Sustainability alerts 6 November 2009 6 November, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Natural Gas, Trade policy, carbon trading.add a comment
- Interesting speech by WTO boss Pascal Lamy: “Climate first, trade second”. Talks about border adjustment tax and carbon leakage.
- New French report on the impacts and costs of climate change: billions of euros will be needed to deal with the negative effects on water, health, biodiversity, energy systems, agriculture and forestry and tourism. For a synthesis (in French), see CDurable.info.
- Bad news for gas producers? The International Energy Agency predicts that the demand for gas will peak by 2020 and there will be overcapacity and under-utilisation of pipeline capacity. Read the article in the Financial Times.
- Is carbon trading the next subprime? Yes according to a new report by Friends of the Earth. Bankers and speculators, not the planet, are the real winners of the carbon market. The green group advocates a carbon tax instead of cap and trade. Good coverage in the Guardian and The Ecologist.
Sustainability alerts 4 November 2009 4 November, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Nuclear.add a comment
- Meltdown for nuclear renaissance? The nuclear safety authorities of three countries (France, Finland and the UK) have called into question the safety of Areva’s third-generation (EPR) nuclear plants. See and the reactions from Areva and Greenpeace.
- The Potsdam Institute for Climate Research, WWF and Allianz presented a new cost analysis of climate policies. Main conclusion: the costs are manageable (only a one year GDP-loss by 2050) and Europe can even afford to go it alone.
- The Guardian’s Environment Network has an interesting comment on the growing skepticism of public opinion about global warming.
Sustainability alerts 29 October: More EU climate rhetoric; Deutsche Bank on peak oil 29 October, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Peak oil.add a comment
- The EU’s announcement that it will back carbon emission reductions up to 95% for the developed world by 2050 is no more than cheap rhetoric. These hollow commitments are meaningless when they are not backed up with clear and detailed plans on how to effectively implement such promises. Moreover, the political leaders who try to impress, will not be the ones who will have to face the evaluation come 2050.
- Deutsche Bank’s top oil analyst Paul Sankey says the oil price will go to 175 dollars a barrel by 2016 and he predicts the end of the oil age as transport will go electric. Excellent coverage of this story in Barron’s (with interview of Sankey) and investor’s website Seeking Alpha.
Shifting climate alliances 29 September, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Global Warming, US climate policy.add a comment
I have always maintained that it will be business and not policymakers nor civil society which will take leadership in our transition to sustainability and in the fight against climate change. Of course, even the most resource-enlightened businesses still have a long way to go in terms of changing their business models to the new economic and ecological reality of limits but there are encouraging signs that change is happening.
One of the interesting developments is the shifting of climate alliances in the US.
In recent weeks, several utilities have left trade associations because of the anti-climate-policy stance of these interest groups (see “Companies desert the climate deniosphere”).
It is tragic that this is happening at the same time when we start seeing a public backlash against the first feeble efforts of politicians to tax carbon or create new climate instruments (see the French debate on the carbon tax).
Leave carbon in the ground instead of trying to capture and store it 27 August, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Carbon capture and storage, Climate change, coal.1 comment so far
German economist Hans-Werner Sinn (IFO – Institute for Economic Research) makes the excellent case in today’s Financial Times that as long as climate policies do not focus on energy supply instead of demand they achieve very little and even have perverse effects. “… Instead of mulling over for the thousandth time which technical fixes could be applied to reduce CO2 emissions, we should turn to the core question of how to induce resource owners to leave more carbon underground”.
He also provides a good reality-check for the dreamers of carbon capture and storage: “The process of capturing CO2 from a chimney and turning it into a liquid consumes a third of the energy generated by burning the fuel in the first place. On top of that, the amount of storage volume required would be gigantic, as each carbon atom is joined by two oxygen atoms upon combustion – and they all need to be stored. Carbon captured from anthracite coal would occupy five times as much space underground as the coal itself; in the case of crude oil, three times the volume would be needed”.
His critique of current climate policy is hard-hitting: “The silence of politicians on how to slow down fossil fuel extraction smacks of denial. Gesture politics go a long way towards soothing green-tinged souls (and firming up business for the environmental industries), but whether they actually achieve anything appears to be of no interest”.
Sinn’s theory about the “green paradox” is not new. He has been writing on this issue for the last three years. Other climate experts have been critical of his approach but it seems to me that he has some interesting points which need further discussion. For a good critique of Sinn’s ideas, see Claudia Kemfert (head of the energy department at the same IFO): “There is no green paradox” in European Energy Review.
Sustainability alerts 26 August 2009 26 August, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Peak oil, Population & Sustainability, Population growth.add a comment
- The NY Times published an op-ed by energy consultant Michael Lynch debunking peak oil (“’Peak Oil’ is a waste of energy” – nice title BTW). The peak oil community has reacted on the Oil Drum. Worth reading to understand how peak oil or climate sceptics work. Interesting to see also that these “no peak oil” lobbyists get louder now that official organisations like the International Energy Agency have come out and are openly talking about peak oil.
- Le Monde: there will be 7 billion Earthlings in 2012. Should we applaud or weep? Depends how you look at it, I suppose. It might save our social security systems, but what about our ecosystems and natural resources? Unless one of these new Earthlings discovers the zero-point module
Electric car policies: great but might need a reality check 20 August, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Car technologies, Climate change, Global Warming, Sustainable transport.2 comments
Don’t get me wrong. I am all in favour of transforming our petrol-based car industry and putting it on a more sustainable path. But it seems to me the new enthusiasm about electric cars might need a good reality check.
The latest example of electric car hype comes from Germany, where the CDU-SPD government presented an action plan (“Nationaler Entwicklungsplan Elektromobilität”) to put one million electric cars on the road by 2020. Read about this action plan in Focus, Der Spiegel (“Koalition treibt Wahlkampf mit E-Auto-Plan”) and Handelsblatt. It is interesting to see that some of the media look at this plan as an election stunt from both governing parties.
The problem with electric cars is that they can only be as green as the source from which the electricity is generated. Do we really need cars on the road powered by new coal power plants? Is that climate-friendly?
Another issue is that it will still take quite a while before these cars will be commercialised and bought in big numbers. In the meantime, Chinese and Indians will continue putting more petrol-based cars on the roads and the contribution of the transport industry to global warming will continue to grow.
Last but not least, the batteries for these electric cars need precious metals like lithium and a rush for this metal could lead to new resource scarcities (see Wall Street Journal blog “Peak Lithium: Will Supply Fears Drive Alternative Batteries?”).
Lomborg prefers gambling with the planet 13 August, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Geo-engineering, Global Warming, sustainability.add a comment
Bjørn Lomborg may call himself an environmentalist, but he surely is no ecologist. His latest efforts to remain in the spotlight of the media (and earn in the process huge speaking fees at business conferences) focuses on climate engineering. Tricking several media into believing the climate skeptic had changed sides, Lomborg helped launch the new study of his Copenhagen Consensus Center (brilliant use of the word consensus BTW) on geo-engineering last week.
The study (undertaken by Eric Bickel of the University of Texas at Austin and Lee Lane of the American Enterprise Institute) is an economic evaluation of benefits and costs of starting R&D on climate engineering. Bickel and Lane come to the conclusion that several technical solutions to tinkering with the Earth’s climate would probably be less expensive than current carbon mitigation policies. It has to be said that the study mentions on several occasions that there might be unintended consequences to these experiments which could not be economically valued. The Copenhagen Consensus Center has also given two other scientists the opportunity to look at the Bickel-Lane study and criticise its assumptions and calculations.
A few blogs have published excellent critical reactions to the Copenhagen Center analysis.
The Business Green blog (“Have Bond Villains taught us nothing about messing with the climate?”) highlights the fact that “the project would only serve to mask the effect of climate change, not reverse it by addressing concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere” and “create an unprecedented political and security challenge as world leaders attempted to negotiate who gets to play God and control the technology”.
The Real Climate blog calls the study a “biased economic analysis of geoengineering” and points out a lot of scientific work which has been ignored by the study’s authors. This blog post concludes: “It may be that the benefits of geoengineering will outweigh the negative aspects, and that most of the problems can be dealt with, but the paper from Lomborg’s center ignores the real consensus among all responsible geoengineering researchers. The real consensus, as expressed at the National Academy conference and in the AMS statement, is that mitigation needs to be our first and overwhelming response to global warming, and that whether geoengineering can even be considered as an emergency measure in the future should climate change become too dangerous is not now known. Policymakers will only be able to make such decisions after they see results from an intensive research program. Lomborg’s report should have stopped at the need for a research program, and not issued its flawed and premature conclusions.”
My other main objection to the analysis promoted by “environmentalist” Lomborg is that his study misses the big picture. Even if more geo-experimenting would be able to help in the climate change battle, it does not do anything for the other sustainability challenges that we are facing (water scarcity, peak energy, biodiversity loss etc). By continuing the hold up the promise of technological fixes, Lomborg provides the illusion that we can overcome all sustainability challenges without having to question our current way of life. I am sure the Danish wonderboy will get lots of new speaking opportunities as a result of this “convenient” study.
Wanna bet that even the next European Commission will suddenly find research money for the geo-engineering illusion?
Sustainability alerts 10 August 2009 10 August, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Climate change, Globalisation.add a comment
The coming end of globalisation: Philips CEO talks about the shift from global to regional supply chains – see Financial Times (“Crisis and climate force supply chain shift”). On the same subject, read Jeff Rubin’s “Why your world is about to get a whole lot smaller”
Has “sceptical environmentalist” Bjorn Lomborg really changed sides on climate change as the FT (“Sceptic switches tack”) reported last week? Not according to the Desmog Blog (“Incorrigible Lomborg: Defending the right of rich people to pollute”).
Sustainability alert 3 August 2009 3 August, 2009
Posted by Willy De Backer in Energy outlook, Peak oil, energy security.Tags: peak oil; energy outlook
add a comment
The UK’s Independent starts off today with a shocker (“Warning: Oil supplies are running out fast”). The article is based on a new interview with the International Energy Agency’s Fatih Birol. The IEA, once the spin doctor of the oil industry, has become quite courageous in the last few years under the leadership of Birol. A few interesting quotes from the article:
- “the decline in oil production in existing fields is now running at 6.7 per cent a year compared to the 3.7 per cent decline it had estimated in 2007, which it now acknowledges to be wrong.”
- “Even if demand remained steady, the world would have to find the equivalent of four Saudi Arabias to maintain production, and six Saudi Arabias if it is to keep up with the expected increase in demand between now and 2030, Dr Birol said.”
Now it’s time to start educating political and business leaders what the implications will be of this “energy descent”.
