Green, ethical, energy issues in the news

Martyn1981

A lot of bad news in this post. Feel free to ignore, but the other side of RE energy news, is the fight against AGW and pollution, and I'm not sure we are 'winning'.

Are we moving too slowly, too late, perhaps.

Climate emergency: world 'may have crossed tipping points’

The world may already have crossed a series of climate tipping points, according to a stark warning from scientists. This risk is “an existential threat to civilisation”, they say, meaning “we are in a state of planetary emergency”.

Tipping points are reached when particular impacts of global heating become unstoppable, such as the runaway loss of ice sheets or forests. In the past, extreme heating of 5C was thought necessary to pass tipping points, but the latest evidence suggests this could happen between 1C and 2C.

Impact of air pollution on health may be far worse than thought, study suggests

The number of health problems linked to air pollution could be far higher than previously thought, according to research suggesting hospital admissions for conditions ranging from heart failure to urinary tract infections increase as air becomes dirtier.

Air pollution has already been associated with a number of conditions, from strokes to brain cancer, miscarriage and mental health problems.

However, the research suggests the impact could be far wider, despite looking at only one component of air pollution, chiming with a global review published earlier this year that indicated almost every cell in the body may be affected by dirty air.

Linked to the above article, South Korea limiting coal generation due to air pollution:

South Korea to shut a quarter of its coal-fired plants over winter to cut pollution


And lastly some good/bad news, as it starts of well, till you see the timelines:

King coal no more as insurer Axa vows to divest from fossil fuel

The insurer Axa has promised to sever ties with the coal industry as part of a climate strategy to phase out the group’s multibillion pound investments and insurance underwriting of companies that back the fossil fuel.

Axa said it intended to exit the coal industry by 2030 in Europe and other members states of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, and by 2040 in the rest of the world.

Back to 'fun' stuff next ....hopefully.

Martyn1981

Lots of political news in this post from Europe, UK and UK party politics. But the theme seems to be, we need to do more, so we seem to be gradually wakening from the denial slumber, which is good news, especially now that RE is cheap and popular.

Europe - Did declare a climate emergency, and even mentioned that our house is on fire (I seem to recall saying much the same myself!)

'Our house is on fire': EU parliament declares climate emergency

The European parliament has declared a global “climate and environmental emergency” as it urged all EU countries to commit to net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

The vote came as scientists warned that the world may have already crossed a series of climate tipping points, resulting in “a state of planetary emergency”.

Intended to demonstrate Europe’s green credentials days before a crucial UN climate conference in Madrid, the vote also ratchets up pressure on Ursula von der Leyen, the incoming president of the European commission, who declared this week that the EU would lead the fight against “the existential threat” of the climate crisis.

Although passed with a comfortable majority, with 429 votes in favour, 225 votes against and 19 abstentions – MEPs across the political spectrum warned against making symbolic gestures.

Environmental campaigners said the declaration was not backed by sufficient action. “Our house is on fire. The European parliament has seen the blaze, but it’s not enough to stand by and watch,” said Greenpeace’s EU climate policy adviser, Sebastian Mang, shortly before the vote.

In a separate vote on Thursday, MEPs backed a resolution stating that current EU climate targets were “not in line” with the 2015 Paris climate agreement, which calls for keeping global heating “well below” 2C above pre-industrial levels, but aiming to cap temperature rises at 1.5C.

MEPs backed a tougher target of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by 55% by 2030, an improvement on the current 40% target, but derided by Green politicians and campaigners as inadequate.

UK news - We are getting criticised for not contributing enough money, having 'contributed' a lot of CO2.

[Personal musings - Whilst all historical emissions confirm our joint responsibility to act, I'd argue that technological advancements from the FF era have also been beneficial, and no malice was originally intended. So perhaps, if totals are to be compiled and compared, then the count should really start from around the 1960's when we became aware of the seriousness of the emissions. Effectively, I'm suggesting if there is blame, then a post awareness (and per capita) basis should be applied to calculate additional contributions, above and beyond those that we should all be making anyways. M.]

UK should contribute £20bn to UN climate fund by 2030, report says

The UK contribution to the UN’s climate fund should balloon to £20bn by 2030 if it plans to pay a “fair share” to helping tackle the global climate crisis, according to new research.

A report from the IPPR thinktank says the UK should “shoulder more of the burden” of the global climate crisis because of its major contribution to the world’s rising carbon emissions.

The left-leaning thinktank found that the UK is responsible for the fifth largest contribution of carbon emissions in the atmosphere since the 1750s. The UK is behind only the US, China, Russia and Germany in terms of its global climate impact.

The IPPR called on the next government to radically increase the money it spends on helping to fund green initiatives by almost threefold to match its contribution to the climate crisis with funds to help tackle the environmental breakdown.

And internal UK - nice to see an actual climate debate, even if a couple of leaders were represented by melting ice.

Tories left on ice in TV debate as leaders vie for climate credentials

Opposition leaders attempted to outbid each other on Thursday night with their climate credentials in the first ever election debate focusing on the environmental emergency, in which the absent Boris Johnson was replaced by a melting ice sculpture.

In place of the prime minister, Channel 4 placed an ice sculpture, representing, they said, the emergency on planet Earth. A second ice sculpture took the place of Brexit party leader Nigel Farage, who also refused to take part.

Martyn1981

Part of the 'Exxon Knew' news. Worth a read, though it left me saddened by the lies and wasted opportunities. I've extracted some juicy bits, but it's all pretty upsetting as their lies, denials and stalling tactics worked - worked in the sense that they made the money, now we have to pay to [STRIKE]fix it[/STRIKE] make the damage less worse:

Coal Knew, Too

“Exxon knew.” Thanks to the work of activists and journalists, those two words have rocked the politics of climate change in recent years, as investigations revealed the extent to which giants like Exxon Mobil and Shell were aware of the danger of rising greenhouse gas emissions even as they undermined the work of scientists.

But the coal industry knew, too — as early as 1966, a newly unearthed journal shows.

In August, Chris Cherry, a professor in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, salvaged a large volume from a stack of vintage journals that a fellow faculty member was about to toss out. He was drawn to a 1966 copy of the industry publication Mining Congress Journal;his father-in-law had been in the industry and he thought it might be an interesting memento.

Cherry flipped it open to a passage from James R. Garvey, who was the president of Bituminous Coal Research Inc., a now-defunct coal mining and processing research organization.

“There is evidence that the amount of carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere is increasing rapidly as a result of the combustion of fossil fuels,” wrote Garvey. “If the future rate of increase continues as it is at the present, it has been predicted that, because the CO2 envelope reduces radiation, the temperature of the earth’s atmosphere will increase and that vast changes in the climates of the earth will result.”

“Such changes in temperature will cause melting of the polar icecaps, which, in turn, would result in the inundation of many coastal cities, including New York and London,” he continued.

As Cherry did some of his own digging, he soon realized his discovery could be the first evidence that the coal industry was aware of the impending climate crisis more than half a century ago — a finding that could open mining companies to the type of litigation that the oil industry is now facing.

At the heart of big coal’s denial campaign was Fred Palmer, who served as Peabody’s senior vice president of government relations from 2001 to 2015. In 1997, Palmer founded the Greening Earth Society, a now-defunct industry front group that argued that burning fossil fuels was good for the planet. The group was based in the same office as the Western Fuels Association, a consortium of coal suppliers and coal-fired utilities that Palmer also ran.

“Every time you turn your car on and you burn fossil fuels and you put CO2 into the air, you’re doing the work of the Lord,” Palmer told a Danish documentary team in 1997. “That’s the ecological system we live in.”

Some previously released documents show that Exxon’s scientists began advising that the world phase out coal as a fuel as early as 1979. In one scenario, the Exxon scientists concluded that non-fossil fuels would need to be substituted for coal beginning in the 1990s to keep carbon dioxide levels below atmospheric concentrations of 440 parts per million. In 1999, Exxon merged with Mobil, and by 2002, Exxon Mobil had dumped its coal assets.

Meanwhile, the coal industry tried to reinvent itself with the concept of “clean coal.” This as-yet-undelivered promise that carbon capture and other technological advances could lower coal’s environmental impact has been around for decades but resurged in the early 2000s as regulations seemed imminent.

The biggest proponent of this idea was the American Coalition for Clean Coal Electricity, a coal front group that spent $35 million on public relations campaigns in 2008 alone, seeking to influence the election. A year later, ACCCE was caught sending Congress fraudulent letters opposing federal climate legislation and pretending to be from veterans, women’s and civil rights groups. The incident led many members to leave the organization, but Peabody remains a member to this day.

“Its whole mission was to stop climate regulations but pretend that they were in favor of clean coal, which, of course, doesn’t exist,” said Davies.

Martyn1981

UN appoints Mark Carney to help finance climate action goals

Mark Carney has been appointed as UN special envoy for climate action and finance as he prepares to step down as governor of the Bank of England in January.

Carney replaces billionaire Michael Bloomberg in the part time pro bono climate action role after the former New York mayor stepped down to focus on the US presidential race.

The governor has been signed up to galvanise action among financial institutions ahead of the 26th round of global climate talks in November 2020. His main focus will be on mobilising private finance to invest in schemes that will help achieve the Paris climate agreement goal of limiting global temperature rises to 1.5C.

Martyn1981

A whole host of articles, but more on the politics of action, than the technology, so I'll squeeze them all together for an easy scanning (or ignoring).

Scientists setting out a formula for when it's all too late to even hope to stall/stop AGW:

Scientist's theory of climate's Titanic moment the 'tip of a mathematical iceberg'

“It can be illustrated by the Titanic disaster, but it applies to many severe risks where you can calculate the do-nothing/business-as-usual probability of a highly damaging event,” he says. “Yet there are options to avoid the disaster.

“In other words, this a control problem.”

There is a time lag between the rapid cuts to greenhouse gases and the climate system reacting. Knowing if you have enough time tells you if you’re in an emergency or not.

And Boris urged to stress the importance of more action to Trump:

Boris Johnson urged to challenge Trump on climate denial

Boris Johnson is being urged by 350 leading climate researchers to robustly challenge Donald Trump on his “dangerous” and “irresponsible” denial of the risks of climate change during the US president’s visit to the UK this week.

Putting the prime minister under more pressure over his stance on global heating, leading academics involved in climate research said he must try to persuade Trump to take strong domestic and international action.

Whilst the US start to form a coalition to fight:

John Kerry launches coalition to fight climate crisis: ‘We are way behind’

Former US secretary of state and Democratic senator John Kerry has launched a new coalition of power-brokers, including top politicians, military leaders, and Hollywood celebrities, to fight for addressing the climate crisis.

This coalition – named World War Zero, in reference to the national security danger presented by global heating – aims to convince people that rapid mobilization is required to halt the increase in carbon emissions within 30 years. According to United Nations scientists, global carbon emissions must be halved by 2030 – and eliminated completely by 2050 – to restrict warming to comparatively safe levels.

On a slightly different tack, the EU under pressure to weaken action on AGW, especially FF gas consumption, and attempts to call it 'green':

Fossil fuel lobbyists push to dilute EU anti-greenwash plan

Fossil fuel lobbyists are trying to water down planned EU rules to stop “investment greenwashing’ by setting science-based criteria for any investment which lays claim to being environmentally sustainable.

A report from lobbyist watchdog InfluenceMap has found that although some investors support the “green labelling” rules, 98% of Europe’s 50 largest investors are members of lobby groups trying to weaken the proposals.

But good news regarding coal investment, unless you support coal investment, then it's decidedly bad news:

Coal power becoming 'uninsurable' as firms refuse cover

The number of insurers withdrawing cover for coal projects more than doubled this year and for the first time US companies have taken action, leaving Lloyd’s of London and Asian insurers as the “last resort” for fossil fuels, according to a new report.

The report, which rates the world’s 35 biggest insurers on their actions on fossil fuels, declares that coal – the biggest single contributor to climate change – “is on the way to becoming uninsurable” as most coal projects cannot be financed, built or operated without insurance.

Martyn1981

Article looking at bio-fuels to replace petrol during the transition to BEV's, but I suspect it's a little more controversial than that given the scale of fuels needed, and (in my opinion) the potential for slowing a transition away from the ICE, and localised exhaust pipe emissions. But, for air and sea transport, perhaps?

Biofuels Could Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions By 96%

There is nothing inherently wrong with internal combustion engines. The problem is the fuels we use to run them emit billions of tons of greenhouse gases every year, gases which cause the Earth to get hotter. The byproducts from burning gasoline or diesel fuel account for almost a third of all US greenhouse gas emissions according to the EPA.

It’s true that internal combustion engines are less efficient than electric motors. In a perfect world, we would take the billions of them in use in the world today and replace them with motors powered by sunlight or wind or ocean waves. And someday we will, but it will take many generations to make that happen. What do we do in the meantime?

Martyn1981

Extract from this week's Carbon Commentary:

5, Power-to gas (P2G) in Germany. The gas industry association began a push for 5 GW of power-to-gas capacity by 2024/5. What is surprising about this number is the size; 5 GW is not far off 10% of average German electricity demand. Only about 60 MW of P2G capacity is currently installed so the expansion, if it occurs may reduce the manufacturing cost of electrolysers substantially. The incentives for the gas industry to push for P2G are clear. The pipelines across Germany will become ‘stranded assets’ unless fossil natural gas is replaced by hydrogen (or biomethane). In a first step, the association recently announced that a section of the gas grid in Saxony-Anhalt would be switched to 20% hydrogen by the end of 2020.

This is the linked article:

German gas industry targets 5 GW of power-to-gas capacity in five years

COLOGNE, Germany (Reuters) - Germany’s gas industry aims to build power-to-gas capacity of five gigawatts (GW) over the next five years, and 40 GW by 2050, as it seeks to develop zero-carbon fuels for homes, factories and vehicles, industry group DVGW said on Tuesday.

The target comes as policymakers aim to unveil a hydrogen strategy by year-end to help decarbonize Germany’s fossil fuel-based gas system toward the use of hydrogen derived from water and biogas from crops and waste.

Currently Germany is home to around 40 small power-to-gas pilot projects. These harness surplus green power, mainly from wind, to carry out electrolysis, splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen to produce zero-carbon fuel.

The biggest projects so far measure just 6 MW, equivalent to around 60 car engines. The 5 GW size planned over the next five years would be equivalent to five nuclear power stations.

michaels

Martyn1981 wrote: »

Extract from this week's Carbon Commentary:



This is the linked article:

German gas industry targets 5 GW of power-to-gas capacity in five years

Power to gas is obviously very helpful with grid and peak load issues compared to the electrification of heating

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

Power to gas is obviously very helpful with grid and peak load issues compared to the electrification of heating

This doesn't mean it's a good idea
It might cost X to upgrade the grid to do electrification
If it costs multiples of X to do electricity to gas to gas boiler then that's not going to work

Overall the idea of electricity to gas isn't at all likely
You don't take a high grade fuel and turn it into a lower grade fuel

Wholesale natural gas is only about 1.5 penny a KWh
Wholesale electricity is about 5 pennies s KWh
Converting 5 pennies to 1.5 penny isn't a good idea
And that's if the conversion is 100% and has zero capital land labor costs which of course isn't the case

Better is to simply use smart resistance heaters in gas boiler homes as per my idea
This way during times of excess wind power the grid can find smart resistance heaters around the country in locations where there is excess grid capacity at that point in time and dump the excess power into those resistance heaters therefore saving gas in the boiler. Effectively converting 1 unit of electricity into about 1.1 units of gas so 110% efficient and very low capital cost


With the correct regulations we can do a massive amount of power to gas virtually with smart resistance heaters. No big chemical plants need to be built. Efficiency is 110% rather than probably less than 60%. Low capital cost it's just a few million smart heaters that cost £20 and some smart software. Rather than building dozens of chemical plants at £many$billions that need land water time labor.

GreatApe

5 million social homes in the UK
Give each one a 3KW smart heater
They just plug it in the hallway

When there is excess wind the grid dumps the energy into these heaters for free
110% efficient electricity to gas conversion. Costs ~£100 million for the smart heaters which are slid state totally passive and should last 30 years. Able to absorb as much as 15GW of extra wind power rather than curtailing it

Why pay big chemical companies to do inefficient dirty slow electricity to chemicals back to electricity when you can use electricity directly as above.

But this isn't really an issue for the UK or Germany anytime soon
With the nukes coming offline over the next 3-9 years there will be more space for both wind power and fossil fuels to take up the lost nuclear.

In the UK we will also have more links come online so instead of curtail or do the chemicals dance we will just export the excess. UK will probably build out another 10GW of links over the 2020s with two about to come online in 1month and 6 months time

Electricity to chemicals shouldn't be seen as positive it's very negative for at least the next 15-20 years.