The Harper chill factor

Byoliveridley

The crisis over who will be in charge in Ottawa in the new year is making waves at the United Nations climate change conference in Poznan, Poland, with many delegates expressing hope that Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be ousted, a Montreal observer said at the conference.

“I've had delegates from all over the world coming up to me and asking what is happening in Canada, and frankly, in the vast majority of cases, they are saying they wish the government would fall. The Harper government is not popular here,” said Steven Guilbeault, a representative of Montreal-based Équiterre and one of about 9,000 participants in the 14th annual Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

via The Harper chill factor.

As Canada takes a timeout on installing a more representative government, a quick reminder that Harper’s conservative government is a climate dissembler, denier and liar.

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China takes most of UN clean energy funds

Byoliveridley

Clean Power That Reaps a Whirlwind – New York Times

That program, the Clean Development Mechanism, has become a kind of Robin Hood, raising billions of dollars from rich countries and transferring them to poor countries to curb the emission of global warming gases. The biggest beneficiary is no longer so poor: China, with $1.2 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, received three-fifths of the money last year. And as a result, some of the poorest countries are being left out.

Scientists increasingly worry about the emissions from developing countries, which may contribute to global environmental problems even sooner than previously expected. China is expected to pass the United States this year or next to become the world’s largest emitter of global warming gases.

The controversy is that China, India and Brazil together are gobbling up close to 80% of the UN Clean Development Mechanism Funds. What is the CDM?

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is an arrangement under the Kyoto Protocol allowing industrialized countries with a greenhouse gas reduction commitment (so-called Annex 1 countries) to invest in emission reducing projects in developing countries as an alternative to what is generally considered more costly emission reductions in their own countries.

In theory, the CDM allows for a drastic reduction of costs for the industrialised countries, while achieving the same amount of emission reductions as without the CDM. However, critics have long argued that emission reductions under the CDM may be fictive, and in early 2007 the CDM came under fire for paying €4.6 billion for destruction of HFC gases while according to a study this would cost only €100 million if funded by development agencies.

Source wikipedia.
The Kyoto protocol was supposed to be a starting point for further negotiations. Unfortunately, the U.S pulled out and put negotiations towards a better worldwide mechanism on the backburner.

Back to the issue at hand? This program is supposed to help countries that are expanding their energy use fast to develop clean sources of energy. India and China are both developing at breakneck pace, and every bit of wind energy that goes in there is one less Megawatt from coal. Yes, the money is not going to Africa, but Africa is not developing infrastructure at that pace (the reasons for that have filled many books!). This program is not meant to foster development, it is meant to facilitate clean development wherever development occurs. So, if China is developing the fastest, it has equal rights to access these funds to put in a wind energy infrastructure.

If you want China and India to stop using these funds and use some of their own money to develop clean energy, you have to redesign the program to include a rider that takes into account the affluence of the country. The more money a country has, the less it gets from the CDM, or it has to atleast pony up a bigger share. You also have to put in the infrastructure in poorer countries that can take advantage of these funds. Without a power distribution infrastructure, or a functioning government or bureaucracy, how do you expect a poor country in Africa to take advantage of a complicated credits based funding program?

Development is complicated stuff, and distortions like these happen all the time. When the Kyoto protocol was negotiated, China was not rich, now it has a little more money. Development situations are fluid and demand flexibility in action, and constant monitoring. If the world’s richest country does not participate, and actively trashes the UN continuously, old and imperfect agreements stay in power even longer. U.S disavowal of the Kyoto protocol has the effect of making the protocol’s distortions even stronger and delaying action to fix them.

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India goes solar

Byoliveridley

India, of course, gets a lot of sun, it is wasted in the sense that it makes us sweat, causes us to use increasing amounts of electricity for air conditioning, and all in all, is a pain. So, a plan to use that sun to generate solar energy, of course, is very welcome. Solar energy use obviously is not new in India, my best friend growing up had a solar water heater at home (his family business used to make them). Policy has never kept up because there has not been a push, is this one?

The Union Government has finalised the draft for the National Solar Mission. It aims to make India a global leader in solar energy and envisages an installed solar generation capacity of 20,000 MW by 2020, of 1,00,000 MW by 2030 and of 2,00,000 MW by 2050.

The total expected funding from the government for the 30-year period will run to Rs. 85,000 crore to Rs. 105,000 crore. The requirement during the current Five Year Plan is estimated to be Rs. 5,000 crore to Rs. 6,000 crore. It will rise to between Rs. 12,000 crore and Rs. 15,000 crore during the 12th Five Year Plan.

A crore, BTW, is 10 million. India still uses its own number multiplier system for money that goes in 100s, not thousands. So, a 100,000 is a lakh, and a 100 lakhs is a crore. I never understood why this was not changed when the country went metric. Lakhs and crores, of course, are metric, but can get confusing.

The plan will start off by mandating roof top solar panels for government and government owned industry buildings in an attempt to reduce costs by scaling up. It will be followed by mandated solar water heaters for all commercial buildings and apartment complexes, and use of solar panels for all in industrial buildings. All this is supposed to happen in the next three years, which appears to be wildly ambitious.

India is a federal country with delineation of jurisdictions between the central and state governments on regulation. Electricity happens to be on the concurrent list, meaning both the state and central governments can make laws, and the central government’s laws will always preempt the states. However, building appears to be a local government issue, so managing this huge transition could get tricky. They are all supposed to use the same building code, but given the unevenness of local governance, who knows what implementation will look like.

In Phase II, starting 2012, India will go solar thermal. India and Pakistan have 200,000 sq km of the Thar Desert, a typical dry tropical desert with oodles of space and sun. It would be a good place to site all kinds of capacity similar to efforts in North Africa and Spain.

Solar thermal, if combined with the right kind of transmission and storage technology, could power the world in 7000 sq km, so theoretical capacity may not be an issue. Of course, the storage and distribution are key. Molten salt batteries look very promising for solar energy storage and night use.

India’s electricity needs are daunting. This WolframAlpha search provides the following:

IndiaCanada

Note to Wolfram: your data presentation would result in a failing grade on a middle school term paper, where are the sources? Where did you get your numbers? BIG FAIL!

We in Canada use more electricity than India for about a billion fewer people. Clearly, if India was as profligate as Canada in energy consumption and got the power it needed to get there from coal, we would all be dead soon. India needs to go solar in a hurry and I am glad the government has released a policy that is more ambitious than the US or Canada. It needs the support and funding to make it happen and I for one will be very happy to see progress in this area. Solar power needs big up front costs and little ongoing costs.

Can Indian industry provide the money needed? We shall see. I am not too worried about the photovoltaic panel parts, they will muddle along in typical patchwork Indian fashion with the quality of governance being the controlling factor in success or failure. It is the capital and political will needed for solar thermal that strikes me as problematic. The coal and mining industries are entrenched in some population (and vote) rich states like Bihar based in the central and north east regions and there could be some big losers if India went away from coal (as it needs to in order to prevent catastrophic climate change) and toward solar thermal, which I assume would come out of Rajasthan (West).

Anyway, we live in interesting and sunshiny times, stay tuned for more.

h/t to my one of my favourite climate blogs, solve climate for bringing this article to my attention, love your blog folks!

Recycling Paper

Byoliveridley

recycle.gifNow you’re having this conversation over dinner about recycling (yes, I have had this conversation before with lots of people), and there pipes up this voice which says “Well, I read somewhere that it costs more money to recycle than to just throw it away”, and you think, “waitaminnit, that can’t be right, but where’s the proof?” Well, at least for paper, here it is, and bless the EU for taking the trouble (I read about this in the Environmental Valuation and Cost-Benefit News Blog).

Lifecycle Analysis and Cost Benefit Analysis on Paper Recycling

No, I did not read all 160 pages, but sure did read the Executive Summary…

The LCA review concludes that the majority of LCAs indicate that recycling of paper has lower environmental impacts than the alternative options of landfill and incineration. The result is very clear in the comparison of recycling with landfilling, and less pronounced, but still clear, in the comparison of recycling with incineration. The CBA review concludes that in little more than half of the CBAs, paper recycling has higher socioeconomic benefits than other management options. In the remainder of the studies, the socio-economic benefits of incineration, landfill or other options are higher than those gained from recycling. It is often said that CBAs are generally favourable to other waste management options than recycling. However due to the heterogeneity of the methodologies used in the reviewed CBAs, it is not possible to confirm or to reject this statement.

They looked at 9 different regions and did an LCA and CBA for each. Apparently, and I did not know this, the LCA evaluation system is well standardized and codified, so it is easy to compare results between regions, but the CBA mechanisms are not as well codified, hence more sensitive to the assumptions made.

Fascinating reading aside, the answer is clear, recycle your paper! At least they make it easy in Chapel Hill.

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India announces Panel to "study" global warming

Byoliveridley

The Hindu News Update Service

Warning that the threat of climate change was real, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Tuesday said future of people will be at peril if they do not change their lifestyles.

Singh’s warning came on a day when he constituted a high level advisory group to help the government take pro-active measures to deal with global warming.

“The threat of climate change is real and unless we alter our lifestyles and pursue a sustainable model of development, our future will be at peril”, he said in a message on the occasion of World Environment Day.

So, what exactly is the Indian position on climate change, something that threatens its coastlines, will put entire villages under water in the Ganga delta, screw around with the monsoon, and accelerate glacier melting in the Himalayas (among many other effects?)

Here’s India’s position from the talks with Brazil last week…

“We are willing to work in partnership in this process to cut emissions but we cannot accept equal responsibility (for the global mess caused by the industrialised nations),” an Indian official said.

The country’s top environmental official, Pradipto Ghosh, said yesterday that “legally mandated measures for reducing greenhouse gas emissions are likely to have significant adverse effects on the GDP growth of developing countries, including India”.

Yes, obviously. The world is in desperate need of a framework to make development and poverty alleviation happen without burning too much coal. But, as long as the leader of the free world vacillates, obfuscates and procrastinates, not much will happen.

Arsenic in the News, US Edition

Byoliveridley

Boy, it’s all arsenic all the time on this blog!

Chemical & Engineering News: Latest News – In Katrina’s Wake, An Arsenic Threat

An incredible 72 million m3 of debris was created when Hurricane Katrina wreaked havoc in Louisiana and Mississippi in 2005. A survey of this debris now reveals that an estimated 1,740 metric tons of arsenic could leach into groundwater from unlined landfills where the materials are being disposed (Environ. Sci. Technol., DOI: 10.1021/es0622812).

Here’s EPA’s page on arsenic treated wood, and here’s the cheerleader page for same (mmm, industry advocacy websites, delicious!). Note that the EPA is currently working with the manufacturers to “voluntarily” phase out the use of Chromated Copper Arsenate in residential settings. Note that there are several alternatives available, all of them less toxic and equally effective. While this “voluntary” action limits direct exposure for certain types of people, old wood ending up in unlined landfills will overwhelmingly affect people who live near said landfills, namely the poor, and African American. 

Even lined landfills leak eventually, and while other organic matter may degrade before the leaking, arsenic and heavy metals are not going anywhere. Unlined landfills, which is a fancy way of saying hole in the ground where you throw trash in, are completely unacceptable in this day and age in a so called developed country like the US of A. On the other hand, it is fashionable to refer to Louisiana as a third world country, so I guess anything goes for those kinds of people, eh.

Excellent Editorial on CO2 mitigation

Byoliveridley

It is nice to get away into the mountains for a while and not think about work, or climate change, but, reality drags you back. This is a great primer on various CO2 mitigation strategies, explaining in plain language, carbon taxes, cap and trade systems and such. It does tilt heavily towards the carbon tax approach, but that’s fine, I like it better than cap and trade anyway!

Time to tax carbon – Los Angeles Times

The proposed fixes for climate change are as numerous as its causes. Most only tinker at the edges of the problem, such as a California bill to phase out energy-inefficient lightbulbs. To produce the cuts in greenhouse gases needed to slow or stop global warming, the world will have to phase out the fossil fuels on which it relies for most of its power supply and transportation — especially the coal-burning power plants that account for about 32% of the annual emissions of carbon dioxide in the U.S. and that generate about half of our electricity. There are three basic methods of doing that, which are the subject of debate and legislation at every level of government.