Seven Years On

The last seven year have seen too little progress on solving the climate change problem, despite some welcome developments.  Much more rapid progress is now needed.

It is now seven years since I started this blog – my first post was on 3^rd March 2013.  It seems a good time to take a look at what has gone well and what has gone badly over that period in efforts to reduce climate change.  So here are seven ways in which things have gone badly, and seven ways in which they have gone well.

Things that have gone badly over the last seven years

1. Annual CO₂ emissions from energy and industry have increased over the last seven years, continuing the long-term trend, when they need to be decreasing rapidly.

Chart 1: Emissions of CO₂ from energy and industry (excluding land use)

Source: EDGAR  https://edgar.jrc.ec.europa.eu/booklet2019/Fossil_CO2andGHG_emissions_of_all_world_countries_booklet_2019report.pdf

2. Deforestation has not fallen – if anything it’s increased.

This not only bad for the climate, it’s bad for biodiversity and the wider stability of ecosystems.

Chart 2: Tropical primary forest loss (million hectares)

See:  https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-48104037

3. Over 15% of the remaining carbon budget has been used since 2013, even on the most optimistic view[i].

In 2013 the remaining carbon budget (that is, total cumulative CO₂ emissions that remain possible while limiting global mean surface temperature rises to 2 degrees) was around 1900Gt CO₂.  It is now around 1600Gt CO₂.The remainder is getting used up ever more quickly as emissions continue to rise.

4. Large amounts of high carbon infrastructure are still being built.

This includes large amounts of new coal-fuelled power generation. This risks lock-in of emissions for decades.

5. There is a lack of progress with developing and implementing low carbon technologies in many sectors

Most emissions intensive industries, notably steel, have made little progress in changing their processes to reduce emissions.  One of the main technologies likely to be needed for decarbonising industrial emissions, CCS, has seen very little deployment, with only about an additional 10 mtpa[ii] stored from projects coming on line since 2013.  The largest contributor to the increase has been the Gorgan project, which is natural gas production, so not likely to be part of a net zero emissions world.  10 mtpa is only about 0.02% of global emissions.  CCS is also likely to be essential for achieving negative emissions from Bioenergy with CCS (BECCS), among other things.  There has also been only very limited progress to date on deploying low carbon hydrogen.

6. China appears to be making emissions reduction less of a priority.

Among other factors, recently slowing economic growth seems to have focussed attention in China towards economic stability and energy security rather than the threats from climate change.

7. Most countries have targets that are far too weak

Existing pledges under the Paris Agreement imply a continuing increase in global emissions rather than the rapid decrease that is needed[iii].

This is a daunting list of problems.  However, there is also some good news, although in all cases it would be even better if positive trends were happening faster.

Good news from the last seven years

1. Costs of low carbon technologies have fallen rapidly, and continue to fall.

Wind and solar electricity are in many cases now competitive with, and often cheaper than, electricity from new fossil fuel generation.  Falling battery costs will enable to the electrification of surface transport and help balance the grid.

This seems to me to be by far the greatest cause for optimism.  Low carbon options will simply become the default choice for new investment in many cases, and policies to reduce emissions will increasingly be working to support a trend that is driven by economic as well as environment imperatives.

2. Some countries have put binding targets in place for net zero emissions.

The UK already has such a target for 2050, seeking to end the UK’s contribution to climate change.  The EU seems likely to formalise a similar target very soon.

3. Some countries have cut emissions significantly, showing what can be done.

The UK has cut its annual emissions by nearly 20% since 2013[iv], with the largest component of this being a reduction in coal use in the power sector, a change readily replicable elsewhere.

4. Public concern about climate change has risen while scepticism about the science has largely disappeared, at least outside the USA and a few other countries.

85% of UK voters are now concerned about climate change[v] with over a quarter ranking it among their top three issues[vi].  This was reflected during the recent general election campaign[vii] in all parties offering policies to reduce emissions to net zero .  Over time this should create the political space for some of the more challenging policies that will be needed to reduce emissions to close to zero.

5. Additional policies are being put in place, and carbon pricing is increasingly widespread.

For example, almost all major economies now have renewables targets, and there are over 50 carbon pricing systems in place around the world.

6. Governments increasingly see economic opportunities in decarbonisation rather than costs.

The opportunities created by new industries are increasingly recognised as part of wider industrial policy.

7. The Paris Agreement has been signed.

Almost all countries have now committed to limit temperature rises to below 2 degrees and to make a contribution to reaching that target, recognising different national circumstances.  Some may consider this is the main piece of good news over the past seven years.  However its effectiveness remains to be proven, and its success looks likely to depend on some of the other trends I’ve highlighted, notably falling costs for low carbon technologies.

Looking at these trends together, I am both less optimistic and more optimistic than I was in 2013.  I am less optimistic because seven years of rising emissions and continuing investment in high carbon infrastructure have made the challenge of limiting climate change even greater than it was.  But I am more optimistic because there is greater recognition and acceptance of the problem, more is now being done (though still nowhere near enough) and, above all, because low carbon energy is rapidly becoming cheaper than high carbon energy.  As a result it looks likely that emissions from the energy sector will eventually be greatly reduced and even halted entirely.  This may make it easier to focus on reducing other emissions as well, especially those from deforestation.

But eventually will be too late.  Much damage is already being done to our world.  More will inevitably follow. This will include the loss of irreplaceable parts of the natural world.  Given rising emissions, and how much of the carbon budget has been used up, it now looks practically impossible to keep temperature rises to 1.5 degrees, and difficult, though still possible, even to limit them to 2 degrees.

However it could still get much worse.  The task now is to avoid the worst of the risks by keeping emissions and accompanying temperature rises as low as possible, including keeping global temperature rises to below 2 degrees.  With a lot of effort and a little luck there is still time (just) to achieve this.  But the task has never been greater or more urgent.

Adam Whitmore – 9^th March 2020

[i] For a 50% chance of remaining below 2 degrees, based on cumulative CO₂ emissions.  See https://onclimatechangepolicydotorg.wordpress.com/2018/10/

[ii] https://www.globalccsinstitute.com/resources/global-status-report/

[iii] https://climateactiontracker.org/global/cat-emissions-gaps/

[iv] https://www.theccc.org.uk/publication/reducing-uk-emissions-2019-progress-report-to-parliament/

[v] https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/concern-about-climate-change-reaches-record-levels-half-now-very-concerned

[vi] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-50307304

[vii] https://onclimatechangepolicydotorg.wordpress.com/2019/11/25/the-uks-political-consensus-on-climate-change/

 

Satellite data can help strengthen policy

Advancing satellite technology can improve monitoring of emissions.  This will in turn help make policies more robust.

There are now around 2000 satellites in earth orbit carrying out a wide range of tasks.  This is about twice as many as only a decade ago[i].   Costs continue to come down, technologies are advancing and more organisations are making use of data, applying new techniques as they do so.   As progress continues, satellite technologies are positioned to make a much larger contribution to monitoring greenhouse gas emissions.

Tracking what’s happening on the ground

Satellites are critical to tracking land use changes that contribute to climate change, notably deforestation.   While satellites have played an important role here for years, the increasing availability of data is enabling organisations to increase the effectiveness of their work.  For example, in recent years Global Forest Watch[ii] has greatly increased the range, timeliness and accessibility of its data on deforestation.  This in turn has enabled more rapid responses.

This is now extending to other monitoring.  For example, progress on construction projects can be tracked over time.  This enabled, for example, monitoring the construction of coal plant in China, which showed that construction of new plants was continuing[iii].

Monitoring operation and emissions

As the frequency with which satellite pictures are taken increases, it becomes possible to monitor not only construction and land use changes, but also operation of individual facilities.  For example, it is now becoming possible to track operation of coal plant, because the steam from cooling towers is visible[iv].  This can in turn allow emissions to be estimated.

More direct monitoring of emissions continues to develop.  Publicly available data at high geographic resolution on NOx, SOx, particulates and in the near future methane[v] are becoming increasingly available[vi].   For example, measuring shipping emissions has traditionally been extremely difficult, but is now becoming tractable, at least for NOx.

Measuring methane is especially important.  Methane is a powerful greenhouse gas with significant emissions from leakage in natural gas systems.  Many of these emissions can easily be avoided at relatively low cost, leading to highly cost-effective emissions reduction.

Monitoring CO₂

CO₂ is more difficult to measure than other pollutants, in part because it disperses and mixes in the atmosphere so rapidly.  However, some of the latest satellites have sophisticated technology able to measure CO₂ concentrations very accurately[vii].  These cover only quite small areas at the moment but are expected to scale up and allow more widespread direct monitoring.  The picture below shows a narrow strip of the emissions from a coal plant in Kansas, based on data from the Orbiting Carbon Observatory 2 (OCO‐2) satellite.  These estimates conform well with reported emissions from the plant.

Figure 1:  Satellite data showing CO₂ emissions for a power plant in Kansas

Note: the red arrow shows prevailing wind direction.

Space agencies around the world are now exploring how such monitoring can be taken further.  For example, the EU has now asked the European Space Agency to design a satellite dedicated to monitoring CO₂.  It is expected to be operational in the 2020s.[viii]

Work is also underway to improve data analysis, so that quantities of emissions can be attributed to individual plants.  Machine learning holds a good deal of promise here as a way of finding and labelling patterns in the very large amounts of data available.  It is likely soon to be possible to monitor emissions from an individual source as small as a medium size coal plant, taking account of wind speed and direction and so forth.

Implications

These developments will make actions much more transparent and subject to inspection internationally.  Governments, scientists, energy companies, investors, academics and NGOs can monitor what is going on.  Increasingly polluters will not be able to hide their actions – they will be open for all to see.  This is turn will make it easier to bring pressure on polluters to clean up their act, potentially including, for example, holding countries to account for their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Climate Agreement.

Improved transparency and robust data are not in themselves solutions for reducing climate change.  Instead, they play an important role in an effective policy architecture.  And the do so with ever increasing availability and quality.  This gives cause for optimism that policies and their implementation can be made increasingly robust.

Adam Whitmore – 12^th September 2018

Thanks to Dave Jones for sharing his knowledge on the topic .

[i] https://www.ucsusa.org/nuclear-weapons/space-weapons/satellite-database#.W5Y-7ZNKhcA, https://allthingsnuclear.org/lgrego/new-update-of-ucs-satellite-database,

[ii] https://www.globalforestwatch.org/about

[iii] See here http://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/08/07/china-restarts-coal-plant-construction-two-year-freeze/ for examples

[iv] https://twitter.com/matthewcgray/status/1032251925515968512

[v] http://www.tropomi.eu/data-products/methane

[vi] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/meet-the-satellites-that-can-pinpoint-methane-and-carbon-dioxide-leaks/

[vii] https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2017GL074702

[viii] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-43926232

 

Climate change: how did we get here, and why is it so hard to fix? (Part 1)

Activities that cause emissions are ubiquitous, diverse and deeply embedded in modern life.  The world’s energy system is huge and long-lived.  This makes emissions tough to deal with. 

This post is the first of two stepping back a little from the specific topics I usually cover to take a very high level look at why the climate change problem is so hard to fix.  This first post looks at how we got here and (at a very high level) the physical and engineering challenges of addressing the climate change problem.  The next post will consider some of the political and psychological barriers to greater action.

The consequence of industrialisation

The world’s climate was remarkably stable from before the birth of agriculture, some 8-10,000 years ago, until very recent times[1].  Human civilisation grew up in a stable climate, and knew nothing else, despite the calamities caused on occasions by storms, floods, drought, and so forth.

Industrialisation changed this.  There is no single year that definitively marks the beginning of industrialisation, but 1776 probably as good a reference point as any.  It was an eventful year, with the US Declaration of Independence giving history one of its most famous dates, while elsewhere the first edition of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations was published and the Bolshoi Theatre opened its first season.  But in the long view of history perhaps more important than any of these was that James Watt’s steam engines began to power industrial production[2].  This, more than any other event, marks the beginning of the industrial era.

In the nearly two and a half centuries since 1776, world population has grown by almost a factor of about 10.  Economic output per person has also grown by a factor of about 10.  Taking these two changes together, the world’s economic activity has increased by a factor of about 100.  This has put huge stresses on a range of natural systems, including the atmosphere[3]^,[4].

The increase in the use of fossil fuels has been even greater than the increase in industrial activity.  Around 12 million tonnes of fossil fuels, almost entirely coal, were burnt each year before 1776[5].  Today the world burns about 12 billion tonnes of fossil fuels each year, an increase of a factor of 1000[6].

This huge increase in the burning of fossil fuels is now – together with deforestation, agriculture and a few other activities – changing the make-up of the atmosphere on a large scale.  This in turn, is changing the world’s climate.   Within a single human lifetime – just one percent or so of the time since the birth of agriculture – changes to the climate are likely to be much greater than human civilisation has ever before experienced.  The consequences of these changes are likely to be largely harmful, because manmade and natural systems are largely adapted to the world we have, not the one we are making.

The characteristics of the systems that have led to these changes also make the problems hard to address.

The scale of emissions is huge …

The scale of CO₂ emitted from the energy system is vast, around 36 billion tonnes p.a.  If this were frozen into solid form as “dry ice” it would cover the whole of Manhattan Island to the depth of about two thirds of the Empire State building.

The system that generates these emissions is correspondingly huge.  The world’s energy system cost tens of trillions of dollars to build, and is correspondingly immensely expensive to replace.

The diversity and dispersion of emissions makes the problem more challenging …

The problem is worse even than its scale alone suggests.  It would be simpler to deal with emissions if they were all in one place, whether Manhattan or elsewhere, and in solid form.  Instead emissions are dispersed across billions of individual sources around the world.  And they come from many different types of activity, from transporting food and powering electronics to heating and cooling homes and offices.  There is no single technology doing one thing to be replaced, but a wide diversity of technologies and applications.

And once emissions get into the atmosphere the greenhouse gases are very dilute.  Carbon dioxide makes up only 400 parts per million (0.04%) of the atmosphere.  Among other things this makes capture of CO₂ once it has got into the atmosphere difficult and expensive.

And assets producing emissions are very long lived …

Energy infrastructure often lasts many decades, so changing infrastructure tends to be a long term process, with premature replacement expensive.  And on the whole the existing system does its job remarkably well.  Some political considerations aside, there would be little need for very rapid changes to the system if it were not for climate change and other forms of pollution.

Energy is central to modern life …

Finally it’s not possible to simply switch off the world’s energy system because it is essential to modern life.  Hurricane Sandy disrupted much of New York’s energy system, and the consequences of that gave an indication of how quickly modern life collapses without critical energy infrastructure.

These physical characteristics of the problem are compounded by the political and psychological obstacles to change at the necessary scale.  I will return to these in my next post.

Adam Whitmore – 22^nd May 2017

 

[1] This climatically stable period since the end of the last ice age between 11,000 to 12,000 years ago is referred to as the Holocene.  Agriculture started not long after the ice sheets retreated and the world warmed.  Human activity has now led to a new period, referred to as the Anthropocene.

[2]   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watt_steam_engine.  The first use of the Watt engine to provide the rotary power, which was crucial for factories, was a little later in 1782 at the Soho manufactory near Birmingham.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soho_Manufactory.

[3] http://www.scottmanning.com/content/year-by-year-world-population-estimates/

[4] http://www.ggdc.net/maddison/maddison-project/data.htm

[5]Reliable data is obviously hard to come by that far back, but See Energy for a Sustainable World: From the Oil Age to a Sun-Powered Future By Vincenzo Balzani, Nicola Armaroli .  They estimate 10 million tonnes in 1700 and 16 million tonnes by 1815.  The majority of the increase would have been in the later part of this period.  See also Socioecological Transitions and Global Change, edited by Marina Fischer-Kowalski, Helmut Haberl, who quote estimates of 3 million tonnes p.a. in 1700 in the UK, a large proportion of the world total at the time, with little increase to 1776.  This consumption included a few primitive, inefficient steam engines, used mainly for pumping water from coal mines themselves.  The Newcomen steam engine required such large quantities of coal that it was rarely economic to site it away from coal mines.  The Watt engine was more than twice as efficient.

[6] My estimate of the total mass of coal, oil and gas, based on data in BP statistical review of World Energy.

Could rising aviation emissions be good for the environment?

The international aviation sector is likely to require a substantial number of offsets to meet its goal of achieving carbon neutrality above a 2020 baseline.  If these offsets are forestry related there is the possibility of generating substantial biodiversity co-benefits.

Emissions from international aviation are around 2% of total emissions, and are expected to roughly quadruple by 2050, well above the expected growth rate of other sectors.  Faced with this prospect, and challenged by measures attempting to include international flights within the EUETS, the governing body for aviation the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) last year decided to look at using market based measures to cap net international aviation emissions at 2020 levels globally, with agreement to be reached by 2016.  The chart below illustrates the scale of the action needed to achieve this.  The blue line shows a scenario with high growth in emissions, which already includes efficiency gains from introducing new aircraft.  The dashed green line represents a lower emissions growth scenario.  The light blue area shows the potential contribution of new technologies and processes such as additional maintenance.  There is also a contribution from running the system more efficiently, with improved air traffic management and airport operation, shown by the brown area.  Such measures can in total probably reduce emissions growth by about 40%.  However this still leaves around 60% of emissions growth which is difficult to avoid by technology changes except in the long term.   (Reducing the growth in aviation services would also reduce emissions of course, but any set of policies that severely caps the number and length of journeys is likely to prove politically intractable.)

Source:  ICAO CAEP A38-WP/26, 2013

For this remaining emissions growth the only realistic option for capping net emissions at 2020 levels over the next few decades is likely to be the use of offsets.  Demand for offsets from aviation could reach some hundreds of millions of tonnes p.a. in the 2030s, and this demand would be reliable as well as large, given the steady growth in demand.  It could provide a much needed source of demand for international offsets, which is currently weak.  The cost of this to passengers is likely to be small.  Emissions from a transatlantic flight are very roughly around a tonne of CO_2e per passenger, so this would add about $10 to the price of an economy class ticket assuming an offset price of $10/tonne, and less at current international offset prices, which are in the low single figures of dollars per tonne.

One source of offsets that looks particularly promising is reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD).  There has been a marked reduction in the rate of deforestation in Brazil (and some other jurisdictions) in the last decade, despite a slight increase last year.  The reductions in Brazil have been achieved through a variety of measures, including improved monitoring by remote sensing, new legal frameworks with better enforcement, more intensive agriculture and so forth.  But funding from governments, including Norway, Germany and the UK, has also played a useful role in reducing deforestation.  Future programmes will likely benefit from the additional funding that REDD offsets can provide. , although this funding will never be enough on its own.  And the scale of offsets available is potentially large.  For example, 500 million tonnes p.a. is equivalent to avoiding over 8,500sq. km of Amazon forest loss each year, compared with about 5,800 sq. km of forest currently lost in the Amazon region of Brazil last year (and an average annual loss of about 11,500 sq. km over the last ten years).

For a satisfactory scheme any offsets will of course need to be high quality, including meeting the usual tests of additionally, permanence and so forth, with adequate governance a prerequisite.  Buffers, exchange rates or risk premiums may be necessary to account for residual risks around permanence, leakage and other factors, or to realise an explicit goal of generating net benefits, with (for illustration) 1.5 tonnes of REDD offsets required for every tonne of aviation emissions.  This would somewhat increase the area protected for a given number of aviation emissions, assuming that REDD offsets are available at an appropriate price.

REDD programmes have the advantage that they help conserve biodiversity.  Indeed biodiversity benefits can be made an explicit criterion in programme design and selection.  This may, for example, include building on the current Climate, Community and Biodiversity (CCB) standard that is widely used in voluntary markets.  This would potentially allow an overall net gain for the environment if net carbon emissions were zero.  Reduced emissions from deforestation would match increased airline emissions, and biodiversity would additionally be preserved – hence the (deliberately provocative) title of this post.  Programmes can also provide opportunities for local communities, and the CCB standard is again relevant here.  Indeed appropriate community involvement in projects, ensuring local communities also benefit, is likely to be essential to any successful REDD programme.

Establishing that offsets issued now can be used after 2020 would provide valuable early demand for credits.  However given the early stages of development of proposals by ICAO it may be difficult to attract investors at present.

So far REDD has struggled to find adequate funding from carbon markets, despite discussion of allowing limited volumes of REDD credits under the California emissions scheme.  And significant challenges remain in any circumstances.  In particular, governance often remains difficult given the requirements for monitoring and permanence of REDD projects and programs.

Eventually some technical solution will be needed to enable aviation emissions to be reduced at source.  However in the meantime the chance to generate substantial additional benefits for biodiversity and other environmental goals by the judicious choice of forestry offsets to help meet aviation goals is an opportunity well worth further exploration.

Adam Whitmore – 10^th July 2014

Thanks to Ruben Lubowski of Environmental Defense Fund for useful comments on this post.

Notes

The 1 tonne CO_2e per transatlantic flight per economy class passenger figure is indicative, and depends on the multiplier applied to the CO₂ emissions to represent other atmospheric effects of emissions at altitude.