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  • Palm oil power plants become burning issue thanks to UK’s crazy ‘green’ policy

     

    When I say vegetable oil, I mean mostly palm and soya oil. The developer of the Newport plant, Vogen Energy, has admitted that these oils will form at least part of the mix. So has W4BRE Limited, the company hoping to receive planning permission for a similar plant at Portland in Dorset in the next few weeks. This isn’t surprising, as they are the cheapest sources of vegetable oil.

    They are also the most destructive. The world’s soya frontier is the Brazilian Amazon, where great tracts of rainforest are being trashed to produce oil and meal for western markets. Palm oil plantations now threaten to destroy almost all the remaining rainforest in Malaysia and Indonesia – even reserves such as the famous Tanjung Puting national park in Kalimantan, which is currently being wrecked by planters. Oil palm threatens the extinction of the orang-utan, Sumatran rhino and at least one sub-species of tiger. It is driving tens of thousands of indigenous people from their homes. But, maddest of all, it produces far greater greenhouse gas emissions than fossil fuels.

    A report for Wetlands International shows that every tonne of palm oil results in up to 33 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions, or 10 times as much as petroleum produces.

    A paper published in Science suggests that when tropical forest growing on peaty soils is cleared to plant palm oil, it would take around 840 years for any carbon savings from burning this oil to catch up with the emissions caused by planting it.

    After these plants were challenged by the small but very effective campaign group Biofuelwatch, the two companies started backtracking, suggesting that they might use other oils, not just palm oil and soya oil. But if they receive planning permission, there would be no means of enforcing this – no means, in other words, of preventing them from using the cheapest feedstocks to supply their power stations. And even if, out of the goodness of their hearts, they decided not to use either of these sources, it’s doubtful that this would make any difference. As Carl Bek-Nielsen, vice-chairman of Malaysia’s United Plantations Bhd, remarked: “Even if it is another oil that goes into biodiesel, that other oil then needs to be replaced. Either way, there’s going to be a vacuum and palm oil can fill that vacuum.”

    The fact is that all these plants would be burning food to produce power. Even if the Newport scheme were to use rapeseed oil (which still produces more greenhouse gases than fossil fuel, though it’s not nearly as bad as palm or soya), Biofuelwatch calculates that the land required to grow it could otherwise have fed 35,000 people. As the government’s environment department, Defra, now says that food security is one of the major issues the UK faces, this is madness squared. Last year the World Bank calculated that biofuels were responsible for 75% of the inflation in the price of food.

    But already the UK’s first vegetable oil power station – Blue NG’s plant in Beckton, east London – has been approved. Blue-NG doesn’t use palm or soya oil, it says it uses UK sourced rapeseed oil. Thanks to a powerful campaign by local people and the group Food Not Fuel, Blue NG’s attempt to build a similar one in Southall, west London, was thrown out last week by the council, though the Greater London Authority could reverse that. There are several more in the pipeline.

    So why is it happening? For one reason: the government awards double renewable obligation certificates for power stations burning vegetable oil. In other words, you harvest twice as much taxpayers’ money this way as you would for generating the same amount of electricity with a wind turbine. None of it would be happening if it weren’t for this perverse incentive, which the government justifies by defining sustainability so narrowly that it excludes the greenhouse gases caused by clearing land to grow the oil. Ed Miliband’s department is responsible for this. Over the next few weeks I hope to discover how the hell he justifies it.

    monbiot.com

    • This article was amended on 14 September 2009 to make clear that Blue-NG does not use palm or soya oil and says it uses UK sourced rapeseed oil. Becton, was changed to Beckton.

  • Global oil reserves and fossil fuel consumption

     

    Opec nations control the lion’s share, with 76% of the world’s reserves. Interestingly, many of the Opec countries’ proven reserves have barely changed in the past 20 years, despite massive exporting activity.

    The largest percentage growth in oil wealth is in Vietnam, with a 39% surge in its proven oil reserves from 2007-08. This newfound wealth corresponds to 1.3bn barrels, which may sound like a lot, but would feed the world demand for less than three weeks (17 days) at 2008 levels of consumption.

    Oil consumption fell by 0.29% from 2007-08, while its more polluting relation coal saw a 3% increase in its use. Reasons for coal’s recent rise include the low price of emissions trading permits and the fuel’s increasing promotion as key for ‘energy security’.

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  • What we urgently need need is a new mindset on climate change

     

    The scientific evidence that global temperatures are rising and that man is responsible has been widely accepted since the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s report in 2007. There is now equally wide consensus that we need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to at most 50% of 1990 levels by 2050 if we are to have even a 50% chance of preventing temperatures from exceeding preindustrial levels by more than 2 degrees, considered by many to be the tipping point for catastrophic and irreversible climate change.

    The economic argument that taking action now rather than later will be cheaper has also been widely accepted since the Stern report in 2006. The election of President Obama has shifted policy in the US from seeking to block an agreement to seeking to find one.

    So the chances of success should be good, but the politics are tough. The most vocal arguments are about equity: the rich world caused the problem so why should the poor world pay to put it right?

    Can the rich world do enough through its own actions and through its financial and technological support for the poor to persuade the poor to join in a global agreement? The present economic climate doesn’t help, giving sceptics from the rich world arguments for not acting—or at least not acting now. And the sensitive issue of population stabilisation continues to slip off the agenda but is crucial to achieving real reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions.

    These arguments need to be tackled head on. Climate change is global, and emissions know no frontiers. The necessary measures should be seen not as a cost but as an opportunity.

    Coal-fired power stations and internal combustion engines pollute the atmosphere and worsen health, and deforestation destroys biodiversity, whereas saving energy helps hard-pressed household budgets, and drought-resistant crops help poor farmers. So even without climate change, the case for clean power, electric cars, saving forests, energy efficiency, and new agriculture technology is strong. Climate change makes it unanswerable.

    The threat to health is especially evident in poorest countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa, as the recent Lancet and University College London report shows. These countries are struggling to meet the Millennium Development Goals.

    Their poverty and lack of resources, infrastructure, and often governance, greatly increase their vulnerability to the effects of climate change. Warmer climate can lead to drought, pressure on resources (particularly water), migration, and conflict. The conflict in Darfur is as much about pressure on resources as the desert encroaches as about the internal politics of Sudan.

    And the implications for the health of local populations are acute: on the spread and changing patterns of disease, notably water-borne diseases from inadequate and unclean supplies; on maternal and child mortality as basic health services collapse; and on malnutrition where food is scarce. And population stabilisation will not be achieved if, for want of resources, girls are not educated and contraceptives are unavailable.

    Climate change is causing other kinds of extreme weather events too: storms, floods, and rising sea levels affecting coastal populations and islands. Every such event has adverse consequences for health. The poorer the country and its infrastructure, the worse are the consequences and the poorer the chances of meeting the Millennium Development Goals.

    Crucially for winning hearts and minds in richer countries, what’s good for the climate is good for health. The measures needed to combat climate change coincide with those needed to ensure a healthier population and reduce the burden on health services. A low-carbon economy will mean less pollution. A low-carbon diet (especially eating less meat) and more exercise will mean less cancer, obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. Opportunity, surely, not cost.

    This is an opportunity too to advance health equity, which is increasingly seen as necessary for a healthy and happy society. If we take climate change seriously, it will require major changes to the way we live, reducing the gap between carbon rich and carbon poor within and between countries.

    The Commission on Social Determinants of Health said that action to promote health must go well beyond health care. It must focus on the conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, and in the structural drivers of those conditions—inequities in power, money, and resources. These insights give further confirmation that what is good for the climate is good for health.

    A successful outcome at Copenhagen is vital for our future as a species and for our civilisation. It will require recognition by the rich countries of their obligations to the poor; and recognition by the poor countries that climate change is a global problem that requires a global solution in which we all have to play a part.

    It will require a new mindset: that the measures needed to mitigate the risks of climate change and adapt to its already inevitable effects provide an opportunity to achieve goals that are desirable in their own right – the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals in the poor countries and a healthier more equal society in the rich world and globally. Failure to agree radical reductions in emissions spells a global health catastrophe, which is why health professionals must put their case forcefully now and after Copenhagen.

    • Michael Jay, chair, Merlin; Professor Sir Michael Marmot, director, International Institute for Society and Health

  • World Bank warns 2C rise will cripple development efforts

     

    In a move that is likely to bolster the negotiating position of emerging economies, such as China and India, World Bank president Robert Zoellick echoed their view that the onus was on rich nations to deliver an “equitable deal” at the upcoming UN climate change conference in Copenhagen that acknowledges their historic responsibility for global warming.

    “Developing countries are disproportionately affected by climate change – a crisis that is not of their making and for which they are the least prepared,” he said.

    The report recommends that by 2030 rich nations will need to invest $400bn a year to help developing nations cut emissions through the adoption of new low carbon technologies and $75bn a year to help them adapt to the impact of climate change, in addition to the hundreds of billions of dollars of R&D investment that will be required to develop cost-effective clean technologies.

    The scale of the sums involved are an order of magnitude higher than those currently being considered by many rich nations. For example, to date the only offer of climate change investment made as part of the Copenhagen process is UK prime minister Gordon Brown’s proposal that rich nations invest $100 billion a year to help poorer nations cut emissions.

    Justin Lin, World Bank chief economist, warned that without increased investment from developed economies poorer nations would find themselves unable to cope with the impacts of climate change. “Developing countries, which have historically contributed little to global warming, are now, ironically, faced with 75 to 80 per cent of the potential damage from it,” he said. “They need help to cope with climate change, as they are preoccupied with existing challenges such as reducing poverty and hunger and providing access to energy and water.”

    The report also claims that such investments will make economic sense for industrialised economies, arguing that the cost of addressing climate change will only rise as “more and more investments are made in the wrong kinds of infrastructure and energy”.

    The report is likely to be welcomed by green groups, many of whom have long complained that the World Bank has been guilty of undermining investment in low carbon technologies in the developing world by favouring carbon intensive projects.

    For example, the bank has faced consistent criticism for funding coal projects and it recently suspended investment in the palm oil sector after an investigation found that it had provided financing to a company allegedly linked to rainforest deforestation.

    The Bank said that it has improved its record of investment in clean technologies, increasing financing for renewable energy and energy efficiency projects in developing countries by 24 per cent in the fiscal year 2009 to over $3.3bn, a record high. It added that renewable energy and energy-efficiency projects last year made up over 40 per cent of the $8.2bn of energy financing provided by the bank, although critics will point out that 60 per cent of fina ncing is still funnelled into conventional energy projects.

  • Ocean surfaces have warmest summer on record, US report finds

     

    “During the season, warmer-than-average temperatures engulfed much of the planet’s surface,” the centre said. Australia and New Zealand had their warmest August since records began.

    However, central Canada and the United States were the exceptions, with unusually cool temperatures. “In some areas, such as the western United States, temperatures were much cooler than average,” the report said.

    The unusually warm summer temperatures for much of the world’s oceans were due to El Niño, the periodic warming of the Pacific. If El Niño strengthens, global temperatures are likely to set new records, the report said. So far, 2009 has been the fifth warmest year on record.

    Some scientists have suggested that, the effects of El Niño, coupled with warming due to climate change could well make the coming decade the hottest in human history.

    Nasa predicted at the start of this year that 2009 and 2010 could see the setting of new global temperature records.

    The report also noted the continuing retreat in Arctic sea ice over the summer. Sea ice covered an average of 6.3m sq kilometres (2.42m sq miles) during August, according to the national snow and ice data centre. That was 18.4% the 1979-2000 average.

  • US planning to weaken Copenhagen climate deal, Europe warns

     

    The Guardian understands that key differences have emerged between the US and Europe over the structure of a new worldwide treaty on global warming. Sources on the European side say the US approach could undermine the new treaty and weaken the world’s ability to cut carbon emissions.

    The treaty will be negotiated in December at a UN meeting in Copenhagen and is widely billed as the last chance to save the planet from a temperature rise of 2C or higher, which the EU considers dangerous.

    Copenhagen climate deal: ‘The world has been set a deadline’ Link to this audio

    “If we end up with a weaker framework with less stringent compliance, then that is not so good for the chances of hitting 2C,” a source close to the EU negotiating team said.

    News of the split comes amid mounting concern that the Copenhagen talks will not make the necessary progress.

    Ban Ki-moon, the UN general secretary, told the Guardian last night that negotiations had stalled and need to “get moving”.

    Ahead of an unprecedented UN climate change summit of almost 100 heads of government in New York next week, Moon said the leaders held in their hands “the future of this entire humanity”.

    He said: “We are deeply concerned that the negotiation is not making much headway [and] it is absolutely and crucially important for the leaders to demonstrate their political will and leadership.”

    The dispute between the US and Europe is over the way national carbon reduction targets would be counted. Europe has been pushing to retain structures and systems set up under the Kyoto protocol, the existing global treaty on climate change. US negotiators have told European counterparts that the Obama administration intends to sweep away almost all of the Kyoto architecture and replace it with a system of its own design.

    The issue is highly sensitive and European officials are reluctant to be seen to openly criticise the Obama administration, which they acknowledge has engaged with climate change in a way that President Bush refused to. But they fear the US move could sink efforts to agree a robust new treaty in Copenhagen.

    The US distanced itself from Kyoto under President Bush because it made no demands on China, and the treaty remains political poison in Washington. European negotiators knew the US would be reluctant to embrace Kyoto, but they hoped they would be able to use it as a foundation for a new agreement.

    If Kyoto is scrapped, it could take several years to negotiate a replacement framework, the source added, a delay that could strike a terminal blow at efforts to prevent dangerous climate change. “In Europe we want to build on Kyoto, but the US proposal would in effect kill it off. If we have to start from scratch then it all takes time. It could be 2015 or 2016 before something is in place, who knows.”

    According to the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), world emissions need to peak by 2015 to give any chance of avoiding a 2C rise.

    Europe is unlikely to stand up to the US, the source added. “I am not sure that the EU actually has the guts for a showdown and that may be exactly the problem.” The US plan is likely to anger many in the developing world, who are keen to retain Kyoto because of the obligations it makes on rich countries.

    Under Kyoto, greenhouse gas reductions are subject to an international system that regulates the calculation of emissions, the purchase of carbon credits and contribution of sectors such as forestry. The US is pushing instead for each country to set its own rules and to decide unilaterally how to meet its target.

    The US is yet to offer full details on how its scheme might work, though a draft “implementing agreement” submitted to the UN by the Obama team in May contained a key clause that emissions reductions would be subject to “conformity with domestic law”.

    Legal experts say the phrase is designed to protect the US from being forced to implement international action it does not agree with. Farhana Yamin, an environmental lawyer with the Institute of Development Studies, who worked on Kyoto, said: “It seems a bit backwards. The danger is that the domestic tail starts to wag the international dog.”

    The move reflects a “prehistoric” level of debate on climate change in the wider US, according to another high-ranking European official, and anxiety in the Obama administration about its ability to get a new global treaty ratified in the US Senate, where it would require a two-thirds majority vote. The US has not ratified a major international environment treaty since 1992 and President Clinton never submitted the Kyoto protocol for approval, after a unaminous Senate vote indicated it would be rejected on economic grounds.

    The US proposal for unilateral rule-setting “is all about getting something through the Senate,” the source said. “But I don’t have the feeling that the US has thought through what it means for the Copenhagen agreement.”

    The move could open loopholes for countries to meet targets without genuine carbon cuts, they said. Europe is not concerned that the US would exploit such loopholes, but it fears that other countries might.

    The US State Department, which handles climate change, would not comment.

    Stuart Eizenstat, who negotiated Kyoto for the US, said: “There has been a sea change in US attitudes [on climate] and the new president is deeply committed on this issue. But the EU needs to understand the limitations in the US. The reality is that is it impossible for my successor to negotiate something in Copenhagen beyond that which Congress will give the administration in domestic cap-and-trade legislation.”

    Nigel Purvis, who also worked on the US Kyoto team, said: “It’s not welcome news in Europe but the Kyoto architecture shouldn’t have any presumed status. Many decisions were taken when the United States was not at the negotiating table. Importing the Kyoto architecture into a new agreement would leave it vulnerable to charges of repackaging.”

    He denied the US move would weaken the agreement. “It is important for the US to negotiate an agreement it can join, because another agreement that did not involve the United States would set back efforts to protect the climate. Is it weaker to have a system that applies to more countries? I would argue not.”