17 December 2015, The Guardian, There is a new form of climate denialism to look out for – so don’t celebrate yet. After the signing of a historic climate pact in Paris, we might now hope that the merchants of doubt – who for two decades have denied the science and dismissed the threat – are officially irrelevant. But not so fast. There is also a new, strange form of denial that has appeared on the landscape of late, one that says that renewable sources can’t meet our energy needs. Oddly, some of these voices include climate scientists, who insist that we must now turn to wholesale expansion of nuclear power. Just this past week, as negotiators were closing in on the Paris agreement, four climate scientists held an off-site session insisting that the only way we can solve the coupled climate/energy problem is with a massive and immediate expansion of nuclear power. More than that, they are blaming environmentalists, suggesting that the opposition to nuclear power stands between all of us and a two-degree world. That would have troubling consequences for climate change if it were true, but it is not. Numerous high quality studies, including one recently published by Mark Jacobson of Stanford University, show that this isn’t so. We can transition to a decarbonized economy without expanded nuclear power, by focusing on wind, water and solar, coupled with grid integration, energy efficiency and demand management. In fact, our best studies show that we can do it faster, and more cheaply. Read more here
Category Archives: Fossil Fuel Reduction
15 December 2015, Carbon Pulse, After Paris, UN’s new “light touch” role on markets to help spawn carbon clubs. It may take years for enough governments to ratify the new Paris Agreement for it to come into force, or to agree on the rules underpinning the new emissions trading mechanism enshrined by it, but any parties wanting to link up their carbon markets under the pact need not wait. The agreement approved by 195 governments in the French capital on Saturday carried provisions effectively setting up two tracks for the use of market-based mechanisms in meeting nations’ emissions reduction pledges, now officially known as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Article 6.4 of the agreement takes a centralised approach, establishing a market-based mechanism akin to the Kyoto Protocol’s CDM or JI, which is to be developed by countries between now and 2020. It will create a new type of carbon unit that, similar to those generated under Kyoto, can be used by governments that have ratified the agreement. Articles 6.2 and 6.3, on the other hand, allow for decentralised ‘cooperative approaches’ that let countries and other jurisdictions with markets bilaterally and multilaterally link them together, in what many now refer to as ‘carbon clubs’. These clubs will now be able to trade units, recognised under the Paris Agreement as being “Internationally Transferrable Mitigation Outcomes”, or ITMOs, that are backed by robust accounting measures and not counted more than once towards a country’s target. These cooperative approaches, says Jeff Swartz, director of international policy at IETA, “set up the framework for a much deeper world of cooperation” on carbon markets. “It says ‘here’s a framework, some basic rules of the road’. It’s different from Kyoto’s top-down approach in that it lets countries drive,” added Nat Keohane, vice president for global climate at US-based Environmental Defense Fund (EDF). Both spoke to reporters on Tuesday in a conference call hosted by the two organisations. Read More here
15 December 2015, Carbon Brief, The world has spoken. It wants to limit future temperatures rises to 1.5C above historic levels. To achieve this everything must change. The twelfth of December 2015 may well be remembered as the day the human race came together and saved the world. Old differences between rich and poor, west and east were laid aside. Unbeknownst to anyone, six months ago and in secret, the sinking Marshall islanders started to raise an army of more than 100 ambitious nations that rose above the flotsam and jetsam of self-interest and created a stronger climate agreement than anyone thought possible. The Paris agreement aims to hold the increase in the global average temperatures to “well below 2C above pre-industrial levels” and to “pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5C”. It also requires parties to produce audited emission-reduction commitments ratcheting up every five years, and delivers a “floor” of $100 billion per year of financing up to 2025. So unexpected was this that we climate scientists were caught napping. Before Paris, we all thought 2C was a near-impossible target and spent our energies researching future worlds where temperatures soared. In fact, there is still much to discover about the specific advantages of limiting warming to 1.5C, and the plausible social and economic pathways that might keep us under this limit. Some have derided the 1.5C target as a pipe dream, given that current national pledges to reduce carbon dioxide emissions – known as Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs) – could bring us closer to 3C. However, the limited research that does exist suggests that it is possible to overshoot 1.5C and return below it by 2100. And the figure below illustrates how a five-year ratchet mechanism of increasingly ambitious INDCs could deliver a temperature close to 1.5C by 2100. Read More here
14 December 2015, Renew Economy, Hidden gem in Paris deal condemns coal to early demise. When France foreign minister Laurent Fabius brought the gavel down on Saturday night and declared the Paris Agreement on climate change action was sealed, the reaction was almost immediate. Within the conference hall it was greeted with cheers, hugging and great emotion. Outside, the agreement to cap temperature rises “well below 2°C” and as low as 1.5°C signalled a remarkable achievement that had one major implication: the end of the fossil fuel era is nigh. ….But if that is what the fossil fuel industry and the Coalition government are really thinking, then the evidence suggests that they are kidding themselves. One little gem, alerted to me by the Potsdam Institute’s Malter Meinshausen (on the dance floor of the COP after party of all places) puts the agreement in a new perspective. It is this paragraph, article 17, in the decisions text of the deal: “Clause 17. Notes with concern that the estimated aggregate greenhouse gas emission levels in 2025 and 2030 resulting from the intended nationally determined contributions do not fall within least-cost 2 ̊C scenarios but rather lead to a projected level of 55 gigatonnes in 2030, and also notes that much greater emission reduction efforts will be required than those associated with the intended nationally determined contributions in order to hold the increase in the global average temperature to below 2 ̊C above pre-industrial levels by reducing emissions to 40 gigatonnes or to 1.5 ̊C above pre-industrial levels by reducing to a level to be identified in the special report referred to in paragraph 21 below”; OK, now for a quick translation. The world currently emits around 50 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions a year. Even if all the pledges put together by 186 nations before and during the Paris climate talks were enacted, these emissions would grow to around 55 gigatonnes of GHG emissions a year by 2030. But to meet the 2°C target, the world will need to reduce those emissions to 40 gigatonnes a year. And to reach that level, they are likely going to have to reverse direction before 2020. What’s more, if the world does move to that aspirational goal of capping temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, then it is going to have to move a lot faster, and a lot more dramatically than that. That trajectory will be outlined by a new IPCC report due in 2018. Read More here