Linking the floods with climate change – and why it’s important

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How London might be affected by flooding from the sea without the Thames Barrier

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Oosterscheldekering

• Largest tidal surge barrier in the world, situated between Dutch islands of Schouwen-Duiveland and Noord-Beveland
• One of 13 barriers in the Delta network, built to protect the Netherlands from flooding, it was opened in 1986 by Queen Beatrix
• Designed to last 200 years; the plaque on the barrier bears the inscription: “Here the tide is ruled, by the wind, the moon and us”

1928: The last time the Thames flooded the streets of London

Climate Code Red noreply@blogger.com via google.com	8:14 PM (40 minutes ago)
to me

By Joshua Hill on 12 February 2014

CleanTechnica

A new study published by an Australian researcher has determined that small- and medium-sized wind turbines can not only be placed in inefficient locations, but can be installed in locations where they will have no benefit whatsoever.

The study was authored by Amir Bashirzadeh Tabrizia, from Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, who used Computational Fluid Dynamics (CDF) to model wind flows in order to perform a resource assessment for the installation of small wind turbines.

As Tabrizia and his co-authors noted in their abstract, “the installation of small and medium-size wind turbines on the rooftops of high buildings has been often suggested by architects and project developers as a potential solution for achieving sustainable energy in building design.”

They add, however, that “because of the presence of buildings and other adjacent obstructions, wind is normally turbulent, unstable and weak, in terms of direction and speed.”

Quoted by Chris Thomas for the ScienceNetwork WA, Tabrizia notes that “the performance of small wind turbines in the built-environment is really sensitive to the place you put them. If you put them in wrong place, you will not get any power. Unfortunately, there are several bad examples around Perth where they have put the machines in shadow and they don’t work, not even in windy conditions.”

Not only is there the likelihood that the turbines will have no practical benefit, but there is also the possibility of breaking and damage. Tabrizia noted instances where some of the turbines in “the built-environment … failed and broke.

“There was even some damage to cars in parking lots, due to broken blades from the small turbines.”

The aim of the study was to better simulate where wind turbines could be placed to maximise their efficiency, based on Computational Fluid Dynamics.

“Through wind simulation in the target area, CFD helps to find the right place for the turbine with higher wind speed to avoid re-circulation and shadow zones, also putting the machine where it will generate more power,” Tabrizi said.

 Source: CleanTechnica. Reproduced with permission.

By Giles Parkinson on 11 February 2014

Legendary hedge fund investor Jeremy Grantham says there is no doubt that solar and wind energy will “completely replace” coal and gas across the globe, it is just a matter of when.

The founder of $100 billion funds manager GMO Capital is known as a contrarian. But he suggests that the pace of change in the fuel supply will surprise everyone, and have huge implications for fossil fuel investments.

“I have become increasingly impressed with the potential for a revolution in energy, which will make it extremely unlikely that a lack of energy will be the issue that brings us to our knees,” Grantham writes in his latest quarterly newsletter.

“Even in the expected event that there are no important breakthroughs in the cost of nuclear power, the potential for alternative energy sources, mainly solar and wind power, to completely replace coal and gas for utility generation globally is, I think, certain.

“The question is only whether it takes 30 years or 70 years. That we will replace oil for land transportation with electricity or fuel cells derived indirectly from electricity is also certain, and there, perhaps, the timing question is whether this will take 20 or 40 years.”

Grantham’s predictions go against the conventional wisdowm of the fossil fuel industry, but they the thoughts of many people, including Stanford researcher Tony Seba, who said last year this could occur within a few decades.

And Grantham says it could happen quicker than even he believes, and will have major implications for new investments in the fossil fuel industry – a topic very much in mind for project developers and bankers in Australia.

“I have felt for some time that new investments today in coal and tar sands are highly likely to become stranded assets, and everything I have seen, in the last year particularly, increases my confidence,” Grantham writes.

“China especially is escalating rapidly in its drive to limit future pollution from coal and gasoline and diesel powered vehicles. Increased smog last year in major cities led to an unprecedented level of general complaint.

“China simply can’t afford to have Chinese and foreign business leaders leaving important industrial areas in order to protect the health of themselves and their families. Nor are they likely to be comfortable with a high level of sustained complaint from the general public. They have responded in what I consider to be Chinese style, with a growing list of new targets for reducing pollution. A typical example recently was an increase of 60% in their target for total installed solar by the end of 2015! Hardly a month goes by without a new step being announced.”

He also questioned whether th $650 billion spent by the fossil fuel industry searching for new oil reserves was a smart idea, given his recent experience of a colleague’s Tesla. Grantham, the former onwer of a 12-year-old Volvo, described his journey from New York to Boston as his best ever car experience, and suggested that the slump in battery costs would mean the $75,000 vehicle like Teslas would soon be available at $40,000.

“One can easily see that in 10 years there could be a new world order in cars. (And if that weren’t enough, there is a wholly different attack on the traditional gasoline engine from an entirely new technology, the hydrogen fuel cell, to be introduced by Toyota this year.)

In short, with slower global economic growth, more fuel-efficient gasoline and diesel vehicles, more hybrids, cheaper electric cars, more natural gas vehicles, and possibly new technologies using fuel cells and, conceivably, methanol, it is certain that oil demand from developed countries will decline, probably faster than expected.

“Some emerging countries, notably China, are likely to take more dramatic and faster steps to reduce demand than we have ever thought about. Already they have 200 million electric vehicles – mostly motorbikes – almost as many as the rest of the world squared.

“Total global oil demand at current prices or higher is likely to peak in 10 years or so. At much lower prices we would fairly quickly lose most of our high-cost production: deep offshore, fracking, and tar sands.

“Times may be changing faster than we think. My guess is that oil prices will be higher than now in 10 years, but after that, who knows?

“The idea of “peak oil demand” as opposed to peak oil supply has gone, in my opinion, from being a joke to an idea worth beginning to think about in a single year. Some changes seem to be always around the corner and then at long last they move faster than you expected and you are caught flat-footed.”

By George Crisp on 12 February 2014

The Department of Industry is now collating responses to its Energy White Paper (EWP) and formulating what will likely be a roadmap to Australia’s future energy landscape.

An overarching plan for the future may be eminently sensible, but only if the information that those plans are based upon is accurate and representative.

The EWP sets out to address energy security, reliability, transparent and competitive pricing and efficiency including regulatory reform.

So, to achieve its stated aims the full costs of energy generation including social and environmental costs must be assessed and accounted for.  But herein lies the first major problem with the EWP. These hidden costs, or externalities, are barely considered if mentioned at all.

Energy and transport related fossil fuel combustion (and extraction) produce the vast majority of Australia’s harmful air pollutants as well as greenhouse emissions.

Air pollution is a significant contributor to illness and mortality from the major non-communicable diseases that affect our community; heart and lung disease, stroke and lung cancer. Illnesses that result in significant welfare and healthcare costs and reduce worker productivity. The estimated health costs associated with outdoor air pollution in Australia are up to $8.4 billion each year.

Climate change resulting from greenhouse gas emissions is the dominant long-term factor. The World Bank has described climate change as “a fundamental threat to sustainable economic development and the fight against poverty”.  With just 0.7C of average global warming, health impacts from climate change already contribute to over 140,000 deaths each year according to the WHO, and here in Australia heat-wave mortality and a range of other health impacts are already being observed.

Coal is the most polluting fossil fuel. Epstein and Harvard colleagues calculated that accounting for its life-cycle externalities conservatively doubles or triples the price of electricity in the US, and notes that many of these costs are also cumulative.

And US economist Nordhaus found the pollution costs of coal fired generation 0.8 to 5.6 times its value added. In other words, the damage caused is worth at best 80 per cent of the net value of the industry and at worst 5.6 times greater..

By ignoring these very real and significant costs, especially of air pollution and climate change, the EWP and subsequent papers will be unable to make meaningful comparisons or predictions of energy costs, not to mention the lack of transparency.

But there are other important aspects of climate change that have been missed in the EWP, relating to energy security and productivity.

Generation, transport and transmission infrastructure can be highly vulnerable to disruption from extreme weather events including associated flooding and bushfires, and longer term changes such as droughts from changing rainfall patterns. The latter is especially problematic for water intensive thermal power generation.

Workforce health and productivity is also affected by increasing nocturnal temperatures that facilitate good quality sleep, average daytime and maximum temperatures, particularly with outdoor occupations.

These are very relevant to energy security, resilience and productivity and as a consequence of omission the potential advantages of alternative decentralized and renewable energy technologies are excluded.

Concern is raised about the potential effects on further renewable energy growth on electricity costs, “surety of supply” and providing a “regulated return on the existing asset base”, and that the “review of the renewable Energy Target will inform policy development on this issue”. In marked contrast, fossil fuels subsidies and the market distortion and inefficiency they produce, are not included in the report.

Regulatory reform in the EWP focuses on reducing costs to business. But its importance in protecting environmental and human health glossed over. There are already systemic and major problems with regulatory inadequacies in Australia as we highlighted in a recent report “The Health Factor”. Reducing regulation therefore risks worsening health and environmental outcomes still further.

Curiously, this anti-regulation focus does not extend to the extraordinary and unjustified over-regulation of wind turbines.

Gas appears to be a special case in the EWP, with is rapid growth a given and regulatory controls relaxed to facilitate this. It will apparently address both impending energy security and massive export earnings, and assist in more affordable energy, with no significant concerns raised about health and environmental impacts nor implications for greenhouse emissions.

One cannot help but conclude there is a significant ideological agenda driving this selective choice of information and direction in the EWP.

This is explored in more detail in our submission to government from Doctors for the Environment Australia.

 

Click for DEA’s submission to the EWP

Dr George Crisp WA representative of Doctors for the Environment Australia