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
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.
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