Category: Climate chaos

From Cleantech

Blenheim, New Zealand-based startup Carbonscape says it has developed an industrial microwave process to turn plants, trees and other biomass into charcoal in order to store carbon dioxide emissions for thousands of years.

Carbonscape’s technology is based on the principle that plants can remove carbon from the atmosphere but eventually die and rot, releasing the stored gases. Turning the biomass to charcoal prevents microbial breakdown and locks away the emissions, the company says. Such charcoal is referred to as biochar.

Carbonscape calls other carbon capture and storage (CCS) technologies dangerous because of the potential for the accidental release of underground or underwater gases. Carbonscape says its technology is also superior because there’s no need for new technology to capture carbon emissions.

Last week, Danish shipping and oil company A.P. Moller-Maersk announced it was investigating whether sea vessels can transport greenhouse gases for underwater storage more efficiently and more cheaply than pipes (see Ships, not pipes, for CO2 ocean burial). Scientists are still seeking ways to quantify the underground storage capacity for carbon sequestered from power plants (see MIT unlocking carbon capture and storage).

Carbonscape says the process converts 40 percent to 50 percent of wood debris into charcoal, with each unit having the capability to lock away one metric ton of CO2 into charcoal each day.

Carbonscape has proposed plantations of fast-growing trees that can be cut down and subjected to the industrial microwave, at which point the charcoal could be buried underground.

Carbonscape says the industrial microwaving is a net winner when it comes to emissions. Although the process produces carbon dioxide emissions, the amount is significantly less than the carbon dioxide captured in the charcoal.

In September, the company began using its prototype in a pilot run in South Island, New Zealand.

Carbonscape was founded in December 2006. The company says it has multiple international patents on its technology.

The talks are meant to conclude in Copenhagen in December with a new climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol after 2012. One battleground is between industrialized and developing countries on how to split the cost of curbing greenhouse gas emissions.

“How are things looking in terms of that agreement? Worrying,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a carbon trading conference in Copenhagen.

“Countries have not come forward with specific proposals on how aspects of the Copenhagen agreement can work in practice,” he told Reuters, referring to “gaps” in a document meant to form the basis of a legal text.

Before the final session in Copenhagen senior officials from about 190 countries will negotiate that text at a series of meetings, the first held later this month in Bonn.

“I’m not concerned by the mood, about willingness to get the job done, I’m concerned by the amount of time that’s left to get the work done,” de Boer said, adding that recession had made it more difficult to ask finance ministers for help.

Industrialized countries are meant to agree to specific targets to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 2020. Japan, Ukraine, Switzerland and Russia still had not made offers.

“(A Copenhagen deal) has to include 2020 targets,” said de Boer. “Those numbers need to be ambitious otherwise we’re not close to what science tells us needs to be done.

De Boer said that U.S. President Barack Obama’s goal to bring U.S. greenhouse gases back to 1990 levels by 2020 was a “first good offer.” He declined to comment on what he thought would be a suitable U.S. goal.

Major emerging economies such as China and India were not expected to agree to concrete targets but rich countries want them to agree specific actions.

“We also need clarity on what major developing countries are willing to do to limit the growth of their emissions, and to get that I think finance is essential,” he told Reuters.

De Boer criticized EU finance ministers who appeared to lay conditions on financial help to the South — depending on what specific climate actions developing countries first proposed.

“This is not helpful in moving the world forwards to an agreement in Copenhagen,” he said, and urged EU leaders meeting in Brussels later this week to be more decisive.

“I think without clarity on finance from industrialized countries there will be no commitment from developing countries.”

From The Guardian

A “perfect storm” of food shortages, scarce water and insufficient energy resources threaten to unleash public unrest, cross-border conflicts and mass migration as people flee from the worst-affected regions, the UK government’s chief scientist warned last week.

In a major speech to environmental groups and politicians, Professor John Beddington, who took up the position of chief scientific adviser last year, said that the world is heading for major upheavals which are due to come to a head in 2030.

He told the government’s Sustainable Development UK conference in Westminster that the growing population and success in alleviating poverty in developing countries will trigger a surge in demand for food, water and energy over the next two decades, at a time when governments must also make major progress in combating climate change.

“We head into a perfect storm in 2030, because all of these things are operating on the same time frame,” Beddington told the Guardian.

“If we don’t address this, we can expect major destabilisation, an increase in rioting and potentially significant problems with international migration, as people move out to avoid food and water shortages,” he added.

Food prices for major crops such as wheat and maize have recently settled after a sharp rise last year when production failed to keep up with demand. But according to Beddington, global food reserves are so low – at 14% of annual consumption – a major drought or flood could see prices rapidly escalate again. The majority of the food reserve is grain that is in transit between shipping ports, he said.

“Our food reserves are at a 50-year low, but by 2030 we need to be producing 50% more food. At the same time, we will need 50% more energy, and 30% more fresh water.

“There are dramatic problems out there, particularly with water and food, but energy also, and they are all intimately connected,” Beddington said. “You can’t think about dealing with one without considering the others. We must deal with all of these together.”

Before taking over from Sir David King as chief scientist last year, Beddington was professor of applied population biology at Imperial College London. He is an expert on the sustainable use of renewable resources.

In Britain, a global food shortage would drive up import costs and make food more expensive. Some parts of the country are predicted to become less able to grow crops as higher temperatures become the norm. Most climate models suggest the south-east of England will be especially vulnerable to water shortages, particularly in the summer.

The speech will add to pressure on governments following last week’s climate change conference in Copenhagen, where scientists warned that the impact of global warming has been substantially underestimated by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The latest research suggests that sea level rises, glacier melting and the risk of forest fires are at, or beyond, what was considered the worst case scenario in 2007.

Beddington said that shifts in the climate will see northern Europe and other high-latitude regions become key centres for food production. Other more traditional farming nations will have to develop more advanced pesticides or more hardy crops to boost yields, he said. In some countries, almost half of all crops are lost to pests and disease before they are harvested. Substantial amounts of food are lost after haversting, too, because of insufficient storage facilities.

Beddington said a major technological push is needed to develop renewable energy supplies, boost crop yields and better utilise existing water supplies.

Looming water shortages in China have prompted officials to build 59 new reservoirs to catch meltwater from mountain glaciers, which will be circulated into the water supply.

Beddington will use the speech to urge Europe to involve independent scientists more directly in its policy making, using recent appointments by President Barack Obama in the US as an example of how senior scientists have been brought into the political fold. Shortly after taking office, Obama announced what many see as a “dream team” of scientists, including two Nobel laureates, to advise on science, energy and the environment.

Read Reuters story on UN Climate Chief comments

Related story from the UK Guardian.

By David Brunnstrom and Marcin Grajewski

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – European Union member states hit by the global economic crisis urged the bloc Thursday not to promise the developing world more money to combat climate change than they can afford.

The comments could worry organizers of a conference in Copenhagen on finding a successor to the Kyoto protocol against global warming because its success hangs on whether enough money can be found to persuade poor nations to tackle the problem.

EU member states including Poland, Bulgaria and Hungary fear EU negotiators will commit them to providing more money than they can now afford because of the economic downturn.

“We should readjust the priorities,” Bulgarian Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev told reporters at a summit at which EU leaders were discussing the climate issue and looming recession.

“What really concerns EU citizens today is how jobs will be preserved and how we can keep Europe steady in this unprecedented crisis.”

Polish and Bulgarian officials said they wanted more precise details of how the burden would be shared before the United Nations climate change conference in Copenhagen in December.

“Obviously the enthusiasm for having economic support for the climate package has not increased during the economic crisis,” said Cecilia Malmstrom, EU affairs minister of Sweden, which will hold the EU presidency during the Copenhagen talks.

“That is an issue that is of great concern to us.”

POOR COUNTRIES SEEK HELP

Poor countries blame industrialized nations for climate change and say they do not do enough to help the poor adapt to its impact, such as by creating drought- or flood-resistant crops, or helping build barriers to rising sea levels.

“The EU will have to pay the bill for its historical emissions — this means committing to provide at least 30 billion euros per year by 2020 to an international climate fund for developing countries,” said politician Rebecca Harms of the German Green group.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters informal discussions had focused on an annual EU contribution of between 20 billion euros and 40 billion.

He said Warsaw would oppose any attempt to divide that burden up according to countries’ emissions levels — a move that would hurt Poland as it relies on heavily-polluting coal.

The east European states fear a repeat of their problem last year when the EU committed to cutting carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2020. They recognized the potential impact on their economies too late to steer the debate.

Central and eastern Europe countries are trying to stop an evaporation of foreign funds that prompted Hungary and Latvia to seek a lifeline from the International Monetary Fund and contributed to social unrest.

Some experts see the Copenhagen conference as the last chance to keep global warming in check.

U.N. climate chief Yvo de Boer this week criticized European finance ministers for not living up to promises made at the launch of the two-year process in Bali in 2007.

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen urged his European counterparts not to put the brakes on funding.

“I would very much like to see the EU in the driver’s seat. We have to send a clear message that we are going to take on a fair share of the global financial burden,” he said.

(Additional reporting by Ingrid Melander; Writing by Pete Harrison; Editing by Timothy Heritage)

From the UK Guardian

Nasheed approached British climate change experts Chris Goodall and Mark Lynas to help develop the radical carbon-neutrality plan. The pair worked on a package of measures that could virtually eliminate fossil fuel use on the Maldive archipelago by 2020.

The plan includes a new renewable electricity generation and transmission infrastructure with 155 large wind turbines, half a square kilometre of rooftop solar panels, and a biomass plant burning coconut husks. Battery banks would provide back-up storage for when neither wind nor solar energy is available.

The clean electricity would power not only homes and businesses, but also vehicles. Cars and boats with petrol and diesel engines would be gradually replaced by electric versions.

Goodall, author of Ten Technologies to Save the Planet, led the development of the clean-energy package. He said: “The Maldives could just give up. Its people could declare themselves climate change refugees and ask for sanctuary elsewhere. But the new government is taking a stand and asked us to give them a plan for a near zero-carbon economy.

“We don’t want to pretend that this plan is going to be easy to implement. There will be hiccups, and electricity supply will occasionally be disrupted. But we think that building a near-zero-carbon Maldives is a realistic challenge. Get it right and we will show the apathetic developed world that action is possible, and at reasonable cost.”

The Maldives is one of the world’s lowest-lying countries, with 385,000 people living mainly on land less than two metres above sea level. The country would be rendered almost entirely uninhabitable by a rise in sea levels of one metre.

Lynas said: “The Maldives is in the front line of climate change. It is perhaps the most vulnerable country in the world. If nothing is done to cut global carbon emissions, the country will sink beneath rising seas this century. It is a poor country, but here we have a government that is throwing down the gauntlet to the rich, highly polluting countries.”

The Maldives plan is not the first national carbon-neutrality target. Norway is aiming to be zero-carbon by 2030. However, the Maldives scheme is more ambitious – not just in terms of its 10-year timetable, but also because it aims to totally decarbonise the local economy. By contrast, the Norwegian scheme allows a large slice of domestic emissions to be offset by investments in forestry schemes overseas.

The cost for the package of low-carbon measures is estimated to be about $110m a year for 10 years. The scheme should pay for itself quite quickly, because the Maldives will no longer need to import oil products for electricity generation, transport and other functions. If the oil price were to rise to $100 per barrel, the payback period would be as short as 11 years. At current prices, it would take roughly twice as long to break even.

Nasheed said: “Climate change is a global emergency. The world is in danger of going into cardiac arrest, yet we behave as if we’ve caught a common cold. Today, the Maldives has announced plans to become the world’s most eco-friendly country. I can only hope other nations follow suit.”

Visiting Washington last week, UK Climate Secretary, Ed Milibrand said that the changes wrought in US global warming policy had dramatically increased the likelihood of reaching agreement on a new international treaty at Copenhagen this year.

“No-one wants to be the nation that wrecks a global deal [on climate change],” he told reporters in Washington. The United States held out until the last minute at the Bali conference in December 2007, making its agreement conditional on hard targets for developing nations India, China and Brazil.

Since then, the situation has radically worsened, with scientists predicting up to a four degree temperature rise by mid-century and global disasters that could cost the lives of billions of people. United States investment in renewable energy and energy efficiency under President Obama’s financial rescue package will leapfrog the leadership shown by European nations such as Germany.