Climate Feedback

Anjali Nayar, an International Development Research Centre fellow at Nature, recently visited a pioneering project in Madagascar that's aiming to protect one of the country's few remaining forests. About 90% of the species in Madagascar's rainforests are found nowhere else on Earth, but efforts to save the island nation's forests are about more than conserving biodiversity.

It's hoped that projects like this will provide a model for efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation. Under a proposal, known as reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD), wealthy nations could meet their emissions targets in part by buying carbon credits from developing countries such as Madagascar. REDD is one of the topics up for discussion at the UN climate-change conference in Copenhagen this December. Countries will negotiate whether REDD should be included in the global climate deal that takes over from the Kyoto Protocol.

But as Anjali reports, to be successful these projects must overcome the poverty and political upheaval common to most developing countries. Read Anjali's full report here. Or see a slideshow video version, here.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 05, 2009
Categories: Anjali Nayar, Biodiversity and Ecology, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Deforestation, Features, GHG emissions, Notes from the Field | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

After months of saying that recession wouldn’t stop climate policy plans in Australia, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd announced yesterday that the country’s cap-and-trade program is in fact going to be delayed a year and will not roll out until July 2011.

As Roberta Kwok wrote in Nature last month, Rudd’s Labour party government had called for a 5% emissions cut from 2000 levels by 2020 - to be raised to 15% if an ambitious global climate deal is reached in Copenhagen - but the proposed legislation was under fire from both the right and left. The Financial Times notes that Greens in the Australian Senate had demanded a 40% cut with a global deal, while conservative opposition parties wanted the plan delayed to cushion the impact on businesses. Rudd met the Greens halfway, raising the conditional 15% target to 25%. Industry got extra soothing with a new tweak: fixed carbon prices for the first year (The Age has details).

Rudd, who had called any delay in cap-and-trade “reckless and irresponsible”, now says "I believe (this) is the most sensible, rational, balanced response to a fundamental change in economic circumstances."

Halfway around the world, British Columbia may also be about to take a U-turn on a climate policy milestone. Nicola Jones reports in Nature today that the province has been uneasily bearing the burden of North America’s first carbon tax. The BC Liberal Party started the tax in July, but their challengers in an upcoming election on 12 May are against it. Jones writes:

Continue reading "Hard times for climate plans in Australia and Canada " »

Posted by Anna Barnett on May 05, 2009
Categories: Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Politics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Stimulating algal growth by adding iron to nutrient-poor ocean regions is one of several geo-engineering methods that could possibly mitigate greenhouse warming. But given widespread worries about possibly harmful side-effects on marine life, large-scale ocean ‘fertilization’ is currently not considered advisable.

Predictably, environmental groups have therefore jumped on an iron fertilization experiment which an international team of oceanographers is set to conduct over the next two months in the Southern Ocean near the island of South Georgia. Critics claim that LOHAFEX violates the moratorium on ocean fertilization activities which the United Nations had agreed upon last year. The Nature news story here has more details.

The somewhat ambivalent wording of the legally binding UN Convention on Biological Diversity adds to the controversy. ‘Small-scale’ scientific experiments in ‘coastal waters’ are exempted from the moratorium, it reads. But ‘small-scale’ is a relative term, and where exactly coastal waters give way to the open ocean remains also undefined.

Picture: The Polarstern (Alfred Wegener Institute)

The team on board the German ‘Polarstern’, who plan to spread 20 tonnes of iron sulphate over less than 20 by 20 kilometres-large patch of ocean surface in the Scotia Sea, hope that the study will provide new insight into how ocean ecosystems respond to fertilization – the very data, hence, that are needed to assess whether or not larger-scale future activities might be justified. But opponents counter that such doing already qualifies as an activity banned by UN law. Pressure groups have launched a signature campaign aimed at stopping the Polarstern crew, which will reach its destination by the end of the week, from dumping its load.

A number of companies, such as the now defunct Planktos Inc., had in the past hoped to commercialize ocean fertilization for the carbon credit market. Scientists and institutes participating in LOHAFEX stress that the experiment has no commercial background whatsoever.

UPDATE:
The Indo-German ocean fertilization experiment, LOHAFEX, has been suspended. The German science ministry, in response to environmental concerns, has asked the Alfred Wegener Institute (AWI) in Bremerhaven that an additional independent assessment be conducted before the planned activities can commence.

Meanwhile, the Polarstern, scheduled to reach the planned study region in the Scotia Sea by the end of the week, will continue its journey as planned. On arrival, the 48 scientists on board will start doing preparatory work, but the team will have to await permission from the ministry before they can dump any nutrients into the ocean. AWI has today commissioned two undisclosed institutions to carry out the required extra assessment. It hopes the reports will be delivered within ten days.

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on January 14, 2009
Categories: Biosphere feedbacks, Business, Carbon markets, In the News, Mitigation, Ocean science, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, Research, Technology | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

After eleven months of legislative work, the European Parliament gave its backing today to the European Union’s (EU) climate change package which aims to ensure that the EU will achieve its self-set climate targets by 2020: a 20% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions relative to 1990 levels, a 20% improvement in energy efficiency, and a 20% share for renewables in the EU energy mix.

EU heads of states, who had hammered out the agreement last week, called the legislation "historic". But critics say the reduction targets are less ambitious than they appear, basically a bluff. What bothers environmentalist most are the many far-reaching concessions to power plants and other emission-intensive industries participating in the EU’s mandatory emissions trading system.

More about this is in my story over on Nature News.

Quirin Schiermeier

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on December 17, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, GHG emissions, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

It’s well accepted that the upcoming climate talks in Poznan will not be the time or place for agreeing the architecture of a new deal on climate change. An idea that is less well received, but one that is gaining traction, is that the same could be true of the negotiations in Copenhagen a year from now.

While the election of Barack Obama as US president brings renewed energy and hope to the UN process, President Bush will be holding court when environment ministers from some 192 nations meet next week in Poznan. And with Harlan Watson in place as the US chief climate negotiator, any serious shifts in the US position will be on hold until January. In addition, some are speculating that even the modest ambitions of the talks — to settle how to finance emissions cuts and aid adaptation in developing countries — are likely to be eclipsed by the world's financial woes.

But of far graver concern are the growing reports that the US won’t be ready to sign a global deal on climate change in Copenhagen either, given the time needed to enact domestic climate legislation.

As far back as October, Elliot Diringer, Director of International Strategies at the Pew Center on Global Climate Change, wrote the following in an op-ed for the Transatlantic Climate Policy Group:

Any near-term action may come in the form of energy legislation that, while helping to reduce U.S. emissions, will not achieve the levels of reduction envisioned under a cap-and-trade scenario. Enactment of a comprehensive climate package, including cap-and-trade, is unlikely in 2009. It may come at the earliest in 2010.

The world can ill afford a replay of Kyoto, with Europe demanding more than can be delivered and the United States ultimately walking away. We need realism, not brinksmanship. Instead of a full and final deal in Copenhagen, we must aim for what is in fact feasible, and set expectations now so that it is received as a success. The risks and consequences of failure are otherwise far too great.

Just last week Senator Jeff Bingaman, chairman of the Senate Energy Committee, reflected this sentiment, saying that the financial crisis, the transition to a new administration and the complexity of setting up a federal cap-and-trade system would likely preclude action in 2009.

Continue reading "Will the US be ready in Copenhagen? " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on November 28, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Olive Heffernan, Politics, UN Conference on Climate Change, Copenhagen, UN Conference on Climate Change, Poznan | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Is the global financial crisis good or bad for green issues? The ongoing controversy over the European Union’s ambitious climate and energy package suggests the latter might be the case. But political and economical analysts seem to be increasingly confident that the current crisis might give rise to environmentally healthier policies and investment decisions.

The EU heads of state are still determined to finalise the package before the end of the year, but they expect tough negotiations with a group of reluctant countries led by Poland.

An editorial in this week’s Nature lays out the options and prospects for EU climate policies in light of the financial crisis:

“Striking the required bargains may require more time than the remaining two months under French presidency. But a well-weighed set of rules is far and away preferable to a rushed political compromise that would substantially water down the EU’s ambitious climate plan. (…) Meanwhile, the current economic turbulence cannot be allowed to serve as a pretext for lessening climate protection efforts.”

Meanwhile, United Nations (UN) Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has said in a statement that the EU plan “could also be a boon for the economy, generating millions of new jobs at a time when the world is suffering from the financial crisis.”

Any agreement will come too late for the international climate talks next month in Poznan, Poland (of all places). But a strong European commitment to cutting greenhouse gas emissions by at least 20 % would be a much-needed signal to the UN climate meeting in Copenhagen 2009, where nations hope to conclude on a successor treaty to the Kyoto Protocol.

Continue reading "From greed to green?" »

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on October 23, 2008
Categories: Business, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, GHG emissions, Opinion, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The European Parliament’s environment committee yesterday voted largely in favour of the ambitious European climate action plan (subscription) proposed in January.

The decision, although preliminary, allows the European Union (EU) to go into the upcoming next round of international climate negotiations with a common goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions across Europe by at least 20 % by 2020. The European commission, Council and Parliament must yet formally agree on details of the plan, but substantial changes are now considered unlikely.

Power plants in Europe will no longer receive free allowances for their greenhouse-gas emissions.TRAVELPIX/GETTY

Most hotly contested were the amendments to the EU’s emission trading system (ETS) which the European commission had proposed in January to strengthen the effectiveness of the scheme.

Introduced in 2005, the ETS is as yet the only mandatory emissions trading system in the world. Until now, power stations and other large European industries have benefitted from generous supply of free permits to release carbon dioxide. Much of the commission’s proposed reform was aimed to end the over-allocation of emission allowances.

The compromise now agreed upon in parliament doesn’t pull the teeth out of the original plan. As of 2013, power stations will not receive free emission allowances anymore. Instead, they will have to obtain 100% of allowances at auction.

Other energy-intensive industries, such as steel and cement facilities which, unlike the power sector, have to compete with suppliers outside the EU, will in a first phase merely have to obtain 15% (rather than 20 % as the commission had initially proposed) of emission allowances at auction. But the allocation of free allowances to manufacturing industries is to be gradually phased out by 2020.

The environment committee did make some concessions to industry, though. The threshold for facilities – currently around 10,000 - which participate in the ETS is to be raised from 10,000 to 25,000 tonnes of annual carbon dioxide emissions.

Continue reading "EU Parliament backs climate plan" »

Posted by Quirin Schiermeier on October 08, 2008
Categories: Business, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Energy, GHG emissions, In the News, Politics, Quirin Schiermeier, Topics | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Ross Garnaut, the down-under equivalent of Nicholas Stern, offered up a draft report Friday on the costs of climate change in Australia and an emissions trading scheme for dealing with it.

The reaction? Garnaut mania, says Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond. The report's server was overloaded at the time of this blogging - despite the gauntlet of rewrites that still stands between this document and actual legislation, as Daniel points out.

If global warming goes unmitigated, Garnaut figures projected GDP will drop 4.8% and real wages 7.8% by 2100. Agriculture is one sector set to take a beating - and that's in the context of droughts that have already dug into Asia's rice supply (thanks to Grist for link; more on climate, energy and global food supply here).

The proposed emissions market has a broad scope, including transportation and petroleum products. It won't be a revenue-raiser though - households are supposed to get half the proceeds to offset rising prices, businesses another 30% against international competition, and the last 20% goes to developing and commercializing new technologies. For wonkier details, see Reuters' factbox.

Worth noting: At the national level, what Garnaut's recommending is a short-term band-aid plan. From the report summary:

Australia's mitigation effort is our contribution to keeping alive the possibility of an effective global agreement on mitigation.

Any effort prior to effective, comprehensive global agreement should be short, transitional, and directed at achievement of global agreement.

Image: Coal-fired power plant in Western Australia. If carbon consumption goes unmitigated, says the Garnaut report, coal-addicted Oz can expect quadrupled emissions, mostly from power. Credit: Nachoman-au on Wikimedia.

Posted by Anna Barnett on July 07, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For all tree huggers out there, this week’s Science is dedicated to ‘forests in flux’, paying tribute to the trees and their contribution to the greater good. A special collection of articles in print, with complementary and online material, examines the fate of the world’s forests, in the face of climate change and an escalating human population.

If it’s been a while since you’ve had the chance to appreciate the languid leafiness of forest foliage, check out the online video. Or for those of you hoping for a more ‘hands on’ experience, there’s a whole section of Science Careers dedicated to opportunities in forest ecology.

There’s lots of serious science, with six Perspectives and one Review by researchers from all over the globe who give their tuppence worth on what’s needed to better understand forests and manage them properly.

Of particular relevance to discussions on how forests can mitigate global warming, Lera Miles and Valerie Kapos have a Perspective highlighting the risks involved in proposed schemes such as REDD (reduced emissions from deforestation and forest degradation) and how to minimize them. Also on this topic, Josep Canadell and Michael Raupach write on what science currently tells us is the best way to manage forests for sequestering carbon.

Drew Purves and Stephen Pacala discuss how forest dynamics remain one of the largest uncertainties in predicting future climate change and detail some of the efforts underway to improve their representation in models. Or for a really solid review of how forests affect climate change, check out Gordan Bonan’s piece here.

Or if that seems like a lot of tree pulp to get through, here are some interesting stats from the issue:

Forests cover ~42 million km2 in tropical, temperate, and boreal lands, and cover ~30% of the land surface

They store ~45% of terrestrial carbon and account for ~50% of terrestrial net primary production.

Forests hold more than double the amount of carbon in the atmosphere.

Carbon uptake by forests in the 1990s contributed to ~33% of anthropogenic carbon emission from fossil fuel and landuse change.

Olive Heffernan

Image: Plantations of Pinus radiata and Eucalyptus nitens in Gippsland (Victoria, Australia); courtesy of Michael Ryan.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 13, 2008
Categories: Biodiversity and Ecology, Biosphere feedbacks, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Climate Science, Climate prediction, Deforestation, GHG emissions, Mitigation, Olive Heffernan, Uncertainty | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Whether and how to put a price on carbon has been something of a hot topic this week, primarily due to the proposal of a landmark climate change bill to the US Senate that would "cap and trade" emissions of the greenhouse gas.

Perhaps somewhat unsurprisingly, the climate change bill offered by Senators Boxer, Lieberman, and Warner died today in the Senate after Democrat leaders fell a dozen votes short of the 60 needed to defeat Republican obstruction.

Republicans opposed the global warming bill over fears of the economic costs of pricing the greenhouse gas, though Democrats argued there would be no cost to consumers, who would be aided with tax relief. The debate over "cap and trade" legislation is now expected to be postponed until next year, when there is a new president in the White House.

Both presidential nominees back mandatory greenhouse gas reductions and indicated they supported moving forward on discussing the bill offered to the Senate this week, but whether "cap and trade" is the the best way to price carbon remains contentious.

The issue is taken up this week on Nature Reports Climate Change by Roger Pielke Jr who reviews Earth: The Sequel by Fred Krupp and Miriam Horn of the Environmental Defense Fund. The basic tenet of the book is that a US carbon market with tradable credits would provide the profit incentive needed to energize potential innovators of low or no-carbon technology – thus meeting the world's escalating demand for green energy. But Pielke Jr argues:

By placing their attention on the need for innovative energy technologies, Krupp and Horn have focused on the one area where advocates for action on greenhouse gas reduction are in strong agreement. They have avoided engaging in the real debate over the policies necessary to decarbonize the growing global economy and, crucially, over whether and how to put a price on carbon dioxide.

You can read the full review here.

Meanwhile, over on Dot Earth, Andy Revkin has written about an alternative, though less popular, pricing approach known as “cap and dividend”. The scheme, being strongly endorsed by NASA climatologist James Hansen, is based on the principle of making the polluter pay without placing the burdening of rising costs on the consumer, the most commonly cited down-side of "cap and trade" (discussed by Pielke Jr in the above review).

Revkin explores two proposals for “cap and dividend”: one by Hansen that involves taxing fuels by their carbon content, and another by investment pioneer Peter Barnes that entails selling a steadily declining number of permits for emitting carbon dioxide. The latter would force polluters to eventually pay the full whack of their carbon consumption, and the revenue would be returned to citizens. You can read the full story here.

Olive Heffernan

Posted by Olive Heffernan on June 06, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Features, In the News, Olive Heffernan, Politics, Technology | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Canadians are set to slap the first price tag on their greenhouse gas emissions, thanks to some very different initiatives in the works.

Reuters reported Friday that the long-awaited Montreal Climate Exchange will open on May 30, buying and selling voluntary emissions reductions in the same fashion as the Chicago Climate Exchange, its US partner.

Meanwhile, the Canadian government had a few days earlier put out the details of its plan for mandatory emissions reductions, which had likewise been in the works for over a year (a good summary is here; registration required). They're proposing to cut absolute emissions 20% from 2006 levels by 2020 (for those scoring at home, 20% down from 2005 levels would be 0% below 1990 levels, compared to the standard-bearing EU's 20% cut from 1990 levels).

But absolute emissions isn't what they'll limit - they're talking about regulating emissions intensity, or the amount of emissions per unit of production, from 2010. That could make it tough to integrate into a global climate deal, since the EU caps absolute emissions and all three US presidential candidates want to do the same. Interestingly, the plan also mandates carbon capture and storage for oil sands, a carbon-intensive economic lynchpin of the country.

Besides the voluntary market, local measures could already be in play when and if these limits come down. British Columbia is leading the way with what is to be the first carbon tax implemented outside of Europe. Although the tax hasn't been looking very popular and faces the same too-much-is-never-enough criticism that the EU climate bill came in for, liberal leader Stephane Dion now says he'd like the national strategy to be a carbon tax - or something. Anything. "We can talk about what the best model for putting a price on carbon across Canada might be –– but the fact is we need to JUST DO IT. That is what this provincial government has done, and that is what a Liberal government will do," Dion said in a speech in Vancouver.

Conservatives, who will be defending their control in the next election, countered with praise for the Montreal market. And while other provinces remain skeptical of the carbon tax, B.C. and Manitoba are considering joining western US states in a new cap-and-trade system - so a regulatory patchwork looks likely. As in the US recently, though, the question is no longer whether the Canadian government should intervene to raise fossil fuel costs, but how.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on March 19, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Business, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, In the News, Mitigation, Politics | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Following on from Jeff's post on Supercallifragalistic Tuesday, Chris Mooney has a post on his blog and a column elsewhere on the differences between McCain on one side and Obama/Clinton on the other on matters climatic.

Writing before Romney dropped out of the race but after it was fairly clear he had little reason to stay in, Chris's point is that while it's true that all three of the people who might be the next President support real action on climate change, which is an undeniably good thing, they don't all support quite the same sort of action. Specifically, while the Deomocrats are talking about cap and trade measures that would lead to 80% reductions in emissions by 2050,

There are many reasons to think [McCain would] settle for a policy that is more lenient and compromise-oriented. Notably, McCain worked closely with Senator Joseph Lieberman on climate legislation in the past, and the current bipartisan Lieberman-Warner bill sets a lower target for emission reductions – a 70 percent reduction in capped emissions by 2050 (and not all emissions would be capped).

Continue reading "And then there were three" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on February 08, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Oliver Morton | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

The European Commission's draft blueprint for tackling climate change, announced January 23rd, is praised in today's Nature editorial for hitting "the sweet spot" between politically pragmatic but shortsighted proposals and implausably idealistic ones. Other groups - idealists and pragmatists alike - have reacted differently.

Continue reading "EU climate plan "hits the sweet spot"?" »

Posted by Anna Barnett on January 31, 2008
Categories: Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Energy, In the News, Mitigation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Europe and the US could be headed for a trade war over climate change.

In a speech yesterday José Barroso, president of the European Commission, said he would be ready to force companies outside the EU to buy carbon allowances to ensure that companies inside were not disadvantaged by Europe’s tougher emissions targets (speech).

While this apparently went down well with the audience (of European businessmen) it hasn’t gone down so well with America.

Reuters highlights that US Trade Representative Susan Schwab said that an earlier version of the EU plans seemed to be an excuse to close the European market and amounted to something like protectionism. More worryingly, the notes for speech delivered by Schwab last week contains the statement, “The unilateral imposition of restrictions can lead to retaliation, and dramatically impact economic growth and markets worldwide – while accomplishing nothing or worse when it comes to advancing environmental objectives.”

The US approach has also been backed by the UK, most recently by energy minister Malcolm Wicks saying today the government was “against any measures which might look like trade barriers” and warning that some in Europe “could use this as a kind of secret weapon, as it were, to bring about protectionism” (listen to Wicks on BBC or read his comments on Reuters). Barroso also appears to be picking a fight with his own trade commissioner, Peter Mandelson. Mandelson is on record as saying the restrictions are not the way forward (BBC)*.

Continue reading "Climate change trade war" »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on January 23, 2008
Categories: Carbon markets, Daniel Cressey, Features, In the News | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Bali, Indonesia-

As anticipated, deforestation has emerged as something of a thorny issue at the UN conference on climate change, currently nearing a close in Bali.

It was announced yesterday that measures to avoid further destruction of tropical forests, such as the Amazon, will be included in the agreement to come out of the talks at the end of this week. The Bali agreement is expected to act as a guideline for negotiations on an international climate change deal up until the end of 2009.

Daniel Nepstad of Woods Hole Research Centre, US said today in Bali that the Amazon rainforest is expected to see a 55% dieback by 2030 through deforestation, logging and drought. Rainforests in other nations, such as Indonesia are facing similar pressures. So, any effort to avoid deforestation, which accounts for an estimated 20-25% of global greenhouse gas emissions, is to be commended. But the solution being put forward to in Bali , known as REDD - Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, is being met with opposition on many sides.

Under the proposed scheme for ‘avoided deforestation’, carbon sequestered by forests in developing countries that are not being cut can be traded on the carbon market, where developed countries can buy the credits and ‘offset’ them against their own emissions targets.

A draft text on deforestation is ready to go forward for discussion by the high level ministers, who arrived at the Bali conference today, said executive secretary of the UN conference on climate change, Yvo De Boer.

Countries such as Indonesia and numerous conservation NGOs are celebrating inclusion of the scheme. And given that emissions from deforestation were omitted from the Kyoto Protocol, it is the first such international effort of its kind.

But much remains to be agreed upon. The issue of whether such a scheme should include forest conservation is a remaining “bone of contention”. As reported in the Hindustan Times, the Indian delegation wanted to add 'conservation' to 'avoided deforestation' , owing to the fact that India is one of the few developing countries where the forest cover is going up, not down. “We should not be penalised for that” said secretary of the ministry of environment and forests, Meena Gupta

Continue reading "Deforestation a ‘thorny’ issue at the Bali talks " »

Posted by Olive Heffernan on December 12, 2007
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Conferences and Meetings, In the News, Olive Heffernan, UN Conference on Climate Change, Bali | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

How expensive is climate change, what's the cost of stopping it, and should we pay now or pay later? Scientific American gets a three-sided look at these questions in side-by-side interviews with Nicholas Stern, Bjorn Lomborg and Gary Yohe.

Stern and Yohe push raising the price of carbon emissions via caps and taxes, respectively, as insurance to ward off big future risks, with Lomborg taking the contrarian view that we shouldn't mitigate until renewable energy is cheaper -- and shrugging off the risks. (Lomborg thinks that other problems like HIV/AIDS and malaria need money more immediately, an argument Olive Heffernan took on in NRCC's editorial last month.) Interesting discussions of the values assigned to human lives in the present vs. future (Stern, Lomborg), and to lives threatened by asbestos vs. temperature rise, also ensue.

Anna Barnett

Posted by Anna Barnett on November 29, 2007
Categories: Adaptation, Anna Barnett, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Mitigation, Opinion | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

There's an interesting commenary in Nature this week (currently free to access) by Steve Rayner of the James Martin Institute in Oxford and Gwyn Prins of the LSE, arguing that while emissions abatement is a global priority, the Kyoto Protocol is the wrong tool for the job -- a one-size-fits-all approach that, among other failings, doesn't actually look likely to deliver the reductions that it has promised. Unfortunately, as they argue, this sub-optimal approach has developed an iconic status of its own, so that in many minds to be against Kyoto is tantamount to being against any form of action on climate. They're worried that this means people will uncritically attempt to follow up the Kyoto protocol (which expires in 2012) with a son-of-Kyoto that contains many or all of the same flaws, when they should be having a much more radical rethink.

In their words:

The Kyoto Protocol is a symbolically important expression of governments' concern about climate change. But as an instrument for achieving emissions reductions, it has failed. It has produced no demonstrable reductions in emissions or even in anticipated emissions growth. And it pays no more than token attention to the needs of societies to adapt to existing climate change. The impending United Nations Climate Change Conference being held in Bali in December — to decide international policy after 2012 — needs to radically rethink climate policy...Already, in the post-Kyoto discussions, we are witnessing that well-documented human response to failure, especially where political or emotional capital is involved, which is to insist on more of what is not working: in this case more stringent targets and timetables, involving more countries. The next round of negotiations needs to open up new approaches, not to close them down as Kyoto did.

Continue reading "The wrong trousers" »

Posted by Oliver Morton on October 24, 2007
Categories: Adaptation, Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Mitigation, Oliver Morton | Permalink | Comments (35) | TrackBacks (0)

Posted by Olive Heffernan on behalf of Kevin Vranes

Far off the American radar screen, and perhaps not a bright blip on the European one either, is the perverse incentive problem for carbon emissions offsets. As voluntary offset purchases by both individuals and corporations ramp up, a strong backlash against "offsetting your guilt" is building astride. But offsetting guilt as a personal choice or for corporate strategy on an individual basis is one thing. Using an international financial trading mechanism embedded in an international treaty is quite another. And when the mechanisms of one international environmental treaty leads to the subversion of another international environmental treaty, well, you can just hear the collective "whoops!" echo across the Atlantic and Pacific.

Here is the situation: Annex I countries that cannot meet their GHG emissions targets under the Kyoto Protocol pay into the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) fund, which then pays for emissions reductions in developing countries. These emissions reductions can take many forms as long as "additionality" can be proven – that is, the reduction in GHGs would not have occurred without the CDM funding. CDM projects have included capturing landfill-produced methane, creating facilities to burn biomass for energy, and installing wind power capacity. However, CDM projects have also included burning HFC-23 and this is where the perverse incentive creeps up.

HFC-23 is the byproduct of HCFC-22 production. HCFC-22 is a refrigerant and strong ozone depletor, ostensibly banned by the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer. Developing countries, however, were given a loophole arrangement under the Montreal Protocol (MP) specifically for HCFC-22, so while most countries in the world with any degree of industrial activity have agreed to abide by the MP, developing countries do not have to meet HCFC-22 phase-out targets. Because of this loophole, as a cheap and effective refrigerant HCFC-22 continues to be an important industrial chemical, produced in especially high volume by "rich developing" countries such as China, India and Korea.

Both HCFC-22 and HFC-23 are also strong greenhouse gasses, but HFC-23 has a 270-year lifetime in the atmosphere, HCFC-22 only 12 years, and thus HFC-23 has over ten times the Global Warming Potential of HCFC-22 at 14,800 times CO2-equivalent (see Table TS.2 in the WGI Technical Summary of IPCC AR4). Those seeking to fund CDM projects jumped early at the chance to abate the release of HFC-23 to the atmosphere. It turned out to be quite easy (read: cheap) to install capture-and-burn equipment on HCFC-22 factories, and with a ton of HFC-23 burned being the equivalent of over 14,000 tons of CO2 prevented from reaching the atmosphere, the race to fund HFC-23 burn projects was on.

The problem from an international policy perspective is that producers of HCFC-22 now make more money burning HFC-23 than they do selling HCFC-22. Imagine what being paid handsomely to burn your waste does to your incentive to reduce your waste. If your waste stream costs you to dispose of it, you might try to improve your production to reduce waste and thus save money. And even if you did get paid to burn your waste, it might make financial sense to reduce waste anyway if your efficiency improvements paid more in reduced operating expenses than burning waste generated in income. But neither is the case for HCFC-22 factories. For them a double financial incentive now exists: keep making HCFC-22 in copious amounts at a profit, which will produce HFC-23 as a now-valuable waste product. And since HCFC-22 producers need not even lift a finger to burn their HFC-23 (those funding the CDM project fund the capture and burn device), any incentive for switching away from the ozone-depleting HCFC-22 as a refrigerant is also destroyed.

Aside from very good in-depth reporting from Fiona Harvey of the Financial Times, based in part on the work of Michael Wara of Stanford (see the 8-Feb-07 issue of Nature), the HCFC-22/HFC-23 issue has gone largely unreported thus far. While the New York Times has run a small handful of articles in the past year on HCFC-22 and its ozone-depleting properties, none have raised the HFC-23 specter. According to my Lexis-Nexis search, no other American newspaper has covered the issue.

As individual states in the U.S. begin forming interstate agreements on GHG trading in advance of a federally-instituted nationwide emissions reduction program, unintended consequences like depleting stratospheric ozone in favor of reducing GHGs will need to be carefully watched for.

Posted by Olive Heffernan on May 22, 2007
Categories: Carbon markets, Climate Policy, Kevin Vranes | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)