obstacles are availability, turbine foundations and energy delivery to land," said Gamesa in a statement. "And [also] narrowing the gap between offshore energy's cost and required investment and those of onshore wind energy sites."
If built, Azimut's wind turbine will be significantly larger than any wind turbine currently planned. US firm Clipper Windpower tops the league at the moment, with plans to build the 10MW Britannia offshore machine in the North East of England, although it is thought that the company is unlikely to deliver a commercial turbine from the project in time for the next wave of Round 3 offshore wind farms.
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Cancun Climate Conference: Chris Huhne says the world is 'within shouting distance of a deal'
Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Secretary, has promised to get the ‘show back on the road’ towards an international agreement to stop global warming.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent 4:06PM GMT 24 Nov 2010
Comments
The United Nations talks on climate change in Copenhagen last year ended in chaos after countries failed to come to a legally-binding deal on cutting emissions.
Mr Huhne said there was ‘obviously not going to be a legal treaty’ agreed at the next major summit in Cancun Mexico later this month.
However he insisted that the talks can make progress towards a deal.
“I am travelling to Cancun very much with the hope of getting the show back on the road,” he said.
“We want to see progress at Cancun. We do not want to see a confrontational shambles that involves a lot of name-calling.”
The UN talks are aimed at achieving a deal that cuts carbon emissions in order to keep global temperature rise within 2C (3.8F).
Mr Huhne said this was still possible at the end of 2011 or 2012.
In the mean time he said the talks must put in place the architecture to make a deal possible. This will mean a series of ‘mini-deals’ on how the world will measure the emissions from different countries, how money will be raised to help poor countries go green and how to reduce deforestation.
“From the point of view of our objectives. We want to see progress, which means we are withing shouting distance of a serious deal which we can rely on to tackle this massive problem,” he said.
“If we do not get peaking of emissions by 2020 the prospects for people living on this planet are pretty bleak.”
However writing in the journal Nature, Yvo de Boer, the former head fo the UN talks, said the focus should not be on emissions cuts as many countries believe this will limit their economies – especially the emerging markets.
Instead he said the talks should focus on green growth and helping all countries to shift to a low carbon economy.
He said efforts should focus on raising the money to help poor countries adapt to climate change and develop green technology.
:: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative announced that it will host a major new business summit alongside the main Cancun talks dubbed the World Climate Summit.
The conference – which UNEP describes as "the beginning of a new, open and collaborative global 10-year framework dedicated to helping governments, businesses and financiers accelerate solutions to climate change" – will take place on December 4-5 in Cancun and will be attended by representatives from over 300 of the world's largest firms, including Richard Branson and Ted Turner.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent 4:06PM GMT 24 Nov 2010
Comments
The United Nations talks on climate change in Copenhagen last year ended in chaos after countries failed to come to a legally-binding deal on cutting emissions.
Mr Huhne said there was ‘obviously not going to be a legal treaty’ agreed at the next major summit in Cancun Mexico later this month.
However he insisted that the talks can make progress towards a deal.
“I am travelling to Cancun very much with the hope of getting the show back on the road,” he said.
“We want to see progress at Cancun. We do not want to see a confrontational shambles that involves a lot of name-calling.”
The UN talks are aimed at achieving a deal that cuts carbon emissions in order to keep global temperature rise within 2C (3.8F).
Mr Huhne said this was still possible at the end of 2011 or 2012.
In the mean time he said the talks must put in place the architecture to make a deal possible. This will mean a series of ‘mini-deals’ on how the world will measure the emissions from different countries, how money will be raised to help poor countries go green and how to reduce deforestation.
“From the point of view of our objectives. We want to see progress, which means we are withing shouting distance of a serious deal which we can rely on to tackle this massive problem,” he said.
“If we do not get peaking of emissions by 2020 the prospects for people living on this planet are pretty bleak.”
However writing in the journal Nature, Yvo de Boer, the former head fo the UN talks, said the focus should not be on emissions cuts as many countries believe this will limit their economies – especially the emerging markets.
Instead he said the talks should focus on green growth and helping all countries to shift to a low carbon economy.
He said efforts should focus on raising the money to help poor countries adapt to climate change and develop green technology.
:: The UN Environment Programme (UNEP) Finance Initiative announced that it will host a major new business summit alongside the main Cancun talks dubbed the World Climate Summit.
The conference – which UNEP describes as "the beginning of a new, open and collaborative global 10-year framework dedicated to helping governments, businesses and financiers accelerate solutions to climate change" – will take place on December 4-5 in Cancun and will be attended by representatives from over 300 of the world's largest firms, including Richard Branson and Ted Turner.
Solar powered bulbs light the way in the developing world
Thursday, 25 November 2010
Nokero, which claims to be the manufacturers of the world's only solar light bulb, announced on November 16 the launch of the new Nokero N200, a bulb 60 percent brighter than its predecessor the N100. The bulb is designed to be used in communities around the world that do not have reliable access to electricity.
The company claims that the N200 can last over six hours on one day's charge and, according to the press release, is designed to be affordable to "billions of people who live worldwide without electricity."
The bulb contains one solar panel with which it draws light from the sun to store in a battery for use at night, the bulb turns off automatically in bright light in order to conserve power and is rainproof for use outside.
The bulb is currently being used to aid flood victims in the refugee camps of Pakistan and in Kenyan orphanages and, according to the press release, Nokero also plan to ship the bulb to Iraq as a replacement for the expensive diesel generators currently being used.
The bulb is designed to provide an alternative source of light to the kerosene and other similar fuels typically used in communities with little or no access to electricity, research from the Intermediate Technology Development Group and the World Health Organization estimates that indoor air pollution from such fuel contributes to 1.5 million deaths per year.
Through more for environmental than health reasons, solar powered lighting is a growing trend across Europe and America; a variety of solar powered garden lamps and lighting devices are available from most major retailers and can even be bought online at amazon.com.
Nokero: http://www.nokero.com
Nokero, which claims to be the manufacturers of the world's only solar light bulb, announced on November 16 the launch of the new Nokero N200, a bulb 60 percent brighter than its predecessor the N100. The bulb is designed to be used in communities around the world that do not have reliable access to electricity.
The company claims that the N200 can last over six hours on one day's charge and, according to the press release, is designed to be affordable to "billions of people who live worldwide without electricity."
The bulb contains one solar panel with which it draws light from the sun to store in a battery for use at night, the bulb turns off automatically in bright light in order to conserve power and is rainproof for use outside.
The bulb is currently being used to aid flood victims in the refugee camps of Pakistan and in Kenyan orphanages and, according to the press release, Nokero also plan to ship the bulb to Iraq as a replacement for the expensive diesel generators currently being used.
The bulb is designed to provide an alternative source of light to the kerosene and other similar fuels typically used in communities with little or no access to electricity, research from the Intermediate Technology Development Group and the World Health Organization estimates that indoor air pollution from such fuel contributes to 1.5 million deaths per year.
Through more for environmental than health reasons, solar powered lighting is a growing trend across Europe and America; a variety of solar powered garden lamps and lighting devices are available from most major retailers and can even be bought online at amazon.com.
Nokero: http://www.nokero.com
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
UN issues severe climate warning ahead of summit
By Michael McCarthy, Environment Editor
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
The world is now firmly on the path for dangerous climate change in the coming century, a major new assessment reveals today on the eve of the forthcoming UN climate conference which opens next week in Mexico.
All the pledges of the nations which have agreed to cut or limit their emissions of greenhouse gases, when added together, still leave the world far short of what is needed to halt the coming rise in global average temperatures to 2C, generally regarded as the danger threshold, according to the study from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The study sets a gloomy context for the international climate meeting opening on Monday in the Mexican resort of Cancun, which is the successor meeting to the abortive Copenhagen climate conference of last year.
Copenhagen dashed many hopes when the countries of the world failed to agree new legally binding targets to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases in an attempt to keep global warming under control. However, a last-minute agreement was patched up, known as the Copenhagen Accord, under which nations could voluntarily pledge targets or other actions to get their emissions down.
Some 80 countries, including the biggest CO2 emitters – China and the US – have now made such pledges, ranging from the firm commitment of the EU and its member states to cut their emissions back by 20 per cent by 2020 (and by 30 per cent if other nations take similar action), to China's statement that it will "endeavour" to reduce the energy intensity of its economy – the amount of CO2 it takes to produce one unit of GDP – by 40 to 45 per cent by the same date.
However, the UNEP study calculates that even if these promises are carried out in full – which itself is a big if – they will still leave a massive "gigatonne gap".
Climate scientists consider that to be on a path to 2C and no higher, total world emissions of CO2 and other gases need to peak within the next 10 years and be brought down to about 44 gigatonnes (44 billion tonnes) by 2020. Currently, the world as a whole is emitting about 48 gigatonnes of CO2, and if economies take no action this figure is expected to rise to 56 gigatonnes in 10 years' time.
But even with full and strict implementation of the Copenhagen Accord pledges, this will only bring emissions in 2020 down to 49 gigatonnes – leaving a gap of five billion tonnes. And if the pledges are only loosely implemented the gap could be even greater, with global emissions rising to 53 gigatonnes in 10 years' time.
The task is to formalise and if possible increase the Copenhagen Accord pledges, but it is by no means clear that this is possible at Cancun – it may have to wait until the next climate conference in 2011.
Achim Steiner, the UNEP executive director, reflected this concern: "The challenge is to take the intent reflected in the Copenhagen Accord and bring it into a mutually reassuring framework, and you can go all the way to a legally binding agreement, or some other form."
Wednesday, 24 November 2010
The world is now firmly on the path for dangerous climate change in the coming century, a major new assessment reveals today on the eve of the forthcoming UN climate conference which opens next week in Mexico.
All the pledges of the nations which have agreed to cut or limit their emissions of greenhouse gases, when added together, still leave the world far short of what is needed to halt the coming rise in global average temperatures to 2C, generally regarded as the danger threshold, according to the study from the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).
The study sets a gloomy context for the international climate meeting opening on Monday in the Mexican resort of Cancun, which is the successor meeting to the abortive Copenhagen climate conference of last year.
Copenhagen dashed many hopes when the countries of the world failed to agree new legally binding targets to cut their emissions of carbon dioxide and other gases in an attempt to keep global warming under control. However, a last-minute agreement was patched up, known as the Copenhagen Accord, under which nations could voluntarily pledge targets or other actions to get their emissions down.
Some 80 countries, including the biggest CO2 emitters – China and the US – have now made such pledges, ranging from the firm commitment of the EU and its member states to cut their emissions back by 20 per cent by 2020 (and by 30 per cent if other nations take similar action), to China's statement that it will "endeavour" to reduce the energy intensity of its economy – the amount of CO2 it takes to produce one unit of GDP – by 40 to 45 per cent by the same date.
However, the UNEP study calculates that even if these promises are carried out in full – which itself is a big if – they will still leave a massive "gigatonne gap".
Climate scientists consider that to be on a path to 2C and no higher, total world emissions of CO2 and other gases need to peak within the next 10 years and be brought down to about 44 gigatonnes (44 billion tonnes) by 2020. Currently, the world as a whole is emitting about 48 gigatonnes of CO2, and if economies take no action this figure is expected to rise to 56 gigatonnes in 10 years' time.
But even with full and strict implementation of the Copenhagen Accord pledges, this will only bring emissions in 2020 down to 49 gigatonnes – leaving a gap of five billion tonnes. And if the pledges are only loosely implemented the gap could be even greater, with global emissions rising to 53 gigatonnes in 10 years' time.
The task is to formalise and if possible increase the Copenhagen Accord pledges, but it is by no means clear that this is possible at Cancun – it may have to wait until the next climate conference in 2011.
Achim Steiner, the UNEP executive director, reflected this concern: "The challenge is to take the intent reflected in the Copenhagen Accord and bring it into a mutually reassuring framework, and you can go all the way to a legally binding agreement, or some other form."
Conservative pre-election coal plant emissions promise goes up in smoke
Energy companies will only have to fit CCS technology to a third of coal plants, rather than two-thirds under the original plans
Tim Webb guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 November 2010 19.01 GMT
The Conservatives are set to break a key pre-election pledge on the environment and allow new coal plants to pump far bigger quantities of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
As a recently as October last year, in a key note speech to environmentalists, David Cameron promised to introduce rules requiring new power stations to be as clean as a modern gas plant.
But the Guardian has learned that ministers are planning to raise the limit on emissions to almost double that amount when the government publishes wide-ranging proposals on reforming the electricity market next month.
It means that energy companies will only be required to fit experimental equipment which captures and stores carbon emissions (CCS) to about one-third of their coal plants, rather than two-thirds under Cameron's pre-election promise.
Ministers are understood to be concerned that companies would refuse to build any CCS plants if the government lowered the emissions limit to the level originally promised. It costs much more to build – and operate – CCS plants.
The tough so-called "emissions performance standard" (EPS) was first promised in 2006 by Cameron and repeated in 2008 by George Osborne, both in high profile addresses to environmental activists. It was part of Cameron's plan to "detoxify" the Conservative party brand by aligning it with environmentalists which also saw him ride a husky-driven sleigh in the Arctic to highlight awareness about climate change.
At the time, the Conservatives' EPS policy was much more radical than the Labour government's controversial support for coal power, symbolised by E.ON's Kingsnorth, which would have been the UK's first new coal plant for decades.
Executive director of Greenpeace, John Sauven, said: "All the huskies in the world can't drag the prime minister out of the environmental mess he'll create if he breaks his totemic green promise to tackle dirty coal plants. Both he and George Osborne personally championed new legal standards to limit coal plant pollution to the same level as modern gas plants. A U-turn on this would be a huge black mark on the self-proclaimed greenest government ever."
Cleaner modern gas plants – cited as the dirtiest fossil fuel plants which would be allowed under Cameron's pre-election promise – emit about 360g of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour (kw/h). Coal plants which have no CCS fitted emit about 900g per kw/h. But ministers and officials at the Department of Energy and Climate Change recently discussed setting an EPS of between 500g and 600g per kw/h. It is understood that even the lower end of this range – which would still allow much higher emissions than the pre-election pledge – was seen as being too low, and a figure approaching 600g per kw/h looks likely. No final decision has been made. Officials and ministers believe there are better ways of greening power plants than a tougher EPS and are anxious to get CCS plants built to demonstrate the technology to export around the world.
The Guardian has also learnt that the Committee on Climate Change – the government's independent advisory body – will recommend next month that by 2030, electricity generators must slash their emissions by almost 90% from today's levels. David Kennedy, CCC chief executive, told a Green Alliance debate on Monday that average emissions should be no higher than 60g per kw/h, from about 550g per kw/h today. This goes much further than the influential committee's previous guidance.
Tim Webb guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 23 November 2010 19.01 GMT
The Conservatives are set to break a key pre-election pledge on the environment and allow new coal plants to pump far bigger quantities of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.
As a recently as October last year, in a key note speech to environmentalists, David Cameron promised to introduce rules requiring new power stations to be as clean as a modern gas plant.
But the Guardian has learned that ministers are planning to raise the limit on emissions to almost double that amount when the government publishes wide-ranging proposals on reforming the electricity market next month.
It means that energy companies will only be required to fit experimental equipment which captures and stores carbon emissions (CCS) to about one-third of their coal plants, rather than two-thirds under Cameron's pre-election promise.
Ministers are understood to be concerned that companies would refuse to build any CCS plants if the government lowered the emissions limit to the level originally promised. It costs much more to build – and operate – CCS plants.
The tough so-called "emissions performance standard" (EPS) was first promised in 2006 by Cameron and repeated in 2008 by George Osborne, both in high profile addresses to environmental activists. It was part of Cameron's plan to "detoxify" the Conservative party brand by aligning it with environmentalists which also saw him ride a husky-driven sleigh in the Arctic to highlight awareness about climate change.
At the time, the Conservatives' EPS policy was much more radical than the Labour government's controversial support for coal power, symbolised by E.ON's Kingsnorth, which would have been the UK's first new coal plant for decades.
Executive director of Greenpeace, John Sauven, said: "All the huskies in the world can't drag the prime minister out of the environmental mess he'll create if he breaks his totemic green promise to tackle dirty coal plants. Both he and George Osborne personally championed new legal standards to limit coal plant pollution to the same level as modern gas plants. A U-turn on this would be a huge black mark on the self-proclaimed greenest government ever."
Cleaner modern gas plants – cited as the dirtiest fossil fuel plants which would be allowed under Cameron's pre-election promise – emit about 360g of carbon dioxide per kilowatt-hour (kw/h). Coal plants which have no CCS fitted emit about 900g per kw/h. But ministers and officials at the Department of Energy and Climate Change recently discussed setting an EPS of between 500g and 600g per kw/h. It is understood that even the lower end of this range – which would still allow much higher emissions than the pre-election pledge – was seen as being too low, and a figure approaching 600g per kw/h looks likely. No final decision has been made. Officials and ministers believe there are better ways of greening power plants than a tougher EPS and are anxious to get CCS plants built to demonstrate the technology to export around the world.
The Guardian has also learnt that the Committee on Climate Change – the government's independent advisory body – will recommend next month that by 2030, electricity generators must slash their emissions by almost 90% from today's levels. David Kennedy, CCC chief executive, told a Green Alliance debate on Monday that average emissions should be no higher than 60g per kw/h, from about 550g per kw/h today. This goes much further than the influential committee's previous guidance.
Could earthships help deliver Britain's low-carbon future?
Bibi van der Zee spends a night in the Groundhouse in Brittany, and is pleasantly surprised by the pleasures of living off-grid
What on Earth am I doing in the middle of France, in the dark, in an earthship? After a four-hour drive from Caen port, getting lost and intimidated by speedy French motorists and battling through the rain I am finally letting myself into the Groundhouse. Tired, bowlegged and with aching shoulders I am faced with rough-finished walls, no TV, and a composting toilet. A wave of homesickness breaks over me.
The Groundhouse is a second or even third generation earthship built in Brittany, in France. The original earthships – sustainable homes made from recycled materials – were built in New Mexico by architect Michael Reynolds. Set into the red soil of the New Mexico desert, with their sloping greenhouse fronts, turret roofs, and bulging adobe walls, the originals look like the settlements in Star Wars.
The one I am visiting in Brittany, owned by Daren Howarth and Adrianna Nortje, doesn't look quite as startling but has the same purpose: to live as lightly as possible on the land. In the 1970s Reynolds, having collected his architecture qualification from Cincinnati University, had concluded that "architecture has nothing to do with the planet and barely anything to do with people, it is worthless" and turned to building houses that were off-grid, using recycled materials such as tyres rammed full of earth, bottles and tin cans.
The greenhouse areas captured the sun, with the sloping glass tilted precisely to take advantage of the fact that in summer the sun is high, and in winter it is lower and so penetrates further into the house just as you need the extra warmth. All the houses have solar water panels, rainwater collection systems and reedbed sewages. They are relatively cheap to build, have vegetable gardens, bird tables and compost bins.
After a wonderful night's sleep, I wake up to sun pouring in through the front of the Groundhouse. The last time I visited an earthship – the Low Carbon Trust one in Brighton and Howarth's first such project – it seemed dark and slightly depressing. But now Howarth has done away with the greenhouse frontage and simply faced the house south, with only the bathroom and boiler room on the back walls, so all the other rooms pick up every available drop of sunlight.
Despite having no heating on during the night, the house is pleasantly warm. In their book, Howarth and Nortje kept track of the Groundhouse temperature for a year and, with no heating beyond the wood-burning stoves, it was between 18.7C in winter and 22C in summer.
The house is also carbon neutral, which is interesting because the UK's coalition government is keeping the target of all newbuild homes having a zero carbon footprint by 2016. Might earthships be an answer? Green architect Pat Borer, who is just finishing the Centre for Alternative Technologies' beautiful Welsh Institute for Sustainable Education, says they can be wonderful "from a libertarian, anarchist view of the world, but are Wimpey or Barretts going to go into earthships?" He thinks they may be a "bit of a red herring".
Howarth, disagrees. For family reasons he has been forced to move back to the UK, leaving the Groundhouse to be rented out to holidaymakers and friends, and now he is driven mad, he says, by the wastefulness of the traditional terraced house he's living in.
"I would love to be able to get out of the city, find a patch of land, and build myself another groundhouse," he says.
What on Earth am I doing in the middle of France, in the dark, in an earthship? After a four-hour drive from Caen port, getting lost and intimidated by speedy French motorists and battling through the rain I am finally letting myself into the Groundhouse. Tired, bowlegged and with aching shoulders I am faced with rough-finished walls, no TV, and a composting toilet. A wave of homesickness breaks over me.
The Groundhouse is a second or even third generation earthship built in Brittany, in France. The original earthships – sustainable homes made from recycled materials – were built in New Mexico by architect Michael Reynolds. Set into the red soil of the New Mexico desert, with their sloping greenhouse fronts, turret roofs, and bulging adobe walls, the originals look like the settlements in Star Wars.
The one I am visiting in Brittany, owned by Daren Howarth and Adrianna Nortje, doesn't look quite as startling but has the same purpose: to live as lightly as possible on the land. In the 1970s Reynolds, having collected his architecture qualification from Cincinnati University, had concluded that "architecture has nothing to do with the planet and barely anything to do with people, it is worthless" and turned to building houses that were off-grid, using recycled materials such as tyres rammed full of earth, bottles and tin cans.
The greenhouse areas captured the sun, with the sloping glass tilted precisely to take advantage of the fact that in summer the sun is high, and in winter it is lower and so penetrates further into the house just as you need the extra warmth. All the houses have solar water panels, rainwater collection systems and reedbed sewages. They are relatively cheap to build, have vegetable gardens, bird tables and compost bins.
After a wonderful night's sleep, I wake up to sun pouring in through the front of the Groundhouse. The last time I visited an earthship – the Low Carbon Trust one in Brighton and Howarth's first such project – it seemed dark and slightly depressing. But now Howarth has done away with the greenhouse frontage and simply faced the house south, with only the bathroom and boiler room on the back walls, so all the other rooms pick up every available drop of sunlight.
Despite having no heating on during the night, the house is pleasantly warm. In their book, Howarth and Nortje kept track of the Groundhouse temperature for a year and, with no heating beyond the wood-burning stoves, it was between 18.7C in winter and 22C in summer.
The house is also carbon neutral, which is interesting because the UK's coalition government is keeping the target of all newbuild homes having a zero carbon footprint by 2016. Might earthships be an answer? Green architect Pat Borer, who is just finishing the Centre for Alternative Technologies' beautiful Welsh Institute for Sustainable Education, says they can be wonderful "from a libertarian, anarchist view of the world, but are Wimpey or Barretts going to go into earthships?" He thinks they may be a "bit of a red herring".
Howarth, disagrees. For family reasons he has been forced to move back to the UK, leaving the Groundhouse to be rented out to holidaymakers and friends, and now he is driven mad, he says, by the wastefulness of the traditional terraced house he's living in.
"I would love to be able to get out of the city, find a patch of land, and build myself another groundhouse," he says.
Tuesday, 23 November 2010
UK doing just a third of what is needed to meet climate change targets – WWF
Britain is doing a third of what is needed to tackle climate change, according to the WWF, despite Government efforts to go green.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent 7:00AM GMT 23 Nov 2010
In the first attempt to analyse the policies of all EU countries, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) rated countries between A for excellent to G for poor.
Overall most countries are doing badly, with none of the 27 member states scoring above D.
This means that Europe is doing half what it needs to do to stop global temperatures rising in the future.
The UK rating was even worse, scoring E, below Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany.
The grade means the UK is doing only a third of what is necessary to put our own economy on track towards a key domestic target to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Britain is particularly bad at ensuring buildings are energy efficient and is failing to improve public transport or switch to electric cars. Already Government advisers have warned ministers that there needs to be tougher regulations and more incentives to insulate homes, boost recycling and encourage greener lifestyles. However Government policy on building more wind farms and reducing the emissions from agriculture won points.
Countries like Romania and Poland, that continue to burn a lot of coal, scored F.
Keith Allott, WWF’s head of climate change in the UK, said Britain needs to triple efforts to reduce emissions.
"Time is very short and prompt action has to start immediately,” he said.
:: A separate report found that ‘dirty industries’ like cement, steel and chemical factories are lobbying the EU not to increase its short term target to reduce emissions from 20 to 30 per cent cuts by 2020.
The 2020 target is key in negotiating a global agreement as part of United Nations talks. Poor nations refuse to increase their own emissions until rich states like the EU take action.
The UN meets in Cancun, Mexico later this month for the latest round of talks.
The last major meeting in Copenhagen failed and it is feared this summit will also falter unless the EU and other rich nations take the lead.
However Oxfam said heavy industry is “sabotaging” efforts to increase the target by claiming it will harm economies.
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent 7:00AM GMT 23 Nov 2010
In the first attempt to analyse the policies of all EU countries, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) rated countries between A for excellent to G for poor.
Overall most countries are doing badly, with none of the 27 member states scoring above D.
This means that Europe is doing half what it needs to do to stop global temperatures rising in the future.
The UK rating was even worse, scoring E, below Ireland, Sweden, Denmark and Germany.
The grade means the UK is doing only a third of what is necessary to put our own economy on track towards a key domestic target to cut emissions by 80 per cent by 2050.
Britain is particularly bad at ensuring buildings are energy efficient and is failing to improve public transport or switch to electric cars. Already Government advisers have warned ministers that there needs to be tougher regulations and more incentives to insulate homes, boost recycling and encourage greener lifestyles. However Government policy on building more wind farms and reducing the emissions from agriculture won points.
Countries like Romania and Poland, that continue to burn a lot of coal, scored F.
Keith Allott, WWF’s head of climate change in the UK, said Britain needs to triple efforts to reduce emissions.
"Time is very short and prompt action has to start immediately,” he said.
:: A separate report found that ‘dirty industries’ like cement, steel and chemical factories are lobbying the EU not to increase its short term target to reduce emissions from 20 to 30 per cent cuts by 2020.
The 2020 target is key in negotiating a global agreement as part of United Nations talks. Poor nations refuse to increase their own emissions until rich states like the EU take action.
The UN meets in Cancun, Mexico later this month for the latest round of talks.
The last major meeting in Copenhagen failed and it is feared this summit will also falter unless the EU and other rich nations take the lead.
However Oxfam said heavy industry is “sabotaging” efforts to increase the target by claiming it will harm economies.
Energy Industry Strikes Out on Its Own
By REBECCA SMITH
A group of utility executives who once lobbied Congress to cap greenhouse-gas emissions say they are now pressing ahead with their own efforts to clean up the industry.
"We're making our own destiny," said Chris Gould, vice president of corporate strategy for Exelon Corp. in Chicago, the nation's largest owner of nuclear-power plants and one of the biggest backers of the failed "cap and trade" legislation.
The new, take-charge attitude is motivated not only by environmental concerns. The industry has identified what it believes are opportunities to make lucrative investments in such things as transmission lines, advanced meters, enhancements to existing power plants, and electric vehicle infrastructure.
In a blueprint released last week, Exelon executives said their 13-state region could achieve reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions nearly equal to what federal legislation might have achieved in the next decade by pressing ahead with activities already encouraged by state and federal regulators.
Exelon plans to spend more than $5 billion by 2017 in ways that should cut its greenhouse-gas emissions. It includes as much as $290 million a year on energy-efficiency programs at utilities it owns in Illinois and Pennsylvania and $3.8 billion to increase the capacity of its existing nuclear plants by up to 1,500 megawatts.
Bob Shapard, chief executive at Oncor, an energy-delivery company in Dallas, said in an interview that smart meters, electric cars and big transmission projects—such as those able to ferry wind power to cities from remote locations—could trim greenhouse-gas emissions significantly and were a worthy focus of utility investment.
Utility investing over the next few years is likely to develop differently than it would have under a cap-and-trade law. That legislation would have done more to encourage construction of new nuclear plants, for example, by raising the cost of emissions for fossil-fuel generators.
But federal cap-and-trade legislation faltered on fears that it would raise energy and manufacturing costs, making U.S. products costlier at a time when other nations, such as China, are resisting emission limits. The coal lobby also opposed the legislation, which likely would have accelerated the shuttering of old coal-fired power plants.
Some utilities had supported cap-and-trade proposals because they wanted regulatory certainty. The industry often invests in assets with a life of 50 or 60 years, and utilities wanted a federal energy plan that would reduce risk in such investments.
Ted Craver, chief executive of energy company Edison International in Rosemead, Calif., said his company had made every effort to advance greenhouse-gas legislation and that he wasn't keen on investing a lot of time in pleading the case again.
But even though the utilities won't now have the benefit of federal legislation, laws passed in many states require utilities to obtain more energy from renewable or cleaner sources.
Lew Hay III, chief executive of NextEra Energy Inc., previously known as FPL Group, in Juno Beach, Fla., said 30 states had renewable-energy goals that would compel the construction of 8,000 megawatts of clean power generation each year for the next decade. Given that half the nation's coal-fired capacity is more than 40 years old, he said, there's ample opportunity for states to replace old units with cleaner sources of electricity.
Another motivation for the industry is that regulated utilities are guaranteed a return on any investment approved by state or federal regulators. So a $1 billion investment can produce a return of $100 million a year or so for a typical utility.
Consumers will see the costs of these investments flow into increased utility rates. The industry says the burden will be lightened by the fact that wholesale power prices are currently low—equivalent to 2004 prices—owing to slack fuel costs.
The decision by utilities to press ahead is not without risks. If power prices suddenly rise, for example, regulators could resist additional investments.
But while the new approach isn't as sweeping as federal legislation, which would have reached across industries, Mr. Shapard at Oncor said it was an effective short-term strategy.
"It's like getting Al Capone for tax evasion," he said. "It's not as satisfying as getting him for murder, but it still puts him away."
Write to Rebecca Smith at rebecca.smith@wsj.com
A group of utility executives who once lobbied Congress to cap greenhouse-gas emissions say they are now pressing ahead with their own efforts to clean up the industry.
"We're making our own destiny," said Chris Gould, vice president of corporate strategy for Exelon Corp. in Chicago, the nation's largest owner of nuclear-power plants and one of the biggest backers of the failed "cap and trade" legislation.
The new, take-charge attitude is motivated not only by environmental concerns. The industry has identified what it believes are opportunities to make lucrative investments in such things as transmission lines, advanced meters, enhancements to existing power plants, and electric vehicle infrastructure.
In a blueprint released last week, Exelon executives said their 13-state region could achieve reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions nearly equal to what federal legislation might have achieved in the next decade by pressing ahead with activities already encouraged by state and federal regulators.
Exelon plans to spend more than $5 billion by 2017 in ways that should cut its greenhouse-gas emissions. It includes as much as $290 million a year on energy-efficiency programs at utilities it owns in Illinois and Pennsylvania and $3.8 billion to increase the capacity of its existing nuclear plants by up to 1,500 megawatts.
Bob Shapard, chief executive at Oncor, an energy-delivery company in Dallas, said in an interview that smart meters, electric cars and big transmission projects—such as those able to ferry wind power to cities from remote locations—could trim greenhouse-gas emissions significantly and were a worthy focus of utility investment.
Utility investing over the next few years is likely to develop differently than it would have under a cap-and-trade law. That legislation would have done more to encourage construction of new nuclear plants, for example, by raising the cost of emissions for fossil-fuel generators.
But federal cap-and-trade legislation faltered on fears that it would raise energy and manufacturing costs, making U.S. products costlier at a time when other nations, such as China, are resisting emission limits. The coal lobby also opposed the legislation, which likely would have accelerated the shuttering of old coal-fired power plants.
Some utilities had supported cap-and-trade proposals because they wanted regulatory certainty. The industry often invests in assets with a life of 50 or 60 years, and utilities wanted a federal energy plan that would reduce risk in such investments.
Ted Craver, chief executive of energy company Edison International in Rosemead, Calif., said his company had made every effort to advance greenhouse-gas legislation and that he wasn't keen on investing a lot of time in pleading the case again.
But even though the utilities won't now have the benefit of federal legislation, laws passed in many states require utilities to obtain more energy from renewable or cleaner sources.
Lew Hay III, chief executive of NextEra Energy Inc., previously known as FPL Group, in Juno Beach, Fla., said 30 states had renewable-energy goals that would compel the construction of 8,000 megawatts of clean power generation each year for the next decade. Given that half the nation's coal-fired capacity is more than 40 years old, he said, there's ample opportunity for states to replace old units with cleaner sources of electricity.
Another motivation for the industry is that regulated utilities are guaranteed a return on any investment approved by state or federal regulators. So a $1 billion investment can produce a return of $100 million a year or so for a typical utility.
Consumers will see the costs of these investments flow into increased utility rates. The industry says the burden will be lightened by the fact that wholesale power prices are currently low—equivalent to 2004 prices—owing to slack fuel costs.
The decision by utilities to press ahead is not without risks. If power prices suddenly rise, for example, regulators could resist additional investments.
But while the new approach isn't as sweeping as federal legislation, which would have reached across industries, Mr. Shapard at Oncor said it was an effective short-term strategy.
"It's like getting Al Capone for tax evasion," he said. "It's not as satisfying as getting him for murder, but it still puts him away."
Write to Rebecca Smith at rebecca.smith@wsj.com
World Bank Lauds China Green Energy Moves, Points to Inefficiencies
By SIMON HALL
BEIJING—China is making good progress in meeting targets to get 15% of its energy from non-fossil fuels by 2020, but it needs to improve and expand hydropower generation and deal with high levels of inefficiency in its wind-power sector, the World Bank said Tuesday.
The bank said in a report that China should improve interprovincial trade in renewable energy and better promote green electricity schemes.
"China has achieved remarkable progress in developing renewable energy during the last three decades," Ede Ijjasz, World Bank China Sector Manager for Sustainable Development, said in a statement accompanying the report.
China is already planning a massive expansion of its hydroelectric power sector in its 12th five-year plan—which starts in 2011—despite worries that such schemes can cause environmental and social problems.
Its rapidly growing wind sector is also struggling due to a lack of connections to the country's electricity grid: At the end of 2009, 30% of China's wind farms weren't grid-connected, according to the National Energy Administration.
This is a major problem for China, which is planning a fivefold increase in wind-power generating capacity, to 200 gigawatts in 2020 from 34 gigawatts in mid-2010.
"Hydropower rehabilitation and more rapid and environmentally and socially sound development could achieve the (15%) target at a lower cost because hydropower is already competitive with coal," the report said. "Developing hydropower more quickly would allow for increasing the renewable energy target without increasing the incremental cost of the program."
Under plans the government is finalizing, hydropower's share of the national energy mix, currently around 10% and with a capacity of just over 200 GW, will rise to up to 18% of China's energy needs by 2020, or 350-380 GW, Xinhua News Agency recently reported.
By 2030 this could increase to up to 24% of the total, it said.
China is home to the world's biggest hydroelectric project—the $23 billion Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, completed in 2006 to end centuries of devastating annual floods and to provide energy to fuel China's economic boom.
Critics have long argued that the dam was too expensive, unnecessarily forced 1.4 million people from their homes, increased the risk of landslides and caused serious damage to the Yangtze River's ecology.
Similar concerns have been raised about several new major dams, including a controversial $1.2 billion project under way to build the world's highest dam in Tibet, on the Yarlung Zangbo River, 325 kilometers southeast of Lhasa. It is due to be completed in 2014.
Another project with recent government approval is the $3.3 billion, 2,600-MW Changheba Hydropower plan in China's Sichuan province, to be built by Datang International Power Generation Co.
The World Bank warned that China's wind-power programs were in danger of being blown off course.
"China's experience has been less than optimal in planning wind farms, operational integration and coordination between developers and grid operators," it said.
"If not addressed adequately, the high level of inefficiencies could increase the cost to the nation of the envisaged wind program, which could become prohibitive," it warned.
Write to Simon Hall at simon.hall@dowjones.com
BEIJING—China is making good progress in meeting targets to get 15% of its energy from non-fossil fuels by 2020, but it needs to improve and expand hydropower generation and deal with high levels of inefficiency in its wind-power sector, the World Bank said Tuesday.
The bank said in a report that China should improve interprovincial trade in renewable energy and better promote green electricity schemes.
"China has achieved remarkable progress in developing renewable energy during the last three decades," Ede Ijjasz, World Bank China Sector Manager for Sustainable Development, said in a statement accompanying the report.
China is already planning a massive expansion of its hydroelectric power sector in its 12th five-year plan—which starts in 2011—despite worries that such schemes can cause environmental and social problems.
Its rapidly growing wind sector is also struggling due to a lack of connections to the country's electricity grid: At the end of 2009, 30% of China's wind farms weren't grid-connected, according to the National Energy Administration.
This is a major problem for China, which is planning a fivefold increase in wind-power generating capacity, to 200 gigawatts in 2020 from 34 gigawatts in mid-2010.
"Hydropower rehabilitation and more rapid and environmentally and socially sound development could achieve the (15%) target at a lower cost because hydropower is already competitive with coal," the report said. "Developing hydropower more quickly would allow for increasing the renewable energy target without increasing the incremental cost of the program."
Under plans the government is finalizing, hydropower's share of the national energy mix, currently around 10% and with a capacity of just over 200 GW, will rise to up to 18% of China's energy needs by 2020, or 350-380 GW, Xinhua News Agency recently reported.
By 2030 this could increase to up to 24% of the total, it said.
China is home to the world's biggest hydroelectric project—the $23 billion Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, completed in 2006 to end centuries of devastating annual floods and to provide energy to fuel China's economic boom.
Critics have long argued that the dam was too expensive, unnecessarily forced 1.4 million people from their homes, increased the risk of landslides and caused serious damage to the Yangtze River's ecology.
Similar concerns have been raised about several new major dams, including a controversial $1.2 billion project under way to build the world's highest dam in Tibet, on the Yarlung Zangbo River, 325 kilometers southeast of Lhasa. It is due to be completed in 2014.
Another project with recent government approval is the $3.3 billion, 2,600-MW Changheba Hydropower plan in China's Sichuan province, to be built by Datang International Power Generation Co.
The World Bank warned that China's wind-power programs were in danger of being blown off course.
"China's experience has been less than optimal in planning wind farms, operational integration and coordination between developers and grid operators," it said.
"If not addressed adequately, the high level of inefficiencies could increase the cost to the nation of the envisaged wind program, which could become prohibitive," it warned.
Write to Simon Hall at simon.hall@dowjones.com
Monday, 22 November 2010
Climate inaction spells economic chaos worse than global recession – investors
18 November 2010
More than 250 of the world’s leading investors have issued an impassioned plea for policy action ahead of the UN climate talks this month, warning that inaction will risk economic disruptions “far more severe” than the global financial crisis.
A statement signed by 259 investors representing more than $15 trillion in assets, including heavyweights HSBC, Allianz, Deutsche Bank and Swiss Re, called on UN negotiators and the new US Congress to implement national and international strategies to foster private sector investment in the low-carbon economy.At the Cancún climate talks, the group is hoping for progress in a number of areas, including emissions reduction targets, climate finance architecture, fast-start funding delivery and climate change adaptation.The investors also hope the talks will deliver progress on a rapid timeframe for implementation of efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and for the expansion of the international carbon market. Investors called for greater clarity on the future of the UN carbon offset mechanisms, the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation, and emerging crediting mechanisms such as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions.The statement said, without action, the impacts of climate change could cost up to 20% of GDP by 2050.Jack Ehnes, chief executive of the $442 billion pension fund California State Teachers' Retirement System called for climate change to be tackled and private investment for low-carbon technologies catalysed, adding that the risks of inaction are “potentially catastrophic”.“Climate change if left unchecked threatens economic disruption exponentially more serious than the recent financial meltdown,” he said.Ole Beier Sørensen, head of research and strategy at the Danish pension fund ATP and chairman of the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change, said “strong, stable, transparent policy” is the single most important driver for private sector investment in climate change solutions.While policies in China and Europe are encouraging private sector investment in climate-relevant technologies, he said comparable economies such as the US risk being left behind because of a lack of policy drive.Timothy Wirth, UN Foundation president and former US politician, said the US is “alarmingly absent” from climate initiatives and challenged the lack of long-term policy framework for low-carbon investment.“The blunt fact of the matter is that our federal government is absent. We’ve got states like California moving aggressively but we have to spread that out across the country if in fact we’re going to take advantage of this opportunity,” he said.Charlotte DudleyA statement signed by 259 investors representing more than $15 trillion in assets, including heavyweights HSBC, Allianz, Deutsche Bank and Swiss Re, called on UN negotiators and the new US Congress to implement national and international strategies to foster private sector investment in the low-carbon economy.
At the Cancún climate talks, the group is hoping for progress in a number of areas, including emissions reduction targets, climate finance architecture, fast-start funding delivery and climate change adaptation.
The investors also hope the talks will deliver progress on a rapid timeframe for implementation of efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and for the expansion of the international carbon market. Investors called for greater clarity on the future of the UN carbon offset mechanisms, the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation, and emerging crediting mechanisms such as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions.
The statement said, without action, the impacts of climate change could cost up to 20% of GDP by 2050.
Jack Ehnes, chief executive of the $442 billion pension fund California State Teachers' Retirement System called for climate change to be tackled and private investment for low-carbon technologies catalysed, adding that the risks of inaction are “potentially catastrophic”.
“Climate change if left unchecked threatens economic disruption exponentially more serious than the recent financial meltdown,” he said.
Ole Beier Sørensen, head of research and strategy at the Danish pension fund ATP and chairman of the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change, said “strong, stable, transparent policy” is the single most important driver for private sector investment in climate change solutions.
While policies in China and Europe are encouraging private sector investment in climate-relevant technologies, he said comparable economies such as the US risk being left behind because of a lack of policy drive.
Timothy Wirth, UN Foundation president and former US politician, said the US is “alarmingly absent” from climate initiatives and challenged the lack of long-term policy framework for low-carbon investment.
“The blunt fact of the matter is that our federal government is absent. We’ve got states like California moving aggressively but we have to spread that out across the country if in fact we’re going to take advantage of this opportunity,” he said.
Charlotte Dudley
More than 250 of the world’s leading investors have issued an impassioned plea for policy action ahead of the UN climate talks this month, warning that inaction will risk economic disruptions “far more severe” than the global financial crisis.
A statement signed by 259 investors representing more than $15 trillion in assets, including heavyweights HSBC, Allianz, Deutsche Bank and Swiss Re, called on UN negotiators and the new US Congress to implement national and international strategies to foster private sector investment in the low-carbon economy.At the Cancún climate talks, the group is hoping for progress in a number of areas, including emissions reduction targets, climate finance architecture, fast-start funding delivery and climate change adaptation.The investors also hope the talks will deliver progress on a rapid timeframe for implementation of efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD) and for the expansion of the international carbon market. Investors called for greater clarity on the future of the UN carbon offset mechanisms, the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation, and emerging crediting mechanisms such as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions.The statement said, without action, the impacts of climate change could cost up to 20% of GDP by 2050.Jack Ehnes, chief executive of the $442 billion pension fund California State Teachers' Retirement System called for climate change to be tackled and private investment for low-carbon technologies catalysed, adding that the risks of inaction are “potentially catastrophic”.“Climate change if left unchecked threatens economic disruption exponentially more serious than the recent financial meltdown,” he said.Ole Beier Sørensen, head of research and strategy at the Danish pension fund ATP and chairman of the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change, said “strong, stable, transparent policy” is the single most important driver for private sector investment in climate change solutions.While policies in China and Europe are encouraging private sector investment in climate-relevant technologies, he said comparable economies such as the US risk being left behind because of a lack of policy drive.Timothy Wirth, UN Foundation president and former US politician, said the US is “alarmingly absent” from climate initiatives and challenged the lack of long-term policy framework for low-carbon investment.“The blunt fact of the matter is that our federal government is absent. We’ve got states like California moving aggressively but we have to spread that out across the country if in fact we’re going to take advantage of this opportunity,” he said.Charlotte DudleyA statement signed by 259 investors representing more than $15 trillion in assets, including heavyweights HSBC, Allianz, Deutsche Bank and Swiss Re, called on UN negotiators and the new US Congress to implement national and international strategies to foster private sector investment in the low-carbon economy.
At the Cancún climate talks, the group is hoping for progress in a number of areas, including emissions reduction targets, climate finance architecture, fast-start funding delivery and climate change adaptation.
The investors also hope the talks will deliver progress on a rapid timeframe for implementation of efforts to reduce emissions from deforestation and forest degradation and for the expansion of the international carbon market. Investors called for greater clarity on the future of the UN carbon offset mechanisms, the Clean Development Mechanism and Joint Implementation, and emerging crediting mechanisms such as Nationally Appropriate Mitigation Actions.
The statement said, without action, the impacts of climate change could cost up to 20% of GDP by 2050.
Jack Ehnes, chief executive of the $442 billion pension fund California State Teachers' Retirement System called for climate change to be tackled and private investment for low-carbon technologies catalysed, adding that the risks of inaction are “potentially catastrophic”.
“Climate change if left unchecked threatens economic disruption exponentially more serious than the recent financial meltdown,” he said.
Ole Beier Sørensen, head of research and strategy at the Danish pension fund ATP and chairman of the Institutional Investor Group on Climate Change, said “strong, stable, transparent policy” is the single most important driver for private sector investment in climate change solutions.
While policies in China and Europe are encouraging private sector investment in climate-relevant technologies, he said comparable economies such as the US risk being left behind because of a lack of policy drive.
Timothy Wirth, UN Foundation president and former US politician, said the US is “alarmingly absent” from climate initiatives and challenged the lack of long-term policy framework for low-carbon investment.
“The blunt fact of the matter is that our federal government is absent. We’ve got states like California moving aggressively but we have to spread that out across the country if in fact we’re going to take advantage of this opportunity,” he said.
Charlotte Dudley