Month: November 2016

Your Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending November 18, 2016 follows.  Please forward it to anyone you think might be interested.  For an archive of prior posts visit the CAAV website.  It also contains news of events in the Central Shenandoah Valley as well as activities in which CAAV is involved.

Because of the Thanksgiving holiday next week, there will be no Weekly Roundup.  The next will cover the week ending December 2.

Inside Climate News has a profile of Myron Ebell, who is heading the EPA transition team for the new Trump administration.  They also have an article about Steve Bannon.

Climate

At COP22 in Marrakech the Obama administration released a report outlining its plans for deep decarbonization of the U.S. economy by 2050.  Of course, the incoming Trump administration will determine whether any of the strategies in the plan are implemented.  Consequently, Climate Home entitled one of its articles on COP22 “With appeal to Trump, Kerry (and US) leave climate leadership.”  Meanwhile, Matt Patsky, CEO of Trillium Asset Management, stated at Marrakech “…now is the time to remind the incoming administration that virtually every company in the Fortune 500 and over $100 trillion in investor assets has acknowledged the reality of climate change and the need to address in head on.”  In addition, in an open letter, more than 360 businesses and investors reaffirmed their commitment to the Paris Agreement on climate change.  Finally, the Marrakech Action Proclamation reaffirmed the commitment of the world’s nations to fight climate change.

In a report released on Wednesday, the U.N. Development Programme said that limiting global temperature rise to 1.5°C would avoid economic losses by 2050 of $12 trillion, or around 10% of the world’s GDP, compared to staying on the current track of at least 3°C of warming.  Also, the World Bank issued a report on the impacts of natural disasters such as storms, floods, and droughts on the global economy.  The report finds that such events push 26 million people into poverty each year and cost the global economy more than half a trillion dollars in lost consumption.

A new report from the Global Carbon Project suggests that for the third straight year the global CO₂ emission rate stayed almost constant.  Furthermore, the flattening occurred despite steady global economic growth above 3% per year.

A new paper in the journal Science investigated the impacts of climate change on 94 ecological processes worldwide and found that 84% were impacted, even though global average temperatures have only increased 1°C.

A study published on Tuesday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that the disappearance of kelp from waters near Coffs Harbour in Australia coincided with a threefold increase in the number of tropical fish in the region.  The deforestation coincided with an 0.6°C temperature rise, which had no direct impact on the kelp, but did attract the tropical fish.

The Canadian Arctic is extremely warm right now while Siberia is extremely cold.  One impact of the warm weather is to prevent Arctic sea ice from forming as rapidly as it usually does, driving its extent to the lowest value ever recorded for mid-November.

The World Meteorological Organization has joined other scientific organizations in projecting that 2016 will set another global temperature record.  RealClimate has a post discussing this record heat in the context of incoming solar radiation, which is currently quite low.  The Guardian has collected stories from people all over the world who have been impacted by this year’s record heat.

Energy

The International Energy Agency (IEA) has released its World Energy Outlook for 2016.  In it they joined several organizations in pointing out that the national commitments in the Paris Climate Agreement were insufficient to meet the goal of keeping global warming well below 2°C.  Rather, the IEA projected that global temperatures would rise 2.7°C by 2100 if all commitments were met.  It also decreased in half its projections of future coal use, primarily due to decreases in China, where coal use peaked in 2013.  Nevertheless, the report projected that coal use in 2040 would be twice that needed for a 2°C path.

According to a new report by the Georgetown Climate Center, 19 states have developed strong policies aimed at diversifying their energy sources and cutting carbon emissions.  According to some renewable energy experts, these states have driven much of the progress on renewable energy and are unlikely to stop because of policy changes in a new administration.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a technology that has been a long time coming, but which is necessary if global warming is to be held below 1.5°C.  That is because that limit can only be met by removing CO₂ from the atmosphere.  Thus, many are hoping that a Trump presidency will lead to more rapid development of CCS, although if that occurs it will be to help the coal industry.  Speaking of coal, there is a new documentary, Blood on the Mountain, that opens November 18 in New York and Los Angeles.  The Atlantic has a 6 minute excerpt.

The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) has produced a comprehensive and balanced rate design manualthat electric utility regulators can use as a guide when they are considering appropriate policies for distributed energy resources, such as solar and wind.

The U.S. Geological Survey announced Tuesday that a deposit in West Texas contains 20 billion barrels of oil and 16 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, making it the largest deposit ever discovered in the U.S.  All of it is “technically recoverable.”  Meanwhile, on the same day, the U.S. Interior Department finalized rules aimed at preventing methane leaks from oil and gas production on federal and tribal lands.  The updated regulations could avoid wasting up to 41 billion cubic feet (BCF) of natural gas per year.  Also, on Friday, as part of a new five-year plan for energy development in federal waters, the Obama administration banned offshore drilling in the Arctic.  It also dropped plans to allow companies to drill for oil and natural gas in the Atlantic Ocean off four southeastern states.

On Wednesday the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the National League of Cities launched the Better Buildings Zero Energy Districts Accelerator to move the building market toward adopting sustainable practices to help districts achieve zero energy use in buildings.  Through the Zero Energy Districts Accelerator, partners will work with DOE to outline and refine best practice approaches and address market barriers to achieving zero energy adoption.

On Monday Alaska Airlines flew a commercial flight from Seattle to Washington, D.C., using jet fuel containing 20% alcohol derived from wood scraps by a Colorado-based company.

Your Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending November 11, 2016 follows.  Please forward it to anyone you think might be interested.

Given Donald Trump’s statements concerning climate change, it is not surprising that his election as President on Tuesday has generated a lot of buzz in both the domestic and international media.  Here are some articles that are relevant to the question of how he will handle climate and energy.

1. “Donald Trump could put climate change on course for ‘danger zone’”
2. “What Trump can—and can’t—do all by himself on climate”
3. “Trump win signals titanic U-turn on energy, climate policies”
4. “Trump could pull out of global climate accord in a year: lawyers”
5. “The Paris Agreement will survive President Trump”
6. “Climate change: Nations will push ahead with plans despite Trump”
7. “‘Trump effect’ will test global momentum on climate change”
8. “All bets are off: 4 takeaways on what President Trump means for the power sector”
9. “How President Trump could upend Obama’s climate and energy legacy”
10. Ivy Main – “Why Trump won’t stop the clean energy revolution”

Here is episode 4 of Global Weirding with Katharine Hayhoe.  It is important to recognize that many conservatives accept the science of climate change and are working to convince their associates of the need for action.  For example, consider the case of Alex Bozmoski of the Energy and Enterprise Initiative at George Mason University.

Climate

A federal judge in Eugene, OR, ruled on Thursday that a lawsuit filed by young climate activists, who contend the U.S. government is failing to protect them from the harmful effects of greenhouse gas emissions, can move forward.  U.S. District Judge Ann Aiken denied motions by the federal government and trade groups representing energy companies to dismiss the lawsuit.  The plaintiffs are seeking a court order that requires the government to create a plan to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions released by the burning of fossil fuels.  The press release from Our Children’s Trust can be found here.  Judge Aiken’s Opinion and Order can be found here.

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examines the variability in sea level rise around the globe for two warming scenarios.  One surprising finding is that because of variability in sea level rise associated with factors ranging from ocean circulation patterns to mass redistribution, “more than 90% of coastal areas will experience sea level rise exceeding the global estimate.”  One particularly vulnerable region is the U.S. East Coast, which could experience a foot of rise by 2040 under a business-as-usual scenario.  Andrew Freedman has a list of the world’s largest cities that are particularly vulnerable to sea level rise.

Continued CO₂ emissions are causing two major stressors on coral reefs: elevated sea surface temperatures and ocean acidification.  Now research published in the journal PLOS One combines mapping of where people most depend on reefs for their livelihood with mapping of areas where reefs are most under stress.  The results show that countries in Southeast Asia would bear the brunt of the damage, but so would coastal communities in western Mexico and parts of Australia, Japan and Saudi Arabia, with potentially severe economic consequences.

Irrespective of Donald Trump’s election, keeping global warming below 2°C (relative to preindustrial times) may have just gotten a whole lot harder.  That is because new research published this week in Science Advances suggests that Earth is more sensitive to greenhouse gases when it is warmer, as it is now.  If this is true, it means that under business-as-usual emissions Earth’s average temperature could rise by 4.8°C to 7.4°C by 2100 rather than by the 2.6°C to 4.8°C range projected by the IPCC.

The World Meteorological Organization has issued a new report examining Earth’s climate and weather over the period 2011-2015.  Not surprisingly, it was the warmest five year period on record.  They also found that many extreme events in the period have had their probabilities substantially increased, by a factor of 10 or more in some cases.  NOAA announced on Tuesday that October was the third warmest on record in the U.S.  In addition, 37 states had one of their five warmest January-October periods.

A new study, published in Nature Communications, explains why the rate of increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere leveled off and became constant this century.  It was because of increased plant growth in response to increased CO₂ concentrations and temperature.  As stated by the authors, “Enhanced carbon uptake by the biosphere to date has slowed the growth rate of atmospheric CO₂ and our results [suggest] uptake has been especially strong recently.  Without effective reduction of global CO₂ emissions, however, future climate change remains a stark reality.”

New research, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, found that a 40% tax on beef and a 20% tax on milk would be required to account for the damage their production causes people via climate change.  Instituting such a tax would discourage people from consuming as much of these foods, reducing both emissions and illness.  The research also found that the taxes needed to compensate for climate damage were 15% on lamb, 8.5% on chicken, 7% on pork and 5% on eggs.

In October 2006 Nicholas Stern issued his important report on the economic impacts of climate change.  Now, in an interview with Robin McKie of The Observer, he reflected on his warning that the cost of inaction would be far greater for future generations than the costs of actions taken today: “With hindsight, I now realize that I underestimated the risks.  I should have been much stronger in what I said in the report about the costs of inaction.  I underplayed the dangers.”

Energy

Voters in the state of Washington voted down a proposal for a revenue-neutral carbon tax, even though it would have reduced other taxes and provided grants to households with low and moderate incomes to help off-set the costs of the new tax.  The vote raises questions as to what exactly “revenue neutral” means and how a carbon tax could be structured so that a broad segment of the electorate favored it.

TransCanada has said it hopes to persuade a new Trump administration to revive the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline.  Meanwhile, Energy Transfer Partners, owner of the Dakota Access Pipeline, has said it is “mobilizing horizontal drilling equipment” in preparation for tunneling under Lake Oahe, a reservoir on the Missouri river near the protest camps and Standing Rock Sioux reservation. The corporation said it would be ready to start crossing the water in two weeks and felt that federal approval for the drilling was “imminent”.  The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, on the other hand, once again called on Energy Transfer Partners to voluntarily stop work in the area.

A new paper in the journal Current Biology reports on a study into bat mortality by wind farms.  It found that Environmental Impact Analyses do not predict the risks to bats accurately, and even in those cases where high risk was correctly identified, the mitigation deployed did not avert the risk.  Hopefully, ongoing research into the causes and repercussions of bat fatalities at wind farms will help minimize them.

The city of Denver plans to add 200 plug-in electric vehicles to its fleet by 2020.  Toyota announced that it will introduce a fully electric vehicle at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.  This will be quite a change for them because they have been a major proponent of fuel cell vehicles.  Meanwhile, the Alliance of Automobile Manufactures asked the incoming Trump administration to roll back fuel efficiency standards issued during the Obama administration.

The EU is planning to spend €320 “in a comprehensive, inclusive and ambitious plan for building up ocean energy in Europe” according to environment commissioner, Karmenu Vella.  The money is intended to serve as a buffer for companies that are attempting to cross the “valley of death” between demonstration projects and the energy market.

Some renewable energy developers are exploring the installation of both solar and wind systems at the same site.  They claim that there are several benefits from doing so, such as saving money on grid connections, site development, and regulatory approvals.  In addition, combined systems can yield up to twice the amount of electricity as either system working alone.

Your Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending November 4, 2016 follows.  Please forward it to anyone you think might be interested

Since the election is Tuesday, I thought I should include Chris Mooney’s recent analysis of “What the election outcome will really mean for climate and energy” as well as Adam Wernick’s analysis of Clinton’s climate plan.

Climate

The Paris Climate Agreement goes into force on Friday.  The UN COP22 climate summit will be held in Marrakech, Morocco on November 7-18.  According to Sara Stefanini at Politico the major tasks at Marrakech are “to decide on the details of how to make sure each country is actually reducing its emissions (and not just saying it is); how to compensate poorer countries for the damage done by hurricanes, floods, droughts and other effects of climate change; and how to shore up financial aid from the developed to the developing world.”  She also presents five things you should know about the summit.

In August I provided a link to an article in The New Republic by Bill McKibbon in which he invoked the war metaphor to characterize our struggle against climate change.  Now, writing in The New York Times, social scientist Eric Godoy and philosopher Aaron Jaffe argue that is the wrong metaphor to use.  Rather, they conclude that climate change demands “a revolution to democratize all forms of power,” including economic and political power.  In their essay, Godoy and Jaffe make justice a central issue.  Hence it is interesting that another article this week focused on the disproportionate displacement of the poor in the U.S. following climate-related disasters and a new report concluded that building coal-fired power plants does little to help the poor, and often actually makes them poorer.

Fall “leaf peeping” is a major pleasure for folk in many parts of the world, including the Shenandoah Valley and the Blue Ridge Mountains.  It is also a major economic activity.  Hence, the impacts of climate change on the timing and intensity of fall color changes are of interest to many people.  Writing in The New York Times, Craig Smith examines the multiple ways in which climate change is shaping fall colors.

According to a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, the record low snowpack in the western mountains of the U.S. during the winter of 2014-2015 was primarily due to high temperatures caused by both greenhouse gases and, in some areas, an enormous patch of warm water in the northern Pacific Ocean, dubbed “The Blob.”

The United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) issued its Emissions Gap Report for 2016, which compares the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement to the pledges of its signatories.  The main take-home message is that unless nations ramp up their carbon-reduction pledges before 2020, it will be nearly impossible to keep warming to 2°C.  Chris Mooney of the Washington Post has a good explanation of “emissions gap.”

A paper published in the journal Science this week finds that there is an essentially linear relationship between CO₂ emissions and the loss of Arctic sea ice.  For every metric ton of CO₂ emitted, a square meter of ice is lost.  Since the average person in the U.S. emits around 16 metric tons of CO₂ per year, each of us is responsible for the loss of around 48 square meters (517 square feet) of ice each year from the ice cover left at the end of the summer.  The results also mean that exhaustion of the carbon budget for 2°C warming will be sufficient to make the Arctic Ocean ice free by the end of summer.  In addition, researchers at NASA have noted a new trend in sea ice melt.  Not only is seasonal ice melting, but older ice that has remained frozen for long periods is also showing signs of significant thinning.  Be sure and watch the video associated with this article.  Finally, a new paper in Nature Climate Change finds that a decrease in Arctic sea ice is associated with colder temperatures in eastern North America during March, so what happens in the Arctic may well influence the weather down here.

A new study in the journal Nature Geoscience examines how clouds may have influenced Earth’s warming over the past several decades.  Satellite data have identified an increase in low-level clouds in the tropics over the eastern Pacific Ocean since the 1980s. The authors of the new study say this has likely reduced the pace of recent warming, although the effect is expected to be short-lived.  The findings have implications for the estimation of climate sensitivity.

A new study, published in the journal Science, has found that, unless global warming is limited to 1.5°C above preindustrial levels, Mediterranean ecosystems will change more than they have at any time during the past 10,000 years.  If warming were to reach 2°C, deserts would expand substantially in Spain, North Africa and the Near East.  Vegetation would also be affected, with deciduous trees beginning to disappear from the Mediterranean basin and be replaced with other vegetation.

Energy

You may recall that I have linked to articles in the past about pumped storage, which typically pumps water uphill to a reservoir when excess power is available, and then lets it flow down again through generators (the pumps running backwards) when power is needed.  Its limitation is that you need a hill suitable for putting a reservoir on.  Now two different companies have come up with schemes whereby one can have pumped storage without a hill (although an ocean or lake is needed).

The chief executives of ten oil and gas companies, including BP, Saudi Aramco, Royal Dutch Shell, Statoil, and Total, announced on Friday that the companies are joining forces to create an investment fund to develop technologies to decrease methane leaks, increase fuel efficiency of cars and trucks, and reduce costs of carbon capture and storage (CCS) technology.  In an extended feature in The New York Times, Clifford Krauss examined how “Big Oil Slowly Adapts to a Warming World.”

There was both good news and bad news this week concerning energy consumption in the transportation sector.  First the bad news.  U.S. gasoline consumption set a record high of 9.7 million barrels a day in June of this year, surpassing the old record of 9.6 million barrels a day set in July 2007.  The good news is that the average fuel economy of cars in the U.S. in 2015 was 24.8 mpg, 0.5 mpg higher than the 2014 average.  Finally, on the subject of cars, in October total sales of the Nissan Leaf reached 100,000.  The Chevy Volt reached that total in July.

The cost of electricity from offshore wind dropped 28% globally in the second half of 2016 compared to the same period last year, according to a new analysis. The price decline is driven by the use of larger turbines and competitive auctions for new wind projects in Europe.  Meanwhile, renewables may well be the way to an electrified future for Africa, allowing countries there to leapfrog over the fossil-fuel-based energy systems found in much of the rest of the world, just as they have leapfrogged over landline telephones.  Nevertheless, Michael Liebreich, founder of Bloomberg New Energy Finance, predicted that renewable energy investment probably has reached a peak of $349 billion that won’t be surpassed for at least five years, primarily because the falling price of wind and solar will allow the installation of more capacity at less cost.

PricewaterhouseCoopers’ (PwC) annual Low Carbon Economy Index report for 2016 has found that the global carbon intensity (emissions per unit of GDP) fell by 2.8% in 2015.  This was more than double the average fall of 1.3% between 2000 and 2014, but far below the 6.5% required to stay within the 2°C warming limit set by last year’s Paris agreement.  The biggest driver was a decline in China’s coal consumption, which resulted in a 6.4% drop in its carbon intensity.

Because there is currently no price on CO₂ emissions, coal- or gas-fired power plants are cheaper to build and operate than nuclear power plants, even though the latter provide CO₂-free electricity.  Thus, when the goal is simply to minimize the “cost” of electricity, the decision is to shut down nuclear power plants before the end of their useful life and replace them with coal- or gas-fired plants, thereby increasing CO₂ emissions.  Unfortunately, when nuclear power plants close prematurely, their waste is left stranded at the site.