lindafarmer.com» | lindafarmer.com

Reasons to Read “The COP15 Post”

Linda Farmer — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:23:03 +0000

Each morning when we go down to the Hellerup Park Hotel restaurant for breakfast, we pick up a copy of The COP15 Post – a special daily supplement published by The Copenhagen Post (www.cphpost.dk – Danish News in English).

Cover of today's issue: Thursday, December 17, 2009

The COP15 Post provides another way to be up-to-date on the previous day’s events, but more importantly it has feature articles covering climate change experiences from “people on the climate frontline” around the world.

As much as we think we know about climate change, it is an eye-opener to read first hand accounts of on-the-ground indigenous knowledge of changes in local climates and the permanent impacts these are having on cultures and livelihoods.

In today’s issue for example (Issue 9, Thursday, December 17, 2009) one of the articles, Canada’s frozen north becomes soggy north, by Simon Cooper, is about two 17-year old Canadian students, Danny Ishulutak, and Janet Evic, from the north-eastern Canadian Arctic village of Pangnirtung, Nunavut. Through their eyes we see the ways in which an ancient culture is impacted by irreversible changes in climate.

The very highly-respected Bill McKibben also has a daily opinion column and it’s worth reading just for his column alone.

I highly recommend checking out The COP15 Post website – you can read the issues online and/or download the PDFs to read at your convenience. Even the ads will give you food for thought (and perhaps outrage).

If only the climate skeptics would read it too, perhaps they might begin to question their head-in-the-sand position.

COP15: Canada takes the prize

Linda Farmer — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:39:33 +0000

With sincere apologies to my Canadian rellies and friends who are not responsible for their PM’s bad decisions, thought you’d like to see the “Fossil of the day” award that, sadly, Canada seems hell-bent on keeping for its own.

The Fossil of the Day award is determined by international voting members of the Climate Action Network.

The Climate Action Network's Fossil of the Day scoreboard. Their "prize" is announced daily at COP15 with great fanfare and ceremony.

A close encounter with the actual trophy:

Fossil of the Day: A trophy full of lumps of coal and dinosaurs.

Currently at the top of the leaderboard, Canada could take the outright overall prize at the rate it’s going.

COP15 travelogue – Part 1

Linda Farmer — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:24:58 +0000

As we’ve discovered to our chagrin at COP15, we were amazingly naïve to think we’d get time to write a daily post! An entire week has shot past and we have been on the go from morning to night.

First of all, many thanks to our readers and those who’ve taken the time to comment, your time is appreciated and your feedback is most welcome. Under normal circumstances, I’d reply to your individual comments, but this will have to do for now.

So far we start our days with a hearty breakfast at our hotel along with an apple and a banana to go that get us through until dinner time. We then head out into the winter cold to catch the bus and Metro to the Bella Center and proceed from there.

On the right, the Metro, near the Bella Center. In the foreground you can see the dedicated, curbed bicycle path, common throughout the city.

The days are long and becoming ever more crowded with people. Seriously.

The crowds are growing larger at COP 15 in the Bella Center

Wednesday, December 9th

While the delegates negotiate on, or don’t, the main event for us was an Energy Tour to Copenhagen’s new Kongens Nytorv District Cooling Project in the city, and to the Avedøre Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Plant on the coast.

The city is retooling an old power plant in the heart of the medieval downtown area known as Kongens Nytorv to provide district cooling to several major buildings including a large department store, a banking facility, and a newspaper company, among the many end users they have signed up for the project. (Public/private partnerships.) This area is among the most expensive real estate in Denmark.

Not only will these facilities have “central” air conditioning through district cooling, but they have each reclaimed major commercial square footage (meterage?) which they’re able to now use as income-producing space vs. mechanical facilities housing. For example the bank is using the reclaimed space for more data processing equipment, allowing them to maintain their valuable data in-house. The newspaper company has converted its rooftop from a mechanical jungle into a roof-top café and lounge area for its employees. These are basic no-brainer applications that we should be using everywhere to maximize our use of every molecule of energy we can, and enjoy the side benefits that come from the reclaimed space.

From there our bus took us on a 20 or 30 minute ride to the south coast to the Avedøre Combined Heat and Power (CHP) Plant owned by DONG (Danish Oil and Natural Gas – Dansk Olie og Naturgas A/S) Energy. After a bitterly cold wait standing in line in the dark (late afternoon) outside the security gates, our tour was finally allowed into the facility after the guards individually typed in our names from our UNFCCC security badges. Believe me, it’s not much fun standing outside with the wind howling in off the sea, so that was a little hitch in the gitalong. However, we appreciate their need for caution (in case any of us get left behind!), and we carry on…

We don hardhats for the Avedore CHP plant tour.

We don hardhats, and get a guided tour of the power plants. My Ontario Hydro Dad would have loved it!

Because it was night, we weren’t able to get photos of the facility. The corporate website has a brief video here if you are interested in seeing the power plants.

It is said that this is one of the most energy-efficient power plants in the world because they capture the heat created by the electricity-producing process and distribute it to the homes and businesses of Copenhagen. Both power plants are quite new, one being built in 1990 and the other in 2001 – they are very modern and impressive facilities.

The power plants at this site are able to use a variety of fuels depending on whatever is the most cost-efficient at the time in the energy markets. These include coal, oil, gas, wood pellets and straw. The later is gathered by the farmers and would otherwise lay rotting in the fields until new crops are planted. There are efforts underway to provide subsidies to farmers for their straw to make it more attractive for them to collect the straw for energy use.

From DONG Energy’s own website, here is a recap on the two power plants:

The overall production capacity of the two Avedøre Power Station units is 810 Megawatts of electricity and 900 Megawatts of heat.
Avedøre Power Station’s Unit 1 primarily uses coal, while Avedøre Power Station’s Unit 2 can use a wide variety of fuels: natural gas, oil, straw and wood pellets.
Avedøre Power Station’s Unit 2 has facilities consisting of several parts that, when combined, can make record-high use of the energy in the fuels. By simultaneously generating heat and electricity, Avedøre Power Station’s Unit 2 utilises as much as 94 % of the energy in the fuels and has an electrical efficiency of 49%. An achievement that makes the unit one of the most efficient in the world.

It’s been another long but interesting day in Copenhagen. I’ll continue my travelogue in another post …

Impressions of a COP novice

Linda Farmer — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:27:06 +0000

Day 2 at COP 15

Introduction: I am attending the COP15 meetings in Copenhagen as Communications Director for Third Planet, a non-governmental organization (NGO) non-profit foundation, along with Third Planet’s President, Robert Farmer. We are endeavoring to post our daily impressions of the conference. It has already become apparent that this is a large undertaking because of the amount of activity packed into each day. However, we shall do our best …

Not quite Day 1. Yesterday was largely ceremonial, but now we’re into Day 2 and the work of the Conference really begins.

We started Day 2 by catching the bus near our hotel and enjoying the scenery while commuting to Copenhagen’s city center with the locals. From there we boarded the metro and travelled to the conference headquarters at the Bella Center, a total journey of about 30 minutes.

I am amazed by the sheer volume of cyclists here – there is a dedicated cycling lane curbed from the motorized traffic, and it is very well used by business men, business women in high heels, and school kids alike. There are bicycle shops everywhere. We even saw a fellow cycling home with his Christmas tree in the bicycle’s basket. But I digress …

Having taken care of all the preliminaries of registration exceedingly late on Sunday evening, today we were able to head straight for the entrance security, past lines of hopeful late-arrival registrants.

Everything is very streamlined and well run. Security is tight and efficient. It’s like going through airport security (belongings into baskets, belts off, computers out, etc.), but lines move quickly and everyone is in a friendly and hospitable mood. (We have this daily airport security check to look forward to.)

There are well over 30,000 people attending in a facility designed for 15,000, so the UNFCCC issued a statement that if necessary they will be limiting the numbers of delegates from each organization. Our registration ID barcodes are scanned after we pass through security – this is how the UNFCCC controls the number of delegates from each organization.

At COP15 in Copenhagen: the head of the Third Planet delegation and the non-profit foundation's President, Robert Farmer

We check our coats and proceed with the peaceful throngs through to the large open general congregating area. Along the way we pick up the official UNFCCC Daily Programme giving us the scoop on the day’s activities. We pass two large groups of indigenous peoples singing to the crowd to attract attention to their cause.

The television news interviews you may have seen from the COP are recorded on an open sky bridge overhanging this central area. Far below them, in a sea of people at café-type seating at round tables, we nab a rare vacant table along the walk leading to the main Plenary area in the Tycho Brahe hall. We are surrounded by country delegates planning their strategies for the upcoming plenaries. Laptops are everywhere, as are semi-depleted cups of coffee and bottles of water. And croissant crumbs.

Third Planet's President is seated at the table directly under the white banner.

Everyone within sight is working. Delegations, discussion groups, etc. People seem to be very calm, not hurried but purposeful.

The rest of our morning is occupied with studying the Programme and the accompanying literature we’ve accumulated so we can strategize our conference plan. After a very good cafeteria-style Danish lunch of endive and orange salad, scalloped potatoes and baked stuffed chicken breast (imagine cooking for 30,000), we head over to Hall H where the Side Events rooms and Exhibits Hall are located. We spend the afternoon visiting the booths, collecting relevant reference materials, and engaging the exhibitors in dialogue.

Robert at the UNITAR (United Nations Institute for Training and Research) Exhibit at COP15

Groups of young people are seated in circles here and there on the floor holding impromptu discussion groups. Many sit cross-legged working away on their laptops:

Today there are a lot of organizational meetings (adopting agendas organizing the work for the session, election of officers for the session, etc.) going on, involving the subcommittees under the Framework. Here’s a peek through the door at one of the Side Events taking place in the Exhibit Hall:

This Side Event is being held in the Victor Borge meeting room.

For a more indepth look at just what is going on at the COP15 meetings, please see Robert Farmer’s post on the Third Planet blog: http://thethirdplanet.org/blog/2009/12/cop15-communique.html.

Our evening was spent back at the café table area working on our computers, surrounded by even larger tables of delegates planning their strategies. We learn from a lovely young journalist, Jaspreet Kindra of the United Nations Integrated Regional Information Networks (IRIN) that the large group is from Mali, and the other group is from Zambia. Jaspreet has been accompanying the Mali group all day to get an interview and when the group breaks up the Ambassador is ready for her interview. It’s now about 8 o’clock in the evening and we’re ready to call it a day.

We head for the coat check, then on to the Metro to return to the hotel. A woman next to us is wondering if she’s on the correct train. We get to talking and find out she’s a Party delegate from Israel – who is staying at the same hotel as us – and what’s more, she’s from Jacksonville (moved to Israel 30 years ago) for heaven’s sake! Small world. The three of us cover a wide range of subjects on our way back to the hotel by train then bus.

It’s been a long and stimulating day. Tomorrow (Wednesday) we are scheduled to take an Energy Tour – can’t wait to see what the day brings.