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  • BP shuts alternative energy HQ

    BP shuts alternative energy HQ


    • ‘Beyond Petroleum’ boast in doubt as clean energy boss quits
    • Renewables budget will be reduced by up to £550m this year


     





    A sign at a BP petrol station is reflected in raindrops in London.

    A sign at a BP petrol station is reflected in raindrops in London. Photograph: Luke MacGregor/Reuters


    BP has shut down its alternative energy headquarters in London, accepted the resignation of its clean energy boss and imposed budget cuts in moves likely to be seen by environmental critics as further signs of the oil group moving “back to petroleum”.


     


    But Tony Hayward, the group’s chief executive, said BP remained as committed as ever to exploring new energy sources and the non-oil division would benefit from the extra focus of being brought back in house.


    BP Alternative Energy was given its own headquarters in County Hall opposite the Houses of Parliament two years ago and its managing director, Vivienne Cox, oversaw a small division of 80 staff concentrating on wind and solar power.


    But the 49-year-old Cox – BP’s most senior female executive, who previously ran renewables as part of a larger gas and power division now dismantled by Hayward – is standing down tomorrow.


    This comes alongside huge cuts in the alternative energy budget – from $1.4bn (£850m) last year to between $500m and $1bn this year, although spending is still roughly in line with original plans to invest $8bn by 2015.


    The move back to BP’s corporate headquarters at St James’s Square in London’s West End made sense, particularly when the group was sitting on spare office space due to earlier cutbacks, said Hayward.


    “We are going through a major restructuring and bringing the alternative energy business headquarters into the head office seems a good idea to me.


    “It saves money and brings it closer to home … you could almost see it as a reinforcement [of our commitment to the business],” he said.


    Cox was stepping down to spend more time with her children, Hayward added. “I know you would love to make a story out of all this,” he said, “but it’s quite hard work.”


    The reason for the departure of Cox is variously said by industry insiders to be caused by frustration over the business being downgraded in importance or because she really does intend to stay at home more with her young children. Cox had already reduced her working week down to three days and had publicly admitted the difficulty of combining different roles.


    She will be replaced by another woman, her former deputy Katrina Landis, but the moves will worry those campaigning for more women in business, especially as Linda Cook, Shell’s most senior female executive, has recently left her job too.


    BP has gradually given up on plans to enter the UK wind industry and concentrated all its turbine activities on the US, where it can win tax breaks and get cheaper and easier access to land.


    In April the company closed a range of solar power manufacturing plants in Spain and the US with the loss of 620 jobs and Hayward has publicly questioned whether solar would ever become competitive with fossil fuels, something that goes against the current thinking inside the renewables sector.


    Hayward has also moved BP into more controversial oil areas, such as Canada’s tar sands, creating an impression that he has given up on the objectives of his predecessor, Lord Browne, to take the company “Beyond Petroleum”.

  • The price of climate change

     

    Opponents of Waxman-Markey, when not denying that global warming is real, are resorting to another time-honoured tactic of scaring people with wildly inflated cost estimates. Fortified with alarming numbers from thinktanks, opponents are calling the bill a “tax-and-trade” scheme that would saddle families with an unbearable financial burden for decades.

    One source of these spurious numbers, the Heritage Foundation, claims that Waxman-Markey would reduce GDP by a total of $7.4tn and destroy 1.9 million jobs by the year 2035. A family’s electricity bill would climb 90% and natural gas prices would climb 55%, adding $1,500 to the family budget. An even scarier assertion that the bill would cost families $3,100 was purportedly based on an MIT study – a claim that one of the study’s authors, John Reilly, roundly disputed.

    Opponents reached these conclusions by exaggerating the downside and ignoring the upside altogether. They have overstated the costs of renewable energy, underestimated the future costs of fossil fuels and left out the cost savings of improving energy efficiency. The Heritage Foundation report projects home energy prices will increase three to four times faster than the Congressional Budget Office or Environmental Protection Agency studies, and doesn’t include any benefits from improvements in energy efficiency or investing in new industries.

    The CBO came in with a cost of $175 per household. The EPA projects a lower net cost per household of $80 to $111 per year, and predicts energy savings for US households would lower utility bills by roughly 7% by 2020. Critics often cite the burden on the poor as a reason to not support renewable energy. But the CBO analysis projects a net benefit to the lowest income quintile of $40 per year.

    These savings will come by investing in renewable energy technologies that won’t be subject to the relentless and inexorable increase in fossil fuel prices. The EPA projects that by 2025 two thirds of new energy generation will be from renewable sources.

    We heard similar scare tactics here in Delaware during a recent debate over offshore wind power, when opponents tossed out wildly inflated cost projections, some as much as 10 times higher than official estimates. But citizens and elected leaders considered the benefits, not just the exaggerated cost projections, and Delaware became the first state to sign off on an agreement to build offshore wind power.

    There is one important factor the Heritage, CBO and EPA analyses all leave out: the cost of unchecked global warming, which could be considerable. Global warming will do more than inconvenience a few polar bears. Reduced snow melts in the Rockies and the Himalayas could disrupt agricultural water supplies in the US, China and India.

    As more water is released from ice caps and mountain ranges, rising sea levels could force the relocation of significant populations and disrupt important infrastructure. Here in Delaware, rising sea levels could flood the principal highway and rail line connecting New York and Washington. Water and sewer service for more than half of Delaware’s residents could be rendered unsafe or shut down altogether.

    A bill this complex on a subject this important deserves careful review. But opponents of Waxman-Markey have resorted to distorted analysis, one-sided arguments and crass exaggerations to make the case that we can’t afford to act. More careful – and balanced – analysis leads to the opposite conclusion that can’t afford to wait.

  • Rising sea level to submerge Louisiana coastline by 2100, study warns

     

     

    For New Orleans, and other low-lying areas of Louisiana whose vulnerability was exposed by hurricane Katrina, the findings could bring some hard choices about how to defend the coast against the future sea level rises that will be produced by climate change.

     

    They also revive the debate about the long-term sustainability of New Orleans and other low-lying areas.

     

    Scientists say New Orleans and the barrier islands to the south will be severely affected by climate change by the end of this century, with sea level rise and growing intensity of hurricanes. Much of the land mass of the barrier island chain sheltering New Orleans was lost in the 2005 storm.

     

    But the extent of the land that will be lost is far greater than earlier forecasts suggest, said Dr Michael Blum and Prof Harry Roberts, the authors of the study. “When you look at the numbers you come to the conclusion that the resources are just not there to restore all the coast, and that is one of the major points of this paper,” said Roberts, a professor emeritus of marine geology at Louisiana State University.

     

    Blum, who was formerly at Louisiana State University, now works at Exxon. “I think every geologist that has worked on this problem realises the future does not look very bright unless we can come up with some innovative ways to get that sediment in the right spot,” said Roberts. “For managers and people who are squarely in the restoration business, this is going to force them to make some very hard decisions about which areas to save and which areas you can’t save.”

     

    Efforts to keep pace with the accelerated rate of sea level rise due to global warming are compromised by the Mississippi’s declining ability to bear sediments downstream into the delta.

     

    The authors used sediment data from the Mississippi flood plain to estimate the amount of sediment deposited on the river delta during the past 12,000 years. They then compared this with sediment deposition today.

     

    In paper published in Nature Geoscience they calculate that due to dam and levee building on the Mississippi the sediment carried by the river has been reduced significantly. There are now about 8,000 dams on the Mississippi river system. Roberts said such constructions and the system of levees in Louisiana had cut in half the sediment carried down to the delta, inhibiting the river’s ability to compensate for the land lost to rising seas.

     

    Sustaining the existing delta size would require 18 to 24bn tonnes of sediment, which the authors say is significantly more than can be drawn from the river in its current state. “We conclude that significant drowning is inevitable,” the authors wrote. “In the absence of sediment input, land surfaces that are now below 1m in elevation will be converted to open water or marsh.”

     

     

     

  • Climate war could kill nearly all of us,leaving survivors in the Stone Age

     

    The followers of the peace lobbies of the 1930s resembled the environmentalist movements now; their intentions were more than good but wholly inappropriate for the war that was about to start. It is time to wake up and realize that Gaia, the Earth system, is no cozy mother that nurtures humans and can be propitiated by gestures such as carbon trading or sustainable development.

    Gaia, even though we are a part of her, will always dictate the terms of peace. I am stirred by the thought that Gaia has existed for more than a quarter the age of the universe and that it has taken this long for a species to evolve that can think, communicate, and store its thoughts and experiences.

    If we can keep civilization alive through this century perhaps there is a chance that our descendants will one day serve Gaia and assist her in the fine-tuned self-regulation of the climate and composition of our planet.

    We have enjoyed 12,000 years of climate peace since the last shift from a glacial age to an interglacial one. Before long, we may face planet-wide devastation worse even than unrestricted nuclear war between superpowers. The climate war could kill nearly all of us and leave the few survivors living a Stone Age existence. But in several places in the world, including the U.K., we have a chance of surviving and even of living well.

    For that to be possible, we have to make our lifeboats seaworthy now. Back in May 1940, we in the UK awoke to find facing us across the Channel a wholly hostile continental force about to invade. We were alone without an effective ally but fortunate to have a new leader, Winston Churchill, whose moving words stirred the whole nation from its lethargy: “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat.”

    We all need modern Churchills to lead us from the clinging, flabby, consensual thinking of the late twentieth century and to bind our nations with a single-minded effort to wage a difficult war.

    • From Conservation magazine, part of the Guardian Environment Network

  • Uganda ‘at risk’ of losing all it’s forests

     

    In its State of the Environment Uganda 2008 report, published this month, NEMA attributes the acceleration of deforestation to expanding farmland, a population boom and increasing urbanisation. It says unless the situation is reversed, the knock-on effect will be catastrophic, contributing to and exacerbating soil degradation, declining food security, disease and conflict.

    “In 41 years time, if the current rate of deforestation continues, the per capital forest cover will be zero because already we are tending towards desertification-type conditions,” Aryamanya Mugisha, executive director at NEMA, told the UN newswire IRIN today.

    Annet Nakyeyune, an environmentalist at Makerere University, added that the poorest people living in rural areas, such as Katine, would be hardest hit.

    Desertification due to deforestation is likely to “tamper with the country’s food security because rainfall will be erratic, floods rampant,” she said.

    Nakyeyune also warned that water sources will disappear, water catchment areas will dwindle, agricultural productivity will be badly hit and livelihoods destroyed as a result. Disease will also inevitably increase.

    The situation is being blamed partly on Uganda’s booming population, which is growing at a rate of 3.2% per annum. Areas around the capital, Kampala, have lost more than 78% of forest land since 1990.

    NEMA also say that as only 10% of Uganda’s population has access to electricity and 89% of rural Ugandans use firewood to cook it will be an uphill struggle to reverse this alarming trend.

    If NEMA is correct, then the people of Katine are likely to be among the first hit by the effects of deforestation and climate change.

    Already farmers in Katine say they are struggling to adapt to what they perceive as rapidly changing and increasingly erratic weather patterns. Rain is not falling when it is supposed to and drought has left many farmers struggling to find enough food to feed their families.

    On the Katine site today, Joseph Malinga reports on farmers’ fears of serious famine as a result of poor rains.

    It is one of the greatest injustices that the world’s poorest will be the hardest hit by global climate change and the effects of deforestation and the destruction of the natural environment.

    The introduction of new strains of drought-resistant cassava as part of the Katine project’s livelihoods programme is one way the project is trying to help farmers mitigate against more unpredictable weather, but are we doing enough?

  • Energy bills ‘too low’ to combat climate change

     

    “We have adapted to an energy price which is unrealistically low if we’re going to try and preserve the environment,” John Shepherd, a climate scientist at Southampton University and co-author of the report said. “We have to allow the economy to adapt to higher energy prices through carbon prices and that will then make things like renewables and nuclear more economic, as carbon-based alternatives become more expensive.”

    Shepherd admitted higher energy costs would be a hard sell to the public, but said it was not unthinkable. Part of the revenue could be generated by a carbon tax that took the place of VAT, so that the cost of an item took into account the energy and carbon footprint of a product. This would allow people to make appropriate decisions on their spending, and also raise cash for research into alternatives.

    “Our research expenditure on non-fossil energy sources is 0.2% of what we spend on energy itself,” said Shepherd. “Multiplying that by 10 would be a very sensible thing to do. We’re spending less than 1% on probably the biggest problem we’ve faced in many decades.”

    He said that the priority should be to decarbonise the UK’s electricity supply. Measures such as the government’s recent support for electric cars, he said, would be of no use unless the electricity they used came from carbon-free sources.

    Though the creation of the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) was a good move, Shepherd said: “We’ve had a lot of good talk but we still have remarkably little in the way of action.”

    He cited the recent DECC proposals on carbon capture and storage (CCS) as an example. The department plans to legislate that any new coal-fired power station must demonstrate CCS on a proportion of its output. Once the technology is proven, a judgment made by the EnvironmentAgency around 2020, power plants would have five years to scale up to full CCS.

    Shepherd said the proposals were not bold enough. “Really, it needs to be ‘no new coal unless you have 90% emissions reductions by 2020’. That is achievable and, if that were a clear signal, industry would get on and do it. It’s taken a long time for that signal to come through and now that it has, it’s a half-hearted message.”

    A spokesperson for DECC argued that its proposed regulatory measures were “the most environmentally ambitious in the world, and would see any new coal power stations capturing at least 20-25% of their carbon emissions from day one”.

    Ed Miliband, energy and climate change secretary, said that a white paper due next month will lay out how Britain will source its energy for the coming decades.

    “This white paper will be the first time we’ve set out our vision of an energy mix in the context of carbon budgets and climate change targets. We have identified ways to tackle the challenges – we will need a mix of renewables, clean fossil fuels and nuclear and we’re already making world-leading progress in those areas. It’s a transition plan, a once in a generation statement of how the UK will make the historic and permanent move to a low-carbon economy with emissions cut by at least 80% in the middle of the century.”

    The Royal Society report will argue that energy policy has been too fragmented and short-term in its outlook, with a tendency to hunt for silver-bullet solutions to climate change. “That really isn’t the case. What we need is a portfolio of solutions, horses for courses,” said Shepherd.