25 February, Renew Economy, Coalition digs deeper into fossil fuels with new “growth centre”. The federal government has announced the establishment of a $15.4 million fossil fuel “growth centre”, to help prop up Australia’s oil, gas, coal and uranium sectors during what it describes as a “challenging time” for the industry. Part of the government’s $248 million Industry Growth Centres Initiative, the Oil, Gas and Energy Resources Growth Centre was unveiled on Wednesday by federal energy minister Josh Frydenberg and minister for innovation and industry, Christopher Pyne. The ministers said they hoped the facility – in which the Turnbull government is investing $15.4 million over four years – would help position Australia’s energy and resources sector for the next wave of investment. It will be chaired by long-time oil and gas industry executive, Ken Fitzpatrick, with a board and management team drawn from across the oil, gas, coal seam gas, coal and uranium industries. According to the website, the growth centre’s mission is to reduce industry costs, direct research to industry needs, improve work skills, facilitate partnerships and reduce regulatory burdens. It will also have a particular focus on improving knowledge and techniques needed to unlock Australia’s marginal gas resources like coal-seam gas – a controversial and high-cost field of exploration and production that AGL Energy recently ruled out of its repertoire to focus, instead, on the “evolution” of the energy industry. Pyne says the new growth centre – which will be known as National Energy Resources Australia, or NERA – will work closely with researchers from universities and the newly streamlined CSIRO, the irony of which was not lost on critics of the scheme. Read More here
Tag Archives: Emissions
23 February 2016, Climate Home, A flying fairy tale: Why aviation carbon cuts won’t take off. Ten days ago the airline industry stunned the world. After years of prevarication the world’s top airlines and leading manufacturers said they would take climate change seriously. The UN’s aviation body, ICAO for short, announced a carbon emissions standard that would apply to new aircraft from 2020, and to all new deliveries of in-production aircraft – current types, or minor variations on current types – as from 2028. Aircraft that don’t meet the standard will not be allowed to be produced after 2028. None of the operational aircraft currently in the fleet will be affected. The statement was widely acclaimed, notably by the US government. But will it really have any significant impact on reducing emissions? Our contention is it will not, riddled as it is with flaws. It will not be a “rigorous and challenging” standard as industry claimed, nor will it save the 650 megatonnes of CO2 emissions by 2040 that the White House proudly proclaimed. ICAO and states shaped the standard around parochial national manufacturer interests instead of the need to mitigate climate change. Aircraft designers will still face many challenges developing the next generation of airliners, but this standard will not be one of them. Beyond business as usual? New generation aircraft are generally some 10-15% more fuel efficient than those they replace. They need to be to sell. This translates to an average annual efficiency improvement of between 0.5% and 1.0%. Constant market pressures result in a continuously improving line when you plot the average fuel consumption of new aircraft types against their entry into commercial service date. Yet ICAO intends to regulate this ever improving trend with a flat (time independent) carbon standard. Even if the stringency is initially set at a level that will have an impact, its effect will quickly fade over time as market-driven improvements cut in. The maximum theoretical effect of the standard at maximum stringencies is just 1 gigatonne of CO2 between 2020-2040, while total CO2 emissions from aviation over this period will be in the order of some 31 Gtonnes, i.e. a potential saving of just 3%. Read More here
17 February 2016, Climate News Network, Carbon capture could be costly and risky. Attempts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and store it safely are all potentially costly gambles with the current technology, scientists say. There’s bad news for those who think that carbon dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere and stored deep in the Earth’s rocks. Even if carbon capture is possible, sequestration in the rocks is fraught because the gas can find multiple ways to escape, according to a report by a team from Penn State University, US, in the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control. Carbon dioxide is not the only greenhouse gas, but it is the one that drives global warming. It escapes from power station chimneys and motor exhausts. Back in the 18th century, the air contained 280 parts of CO2 per million, but now the level has just reached 400 parts per million. In the same period, the average global temperature has risen by 1°C and will go on rising, to make climate change an increasing hazard. Switch to renewables Last December, 195 world leaders agreed in Paris to take action aimed at containing warming to – if possible – 1.5°C. Climate scientists warn that the world must switch to solar power, wind and other renewable sources. But some think that if the exhaust emissions could be trapped and stored, humans would be able to get a bit more value from their fossil fuel investments. Others see it as the only way of avoiding 2°C of warning − the agreed international safety limit prior to the Paris climate summit. The problem is that nobody is confident that carbon can be captured on a sufficient scale. “Removal of CO2 will be expensive and is currently unproven at the scale needed – so it would be much better to reduce emissions as rapidly as possible” Some projects have been abandoned, and others suggest that the problem is that not enough has been spent on the research. But the Penn State team looked at a different aspect: whether CO2 could be buried and forgotten. So they tested laboratory reactions that involve sandstone and limestone – two of the sedimentary rocks found most often in geological strata – and water and carbon dioxide. Read More here
17 February 2016, Eureka Alert, Assessing carbon capture technology. Carbon capture and storage could be used to mitigate greenhouse gas emissions and thus ameliorate their impact on climate change. The focus of this technology is on the large-scale reduction of carbon emissions from fossil-fuelled power plants. Research published in the International Journal of Decision Support Systems investigates the pros and cons, assesses the risks associated with carbon capture and provides a new framework for assessing the necessary technology. John Michael Humphries Choptiany formerly of Dalhousie University in Nova Scotia and now at the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations in Rome, Italy, together with colleagues at Dalhousie, Alberta Innovates – Technology Futures (AITF), and G BACH Enterprises Incorporated, explain how they have adopted information from the environmental, social, economic and engineering fields to create their assessment framework, which incorporates utility curves, criterion weights, thresholds, decision trees, Monte Carlo simulation, critical events and sensitivity analysis. “Climate change is one of the most serious threats facing humankind,” the team reports, “Carbon capture and storage (CCS) includes a suite of technologies and processes with the goal of mitigating climate change by capturing and storing anthropogenic CO2 from various emitters, including fossil-fuelled power plants, in geological reservoirs.” The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has recognized that CCS should be one component of our response to carbon emissions and climate change, but there are many different approaches that could be taken, all with various risks. Read More here