Welcome to another two weekly review of energy and environmental events and developments from both here in New Zealand and around the world. As always we hope you find our collection of stories to be of interest, in what continues to be a fast and evolving market.
Firstly we would like to extend a big welcome to Auckland City Council as the latest organisation to subscribe to e-Bench™
A “Stern warning” has been issued by Lord Stern – it turns out he was wrong and that the Stern Review of 2006 was “too reticent” (reserved, cool and formal in manner), now 1% of world GDP is being called upon to reduce the impact of climate change.
Germany has been working hard toward sustainability, now they have a culture of recycling deeply embedded in their culture, with improvements in East Germany helping reduce Germany’s CO2 emissions by 17% from 1990 levels.
We’re noticing that the supermarket is becoming almost a high-security bank vault, with cheese, bread and rice prices rising significantly over recent months (15% last year in the UK). It seems that adverse weather, insect infestations, the rising cost of fuel, increased demand for meat, and water supply contribute to high food prices. Welcome to the global economy – no wonder that India, Vietnam, Argentina and China are placing limits on food exports. Perhaps this is the lead-in for GM crops to “save the day”?
Now for some good news – three 14.5m radius turbines on the Bahrain World Trade Centre have recently been operational all at the same time – something nice to look out the window at. On the same subject, I’m disappointed to see the small vertical axis wind turbine missing from a nearby office building in Wellington – there was something pleasant about looking out to see the hypnotic left-right motion of the blades…
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) has 60% of its emissions reductions achieved through one-off destruction of HFC-23, rather than development of projects that continually reduce CO2 emissions, through renewable energy generation. Not really operating as it was originally intended perhaps……..
Water generates light, but Virginia Tech ran the numbers and came up with 3,000 to 6,000 gallons of water to run a 60W light bulb for half a year. Natural gas and coal gasification are the most water efficient energy sources, whilst ethanol and biodiesel are the least water efficient – “food for thought”…
Carbon emissions per capita are a great way of comparing CO2 emissions between countries, however we in NZ would perhaps prefer that it didn’t include livestock as well – if it didn’t, we’d be near invisible on the map.
In a ground breaking move, a rainforest larger than England is being protected by paying the local Guyanese population not to chop it down. This rainforest is one of four left in the world, and is larger than England - that’s a big piece of land to dedicate to environmental utility. Maybe economic development has a price?
Stern warns that climate change is far worse than 2006 estimate
By Danny Fortson, Business Correspondent
Thursday, 17 April 2008
Lord Stern, the economist whose report on climate change helped galvanise world leaders behind the green energy movement when it was published 18 months ago, has admitted that the situation is far worse than the assumptions that formed the basis of his ground-breaking report.
"We badly underestimated the degree of damages and the risks of climate change," said Lord Stern in a speech in London yesterday. "All of the links in the chain are on average worse than we thought a couple of years ago."
When it was first published, the Stern Review and its recommendations – zero-emission automobiles around the world by 2050, for example – brought plaudits and brickbats from the different sides of the climate change debate. A year and a half on from its publication, Lord Stern dismissed the doubters and renewed his call for urgent global action: "People who said this was scaremongering are profoundly wrong. If anything, I was too reticent. What we are playing for is the transformation of the planet," he said.
Greenhouse gas emissions are growing much faster than previously thought because of several factors that were not fully appreciated before, including the release of methane from thawing permafrost, the acidification of oceans, and the decay of carbon sinks. The worsening situation increases the need, he argued, for a global pollution-cutting agreement to be reached by next year's climate conference in Copenhagen. He also reiterated his previous estimates that governments and business must invest the equivalent of between 1 to 2 per cent of global GDP annually up to 2050 in new technologies and efficiency measures or face climate change of catastrophic proportions. A global carbon trading system would be the "glue" for a worldwide climate deal, he said.
The sector to be most heavily affected by any global climate deal would be the energy industry, which accounts for roughly two-thirds of emissions. "We need to have zero carbon electricity, or very close to it, by 2050. That means carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) in electricity by 2050, it means nuclear, it means renewables," he said.
The soaring use of coal in electricity generation, principally from China where a new coal-fired power station comes into operation every week, means that CCS – a technology that remains unproven on an industrial scale – will be absolutely crucial. "We need to get better at carbon capture and sequestration very quickly," Lord Stern said.
Not only is coal the dirtiest fuel, it is also the only major fossil fuel source where big consumer nations still have large stores within their borders, and it is relatively cheap. For these reasons, most economists and energy analysts expect its consumption to grow massively. Lord Stern gave his revised views on the same day that the price of oil hit a new high at $114.43 per barrel amid rising demand from Asia and industrialised nations.
He said: "This is about buying down risk. Starting now, that means it requires at least 1 per cent of world GDP. That is small relative to a planetary catastrophe."
Waste management is big business in Germany and Bavarians do it with zest, says Tim Howe.
Last Updated: 12:01am BST 16/04/2008
Shops must take back cans for recycling, even those they don't sell
"See over there", says the site supervisor, pointing to a vandalised container in the corner.
"Thieves again. Took PCs and other electrical stuff."
The scene of the crime is not as you might expect some branch of PC World, or any retailer at all for that matter, but a recycling yard.
After reading that Britain is Europe's second worst recycler, I called in at my local Recyclinghof to discover whether we might learn anything from the Germans
.With a turnover of around €50 billion (£39 billion ), waste management, and evidently waste theft, is serious business in Germany.While Britain landfills around 75 per cent of its waste, Germans send virtually the same amount to the recyclers.
And Bavarians do it with zest, each collecting an average 322 kilos of recyclable rubbish a year. Less than one per cent of the remaining waste ends up as landfill.
The separation of rubbish is not compulsory, yet recent surveys show 90 per cent of Bundesbürger enjoy sorting their household rubbish.
From my experience of sidestepping piles of bright yellow bags in our cul-de-sac on designated collection days, that doesn't surprise me. One of my colleagues even takes time off work to sort the family's rubbish.
When I arrived in Germany 10 years ago I had little idea about recycling. Until one day, when I ignorantly threw into the "rest waste" an old hair-dryer, which was meant for the "recyclable bulk waste" bin.
Neighbours immediately put notes under my door and left a trail of polite yet firm "Verboten!" signs around the respective bins, pointing out my dumb deed.
Umweltsünden - "environmental sins" - are so rare in Germany that they make local news. My little faux-pas might not have attracted media coverage, but more serious cases, such as fly-tipping, certainly do.
Ever since 1991, when a recycling company called Duales System Deutschland was set up, people have been busily sorting their rubbish into four colour-coded bins.
The green one is for all packaging made of paper or cardboard. Boxes should be flattened and emptied of any plastic-wrapper contents. Plastic, please note, goes into the yellow bin, along with milk cartons, cans, polystyrene and aluminium.
Simple enough, so long as you don't stuff recyclables inside each other, like the yogurt cup inside the baked beans tin - that's verboten. Rinsing empty cans beforehand is a little more time-consuming, but most Germans cheerfully do so.
Strict laws mean shops in Germany have to take back bottles and cans for recycling, even those that they do not actually sell. So returning empties to the point of sale is a force of habit for Germans - and expats. Most bottles have a green dot on them, which means the item is recyclable.
Supermarket car parks generally have bottle banks for non deposit/return glass, which most burghers meticulously collect by colour beforehand, of course.
After recycling all your packaging and biodegradables (they go in the Biotonne, or brown bin) there's hardly anything left over.
Unrecyclables land in the grey/black bin. The contents are of a generally smelly nature, including nappies, fish bones and meat scraps.
Unwanted household objects - old frying pans, ceramics and, yes, even hair-dryers, are most certainly not "rest waste". They're "recyclable bulk waste" remember, and this should be taken either to the local recycling centre or left outside for periodical collection.
Interestingly, very little of this "bulk waste" actually ends up at the dump, since many second-hand dealers tour the neighbourhood, claiming whatever they like the look of.
Unlike taking from the recycling yard this is lawful.
The majority of bulk gets loaded into private vans long before the municipal lorries arrive.
While it's not streng verboten to simply bung everything into the grey bin, most Germans I talk to almost reel at the idea, like Anja and Christoph, who proudly show me their cellar, piled high with colour-coded bins.On the wall hangs a chart with dates of each collection ringed with virtually every colour of the rainbow.
There are half a dozen or so dates for every month and Anja seems able to recite each one off by heart.
The recycling ethic is inculcated from an early age in Germany. At kindergarten toddlers learn to sort waste into four categories.
Later on it becomes a cross-curricular topic, particularly in English lessons. I've loss count of the number of classes I've given on global warming, the dangers of deforestation and energy-saving tips.
Having not missed a single collection date and having remembered to take waste poisons and dangerous liquids to the local fire station for collection every fourth Friday, there's only one more thing to do: sell your very last piece of unwanted junk at the local Trödelmarkt, or flea market.
Rummaging through chuck-outs at one such venue, I happen across an old put-up bed bearing an uncanny resemblance to the one I'd recently put out for collection.Perhaps we can all learn a thing or two from the Germans.
Cutting carbon, not economic growth: Germany's path
By 2020, Germany could eliminate 30 percent of its 1990 level of greenhouse gas emissions, without curbing economic growth.
The country has already eliminated 17 percent of its 1990 level of emissions, largely by restructuring and modernizing the high-emissions power and industrial sectors of the former East Germany.
A study found that Germany could achieve most of the remaining cuts needed for a 30 percent reduction by increasing the use of renewable energy and implementing measures (such as better insulation in buildings) that would not only improve energy efficiency but also pay off for investors.
Cuts of more than 30 percent, however, could involve difficult trade-offs on issues such as nuclear power and the international competitiveness of Germany’s energy-intensive industries.
A lethal combination of high prices and falling supply is threatening food security. Is the climate to blame?
Rice is getting pricey
In March food agencies began making emergency appeals when food aid, for regions racked by drought and civil war, fell drastically short of target. High food prices and fuel costs have rendered the provision and transportation of such aid prohibitively expensive, threatening to expose the world’s poorest more than ever.Countries including India, Vietnam, Argentina and China have imposed export quotas to protect domestic commodity supplies amid rising concern over production and prices. Meanwhile, net importers like the Philippines were left scrambling to secure supply contracts when the production of food staples dipped below global consumption levels. At the end of March, the US Department of Agriculture published an outlook suggesting that for the period 2007-08, global consumption of wheat outstripped production by 14.7 million tons, leaving global wheat stocks at their lowest in 30 years.
Volatile recipe
The volume of world trade in cereals will decline by 1.5% in 2008, according to the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO). The FAO Food Outlook, suggests that the contraction in trade will result from continuing high, volatile cereal and grain prices, combined with soaring freight costs. In a separate report, the FAO highlights that while food imports in less developed countries will decline by 2% in 2008, the cost of imports will increase by 35%.
Spiralling food prices have already prompted government intervention in many countries. India, Morocco, China, Senegal and Indonesia have cut import tariffs on wheat, while Ethiopia, Pakistan and Zambia have imposed export quotas and, in extreme cases, export bans. Many countries, including Benin and Senegal, have introduced food subsidies in an attempt to keep basics at an affordable price.
The threat of starvation recently triggered riots in Indonesia, prompting government intervention in the form of food subsidies. Shortages and high food and fuel prices have sparked civil unrest in Central Africa, West Africa and Zimbabwe and caused riots over the last few years in Mexico, Bengal, Indonesia, Morocco, Uzbekistan, Yemen, Guinea and Mauritania.
Shrinking harvests, surging prices
World cereal production has declined by up to 16% in recent years in both the US and the European Union, mainly due to reduced plantings and adverse weather in some of the major producing and exporting countries, says Joachim Von Braun, director general of the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI). According to the FAO, wheat production in Australia has fallen a staggering 52%, its cereal production by 33%. In January this year, wheat prices were 83% higher than the previous year.
In Thailand, the world’s primary rice exporter, officials have suggested that rice prices may reach US$1,000 a ton in 2008. Currently, the export price for Grade B (long grain) white rice is US$624 per ton – in January 2001 it was US$197 per ton.
Pest threat
Last year the tungro virus and infestations of the brown planthopper insect ravaged rice crops across central and southern Vietnam. Robert Zeigler, director general of the International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), a non-profit agricultural research centre, has warned that the virus and infestations that devastated the crops may re-emerge this growing season and spread to other key producers, including China, Cambodia, Thailand and Myanmar. On an already thin market, the ramifications could be dire.
A growing number of studies are focusing on the impact of climate change on pests and weeds. A paper by Kohji Yamamura and Masayuki Yokozawa, from the National Institute for Agro-Environmental Sciences in Japan, found that warmer and earlier growing seasons will increase crop susceptibility to pests and viruses, which are expected to proliferate as a direct result of rising temperatures.
The oil factor
Further fuelling food inflation is the price of oil, sustained at over US$100 per barrel since the beginning of the year. The increased cost of production at farm level, in terms of fertiliser costs and equipment operation, through to transportation and shipping, has significantly increased the prices of food staples.
Efforts by governments to become less dependent on fossil fuels have created a global trend for policies favouring biofuel crop production. This threatens to further push up food prices as ‘fuel versus food’ acreage wars become more commonplace.
Dr Sushil Pandi of the IRRI says: “Shortfalls in production and subsequent price rises are being exacerbated by increasing competition for land, labour and water for biofuel production”. He notes that in China, more than three million hectares have already been shifted out of rice production and into biofuel crop production.
In 2007 alone, world demand for coarse grain doubled due to the demand for grain used in US ethanol distilleries, according to calculations based on USDA figures by the Earth Policy Institute, an independent research organisation. Separately, the International Food Policy Research Institute warns that if current biofuel targets are pursued, maize prices will increase by 72% and oilseeds by 44% by 2020.
Appetite for meat
Increasing demand in Asian countries for meat and dairy products, due to higher incomes and changing diets – at a time when global grain production is at its lowest – is also pushing up prices.
Heightened demand for these products implies that greater tracts of arable land may be switched over to animal feed production, with further acreage being shifted from crop production into livestock farming.
On the flipside, the US Department of Agriculture predicts that higher grain prices, primarily due to the impact of crops being switched into ethanol production, will cause a decline in livestock farming as meat products become priced out of the market.
Climate unknowns
The backdrop to this bleak scenario is the spectre of climate change. Economist William Cline, senior fellow at the Institute for International Economics and the Centre for Global Development in Washington, estimates that global warming will cause a 16% decline in global agricultural gross domestic product (GDP) by 2020. He also projects output to fall by 20% in developing countries and by 6% in industrialised nations.
Last year tied as the earth’s second warmest year in recorded history, according to data gathered by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS). Rising temperatures are already resulting in shorter picking seasons.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation investigates the impact of shorter picking seasons ongrapes. In some cases fruit crops are maturing and rotting before they can be picked. Over recent years, warmer temperatures have resulted in fruit ripening early and falling prey to frosts, as was the case with fruit and nut crops in southern USA in 2007 and 2006.
The more arid regions are already being tipped into the danger zone of drought, causing crop failure and loss of livestock. Australia, the world’s second-largest wheat producer, is now suffering its third consecutive year of drought. Formerly the breadbasket of the world, its grain silos now stand virtually empty. As long as they remains so, world grain prices will stay inflated.
Glacial effects
At the other end of the spectrum, rising temperatures are resulting in glacier melt in the Himalayas, which have the largest concentration of glaciers outside the polar caps. According to the World Wildlife Fund, 67% of the glaciers are already melting, causing glacial lakes to burst their banks, destroying villages, crops and livestock. At the UN climate change conference in Bali last December, Bhutan pleaded for adaptation funds to help protect its glacial lakes from bursting.
Over the longer term, the disappearance of these glaciers threatens to deprive China and India of much-needed irrigation water for wheat and rice crops during dry seasons. The glaciers feed the Yangtze and Yellow rivers and provide up to 70% of water in the Ganges during dry season.
Together, China and India produce more than half the world’s wheat and rice, which makes projections by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) regarding the disappearance of Himalayan glaciers by 2035 all the more alarming.
According to Lester Brown, founder of the Earth Policy Institute, Asia’s melting glaciers may pose the biggest threat to food production the world has ever faced.
Extreme weather
A series of reports recently published by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science (PNAS) suggests that in coming years, rising temperatures and increased CO2 levels could result in slightly higher crop yields in temperate regions. Meanwhile, farm-level adaptation measures may allow crops to cope with 1–2°C local temperature increases, creating the effect of ‘buying time’ says one report. This scenario assumes the absence of extreme weather conditions.
But the authors also point out that the variables used in simulation models to date have been oversimplified. In general, crop and pasture responses to climate change and corresponding increases in CO2 remain largely unknown, given that little is known about crop responses to increased CO2, impacts of sustained extreme weather conditions, related changes in weeds and pests, nor the extent to which carbon sinks will be reduced.
Furthermore, any productivity gains in temperate regions will be offset by reduced livestock productivity, increased livestock mortality and loss of cultivated areas in semi-arid and arid regions.
Extreme weather conditions over a few days could wipe out entire crops, if the conditions occur during a critical development stage. This is already happening on a small scale, say the authors, citing a case in the Po Valley of northern Italy, when extremely high temperatures in 2003 caused a record drop of 36% in corn yields.
In any case, the overwhelming body of research indicates that any productivity gains won in the short term regarding higher CO2-related crop yields will be lost in the latter half of the century, as mean temperatures rise between 2º and 3°C regionally and globally. “After that, all bets are off,” said Francesco Tubiello, a physicist and agricultural expert at the Nasa/Goddard Institute of Space Studies and co-author of the three PNAS reports. The temperature increases projected for the second half of the 21st century will have increasingly negative impacts on all regions, say the reports.
Adaptation model
In the face of so many variables threatening food security, what is the best line of defence? Policy recommendations currently touted to governments outline ‘adaptation strategies’ that increase resilience of agricultural systems, reducing their vulnerability to climate change.
"The best strategies to implement are no-regret strategies – techniques that would make production systems more robust anyway," says Tubiello.
"These involve developing more varied systems, and in general include all those techniques that lead to better conservation of soil and water resources – more rotations with several different crops over time; use of cover crops to conserve water; efficient use of inputs; and low-impact tillage," he says.
"The great news about such techniques is that they typically also contribute to carbon sequestration. The bad news is that they would not necessarily be enough to combat climate change – but it is at least a start," he said. Such techniques traditionally provide lower agricultural productivity compared to monoculture farming, however.
Smart biofuels
A pilot scheme currently under way in India involving the cultivation of `smart crops’ reflects this ‘no-regret’ approach. A mitigating strategy is under way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions via the production of biofuel crops that neither compete for existing cultivated land nor reduce grazing land, but which provide non-fossil fuel-based fertiliser for local agricultural crops and create local education and employment opportunities.
Pongamia, sweet sorghum, jatropha and neem are being planted to provide paid employment and harvest rights to local farmers and landless people. With training, local residents will become the owners, producers, processors and end-users of these smart crops, whose production is for biofuel, animal fodder and fertiliser.
Within the programme 500 hectares of marginal common land are currently under cultivation. The three-year-old crops, which are 100% rain fed, are being cultivated utilising rainwater harvesting and other water and soil conservation methods in an effort to improve soil quality.
Sorghum solution
"Sweet sorghum has a pro-poor advantage given its triple product potential – grain, juice for ethanol, and bagasse [crushed stalk waste] for livestock feed and power generation. The byproduct, biofuel ‘seedcake’, will be used as biodegradable fertiliser for local agricultural crops," said Dr Suhas P Wani, principal scientist and regional theme coordinator at the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT), a non-profit agricultural research organisation. An efficient biofuel feedstock, sweet sorghum only requires 4,000 cubic meters to produce a kilolitre of bioethanol, compared with 36,000 cubic meters for sugar cane.
While the existing carbon footprint of the villages themselves is already very low, the high carbon sequestration properties of the tree crops themselves may provide wider benefits – particularly from a carbon credit trading perspective.
No guarantees
The current favourite – and somewhat familiar sounding – policy prescription is to provide farmers with the infrastructure support and financial incentives that enable them to adapt farming practices to the predicted climate changes. But scientists say that even if adaptation policies and farmer training schemes were rolled out blanket-style tomorrow, there is still no guarantee of long-term global food security.
Tubiello estimates that at best, assuming the available investment and the political will exist, European agricultural policy will change over the next ten years to encompass adaptation strategies – if the frequency of extreme climate events continues at the present rate.
Painful progress
Developing countries are currently relying on band-aid-style trade strategies, which are already proving inadequate. Intervention policies, including the removal of import tariffs and the introduction of food price subsidies, have been introduced in an effort to contain food prices. The short-term benefits of these measures are being undermined, however, by the imposition of export quotas and export bans by producer countries – the effect of which is to further push up prices and undercut already short supplies.
The impact on developed countries has so far been negligible in comparison, with bread and pasta prices rising a couple of cents. For the one billion people worldwide struggling on less than a dollar a day, however, the harsh reality is that a couple of cents can mean the difference between subsistence and starvation.
Bahrain World Trade Center Activates Wind Turbines
April 10, 2008
by Jorge Chapa
You may remember that about a year ago news of the Bahrain World Trade Center, which was designed to have three giant turbines provide power to the building. Well, this past Tuesday, the project was finally completed, with the final testing and installation of the enormous wind turbines which power the building. This week, Bahrain WTC has, for the first time, activated all three 29m-diameter turbines at the same time!
It may not sound like much, but for such a high profile project, this represents a huge step. Ffor the past year, all have slowly been tested and balanced, to ensure that they were working properly. But as of now, the project team can lay claim to having successfully incorporated a technology which had never been proven on a building, and certainly not at this scale.
The three wind turbines are expected to provide around 10-15% of the power for both towers, representing about 3.5% of the total cost of the project.
“Having all three turbines spinning simultaneously represents an historic achievement for this landmark project and Atkins is excited to have been a major player in turning the original idea into reality” said Simha LytheRao Senior Project Manager for Atkins, designers for the project
+ Video of BWTC Turbines in Action
Here’s a clip on the BWTC turbine construction (in Spanish)
The Clean Development Mechanism is widely derided as a source of easy pickings for wealthy polluters. So how, asks Terry Slavin, can it be made fit for purpose?
Can we trade our way out of the mess that we have made of the planet? Nicholas Stern thinks so. His influential report on the economics of climate change argued for a huge expansion of trading between rich and poor countries in permits to emit CO2.
Most of this happens under the auspices of the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). When countries and companies have to reduce their emissions, they can do so by funding carbon-cutting projects in the developing world – earning themselves ‘carbon emissions reduction’ credits (CERs) which they can offset against their own ongoing pollution.
"In theory, unlocking a flood of finance for renewable energy throws the full weight of global capitalism at a problem that poorer nations cannot solve on their own"
Unlocking a flood of finance for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects can, say CDM’s fans, throw the full weight of global capitalism at a problem poorer nations cannot solve on their own – and so speed genuinely sustainable development.
On the surface, it makes perfect sense. It is, after all, in countries such as India, China, Mexico and Indonesia that the battle to curb carbon will be won or lost. The International Energy Agency has calculated that three-quarters of the global increase in CO2 levels expected by 2030 will take place in emerging economies like these.
But is CDM up to the job? Certainly not the way it has been operating since it began three years ago. As Stern himself acknowledged, investment generated by the CDM “falls significantly short of the scale and nature of incentives required to reduce future emissions in developing countries”. A similar conclusion was reached by a UN report on the eve of the Bali climate summit in December.
To date, 60% of emissions reductions achieved through the CDM market have had nothing to do with renewable energy, nor with energy efficiency as commonly understood. Instead, they involve huge projects to destroy the industrial gas HFC 23 – which is nearly 12,000 times more destructive than CO2. It’s necessary work, but the cost of cleaning up the gases is a fraction of what they generate in CERs. It’s been described by its critics as a cynical plucking of some very juicy low-hanging fruit, which does nothing for wider sustainable development.
Enthusiasts counter that such easy pickings are essential to kick start the market. Among them is Michael Schlup, director of the Gold Standard, a Swiss-based NGO which stamps its approval on projects offering both genuine emissions reductions and wider environmental and social benefits. He points out that renewable energy and energy efficiency projects accounted for 24% of carbon credits in 2006, more than double their total in 2005. And, he adds, they will attract much more finance once all those juicy HFC fruits have been plucked.
At the moment, though, Schlup says, the difference in profitability between HFC projects and renewable energy ones remains vast. The price for carbon, now sitting at just above €20 a tonne on the EU market, is not high enough to attract the sort of investment required for sustainable energy schemes.
China, which has generated half of all global carbon credits, has come up with a nifty solution. It levies a 60% tax on HFC-style projects, and uses the proceeds to provide funds for renewable energy. But other countries have failed to take China‘s lead, which highlights one of the biggest problems with CDM: individual governments are left to decide the way projects are administered, so the goalposts shift from country to country. Michael Grubb, visiting professor of climate change at Imperial College London, describes CDM as “a funny hybrid between a market and a political construct. It’s not a pure market by any stretch, and there’s a lot of discretion being taken about where people want to spend money. But it‘s better than nothing, and it‘s something that can be improved.”
The most urgent improvement needed is over the thorny question of additionality – that is, whether a project required CDM funding to make it viable, or whether it would have happened anyway (in other words, would not have been ‘additional’). India provides a sobering example of the failure to address this. On the surface, it’s a triumph for CDM: 33% of all projects winning CER certificates are from India, pipping China’s 25%. But unlike China, most projects approved by the Indian authorities are speculative ventures that go ahead regardless of whether they win approval from the CDM’s executive board. In other words, they’re not dependent on carbon finance – so belying the whole point of the CDM. Dr Axel Michaelowa, an advisor to the CDM’s executive board, told Channel Four News last year that one third of the 50 projects he had surveyed in the country failed the additionality test. And it is not just a problem in India. Last November, WWF suggested that one out of five CERs globally were issued to projects that inflated the level of emissions reduced, lacked additionality or, most perverse of all, were awarded to projects that generated emissions in order to obtain CDM funding.
The CDM’s executive board has responded by cracking down on its approvals processes. Over the past six months it has sent back more than half the projects for review. This may have soothed the critics, but it has generated huge delays in projects, and created ructions in the carbon trading market. Industry giant EcoSecurities saw almost half of the value of its shares wiped out in a single day in November, when it announced that one fifth of its expected CDM projects would not materialise because of the delays.
Belinda Kinkead, head of project implementation for EcoSecurities, said the executive board had over-reacted by burying the process in red tape. “They would rather exclude thousands of legitimate credits than run the risk of a single non-additional credit getting through,“ she said, adding that the burden of proof of additionality is now so high it’s almost like defending a criminal case.
“One lesson we’ve learned is that it’s not worth doing small projects any more. The costs of getting these projects through are just as high [as big projects] and the chances of getting them through are much less.” This risks stymieing some of the more innovative local energy schemes in remote communities, for example, where CDM money really could be transformative.
But others are less pessimistic, believing that the CDM’s board is acting with necessary diligence to preserve the integrity of the whole process. “It needs to put a lot of scrutiny on projects,” says Michael Schlup. He points to concerted action by the board to get round the barriers of high transaction costs for small projects. It recently began to allow small projects of the same nature to be bundled together so that they can share a single transaction cost. One of the first of these may be in India, where the Bureau of Energy Efficiency has a proposal to provide low-energy lights to domestic homes for the same price as incandescent bulbs, a move that would save 240 million tonnes of CO2 a year.
Schlup thinks the voluntary market in carbon credits (as traded in the form of carbon ‘offsets’ – could be a useful testing ground for new approaches. The Gold Standard has just adopted a methodology that would allow large volumes of household biodigesters to be bundled together to gain credits on the voluntary market. Biodigesters, which convert animal and human waste into liquid fuel for cooking, lighting and heating, are a triple win in the climate stakes because they reduce CO2, avoid destructive methane emissions, and reduce the pressure on forests for firewood Light emerging, July 2005]. Schlup said the methodology had generated a lot of interest, including among key figures in the UN climate change system.
“Everyone’s problem with CDM would go away if the cost of carbon doubled”
For Neil Eckert, chief executive of Climate Exchange plc, which owns the London-based European Climate Exchange, CDM’s success in reducing emissions stands or falls on the price of carbon. At the moment the price on the EU market is far too low to generate much interest in risky, small-scale renewables projects, he says. “I think everyone’s problem [with CDM] would go away if the cost of carbon was €40, not €20.”
It would help if the EU tightened up its emissions ceilings, Eckert says, but what is really needed is for the US to join the party. At the moment it is only European countries and companies that have to buy carbon credits to comply with the Kyoto Protocol. There are regional voluntary carbon trading markets in the US, and pressure is growing for a nationwide cap on emissions. But no decision will be taken until a new president is in the White House in 2009, believes Eckert, and then it will be another three years before a market could be up and running, when whatever diplomatic deal to succeed Kyoto will kick in.
But Harvard University climate economist Robert Stavins has a somewhat different vision. He thinks that once the US has a mandatory trading scheme, which he expects, like Eckert, to happen during the next US administration, the existing voluntary carbon exchanges dotted around the world will also become mandatory. Trading in CDM credits will be the one common feature that links them, creating in effect a global price for carbon – something that Stern has argued for. If that were to happen, the price of carbon would rise dramatically, and the cost of cutting CO2 emissions could drop.
“I’m fairly optimistic about climate change,” says Stavins. “There will be a time in my kids’ lifetimes when we will have dealt with that… I believe the nations of the world will get in place policies to accelerate the transition to low-carbon technologies.”
Coming from a man who was a lead author on the notoriously gloomy Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, such a prognosis is both welcome – and credible.
The Bank goes for a bundleBundling projects together to save on costs, time and bureaucracy has won endorsement from the World Bank. Its new fund, the Carbon Partnership Facility, will support bundled projects in power sector development, energy efficiency, gas flaring, transport, and urban development. “Instead of purchasing greenhouse gas emission reductions from one project at a time, say reducing methane emissions from a landfill, we will be able to work on ten projects simultaneously across a country or a region,” said Katherine Sierra, the Bank’s vice president for sustainable development. “We will also be able to purchase emissions reductions far beyond 2012, which will help to remove some of the uncertainty currently surrounding the post-Kyoto era.”
Terry Slavin is a regular contributor on energy and environmental issues for The Guardian and Green Futures.
How many gallons of water do you need to power a lightbulb?
Posted by Martin LaMonica
Here's a measurement you probably haven't thought of before: it takes between 3,000 gallons and 6,000 gallons of water to power a 60-watt incandescent bulb for 12 hours a day over the course of a year.
That statistic was published on Thursday by researchers at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State
The water equation comes to energy.
(Credit: Virginia Tech)
University, who have studied how demand for a dwindling natural resource--fresh water--plays into energy.
The most water-efficient energy sources are natural gas and synthetic fuels produced by coal gasification. The least efficient are ethanol and biodiesel--two fuels booming in production because of supportive government policies, followed by rapid investment.
In terms of power generation, they found that geothermal and hydroelectric energy use the least amount of water, while nuclear plants use the most.
A United States-wide tally shows that power generation requires 655 billion gallons of water a year.
"There are several variables, such as geography and climate, technology type and efficiency, and accuracy of measurements that come into play. However, by standardizing the measurement unit (BTU, or British Thermal Unit), we have been able to obtain a unique snapshot of the water used to produce different kinds of energy," Virginia Tech professor Tamim Younos said.
Biofuels, in particular, are being increasingly scrutinized, as people start to measure the trade-offs of making liquid fuels from biomass.
Corn ethanol emits about 20 percent fewer greenhouse gases than gasoline, but it requires more water, and it has raised the price of grain and food.
Fresh-water supply is a serious concern among scientists studying climate change. Recent droughts in Europe and the southeast United States have been blamed for strains on production at nuclear and coal power generation facilities.
We look at the planet in a new way with Worldmapper
In the first of a new series of maps by Worldmapper, we present the planet as you've never seen it before
The map above may look strange, but that's because each country has been resized to reflect the amount of greenhouse gas emissions it is responsible for.
Greenhouse gases trap heat in the Earth’s atmosphere, causing it to warm up. The territories that emit the most greenhouse gases are the US, China, the Russian Federation and Japan. However, the most emissions per person are in Qatar: equivalent to 86 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year. Qatar has significant oil and gas reserves, and in 2002 was populated by 600,000 people.
The greenhouse gases shown here are carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide. These gases account for 98 per cent of the greenhouse effect. (Other greenhouse gases, not shown here, are various fluorocarbons and sulphur hexafluoride.)
The country sizes are based on estimates from Worldmapper. To find out how they worked out these figures, check out their technical notes.
Million acres of Guyanese rainforest to be saved in groundbreaking deal
By Daniel Howden, Deputy Foreign Editor
Thursday, 27 March 2008
A deal has been agreed that will place a financial value on rainforests – paying, for the first time, for their upkeep as "utilities" that provide vital services such as rainfall generation, carbon storage and climate regulation.
The Iwokrama reserve, part of one of the last four intact rainforests in the world
The agreement, to be announced tomorrow in New York, will secure the future of one million acres of pristine rainforest in Guyana, the first move of its kind, and will open the way for financial markets to play a key role in safeguarding the fate of the world's forests.
The initiative follows Guyana's extraordinary offer, revealed in The Independent in November, to place its entire standing forest under the protection of a British-led international body in return for development aid.
Hylton Murray-Philipson, director of the London-based financiers Canopy Capital, who sealed the deal with the Iwokrama rainforest, said: "How can it be that Google's services are worth billions but those from all the world's rainforests amount to nothing?"
The past year has been a pivotal one for the fast- disappearing tropical forests that form a cooling band around the equator because the world has recognised deforestation as the second leading cause of CO2 emissions. Leaders at the UN climate summit in Bali in December agreed to include efforts to halt the destruction of forests in a new global deal to save the world from runaway climate change.
"As atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide rise, emissions will carry an ever-mounting cost and conservation will acquire real value. The investment community is beginning to wake up to this," Mr Murray-Philipson added.
Guyana, sandwiched between the Latin American giants Venezuela and Brazil, is home to fewer than amillion people but 80 per cent of its land is covered by an intact rainforest larger than England. The Guiana Shield is one of only four intact rainforests left on the planet and at its heart lies the Iwokrama reserve, gifted to the Commonwealth in 1989 as a laboratory for pioneering conservation projects.
Iwokrama, which means "place of refuge" in the Makushi language, is home to some of the world's most endangered species including jaguar, giant river otter, anaconda and giant anteater.
Guyana's President Bharrat Jagdeo, a former economist, has appealed for state and private sector help for the country to avoid succumbing to the rampant deforestation currently blighting Brazil and Indonesia, in an effort to raise living standards in one of Latin America's poorest countries.
"Forests do much more for us than just store carbon ... This first significant step is in keeping with President Jagdeo's visionary approach to safeguarding all the forests of Guyana," said Iwokrama's chairman, Edward Glover.
The deal, drawn up by the international firm Stephenson Harwood, is the first serious attempt to pay for the ecosystem services provided by rainforests.
"We should move beyond emissions-based trading to measure and place a value on all the services they provide," said Mr Glover.
In addition to providing shelter to half the world's terrestrial species and one billion of the earth's poorest people, forests such as Iwokrama act as pumps, drawing water from the Atlantic Ocean inland to the Amazon and Guiana Shield where they help to seed clouds and deliver moisture over vast distances.
The Amazon generates the rain that falls on the vast soya estates of Sao Paulo, helping to make Brazil the second biggest agricultural exporter in the world.
Guyana's attempt to secure its entire standing forest has received the backing of the British environment minister Phil Woolas and Downing Street has told The Independent that it is "considering the offer". President Jagdeo met with Gordon Brown on the sidelines of a recent Commonwealth Summit in Uganda where they discussed the proposal. The UN road map to a deal to replace the Kyoto protocols foresees payments from wealthy climate-polluting nations to developing countries to compensate for potential income lost through avoiding deforestation. But there are fears that this formula may simply displace the demand for timber and cheap agricultural land.
Andrew Mitchell, head of the Global Canopy Programme, an alliance of rainforest scientists, said: "The decision on forests at December's conference in Bali is a major step in tackling climate change but it fails to reward countries such as Guyana that aren't cutting down their forests."
Quote Of The Week
"Nature provides a free lunch, but only if we control our appetites."
- William Ruckelshaus, first EPA Adminstrator, (1970-1973 and 1983-1985), Business Week, June 18, 1990.
Technology Corner
What is Plasma?
Plasma is simply a gas (air) that the Converter ionizes so it becomes an effective electrical conductor and produces a lightning-like arc of electricity that is the source of the intense energy transferred to the waste material as radiant energy. The arc in the plasma plume within the vessel can be as high as 30,000 degrees Fahrenheit ... three times hotter than the surface of the Sun. When waste materials are subjected to the intensity of the energy transfer within the vessel, the excitation of the wastes' molecular bonds is so great that the waste materials' molecules break apart into their elemental components (atoms). It is the absorption of this energy by the waste material that forces the waste destruction and elemental dissociation.
The Plasma Converter is computer controlled, easy to use and operates at normal atmospheric pressure, very safely and quietly.
How Does the System Work?
The basic Plasma Converter system consists of the following:
In-feed System
Plasma Vessel
Gas Polisher
Computer Control Station
Power Supply
Figure 1. Process Overview of PCS
Feed System
The feed mechanism can simultaneously accommodate any proportion or combination of solid, liquid and gaseous feedstock. Solid wastes, depending upon their composition, can be pumped, screw fed, or ram fed into the plasma vessel. A shredder ahead of the feed system may be appropriate to achieve size reduction or object separation prior to direct system feed.
Liquid wastes, including sludge, can be pumped directly into the PCS through the wall of the plasma vessel through a special in-feed nozzle. The liquid feed system is designed to also accommodate any entrained solids that may be present. Similarly, gaseous feedstock may also be introduced into the plasma vessel through a specially designed nozzle.
Plasma Vessel
The plasma vessel is a cylindrical two-part container made of stainless steel with an opening in the roof through which the plasma torch is inserted. The vessel is lined with insulation and refractory to allow both maximum retention of internal energy and to protect the stainless steel container from the intense heat inside the vessel. The plasma vessel is equipped with inspection ports (including a video camera so the operator can see real time images inside the vessel to assist in PCS operation), openings for introduction of feedstock, and an exit port for removal of excess molten material. The smaller vessels are designed to remove molten material periodically through an automated tipping mechanism during which time the vessel may or may not remain in continuous operation. A design enhancement incorporated into the most recently constructed system is a continuous melt extraction feature which maintains the level of molten material in the plasma vessel at or below a preset limit without interrupting the operation of the system. This melt extraction system can be deployed with all sizes of Plasma Converters.
The plasma vessel is specially designed to ensure that no feedstock material is able to reach the exit port without first passing through the plasma energy field and undergoing complete molecular dissociation. The method by which this is accomplished forms a part of Startech's intellectual property. In addition, the plasma vessel is maintained at a slight negative pressure to ensure that no gases can escape to atmosphere.
The plasma torch system is a commercially available product that Startech can purchase from any number of reputable vendors. Comparable plasma systems have been used extensively in the metallurgical industry for decades. The most maintenance-intensive aspect of the PCS is the need to periodically replace electrodes, which occurs approximately every 300 to 500 hours of operation (typical). Electrode replacement can be accomplished in approximately 30 minutes thus ensuring minimum downtime of the PCS.
The PCS is also equipped with a torch positional system that allows the operator to aim the torch at different points within the plasma vessel. This aspect of the PCS allows the operator to quickly and efficiently treat feedstock as they enter the vessel and move around inside the vessel to avoid any build-up of solidified melt that may occur on the vessel walls.
Gas Treatment System
The gas treatment system is comprised of six stages: High temperature cyclone separator to remove particulates
Quench stage (with heat recovery, if desired)
Cartridge dust collector to remove particulates
Selective catalytic reduction to remove NOx
Packed column scrubber to remove acids and volatized metals
Final polishing
High Temperature Cyclone Separator
The initial step of the gas treating process is a pre-quench in which the PCG is cooled from approximately 1000°C down to 650°C by direct water injection with a conventional spray dryer arrangement. The PCG then flows through a refractory lined pipe into a conventional, insulated cyclone fabricated with high temperature alloy and designed to operate at high temperatures. The purpose of the cyclone is to remove particulate matter, which is then collected and batch-fed back into the plasma vessel.
Quench
PCG then flows to a spray dryer designed to rapidly reduce the gas temperature from approximately 650°C down to 120°C. The importance of this temperature reduction is to ensure that dioxins and furans, troublesome by-products of incineration, do not form. In order for dioxins and furans to form, the gas would need to remain in a specific temperature zone (e.g., 190°C to 330°C) for some period of time - conditions which are precluded by the quench.
Cartridge Dust Collector
PCG then flows to a commercial pulsejet cartridge dust collector with high-temperature cartridges and heating elements to prevent condensation. This unit is capable of automatically "blowing back" collected solids that are collected and batch-fed back into the plasma vessel.
Selective Catalytic Reduction (SCR)
Upon exiting the dust collector, the PCG is reheated to approximately 310°C for selective catalytic reduction of NOx in a standard unit designed for this application where hydrogen present in the PCG reacts with NOx to form atmospheric nitrogen and water. During periods where there is no hydrogen in the PCG (e.g. during start-up, when processing materials that do not contain carbon), urea is added to reduce the NOx.
Packed Column Scrubber
Upon exiting the SCR, PCG undergoes a final quench with direct water injection to reduce the temperature below 50°C. This prepares the PCG for acid gas removal, which is accomplished in a standard horizontal packed column scrubber. Other inorganic species dissolve into the scrubbing liquid as common ions including chloride, fluoride, sulphate, phosphate, sodium and calcium. To manage the build-up of salts, the scrubbing solution is removed and replenished with fresh water. The wastewater typically requires no further treatment prior to discharge to sewer, except in the event there is a high concentration of heavy metals entering the system as feedstock. Approximately 75% of metals go into the melt with the remainder being volatilized and entrained in the PCG where they are captured in the scrubber and carbon filter (see below). The wastewater also contains particulates below one micron.
Finally, a standard variable speed fan at the exit of the gas treatment train pulls PCG through the entire system and maintains a constant, slight negative pressure within the plasma vessel.
The system has been designed so that it is comfortable, intuitive, and easy to use. The skill level of the operator need not be any higher than one having a reasonable technical aptitude.
