Month: June 2018

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending June 29, 2018 follows.  Please forward the URL to anyone you think might be interested.

Policy and Politics

After less than a year on the job, Robert Powelson said Thursday he would resign from FERC in mid-August to lead the National Association of Water Companies.  Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement on Wednesday.  Writing for The Atlantic, Robinson Meyer solicited opinions on what this will likely mean for environmental law, including on climate change.  On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit voted to keep litigation over the Clean Power Plan on hold for another 60 days.  This prompted two judges to say they would not vote for such a delay again.  Eleven states and the District of Columbia sued the Trump administration on Wednesday, demanding enforcement of regulations on super-polluting greenhouse gases (hydrofluorocarbons) in air conditioners and refrigerators.  A similar lawsuit was filed by environmentalists on Tuesday.  You may recall that San Francisco and Oakland had sued BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Shell to help pay for the costs of building seawalls and other projects to adapt to climate change.  Well, the judge threw out the case on Tuesday, reasoning that no single judge and jury should make a decision impacting the entire world.

Under President Barack Obama, the U.S. pledged a 26% to 28% cut in greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels as a signatory to the Paris Climate Agreement.  Unfortunately, according to a new report from the Rhodium Group LLC, we are on track to reduce emissions by only 12% to 20%.  A new PAC, called Americans for Carbon Dividends, has been formed by former Senators Trent Lott (R, MS) and John Breaux (D, LA).  Its purpose is to educate the public about and lobby for, a carbon tax-and-dividend.  Perhaps young Republicans, who are much more interested than their elders in addressing climate change, will find some of the ideas appealing.  The bipartisan Climate Solutions Caucus in the House just added six more members, bringing the total membership to 84.  In a statement released Monday, NOAA said it will not drop the word “climate” from its mission statement nor will it de-emphasize research into climate change and resource conservation.

June 23^rd was the 30^th anniversary of climate scientist James Hansen’s prescient testimony before a Senate committee.  Elizabeth Kolbert, among others, reflected on the anniversary, Eric Holthaus solicited the opinions of ten climate scientists about Hansen’s impact on them, and Axios summarized the state of things.  In commemoration of the anniversary, Hansen himself presented his ideas about what should be done in an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe, which was reprinted on Hansen’s blog.  Bill McKibben had an essay in The Guardian on Wednesday about the fight against a replacement pipeline (called Enbridge Energy Line 3) proposed to carry tar sands oil from Canada to the U.S., but Minnesota regulators approved it on Thursday.  Joe Romm has published a new book, entitled How to Go Viral and Reach Millions.  John Abraham reviewed the book at The Guardian.  Writing at Yale Climate Connections, Michael Svoboda reviewed Paul Schader’s new film First Reformed, starring Ethan Hawke, asking whether it meets the three criteria of a good cli-fi movie.  Spoiler alert: the review revealed key plot points.

Climate

Climate Home News (CHN) obtained a leaked copy of the 2^nd draft of the “Summary for Policymakers” in the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C to be released later this year.  In the new summary, the authors make clear that the difference between warming of 1.5°C and 2°C would be “substantial” and damaging to communities, economies, and ecosystems across the world.  CHN published an annotated version of the summary, showing the differences between the two drafts.  Meanwhile, a study published Tuesday in Nature Climate Change found that under 1.5°C of warming, more than 100 million Europeans would typically see summer heat that exceeds anything in the 1950-2017 observed record every other year.  Under 2°C of warming, the frequency would be two of every three years.

A new study by Global Forest Watch, which is affiliated with the World Resources Institute, found that in 2017 deforestation led to the clearing of a land area the size of Italy.  Unfortunately, the falling trend in Brazil was reversed amid political instability and forest destruction soared in Colombia.  Carbon emissions associated with the lost forests were about the same as total emissions from the U.S.

The temperature in the coastal city of Quriyat, Oman, never dropped below 108.7°F (42.6°C) on Tuesday, most likely the highest minimum temperature ever observed on Earth.

A new report from the World Bank paints an ominous picture of the future for South Asia (India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Nepal, Bhutan, and Bangladesh).  If nothing is done to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions, climate change could sharply diminish living conditions for up to 800 million people.  Even if we act to reduce emissions, 375 million are still expected to be affected.

New research, published in Nature Climate Change, finds that warming conditions and decreasing sea ice volume “may soon” see the Barents Sea complete a transition from cold, fresh Arctic waters to a warm, salty Atlantic regime, with “unknown consequences” for the wider ecosystem and commercial fishing.  Other research, published in Nature, has uncovered a new threat to endangered coral reefs worldwide: most are incapable of growing quickly enough to compensate for rising sea levels triggered by global warming.

Changing rainfall patterns pose a threat to ecosystems, people, and infrastructure as longer and more intense rainfall events release large quantities of water over short time periods.  Furthermore, across the U.S., reservoirs that supply drinking water and lakes used for recreation are experiencing toxic algal blooms with growing frequency as waters warm.  Many climate-related events are now occurring as CO₂ concentrations in the atmosphere increase.  Understanding how multiple extreme events interact is critical to understanding the risks associated with climate change.

Energy

A new paper in the journal Nature Climate Change focuses on “residual emissions,” which are all the leftover sources of carbon pollution we have to deal with after cleaning up electricity generation.  Even with aggressive policies to decarbonize the global economy, the researchers estimate that 1,000 gigatons of residual carbon emissions will accumulate in the atmosphere by 2100, which is more than the total carbon budget for keeping warming below 1.5°C.  That is why negative emissions will be required.

As we move toward a zero-emissions economy, about 27% of current CO₂ emissions will be difficult to eliminate, according to a new paper in the journal Science.  They result from long-haul shipping and transportation, cement and steel production, and power generation facilities that are turned on only when needed.  We need to start addressing those emissions now so that technologies will be available when all the “easy” emissions have been eliminated.  On Thursday, Yale Environment 360 explored current efforts in the shipping industry to reduce emissions.

There is no question that David Roberts at Vox is a cheerleader for electric vehicles (EVs), as is quite apparent from his latest column.  Nevertheless, his summary of the latest developments in the war for EV adoption is well worth reading, particularly if you think EVs are just a passing fad.  He makes two important points that shouldn’t be overlooked: (1) significant resources are being put into vehicle charging infrastructure, and (2) a coalition of automakers, utilities, and civic groups is working to develop a set of principles by which policymakers can advance electric transportation.  Speaking of infrastructure, BP is buying the UK’s largest electric charging network, Chargemaster.  BP now provides fuel at over 1200 convenience stores in the UK and wants to ensure that customers keep coming after they shift to EVs.

A consortium led by Swiss investor Partners Group and Royal Dutch Shell said it has secured financing for the building of a 1.3 billion euros ($1.5 billion) wind farm in the Dutch part of the North Sea.

At the World Gas Conference in Washington, DC, Total SA Chief Executive Patrick Pouyanne said on Tuesday “This idea of natural gas as a transition fuel to renewables is strange.  Natural gas is a solution (to climate change). It’s been scientifically proven.”  Pouyanne’s views were echoed by others who joined him on an industry panel, including executives from ConocoPhillips, BP Plc, Equinor Asa, and Qatar Petroleum.  Oh?  As I recall, James Hansen once said something to the effect that natural gas doesn’t change the destination, it just changes how fast we get there.  It should be noted that last week, a new study was published in Science showing that the amount of methane leaking from the nation’s oil and gas fields may be 60% higher than the official estimates of the EPA, making its climate impact in the short-term roughly the same as the CO₂ emissions from all U.S. coal-fired power plants.

Continuing advances in solar cell design may soon make it possible to use the windows in buildings as transparent solar panels, allowing buildings to generate significant amounts of their energy needs.

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending June 15, 2018 follows.  Please forward the URL to anyone you think might be interested.

Policy and Politics

President Donald Trump is the first president since 1941 not to name a science adviser, a position created during World War II to guide the Oval Office on scientific and technical matters.  There is also no chief scientist at the State Department or the Department of Agriculture and both the Interior Department and NOAA have disbanded climate science advisory committees.  However, this week the White House nominated Mary Neumayr, the current chief of staff of the Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), to lead it.  The CEQ coordinates environmental activities across federal agencies and implements the National Environmental Policy Act.  President Trump has also nominated Daniel Simmons, a former fossil fuel lobbyist who has questioned climate science, to head the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.  President Trump skipped the G7’s formal discussions on climate change and refused to join in common statements by the other six nations reaffirming their commitment to the Paris climate agreement, which he wants to abandon.  Instead, the U.S. unilaterally promoted fossil fuels.

The drip, drip, drip of allegations of unethical behavior on the part of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt continued this week with revelations by The New York Times that senior staff members at the EPA frequently felt pressured by Pruitt to help in personal matters and obtain special favors for his family.  Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-OK) said in an interview Wednesday that he has requested a face-to-face meeting with Pruitt to discuss the allegations of ethical misconduct dogging him.  Furthermore, Wyoming Sen. John Barrasso (R), chair of the Senate environment committee that has oversight of the EPA, said that he plans to call Pruitt to testify before his panel about his scandals later this year.  So how does Pruitt keep his job?  Margaret Talbot at The New Yorker posits that it is because he is an evangelical Christian.  The Government Accountability Office has agreed to review the Trump administration’s method for calculating the social cost of carbon.  All five members of FERC told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that they see no immediate national security emergency to justify propping up coal and nuclear power plants with a government order.  FERC Commissioner Cheryl LaFleur announced Wednesday that she will consider the broad climate impacts of new natural gas infrastructure when voting on whether to approve new projects.

There is a new video channel on You Tube called “Hot Mess” that presents climate-related videos.  You can see an episode about the 97% consensus at Skeptical Science.  Adam Frank, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, had an opinion piece in The New York Times entitled “Earth will survive.  We may not.”  Climate scientist Kate Marvel had an interesting (and amusing) column at Scientific American about “Why I won’t debate science” and environmentalist Bill McKibben wrote in The Guardian about Pope Francis’ meeting with a gathering of fossil fuel executives at the Vatican.  In an analysis in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Dana Nuccitelli argued that the “Benefits of curbing climate change far outweigh costs.”  At Vox, David Roberts examined models used to estimate the costs ofh climate change in an essay entitled “We are almost certainly underestimating the economic risks of climate change.”  (Be sure to at least read the last section.)

Climate

The results of the “Ice Sheet Mass Balance Inter-Comparison Exercise” were published Wednesday in the journal Nature.  The study focused on Antarctica and found that the melt rate has tripled during the past decade, from 73 to 219 billion tons of ice annually.  Furthermore, the rate was 49 billion tons per year from 1992 through 1997.  The rapid, recent changes are almost entirely driven by the West Antarctic ice sheet, which is being melted from below by warm ocean waters.  Carbon Brief has a more detailed report.

Reuters has obtained a draft copy of the IPCC’s report on keeping global warming below 1.5°C, on average.  According to the report, “If emissions continue at their present rate, human-induced warming will exceed 1.5°C by around 2040” and slow economic growth.

Four countries – the US, China, Brazil, and Argentina – produce more than two thirds of the world’s corn.  A new paper, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), projects that the mean total corn production in these countries will decline by 8-18% if the planet warms by 2°C, and 19-46% with 4°C of warming.  Today, the chance of these four countries all having production losses of more than 10% in the same year is close to zero.  However, the study suggests this likelihood increases to 7% under 2°C warming and 86% under 4°C.  Another paper in PNAS found that by the end of this century, less water and hotter air will combine to cut average yields of vegetables by nearly one-third.  Finally, a paper in the journal Nature, reported that the increased CO₂ levels and temperatures associated with climate change will reduce the mineral content and nutritional value of vegetables and legumes.

Climate change is impacting fisheries globally as fish migrate due to warming oceans.  A new study, published in the journal Science on Friday, used modeling to investigate the migration patterns of 892 species of commercially important fish as they moved through 261 “exclusive economic zones.”  On average, fish are venturing into new territories at 43 miles per decade, a pace expected to continue and accelerate, outpacing the rate at which lawmakers are handling jurisdictional disputes.

Spring in Europe was unusually warm this year.  That caused butterflies to hatch early, but it didn’t have a similar impact on the opening of flowers.  As a result, plants and their pollinators are out of sync, to the detriment of both.

The idea that climate change has caused and will cause human conflict and mass migrations has become more and more accepted.  But is this really true?  Mark Maslin, a Professor at University College London, discussed this question at The Conversation, based on a paper he and a graduate student recently published in Nature.

Energy

This week BP released its annual “Statistical Review of World Energy.”  It found that energy demand accelerated in 2017 by 2.2%, but a 17% increase in solar and wind did little to offset the dominance of fossil fuels.  Natural gas consumption rose by 3%, followed by a 1.8% rise in oil demand, and a 1% increase in coal consumption.  Carbon Brief provided a detailed analysis.  Former BP chief executive Tony Hayward cast doubt over the worldwide energy transition, arguing that the penetration of renewables worldwide is being outpaced by the demand for growth.  David Roberts agrees.  Here in the U.S., the solar market added 2.5 GW of solar PV in the first quarter of this year, representing annual growth of 13%, according to the latest “U.S. Solar Market Insight Report” from GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association.

Flow batteries offer several advantages over lithium-ion batteries for large-scale systems when electricity must be supplied for several hours, such as in the evening after the sun has set.  Andy Colthorpe wrote about the obstacles facing the flow battery industry in its fight for commercialization.  Perhaps the investment by Breakthrough Energy Ventures in the flow battery startup Form Energy will help overcome them.

Scotland has met its annual greenhouse gas reduction target for the third consecutive year.  Greenhouse gas emissions fell by 49% from 1990 to 2016.  However, according to a new report, Germany will not meet its 2020 reduction target, achieving only a 32% reduction since 1990, rather than the 40% target.

A new study, published the journal Nature Communications, has found that storing billions of metric tons of CO₂ underground would be a safe and effective way to help limit the extent of climate change.

On Thursday Senior U.S. District Judge Christina Armijo of Albuquerque ordered the BLM to conduct further analysis on the environmental impact of potential drilling for oil and gas on more than 19,000 acres in the Santa Fe National Forest.  Most significantly, the judge found that federal environmental law requires the BLM to consider the “downstream” and cumulative impacts on climate change of the use of the fuel produced from leases on public lands.

“The Economics of Clean Energy Portfolios,” released by the Rocky Mountain Institute last month, showed that emerging mixes of renewable energy, storage, and other distributed energy resources may soon be more cost effective than natural gas plants in most regions of the U.S.  Furthermore, the report said “The same technological innovations and price declines in renewable energy that have already contributed to early coal-plant retirement are now threatening to strand investments in natural gas.”

The Weekly Roundup of Climate and Energy News for the week ending June 8, 2018 follows.  Please forward the Roundup to anyone you think might be interested.

Sincere thanks to Bishop Dansby and Joy Loving for compiling the Weekly Roundup while I was out of town.

Policy and Politics

Earlier, I provided a link to an article about NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine changing his mind on the existence of man-made climate change.  He said he did so because he “read a lot.”  Furthermore, in a recent meeting with a small group of reporters, he voiced support for two climate studies that the Trump administration had wanted to cut.  Hawaii Governor David Ige signed three important bills on Monday.  One commits the state to becoming fully carbon neutral by 2045.  Another will use carbon offsets to help fund planting trees throughout Hawaii.  The third requires new building projects to consider how high sea levels will rise in their engineering decisions.

Last Friday, a Washington D.C. judge ordered the EPA to comply with a legal request to produce scientific evidence backing Administrator Scott Pruitt’s claim that human activity is not the largest factor causing global climate change.  On Thursday, the EPA took its first step toward a comprehensive overhaul of the cost-benefit calculations that underpin the entire array of its regulations, including actions to rein in climate change.  Also last Friday, the White House called on Energy Secretary Rick Perry to take immediate steps to keep both coal and nuclear power plants running, backing Perry’s claim that plant closures threaten national security.  The proposal is similar to one advocated by coal magnate Robert E. Murray.  A report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance found that the proposal could lead to a reduction in CO₂ emissions because nuclear power would benefit more than coal.  While the Trump administration continues its coal advocacy, changes of government in Italy and Spain hold out the promise of more rapid decarbonization of the EU.  At the G7 meeting in Canada, institutional investors with $26 trillion in assets called on leaders to phase out the use of coal in power generation to help limit climate change, despite strong opposition from Washington.

This past week the Poor People’s Campaign turned its attention to environmental and climate justice.  In an opinion piece in The Guardian on Thursday, Bill McKibben reminded us that “The constant sense of crisis that the president creates robs us of the concentration we need to focus on long-term issues like climate change.”  We even have a hard time talking about it.  Laurie Goering had some ideas about how to initiate conversations on climate.  Speaking of conversations, Amy Brady had one with novelist Sam Miller about his new cli-fi book Blackfish City.  Sierra Club’s new documentary movie Reinventing Power: America’s Renewable Energy Boom lets people across the U.S. tell their own stories of how wind and solar have changed their lives and benefitted the diverse regions where they live.

Climate

A new paper in the journal Nature reported that the speed at which tropical cyclones move decreased by an average of 10% globally between 1949 and 2016.  The western north Pacific had the greatest decrease, at 20%.  Declining speed is important because slower storms linger longer, dumping more rain in a given location.  On the subject of storm-associated rainfall, Peter Sinclair has a new video explaining how the warm Gulf of Mexico fueled the unprecedented rainfall associated with Hurricane Harvey.

A new study by NOAA scientists revealed that the frequency of coastal “sunny-day flooding” doubled in the U.S. over the last 30 years.  Archeologists in the U.S. and around the world are concerned about the impact on archeological sites of such flooding and the associated sea level rise.

Last month was the warmest May on record for the U.S.  Furthermore, almost 8,600 local heat records were broken or tied during the month.  Carbon dioxide levels measured at NOAA’s Mauna Loa Atmospheric Baseline Observatory exceeded 411 parts per million (ppm) in May, the highest monthly average ever recorded.  Perhaps more importantly, the rate of increase of CO₂ in the atmosphere has gone from 1.5 ppm/year in the 1990s to 2.2 ppm/year now.

Catalyzed by a new report on human displacement as a result of “natural” disasters, Harjeet Singh wrote about the global awakening to the scale of the coming displacement and migration associated with climate change.

A paper published last week in Science revealed that animal farming takes up 83% of the world’s agricultural land but delivers only 18% of our calories. A plant-based diet cuts the use of land by 76% and halves the greenhouse gases caused by food production.  George Monbiot used these findings as the starting point for an opinion piece in The Guardian.

A steep decline in coral cover across the Great Barrier Reef is a phenomenon that “has not been observed in the historical record”, a new report by the Australian Institute of Marine Science says.  Furthermore, survey reefs in the northern section, the worst hit by climate-induced marine heatwaves, have lost about half their coral cover.

Energy

A new study, published in Nature Energy, describes a scenario by which global warming is limited to 1.5°C by improving energy efficiency, with no use of negative emissions technologies (NETs).  On the other hand, another study concluded that given the continued increase in CO₂ emissions, it will be impossible to keep warming below 2°C and thus that should now be considered an aspirational goal.

In past Roundups I have provided links to articles about NETs, which will most likely be required to keep warming below 1.5°C, in spite of the first article in the preceding paragraph.  A team of scientists from the Mercator Research Institute at the University of Leeds in the UK and the University of Wisconsin-Madison has just published a three-part literature review in the journal Environmental Research Letters about NETs.  They presented the big picture of the challenge facing us in The Washington Post and provided a more comprehensive presentation of their findings at Carbon Brief.  An article published online on Thursday in the journal Joule described the results of a study achieving direct air capture (DAC) of CO₂, the first step in some NET processes.  The authors of the paper state: “Depending on financial assumptions, energy costs, and the specific choice of inputs and outputs, the levelized cost per ton CO₂ captured from the atmosphere ranges from 94 to 232 $/t-CO₂.”  This is significantly lower than the costs from previous DAC studies and will make it possible to produce liquid fuels from the CO₂ and hydrogen obtained from renewable energy.  Such fuels will have net zero emissions, not negative emissions.

David Roberts at Vox described new interactive maps at Carbon Brief that show changes in the amount of coal generation of electricity during the 21^st Century.  Roberts said he considered his post to be an “amuse-bouche — a few images to whet your appetite for the bigger meal over at Carbon Brief.”  He also tackled the difficult task of explaining “software-defined electricity” (SDE) and how its application can greatly increase the energy efficiency of almost all devices that use electricity, thereby decreasing the amount that must be generated.

Solar developers told Reuters that President Donald Trump’s tariff on imported solar panels led U.S. renewable energy companies to cancel or freeze investments of more than $2.5 billion in large installation projects.  That’s more than double the approximately $1 billion in new spending plans announced by firms building or expanding U.S. solar panel factories to take advantage of the tax on imports.  However, energy analysts say the Chinese government’s decision to dramatically cut its solar power subsidies will create a glut of solar panels and send their prices tumbling worldwide, which should help solar installers.

An estimated 178 GW of renewable power was added worldwide in 2017 – representing 70% of net additions – according to a new report from the renewables policy organization REN21.  New investment in renewables was nearly $279 billion, more than double what went to new fossil fuel and nuclear power capacity.  A new study, published on Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change, has found that plunging prices for renewable energy and rapidly increasing investment in low-carbon technologies could leave fossil fuel companies with trillions in stranded assets and spark a global financial crisis.  Fiona Harvey examined what is meant by a “carbon bubble” and what might happen should it burst.

The world’s first grid-scale liquid air energy storage (LAES) facility has been built in the UK.  When excess power is available, it is used to cool air into liquid form.  Then, when power is needed, the air is allowed to expand back into gaseous form and the energy released is used to drive a turbine-driven generator.