Ecobella Blog

According to the International Energy Agency, here’s what it would take to achieve the goal of cutting GHG emissions by 50% between now and mid-century:

• 30 new nuclear plants;
• 17,000 windmills;
• 400 biomass power plants;
• Two hydroelectric facilities the size of China’s massive Three Gorges Dam; and
• 42 coal and gas power plants with yet-to-be-developed carbon-capture technology.

Now consider this: this list does not describe what we would have to build between now and 2050, but what we would have to build each and every year until then!

One more thing: even if we managed to do all this (which we obviously cannot), the impact on global temperatures would be hardly noticeable by 2050. According to the best-known climate-economic model, this vast undertaking would likely wind up reducing global temperatures by just one-tenth of one degree centigrade (one-fifth of one degree Fahrenheit), while holding back sea-level rises by only one centimeter (less than half an inch).

An extra catch.  Unless we find a way, we depend our well being in the mid and long term on a few countries/persons that set up the production and price of oil.  That is without even mentioning even these powerful countries/persons cannot fully control what mother nature can provide…

Source: Project Syndicate

Increased levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere are apparently causing forests in the eastern United States to grow faster, a new study says. Trees observed along the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland are growing two to four times faster than during earlier periods, and mixed hardwood forests are packing on an additional two tons of growth per acre, according to a report published in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. After controlling for other variables, researchers say the likely cause is higher levels of CO2. Because trees absorb and store carbon dioxide, they are an important factor in counteracting global warming. “My guess is that they are already sopping up some of the extra carbon,” said Geoffrey G. Parker, an ecologist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center and co-author of the study. The rate of growth is tracked by measuring tree diameter. How long this accelerated growth can be sustained is uncertain, however, since the growth rate depends on other factors, including water availability and soil nutrients. Since 1987, Parker has studied 55 stands of trees that are representative of other forests in the eastern United States.

Source: Yale 360

China is aggressively protecting the economic growth that is transforming the lives of its citizens, instead of spending a fortune battling a problem that is unlikely to affect it negatively until next century. Little wonder, then, that Ed Miliband, Britain’s Secretary for Energy and Climate Change, found “impossible resistance” from China to a global carbon mitigation deal.

A global deal in which countries committed to spending 0.2% of GDP to develop non-carbon-emitting energy technologies would increase current spending 50-fold, and it would still be many times cheaper than a global carbon deal. It would also ensure that richer nations pay more, taking much of the political heat out of the debate.

Most importantly, such an approach would bring about the transformational technological breakthroughs that are required to make green energy sources cheap and effective enough to fuel a carbon-free future.

By: Bjorn Lomborg

To read full article: Project Syndicate

Faced with a faltering economy, fatigue over the health care fight, and the prospect of congressional elections this November, proponents of a carbon cap-and-trade bill in the U.S. Senate face high hurdles when Congress returns from its winter recess next week. The Obama administration and Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts, the lead author on the climate bill, insist that they are proceeding with plans to pass climate and energy legislation this year. The House of Representatives passed a bill last fall that would put a price and a cap on carbon. But some political analysts say that with the political environment shifting against the Democrats, the most that Congress may accomplish is to pass an energy bill that stimulates development of renewable sources of energy, nuclear power, and offshore drilling, while shelving plans for a cap-and-trade plan. With prospects for a climate bill in doubt, environmental and industry groups are stepping up political pressure on the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which has said that it will begin regulating greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. Meanwhile, Tom Donohue, the head of the U.S. chamber of Commerce, has said that his organization might launch a legal challenge to the EPA’s effort to regulate CO2 emissions. Prospects for such a maneuver succeeding, however, are slim, as the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that the EPA has the right to regulate greenhouse gases as a threat to human health.

Source: Yale Environment

You would have to go back at least 15 million years to find carbon dioxide levels on Earth as high as they are today, a UCLA scientist and colleagues report Oct. 8 in the online edition of the journal Science.

“The last time carbon dioxide levels were apparently as high as they are today — and were sustained at those levels — global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher than they are today, the sea level was approximately 75 to 120 feet higher than today, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic and very little ice on Antarctica and Greenland,” said the paper’s lead author, Aradhna Tripati, a UCLA assistant professor in the department of Earth and space sciences and the department of atmospheric and oceanic sciences.

“Carbon dioxide is a potent greenhouse gas, and geological observations that we now have for the last 20 million years lend strong support to the idea that carbon dioxide is an important agent for driving climate change throughout Earth’s history,” she said.

By analyzing the chemistry of bubbles of ancient air trapped in Antarctic ice, scientists have been able to determine the composition of Earth’s atmosphere going back as far as 800,000 years, and they have developed a good understanding of how carbon dioxide levels have varied in the atmosphere since that time. But there has been little agreement before this study on how to reconstruct carbon dioxide levels prior to 800,000 years ago.

Tripati, before joining UCLA’s faculty, was part of a research team at England’s University of Cambridge that developed a new technique to assess carbon dioxide levels in the much more distant past — by studying the ratio of the chemical element boron to calcium in the shells of ancient single-celled marine algae. Tripati has now used this method to determine the amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere as far back as 20 million years ago.

“We are able, for the first time, to accurately reproduce the ice-core record for the last 800,000 years — the record of atmospheric C02 based on measurements of carbon dioxide in gas bubbles in ice,” Tripati said. “This suggests that the technique we are using is valid.

“We then applied this technique to study the history of carbon dioxide from 800,000 years ago to 20 million years ago,” she said. “We report evidence for a very close coupling between carbon dioxide levels and climate. When there is evidence for the growth of a large ice sheet on Antarctica or on Greenland or the growth of sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, we see evidence for a dramatic change in carbon dioxide levels over the last 20 million years.

“A slightly shocking finding,” Tripati said, “is that the only time in the last 20 million years that we find evidence for carbon dioxide levels similar to the modern level of 387 parts per million was 15 to 20 million years ago, when the planet was dramatically different.”

Levels of carbon dioxide have varied only between 180 and 300 parts per million over the last 800,000 years — until recent decades, said Tripati, who is also a member of UCLA’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics. It has been known that modern-day levels of carbon dioxide are unprecedented over the last 800,000 years, but the finding that modern levels have not been reached in the last 15 million years is new.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the carbon dioxide level was about 280 parts per million, Tripati said. That figure had changed very little over the previous 1,000 years. But since the Industrial Revolution, the carbon dioxide level has been rising and is likely to soar unless action is taken to reverse the trend, Tripati said.

“During the Middle Miocene (the time period approximately 14 to 20 million years ago), carbon dioxide levels were sustained at about 400 parts per million, which is about where we are today,” Tripati said. “Globally, temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees Fahrenheit warmer, a huge amount.”

Tripati’s new chemical technique has an average uncertainty rate of only 14 parts per million.

“We can now have confidence in making statements about how carbon dioxide has varied throughout history,” Tripati said.

In the last 20 million years, key features of the climate record include the sudden appearance of ice on Antarctica about 14 million years ago and a rise in sea level of approximately 75 to 120 feet.

“We have shown that this dramatic rise in sea level is associated with an increase in carbon dioxide levels of about 100 parts per million, a huge change,” Tripati said. “This record is the first evidence that carbon dioxide may be linked with environmental changes, such as changes in the terrestrial ecosystem, distribution of ice, sea level and monsoon intensity.”

Today, the Arctic Ocean is covered with frozen ice all year long, an ice cap that has been there for about 14 million years.

“Prior to that, there was no permanent sea ice cap in the Arctic,” Tripati said.

Some projections show carbon dioxide levels rising as high as 600 or even 900 parts per million in the next century if no action is taken to reduce carbon dioxide, Tripati said. Such levels may have been reached on Earth 50 million years ago or earlier, said Tripati, who is working to push her data back much farther than 20 million years and to study the last 20 million years in detail.

More than 50 million years ago, there were no ice sheets on Earth, and there were expanded deserts in the subtropics, Tripati noted. The planet was radically different.

Co-authors on the Science paper are Christopher Roberts, a Ph.D. student in the department of Earth sciences at the University of Cambridge, and Robert Eagle, a postdoctoral scholar in the division of geological and planetary sciences at the California Institute of Technology.

The research was funded by UCLA’s Division of Physical Sciences and the United Kingdom’s National Environmental Research Council.

Tripati’s research focuses on the development and application of chemical tools to study climate change throughout history. She studies the evolution of climate and seawater chemistry through time.

“I’m interested in understanding how the carbon cycle and climate have been coupled, and why they have been coupled, over a range of time-scales, from hundreds of years to tens of millions of years,” Tripati said.

In addition to being published on the Science Express website, the paper will be published in the print edition of Science at a later date

Source: ScienceDaily

By Bjorn Lomborg

COPENHAGEN – Our current approach to solving global warming will not work. It is flawed economically, because carbon taxes will cost a fortune and do little, and it is flawed politically, because negotiations to reduce CO2 emissions will become ever more fraught and divisive. And even if you disagree on both counts, the current approach is also flawed technologically.

Many countries are now setting ambitious carbon-cutting goals ahead of global negotiations in Copenhagen this December to replace the Kyoto Protocol. Let us imagine that the world ultimately agrees on an ambitious target. Say we decide to reduce CO2 emissions by three-quarters by 2100 while maintaining reasonable growth. Herein lies the technological problem: to meet this goal, non-carbon-based sources of energy would have to be an astounding 2.5 times greater in 2100 than the level of total global energy consumption was in 2000.

These figures were calculated by economists Chris Green and Isabel Galiana of McGill University. Their research shows that confronting global warming effectively requires nothing short of a technological revolution. We are not taking this challenge seriously. If we continue on our current path, technological development will be nowhere near significant enough to make non-carbon-based energy sources competitive with fossil fuels on price and effectiveness.

In Copenhagen this December, the focus will be on how much carbon to cut, rather than on how to do so. Little or no consideration will be given to whether the means of cutting emissions are sufficient to achieve the goals.

Politicians will base their decisions on global warming models that simply assume that technological breakthroughs will happen by themselves. This faith is sadly – and dangerously – misplaced.

Green and Galiana examine the state of non-carbon-based energy today – nuclear, wind, solar, geothermal, etc. – and find that, taken together, alternative energy sources would get us less than halfway toward a path of stable carbon emissions by 2050, and only a tiny fraction of the way toward stabilization by 2100. We need many, many times more non-carbon-based energy than is currently produced.

Yet the needed technology will not be ready in terms of scalability or stability. In many cases, there is still a need for the most basic research and development. We are not even close to getting this revolution started.

Current technology is so inefficient that – to take just one example – if we were serious about wind power, we would have to blanket most countries with wind turbines to generate enough energy for everybody, and we would still have the massive problem of storage: we don’t know what to do when the wind doesn’t blow.

Policymakers should abandon fraught carbon-reduction negotiations, and instead make agreements to invest in research and development to get this technology to the level where it needs to be. Not only would this have a much greater chance of actually addressing climate change, but it would also have a much greater chance of political success. The biggest emitters of the twenty-first century, including India and China, are unwilling to sign up to tough, costly emission targets. They would be much more likely to embrace a cheaper, smarter, and more beneficial path of innovation.

Today’s politicians focus narrowly on how high a carbon tax should be to stop people from using fossil fuels. That is the wrong question. The market alone is an ineffective way to stimulate research and development into uncertain technology, and a high carbon tax will simply hurt growth if alternatives are not ready. In other words, we will all be worse off.

Green and Galiana propose limiting carbon pricing initially to a low tax (say, $5.00 a ton) to finance energy research and development. Over time, they argue, the tax should be allowed to rise slowly to encourage the deployment of effective, affordable technology alternatives.

Investing about $100 billion annually in non-carbon-based energy research would mean that we could essentially fix climate change on the century scale. Green and Galiana calculate the benefits – from reduced warming and greater prosperity – and conservatively conclude that for every dollar spent this approach would avoid about $11 of climate damage. Compare this to other analyses showing that strong and immediate carbon cuts would be expensive, yet achieve as little as $0.02 of avoided climate damage.

If we continue implementing policies to reduce emissions in the short term without any focus on developing the technology to achieve this, there is only one possible outcome: virtually no climate impact, but a significant dent in global economic growth, with more people in poverty, and the planet in a worse place than it could be.

Source: Project Syndicate

Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, renewed his call for a European carbon tax on imports to the bloc on Thursday as he unveiled details of a new charge on fossil fuel products in France.

“I will not accept a system … that imports products from countries that don’t respect the rules [on carbon emission reductions]. We need to impose a carbon tax at [Europe’s] borders. I will lead that battle.”

The French president has in the past sparked accusations of protectionism after calling for European import tariffs on products from countries that do not abide by international targets on carbon emission reductions.

On Thursday economists warned that such an initiative – likely to be supported by some European countries such as Italy – could have catastrophic consequences for the ongoing attempts to strike a global trade deal.

“This would put the developed world on a collision course with China, India and other developing countries. It could do serious damage to the international trade system,” said Simon Tilford, chief economist of the Centre for European reform. “It would be seen as naked protectionism.”

Mr Sarkozy sought to defend his position, which is clearly aimed at making France’s own carbon tax more palatable in the face of strong public opposition.

“A carbon tax at the border is the natural complement to a domestic carbon tax. More importantly, a carbon tax at the borders is vital for our industries and our jobs. This has nothing to do with protectionism,” he said. “This is about fair play.”

France will become the largest economy to levy a carbon tax when it comes into effect next year.

Mr Sarkozy set the tax at €17 per tonne of carbon emissions, just above the €14 signalled by François Fillon, his prime minister, last week, but still far below the level recommended by environmental activists.

This represents about 4.5 cents per litre of diesel, or 4 cents per litre of gasoline and 0.4 cents per kilowatt hour of gas.

In a concession to concerns within his own party about the impact of a new tax on poorer and rural households, Mr Sarkozy said the tax would be offset by reductions in income tax or special “green cheques” for those below the tax threshold.

“The creation of the carbon tax will not increase charges in our country,” he said. No household or business would be worse off as a result, he added, and an independent commission would be set up to monitor the impact of the tax

Source: MINA

Without looking into absolute number of tons reduced and into the different sectors, a company that pledges a reduction of 25%+ on its emissions over a short period of time, makes a strong statement.

Looking into EPA Climate Leaders, the following companies stand out meeting the 25%+ reduction:

1. 3Degrees pledges to achieve net zero U.S. GHG emissions by 2007 and maintain that level through 2012.
2. 3M achieved its initial goal by reducing total U.S. GHG emissions by 60 percent from 2002 to 2007.
3. Advanced Micro Devices pledges to reduce global GHG emissions by 33 percent per manufacturing index from 2006 to 2010. AMD achieved its initial goal by reducing global GHG emissions by 53 percent per manufacturing index from 2002 to 2006.
4. Burt’s Bees pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 35 percent per dollar sales from 2006 to 2011.
5. Cherokee Investment Partners pledges to achieve net zero U.S. GHG emissions by 2007 and maintain that level through 2011.
6. Cisco Systems pledges to reduce total global GHG emissions by 25 percent from 2007 to 2012.
7. Codding Enterprises pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 50 percent per square foot from 2005 to 2010.
8. Conservation Services Group pledges to achieve net zero U.S. GHG emissions by 2006 and maintain that level through 2010.
9. Cummins pledges to reduce global GHG emissions by 25 percent per dollar revenue from 2005 to 2010.
10. Deere & Company pledges to reduce global GHG emissions by 25 percent per dollar revenue from 2005 to 2014.
11. Dell pledges to reduce global GHG emissions by 15 percent per dollar revenue from 2007 to 2012, and to achieve net zero global GHG emissions by 2008 and maintain that level through 2012.
12. Design Continuum pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 25 percent per square foot from 2007 to 2012.
13. DPR Construction pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 25 percent per employee from 2007 to 2015.
14. EarthColor pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 40 percent per dollar sales from 2006 to 2012.
15. Ecoprint pledges to achieve net zero U.S. GHG emissions by 2006 and maintain that level through 2010.
16. Exelon Corporation achieved its initial goal by reducing total U.S. GHG emissions by 38 percent from 2001 to 2008.
17. Fairchild Semiconductor pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 30 percent per manufacturing index from 2003 to 2010.
18. FetterGroup pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 25 percent by sheets printed from 2007 to 2012.
19. First Environment pledges to achieve net zero U.S. GHG emissions by 2008.
20. Genzyme Corporation pledges to reduce global GHG emissions by 25 percent per dollar revenue from 2007 to 2012.
21. Green Mountain Energy Company pledges to achieve net zero U.S. GHG emissions by 2005 and maintain that level through 2009.
22. Intel Corporation pledges to reduce global GHG emissions by 30 percent per production unit from 2004 to 2010.
23. Johnson Controls pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 30 percent per dollar revenue from 2002 to 2012.
24. Lincus Incorporated pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 30 percent per square foot from 2006 to 2011.
25. Lockheed Martin pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 30 percent per dollar revenue from 2001 to 2010.
26. Melaver pledges to achieve net zero U.S. GHG emissions by 2006 and maintain that level through 2009.
27. National Renewable Energy Laboratory pledges to reduce total U.S. GHG emissions by 75 percent from 2005 to 2009. NREL achieved its initial goal by reducing U.S. GHG emissions by 10 percent per square foot from 2000 to 2005.
28. Owens Corning pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 25 percent per unit of production from 2006 to 2012.
29. PepsiCo pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 25 percent per ton of production from 2006 to 2015.
30. PSEG achieved its initial goal by reducing U.S. GHG emissions by 31 percent per kWh from 2000 to 2008.
31. Quad/Graphics pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 25 percent per page printed from 2003 to 2013.
32. Shaklee Corporation pledges to maintain net zero U.S. GHG emissions from 2006 to 2009.
33. Steelcase pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 40 percent per dollar sales from 2004 to 2009.
34. STMicroelectronics pledges to reduce U.S. GHG emissions by 50 percent per manufacturing unit from 2000 to 2010.
35. The Tower Companies pledges to achieve net zero U.S. GHG emissions by 2008 and maintain that level through 2012.
36. Unilever pledges to reduce global GHG emissions by 25 percent per ton of production from 2004 to 2012.
37. Xerox Corporation pledges to reduce total global GHG emissions by 25 percent from 2002 to 2012. Xerox achieved its initial goal by reducing total global GHG emissions by 18 percent from 2002 to 2006.

Reference:  EPA Climate Leaders

By Chuck Squatriglia

August 26, 2009

The Japanese government wants the EV evangelists at Better Place to electrify some of Tokyo’s taxis, and the cabs with cords could be on the road by January. They will use the Silicon Valley startup’s swappable batteries, which can be replaced in about the time it takes to fill a gas tank.

The pilot program between Better Place and Nihon Kotsu — Tokyo’s largest taxi company — will be the first real-world test of the innovative battery-swap technology. Better Place says the ability to quickly and easy change a dead battery is essential to eliminating the “range anxiety” that makes EVs a tough sell. Tokyo is a perfect proving ground because the city has about 60,000 taxis — more than New York, Paris or Hong Kong. Although those taxis represent just 2 percent of the vehicles in Japan, they account for 20 percent of the CO2 that country’s automobiles produce, said Kiyotaka Fujii, president of Better Place Japan.

“Japan has a very large taxi market,” Fujii said at a press conference, according to Japan Times. “I believe EVs with switchable batteries will spread to many other Asian countries, if they succeed in Japan.”

The pilot program is starting small — really small. Better Place says “up to four newly modified and fully operational” electric taxis will serve the Roppongi Hills neighborhood of central Tokyo. Better Place plans to build one of its $500,000 battery-swap stations in Roppongi Hills to keep the cars going.

But Better Place and Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry — which commissioned Better Place for the pilot program — have big plans. Better Place says it anticipates building 100 battery swap stations within the next decade and converting all of Tokyo’s taxis to electricity. It isn’t clear who’s going to build those cars, though. Although several automakers — most recently Mitsubishi with its iMiEV and Nissan with its Leaf — promise to begin selling electric vehicles, so far only Renault is building one with a swappable battery.

Still, taxis are a logical place for the technology because they can work from a centralized location — in this case, a battery swap station — and the economies of scale offered by a massive fleet could make the technology more cost-effective.

“Battery-switchable EVs are effective as vehicles that get a lot of use, such as taxis and cars used for car-sharing,” Minoru Nakamura, the crude oil distribution unit manager at the ministry’s Natural Resources and Energy Agency, said, according to Japan Times.

You can see the battery swap station in action here and check out our coverage of Better Place here.

Photo of a taxi in Tokyo’s Roppongi Hill neighborhood. megabn/Flickr

Source: Wired

George Ahn

CEO

TRIRIGA

Home Depot battled negative headlines in May when shareholders voted down a resolution to enforce more rigid and transparent energy efficiency measures. The resolution proposed that the organization assess company-wide energy use from its buildings, transportation and supply chain. It also urged Home Depot to set energy use reduction targets and report findings and progress to shareholders.

While the measure did not pass, it received support from the $20 billion Connecticut Retirement Plans and Trust, the advisory firm RiskMetrics Group (RMG), and other investors in the $7 trillion Investor Network on Climate Risk (INCR). Despite the outcome, the resolution foreshadows a future in which shareholders increasingly require reports on energy efficiency improvements and climate change risk. Organizations that fail to put the right systems in place today to meet these reporting requirements will suffer.

Findings from CERES, a coalition of investors, environmentalists and public interest groups, report that “the resolution filed with Home Depot is one of a record 67 global warming resolutions filed with 58 U.S. companies and two Canadian companies as part of the 2009 proxy season.” The findings confirm that companies must start to disclose risks from climate change now and provide stakeholder groups with a plan to mitigate those risks.

Further, despite the evidence that climate change disclosure will quickly transition from a proposal to an imperative, many companies have not started to track or abate their carbon emissions.

In fact, according to a 2009 report co-authored by CERES, over 76 percent of the S&P 500 fail to even mention climate change in SEC filings. This is surprising given that, according to a September 2008 McKinsey survey of 1,453 international executives, 50 percent said that environmental issues ranked among the top three areas that would most affect shareholder value in the next five years. While organizations appreciate investors’ concerns, they often lack the tools necessary to address them.

Further evidence that organizations will face more stringent demands from shareholders comes from INCR, an alliance of over 80 institutional investors and financial firms that collectively manage more than $7 trillion in assets. INCR has suggested that congress mandate climate change disclosure in SEC filings, and INCR Director and CERES President Mindy Lubber states, “climate change is a bottom line issue and investors have a right to know which companies are best positioned for the emerging clean energy global economy.”

To meet shareholder climate risk reporting requirements, organizations need technology that not only measures their current carbon footprint, but also manages abatement opportunities, facilitates emissions reduction initiatives and tracks progress and ROI. To gain a sense of where and how to start reporting, consider real estate. Buildings represent 48 percent of energy consumption and present the most significant opportunities to reduce environmental impact, improve operating costs, and demonstrate carbon reduction accountability.

With a technology framework that can identify underperforming building locations, provide a set of analysis tools to evaluate different carbon reduction options, and manage those options through to completion, organizations can address even the most exacting shareholder resolutions.

Investors will use a number of tools to determine how well companies address risks from climate change, including the Global Framework for Climate Change Disclosure, the Carbon Disclosure Project, CERES, and SEC Filings. Companies should seek out technology solutions that provide flexible reporting platforms to facilitate carbon reporting to multiple agencies. All else being equal, companies that adequately disclose and address risks from climate change will be rewarded with higher valuations and a lower cost of capital.

As your organization evaluates shareholder demands, ask yourself this: do you have the right tools to disclose your impact on the environment, or will you, like Home Depot, face climate nondisclosure backlash and risk losing shareholder support?

George Ahn is President and Chief Executive Officer of TRIRIGA. He has more than 18 years of software industry leadership.

Source: Environmental Leader