Greenbang

Bloomberg: Renewables spending needs to reach $500bn by 2030

Greenbang — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:44:22 +0000

Global spending on renewable energy projects could more than double by 2030, but that alone won’t be enough to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by the amount needed to prevent dangerous climate change, according to a new projection from Bloomberg New Energy Finance.

To achieve the level of carbon reductions needed, the price of carbon will also have to gradually rise to $100 per tonne, the model finds.

The Bloomberg New Energy Finance Global Energy and Emissions Model GE²M projects that renewable energy spending will rise from $90 billion (US) in 2009 to $150 billion in 2020, and to $200 billion by 2030, based on current policy targets. To avoid the worst of global warming, however, the model projects that spending on renewables needs to reach $230 billion by 2020 and $500 billion by 2030.

That level would help the world achieve an average carbon dioxide reduction of 2 tonnes per person by 2050.

The model predicts the increase in annual global spending on renewable energy will come largely from onshore wind, and also foresees significant expansion in solar photovoltaics and offshore wind. Biomass technologies are expected to continue to play an important role, particularly in the transport sector, while hydropower will see limited growth.

Important emission reductions will also come from forestry and agriculture and improved industrial energy efficiency. Energy efficiency in buildings will play a critical role, but these are expected to occur as a matter of course because in many cases the measures are already cost effective.

“These findings confirm that in spite of the ongoing economic malaise, investment in renewable energy should continue to grow, driven heavily by existing government targets,” said Guy Turner, director of Carbon Market Research at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “And if governments take the threat of climate seriously, there will be an increasing role for renewable energy up to 2030.”

The Grumpy Environmentalist: The woes of waste

Greenbang — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 15:56:12 +0000

There is plenty to be grumpy about when it comes to waste disposal in the UK.

Each year, the UK produces an estimated 335 million tonnes of waste, according to number-crunchers at DEFRA, the UK government department responsible for policy and regulations on the environment. Around half of that ends up in a hole in the ground, commonly known as landfill. Waste capacity in some regions of the UK is down to less than five years at current rates of consumption.

Waste policy is waste of time

The House of Commons Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee recently criticised DEFRA’s waste strategy for focusing disproportionally on domestic waste — the waste that we leave by the roadside for collection. It accounts for less than 10 per cent of overall waste in the UK. Non-household waste makes up the majority of landfill but with no directive from the European Union, the UK Government has set almost no targets.

Government policy in this area is quite literally rubbish.

There is one exception, namely demolition and construction, which currently generates more than three times the amount of waste of domestic households (32 per cent). The Government wants this halved by 2012.

It’s this area of waste that has been under scrutiny on our project restoring a 300-year-old farmhouse in Northumberland around eco-principals. There is inevitably lots of waste when an old building is stripped back to its core.

The farmhouse is a round-trip of more than 50 miles from the nearest waste disposal and recycling centre. The cost of transport combined with waste charges provides a big incentive to find alternative means of recycling or reuse.

Reuse

Where possible, we are reusing waste materials from the build. Rubble and stone is being incorporated as the foundation of new paths or set aside for use in the garden.

Wood from kitchen benches will be manufactured into shutters or raised flowerbeds. Electrical and plumbing fittings be reused at least until we know that we can afford to replace them with modern eco-versions or original fittings in keeping with the house.

More than three tonnes of stone chips have been removed from the old farmyard to make way for a kitchen garden. The stone is from the local Biddlestone quarry and is a common feature of local paths and driveways so the spoils have been literally shared around the neighbourhood.

Recycle

Where reuse directly on site isn’t possible, materials are being sorted and recycled.

Any wood that can’t be reused on the project has been offered to a local carpenter. Rejected timber will be chopped up for use as fuel on the stoves in the winter. Likewise, old cables, pipe work and radiators are being set aside for metal recycling.

Some items are hard to recycle despite their excellent condition. You struggle to give away a second-hand toilet it seems — even on a recycling site such as Freecycle.

Herein lies the issue: it takes considerable effort to coordinate and manage waste disposal and reprocessing on a building or renovation site. It’s much easier and ultimately less expensive, given labour costs, to use landfill.

But that’s because waste disposal costs don’t reflect the true price of disposal. How can it when it will take several decades for landfill waste to degrade? Waste storage would be a more accurate description of the issue.

Editor’s note: Two years ago, Stephen Waddington moved with his family from Ealing, London, to rural Northumberland. He joins the Greenbang team to write an occasional feature about his family’s attempts to renovate a 300-year farmhouse and live by eco principals.

Stephen is the managing director of Speed, a London-based multi-sector PR firm. He splits his time between London and his home in Northumberland. You can follow him on Twitter at @wadds.

CO2 doesn’t stop at the border; Neither should energy policies

Greenbang — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:45:27 +0000

Once upon a time, climate change felt like a distant threat on the horizon. Now it is happening in front of our very eyes. Across the world, global warming is sparking more intense heat waves, more flooding and more droughts. If climate change continues at its current pace, the social, environmental and economic costs don’t bear thinking about.

Yet, as the global population soars, our growing thirst for energy is still being fed by the number-one pollution culprits: traditional fossil fuels. Around the world, governments are investing vast sums of money in exploring and implementing alternative sources of energy that are cleaner, greener and cheaper. The UK government has introduced radical compulsory carbon emission reduction targets: as a country, we need to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 34 per cent by 2020, and by at least 80 per cent by 2050.

Solar power — the world’s fastest-growing source of energy — is poised to make a vital contribution to reducing carbon emissions on a global scale. However, compared to their peers in countries like Germany and the US, UK-based solar companies aiming to export their technology are operating with one hand tied behind their backs, for one reason: there is a lack of focused support from the government, despite the fact that there is an opportunity to expand the UK’s export market, and reduce global carbon emissions.

Surprisingly, the government’s recently published UK Low Carbon Transition Plan, which sets out how the UK will meet its emissions targets, does not detail how solar energy generation could be implemented and encouraged. In fact, the only renewable technologies truly supported by the UK government are those that contribute towards its own CO2 targets.

Despite being home to innovative companies that are developing state-of-the art solar technologies like concentrated photovoltaic energy, the UK’s weather does not make it an ideal candidate to use this technology on its own soil. Instead, photovoltaic technology is generally used overseas in countries whose direct sunlight hours allow them to make the best of this kind of solar energy.

So, why should the UK government support any initiative which would help another country to meet its emissions targets? The simple answer is the obvious one: CO2 doesn’t magically stop at the white cliffs of Dover. Since greenhouse gases don’t respect international borders, nor should our approach to tackling them.

Attitudes toward state investment in green technology are more flexible in other parts of the world. The US government, for example, has recently taken a broader view of the areas that it considers to be “worth” investing in for the economy and to create jobs. Indeed, the Obama administration has recognised that investing in renewable energy is one way to help pull the country out of recession: the $825 billion economic stimulus plan is helping create new jobs by encouraging investment in renewable technologies.

The UK’s strong tradition of manufacturing, engineering and design skills make it ripe for investment in the solar industry. Since the start of the recession, the UK’s industrial landscape has been altered beyond recognition, with regions like the West Midlands — once the hub of the automotive industry — left severely scarred. However, this upheaval has left behind an unemployed, yet highly skilled workforce, as well as ready-made manufacturing facilities, that could be put to good use by up-and-coming industries like solar.

Investing in the UK’s solar industry is not all about us. Carbon emissions are a global problem that needs a global approach. The solar industry is set to become a key way to tackle climate change through a cleaner, greener energy model.

Editor’s note: This was a guest commentary by Robin Godfrey, CEO of Circadian Solar, a UK-based developer of concentrated photovoltaic technology.

‘Frog foam’ could enable carbon capture, easier biofuels

Greenbang — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 19:41:47 +0000

What can frogs teach us about solar power, biofuel production and carbon capture? More than you might think, say researchers at the University of Cincinnati.

Carlo Montemagno, dean of the college of engineering and applied science, has authored a study with research assistant professor David Wendell and student Jacob Todd describing how the foam nest of a semi-tropical frog provided the inspiration for a new material that could eventually help produce biofuels or pull carbon dioxide from the exhaust of coal-fired power plants.

The idea is to place an artificial photosynthetic material within a housing of long-lasting foam similar to that created by the Tungara frog. While the frog uses the foam to protect its eggs while they develop into tadpoles, the researchers’ foam is aimed at keeping in place the ingredients needed for artificial photosynthesis while still letting through ample light and air circulation.

Their artificial photosynthetic material uses plant, bacterial, frog and fungal enzymes.

“The advantage for our system compared to plants and algae is that all of the captured solar energy is converted to sugars, whereas these organisms must divert a great deal of energy to other functions to maintain life and reproduce,” said Wendell. “Our foam also uses no soil, so food production would not be interrupted, and it can be used in highly enriched carbon dioxide environments, like the exhaust from coal-burning power plants, unlike many natural photosynthetic systems.”

In plants, Wendell explained, too much carbon dioxide “shuts down photosynthesis.” With their bacteria-based strategy for artificial photosynthesis, though, that’s not the case.

The new technology, added Montemagno, “establishes an economical way of harnessing the physiology of living systems.” In fact, he said, it could provide a way to tap the sun’s energy to produce either food or fuel far more efficiently than other biosolar technologies.

Montemagno and his team will next turn focus their efforts on making their technology feasible for large-scale operations, such as for carbon capture at coal-fired power plants.

Addicted to oil in a warming world? Blame the human brain

Greenbang — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 17:12:31 +0000

Never mind political differences, the rich-vs-poor divide or the all-out assault by global warming deniers. Our failure to take meaningful action so far on climate change or fossil fuel addiction might all come down to this: the human tendency to choose the status quo over change.

Researchers in the UK published a study this week that shows insights into how the brain behaves when people asked to make a judgment are given two options: stick with a default response (ie, do nothing) or take action to indicate a different response. Their finding: the more difficult the decision, the more likely it was that subjects would stick to the status quo.

“This suboptimal choice behaviour implies that the status quo bias may disconnect people’s preferences from their subsequent choices,” write University College London researchers Stephen M. Fleming, Raymond J. Dolan and Charlotte L. Thomas, who is also on the faculty of medicine and dentistry at the University of Bristol. They add such a bias explains why “employees often accept a company’s default retirement plan even if it leads to poorer investments” and why “consumers become impassive in the face of overwhelming choice.”

Considering the difficulty of reaching a global decision on fighting climate change effectively, is it any wonder that we’re still pretty much stuck with the status quo?

The tendency to “go with the flow” might also help explain why a new Gallup poll finds people in the US are not only less worried about environmental issues than they were last year, but are the least worried about most of them in any time since the poll first began 20 years ago. With more than ever to worry about — from climate change, peak oil and resource depletion to unemployment, failed markets and shifting economic powers — it seems we become increasingly likely to stick our fingers in our ears and go, “La, la, la, I can’t hear you.”

Arctic explorers set off on 500-km climate trek across sea ice

Greenbang — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:17:14 +0000

A three-person team led by British explorer Ann Daniels this week began a grueling 500-kilometre trek across the Arctic’s floating sea ice to study how rising carbon dioxide levels are affecting the ocean waters.

“Our work is to capture data which scientists would otherwise not be able to get, it is just so hard to operate in this environment in the winter,” Daniels said before embarking on the expedition. “The expedition focus is on ocean acidification which some scientists describe as the Earth’s ‘other carbon dioxide problem.’ ”

The team’s Twin Otter plane dropped them off late Sunday at 85°32′ N, 77°45′ W after a seven-hour flight from the town of Resolute in northern Canada. Daniels and fellow explorers Martin Hartley and Charlie Paton have since begun heading north, hauling sledges weighing up to 120 kilograms over pressure ridges, rubble fields and swimming across leads of open water.

This is the second such expedition for Daniels and Hartley, who along with explorer Pen Hadow, last year completed a 73-day, 435-kilometre journey across the sea ice as part of the first Catlin Arctic Survey. (Paton was the ice base manager for last year’s survey.) Their mission last year was to take measurements to help determine how long the Arctic Ocean’s sea ice cover might remain a year-round feature.

Their conclusion last year: there is a significant probability that, within the next 10 years or so, only 20 per cent of the region will still have sea ice cover during the summer months.

Both Catlin Arctic Surveys have been organised as a unique collaboration between ice-trekking explorers and research scientists who operate from an ice base in Canada. The effort aims to gather more information about carbon dioxide’s impact on the region, where research is especially scarce in the winter and early spring.

“Scientists really want to know more about what is going on in this region of the ocean, but to operate on the Arctic Ocean in winter is extremely hard,” said Hadow, who is the survey’s director again this year. “Our expedition is not only giving the scientists a way of working there themselves by providing experienced polar guides, but enabling survey data to be obtained far beyond the areas of the ocean where it is safe for them to work by sending our explorers to do that work for them.”

During the survey work, the teams will face temperatures as low as -45 degrees C and wind-chills of down to -75 degrees C.

Some scientists believe that, based on current projections, the pH of the world’s oceans could by 2050 reach levels that have not been seen on Earth for 20 million years. If this occurs, there could be serious consequences for marine life in the Arctic and elsewhere.

“We understand from models projecting future ocean chemistry that the Arctic Ocean is particularly vulnerable to ocean acidification because cold water absorbs CO2 more effectively than warm oceans, so much so that it may become corrosive to some shelled organisms within a few decades,” said Carol Turley of the Plymouth Marine Laboratory, one of the academic institutions participating in this year’s survey.

“Ocean acidification is the ‘other carbon dioxide problem,’ ” added Jean-Pierre Gattuso of CNRS-Université Pierre et Marie Curie, which is also taking part in the survey. :The oceans absorb about a quarter of human-made CO2. This has been limiting the amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere and mitigating climate change. However, the massive amounts of CO2 absorbed considerably upsets the ocean chemistry by increasing the acidity of sea water. It is certain that it will impact marine ecosystems, although we do not fully understand how all marine species will cope at the levels of acidity projected later in this century.”

Welcome to the cloak-and-dagger world of peak oil, climate

Greenbang — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 19:26:00 +0000

Who would’ve thunk it? As we ease into the second decade of the 21st century — a period that had promised a new era of technological advances beyond imagination — the issues of oil and climate are becoming less IEEE and more Tom Clancy.

First, of course, we have the hacking late last year of the emails at the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit. Rather than set off a storm of outrage over illegal intrusion into research with international security implications, the incident refilled the global warming denier crowd’s arsenal with fresh ammo. While the hacker or hackers today remain at large, climate scientists have become a collective whipping boy for much of the media and the anti-science world.

And then there was the revelation last fall that the International Energy Agency (IEA) had been — in part, due to pressure from US officials — deliberately overstating the case for ample global oil supplies and understating the risk of peak oil. The disclosure came from an unnamed whistleblower at the IEA.

Now we’ve learned how that whistleblower came to sound the alarm, courtesy of a fascinating blow-by-blow account at The Ecologist. Written by Tom Levitt, the article follows Lionel Badal from his days as an undergraduate at Exeter University working on a dissertation about peak oil to a lucky encounter with a source at the IEA who closed the interview with an admission that he was, in fact, quite concerned about the risk of peak oil.

From there, Levitt’s piece goes on to describe an arranged meeting between Badal, the whistleblower and French official Corrine Lepage; early failed efforts to engage the interest of key journalists in the UK; and, finally, the breaking of the whistleblower news story on the front page of the Guardian on the same day the IEA released its 2009 World Energy Outlook.

With real-life stories like these, who needs fiction?

Carbon storage: Works in a lab, but what about real life?

Greenbang — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 17:20:01 +0000

European researchers are set to launch a new field laboratory this year to assess the best ways to store and monitor carbon dioxide underground. The trouble is, until the real price of carbon makes CCS (for “carbon capture and storage”) economically viable, what works in the field lab might not yet be ready to work in real life.

That’s a concern not only in parts of the world like the US, which has yet to adopt any concrete cap-and-trade scheme for carbon, but even in places like Europe, which has such a programme in place but has seen the price of carbon credits collapse in the ongoing recession.

While a recent estimate pegs the required carbon price for economically viable CCS at around $60 per tonne, carbon in Europe is currently trading at about $13. At that rate, carbon capture and storage is likely to be something we’ll continue to see only in field trials.

However, that’s not stopping European researchers from launching a new study to learn more about how carbon dioxide behaves when it is stored deep underground. Later this year, they plan to start testing the storage capabilities of geological strata below the Svelvik Ridge in southern Norway. Their goal is to refine current understanding to help develop regulations and procedures for CO2 storage monitoring.

“When operations are performed according to the book when CO2 is stored in geological strata, the risk of the gas leaking to the surface is extremely low,” said project manager Menno Dillen, who’s a senior scientists at SINTEF Petroleum Research. “However, it is essential to have good methods of monitoring the behaviour of the CO2 once it is stored. That is what our project will help to do.”

According to SINTEF, which is the largest independent research organisation in Scandinavia, no other field laboratory in the world will simultaneously test so many monitoring methods at such depths as the Svelvik Ridge study.

Whatever the results, we’ll still have to wait for the price of carbon to catch up before we see such efforts go commercial. How soon is a question no one appears ready to answer yet.

What’s good for you isn’t good for the krill

Greenbang — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:50:24 +0000

We all know that television commercials tend to, shall we say, accentuate the positive. But one recent ad we spotted went above and beyond … in that what was being touted as a remarkable and revolutionary improvement is in fact a disturbing development in disguise.

The commercial, which was for a new omega fatty acid supplement, said something to the effect of, “This new supplement made with krill gives you three times as much omega-3 as the leading fish oil supplements.”

What we heard, though, was this: “Fish is getting harder to come by, so now we’re bottom-feeding by switching to krill to continue selling the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids.”

And that is, in fact, the case. The northwest Atlantic cod, for example, were fished so heavily in the ’70s and ’80s that the fishery collapsed dramatically in 1992 (and has yet to recover). Some species of salmon and anchovies — both favoured sources of omega-3 — are also being overfished.

As traditionally popular species of fish are pushed to the brink, our unflagging appetite for seafood has pushed the market into previously non-commercial species like hoki and also boosted the demand for krill. For the time being, though, the annual krill catch appears to be staying at sustainable levels, thanks in part to quotas set by the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources.

To help keep it there, we suggest skipping the omega-3 supplements — fishy or krilly — altogether, and switching to flax seed instead.

Beware of vested interests bearing ‘gifts’ of academic studies

Greenbang — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 20:24:26 +0000

Say you’re feeling a bit blue and the feeling won’t go away. Would you accept advice to take the drug GLeeMONEX without a second opinion if the suggestion came

came from a sales rep from Roritor Pharmeceuticals … which happens to make GLeeMONEX?

Wouldn’t seem very wise, would it? Yet we often accept similar “wisdom” in the form of studies on important issues like energy and transport without asking who or what was actually behind the study.

Take, for example, the US National Research Council’s (NRC) recent report on “Transitions to Alternative Transportation Technologies — Plug-In Hybrid Electric Vehicles,” which concluded that hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles could reduce oil consumption better than plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. Interesting and perhaps consequential for our future transport decisions, no?

Yes, except for the fact that, as several astute observers quickly pointed out, the study’s authoring group — the Committee on Assessment of Resource Needs for Fuel Cell and Hydrogen Technologies — included, in the words of climate blogger Joe Romm, “at least three retired oil and auto company people, academics who do hydrogen research, consultants with oil company ties and one who has served on the National Hydrogen Foundation board and another the retired Vice President Hydrogen Systems for Chevron Technology Ventures, and a venture capitalist immersed in hydrogen.”

These kinds of oddly skewed studies come out more often than you might expect, and have been especially pernicious in the fields of tobacco and climate research, as James Hoggan and Richard Littlemore point out in their 2009 book, Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming. They trace many of the papers that took a contrary view of tobacco’s health effects and the risks of climate change to authors backed by groups or institutions funded by — surprise — tobacco or oil companies.

The bottom line: while it’s very easy to identify and dismiss the obvious slanted studies (you know, the petroleum-sponsored research that predicts bottomless oil wells for decades to come, or the cereal company studies that “prove” a bowlful of bran makes your kids smarter, etc.), some of the more “objective” appearing research that generates headlines every day might also bear a bit of scepticism and scrutiny.