12 October 2017, WIRED, The Dirty Secret of the World’s Plan to Avert Climate Disaster. IN 2014 HENRIK Karlsson, a Swedish entrepreneur whose startup was failing, was lying in bed with a bankruptcy notice when the BBC called. The reporter had a scoop: On the eve of releasing a major report, the United Nation’s climate change panel appeared to be touting an untried technology as key to keeping planetary temperatures at safe levels. The technology went by the inelegant acronym BECCS (Bio-Energy with Carbon Capture and Storage), and Karlsson was apparently the only BECCS expert the reporter could find. Karlsson was amazed. The bankruptcy notice was for his BECCS startup, which he’d founded seven years earlier after an idea came to him while watching a late-night television show in Gothenburg, Sweden. The show explored the benefits of capturing carbon dioxide before it was emitted from power plants. It’s the technology behind the much-touted notion of “clean coal,” a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and slow down climate change…..But here’s where things get weird. The UN report envisions 116 scenarios in which global temperatures are prevented from rising more than 2°C. In 101 of them, that goal is accomplished by sucking massive amounts of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere—a concept called “negative emissions”—chiefly via BECCS. And in these scenarios to prevent planetary disaster, this would need to happen by midcentury, or even as soon as 2020. Like a pharmaceutical warning label, one footnote warned that such “methods may carry side effects and long-term consequences on a global scale.” …… Still, negative emissions are not mentioned in the Paris Climate Agreement or a part of formal international climate negotiations. As Peters and Geden recently pointed out, no country mentions BECCS in its official plan to cut emissions in line with Paris’s 2°C goal, and only a dozen mention carbon capture and storage. Politicians are decidedly not crafting elaborate BECCS plans, with supply chains spanning continents and carbon accounting spanning decades. So even if negative emissions of any kind turns out to be feasible technically and economically, it’s hard to see how we can achieve it on a global scale in a scant 13 or even three years, as some scenarios require. Read More here
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11 October 2017, Carbon Briefing, Geoengineering: Scientists in Berlin debate radical ways to reverse global warming. Research scientists, policymakers and ethicists gathered in Berlin this week to discuss the emerging field of “climate engineering” and what it could mean for the planet. Climate engineering, also known as geoengineering, is a term used to describe an array of technologies – many of which remain hypothetical – for altering the global climate in order to lessen the effects of climate change. The four-day conference has been organised by the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam, Germany, and includes speakers and participants from across the world, including Japan, Jamaica, the US and India. Tuesday Tuesday’s proceedings kicked off with talks aimed at bringing the audience up to speed with the latest research into the two main categories of geoengineering technologies: carbon dioxide removal (CDR) and solar radiation management (SRM). First up was Dr Naomi Vaughan, a researcher from the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia. Her talk touched on recent research into a variety of CDR technologies, including biomass energy carbon capture and storage (BECCS), soil carbon sequestration and reforestation projects, and how important these techniques could be to meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement. She told the conference: Read More here
10 October 2017, The Conversation Government’s energy plan still under wraps while Abbott shouts his from afar. Speaking in a light and bright FM radio interview on Tuesday, Malcolm Turnbull said that in politics, “just being chilled, calm is very important. A little bit of zen goes a long way.” He was answering a question about himself. But those with a stake in energy policy might be feeling a rather desperate need to dip into their own zen reserves right now. The government hates the suggestion its policy process looks chaotic, and insists there is “a plan”. “The good news is that we have learned the lessons of the past, we know where we are going and we have a comprehensive plan to get there,” Energy Minister Josh Frydenberg told The Australian Financial Review’s energy summit. But what the core feature of the plan is has yet to be revealed, and this week has added to the public confusion. The AFR’s two-day forum, which seemed to have everyone who is anyone in the field, provided a stage for the latest episode in the policy saga. Frydenberg’s Monday speech was widely seen as the government walking away from the clean energy target proposed by Chief Scientist Alan Finkel. The justification was the falling price of renewables, obviating the need for future subsidies. No surprise perhaps, because despite some initial enthusiasm from Turnbull and Frydenberg, the crab-walk back, under the pressure of the naysayers in Coalition ranks, had been apparent for some time. But here it was happening with Finkel himself in the room, as one of the conference speakers. Read More here
9 October 2017, The Conversation, After the storm: how political attacks on renewables elevates attention paid to climate change. This time last year, Australia was getting over a media storm about renewables, energy policy and climate change. The media storm was caused by a physical storm: a mid-latitude cyclone that hit South Australia on September 29 and set in train a series of events that is still playing itself out. The events include:
- an extraordinary attack on renewables by federal government ministers; a steadfast pushback by the South Australian government to continue its renewables roll-out; the offer of tech entrepreneur Elon Musk to build the largest battery storage facility in the world in South Australia and; the Finkel Review.
In one sense, the Finkel Review was a response to the government’s concerns about “energy security”. But it also managed to successfully respond to the way energy policy had become a political plaything, as exemplified by the attacks on South Australia. New research on the media coverage that framed the energy debate that has ensued over the past year reveals some interesting turning points in how Australia’s media report on climate change. Read More here