Month: December 2017

Policy and Politics

Under the guise of enhancing “environmental stewardship around the world,” EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt met with officials in Morocco about their interest in importing natural gas from the U.S.  Environmental groups, Democratic lawmakers, and some industry experts noted that EPA has no formal role in overseeing natural gas exports.  Last week I included an article about Pruitt’s plans for the “red team/blue team” debate on climate science.  Well, this week, those plans were put on hold.  Since Pruitt took over as administrator of the EPA in March, more than 700 employees have either retired, taken voluntary buyouts, or quit.  The largest number was in the Department of Research and Development.  John Abraham had a column in The Guardian arguing that the Trump administration is being shortsighted by cutting funding for climate research.  Making good on French President Emmanuel Macron’s promise to provide research funding for climate scientists working in the U.S. who are worried about the political climate here, the French government unveiled a list of 18 “laureates”, 13 of them working in the U.S., who have won grants to conduct research in France.  Also on Tuesday, in concert with the One Planet conference in Paris to mark the second anniversary of the Paris Climate Agreement, the EU announced funding of €9bn for action on climate change.  The funds will be focused on sustainable cities, clean energy and sustainable agriculture.

On Monday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard arguments concerning the Trump administration’s request for a writ of mandamus to halt the climate change lawsuit brought by 21 children.  An administration attorney claimed that the discovery requests in the case were “burdensome” and that litigating the case could distract the executive branch from carrying out “its constitutional duties.”  Award-winning poet Megan Hunter published her first novel this month, entitled The End We Start From, and it is a work of climate fiction.  In an interview with Amy Brady, she said “I think that hope is actually essential if we are to take action: If there is no hope for the planet then there is no point doing anything.  And hope…[is] about recognizing the essentially unknown nature of the future…”

California and Washington state joined Canada, Mexico, Costa Rica, Colombia, and Chile on Tuesday in an agreement to step up the use of a price on CO₂ emissions as a central economic policy to slow climate change.  A new paper in the journal Climatic Change reported on a survey of Republican attitudes about climate change.  Clifford Klaus had an interesting piece in The New York Times about the people of Converse County, Wyoming, and their attitudes about energy and President Trump.  They would be very happy with Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s plan to boost coal.  In a report released on Wednesday, the Government Accountability Office said that the Pentagon must do more to prepare its overseas bases for the impacts of climate change.

Climate

Attribution studies were in the news this week.  Two dealt with Hurricane Harvey and its impacts.  As published in the journal Environmental Research Letters, scientists at the World Weather Attribution project calculated that the record rainfall experienced in Houston was made three times more likely because of climate change.  Furthermore, if we continue with business-as-usual CO₂ emissions, rainfall events on the same scale as Hurricane Harvey’s downpour could become up to ten times more likely by 2100.  The results are supported by the second study, published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, which found that Harvey’s rainfall was made 3.5 times more likely by climate change.  In a first for the American Meteorological Society’s annual report on the role of climate change in extreme weather events, their 2016 report, released this week, included three events that would not have happened without the increase in CO₂ level in the atmosphere.  Previous reports had never determined that events could not have occurred under “natural” conditions.  Brad Plumer and Nadja Popovich summarized five cases from the report at The New York Times.  A number of additional attribution studies were presented at the meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in New Orleans and they were summarized by Joel Achenbach at The Washington Post.  In addition, the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit issued a report examining the climate change links of all extreme weather events that have occurred since the Paris Climate Agreement.

Also at the AGU meeting, Jeremy Mathis, director of the Arctic Research Program at NOAA, unveiled the Arctic Report Card 2017.  The report stated that the decline of Arctic sea ice is “outside of the range of natural variability and unprecedented” in the past 1,450 years and that the speed at which Arctic surface temperatures are rising is unprecedented in (at least) the past 2,000 years.  Indicative of the changes in Alaska, some temperature readings in Barrow (now known as Utqiagvik) were automatically deleted from the data record because they were so high they looked like outliers.

A paper published in the journal Earth’s Future examined potential sea level rise associated with the melting of Antarctic glaciers.  The paper reported on the first modeling study to take into consideration two new mechanisms that could lead to rapid collapse of the Antarctic ice sheets: disintegration of floating ice shelves and mechanical failure of tall ice cliffs facing the sea.  The study found that under a business-as-usual emissions scenario sea level could rise by 3 to 8 feet by the year 2100, much higher than projected by the last IPCC report.  Climate Central released a new version of their sea level rise maps to reflect the new findings.

Concerns are growing that because of increasing CO₂ levels, wheat, rice, and other staple crops could deliver less of some minerals and protein in decades to come than they do today.  In 2017, three reports highlighted what changes in those crops could mean for global health.

In the past I have provided links to articles about “negative emissions” technologies for removing CO₂ from the atmosphere and the necessity for their use to meet the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.  Wired has published a long investigative piece about “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage”, or BECCS, which is one of those technologies.

Energy

New research, published in Nature Energy, measured the full lifecycle greenhouse gas emissions of various electricity sources out to 2050. It showed that the carbon footprints of solar, wind and nuclear power are many times lower than coal or gas with carbon capture and storage.  This remained true after accounting for emissions during manufacture, construction and fuel supply.  Even though Florida is called the “sunshine state”, it gets most of its electricity from gas-fired power plants, with relatively little from solar.  The Center for Public Integrity had a rather long investigative piece about the electric power industry there.  It also released a report on the relationship between the American Petroleum Institute and the U.S. government.

National Australia Bank says it will halt all lending for new thermal coal mining projects, although it will continue providing finance for coal projects already on its books.  Meanwhile, in Paris the World Bank announced on Tuesday that after 2019 it will no longer finance upstream oil and gas projects.  In response to the “Powering Past Coal Alliance,” which was launched by Canada and the UK, the Trump administration has proposed the “Clean Coal Alliance” to encourage cooperation on technologies that reduce the carbon footprint of coal.  It has not yet begun recruiting members.

Two recent research papers, one in Nature Geoscience and the other in Nature Scientific Reports, demonstrate clearly the perversity of nature.  The first paper, reporting on a modeling study, found that as Earth warms, wind patterns in the midlatitudes of the Northern Hemisphere will change and diminish somewhat, having a negative impact on wind energy installations.  The second paper reported on a study of wind energy potential in key regions of China from 1979 through 2015, and found that it had declined by about 10%.

According to GTM Research and the Solar Energy Industries Association’s latest U.S. Solar Market Insight report, 2,031 megawatts of photovoltaic (PV) solar generation were installed in the U.S. in the third quarter of the year, resulting in the market’s smallest quarter in two years.  Appalachian Power has announced that its first PV solar generation project, a 15 MW facility, will be built in Rustburg, Va.  Global installations of solar PV panels are set to reach 108 GW next year according to forecasts by IHS Markit Ltd.  They project that the rate of installations will require a large percentage of global panel manufacturing capacity, driving prices up and making the economics of some projects questionable.

Babies born to mothers living near fracking sites have a higher chance of being underweight, according to new research published this week in the journal Science Advances, which surveyed data on more than 1.1 million births in Pennsylvania between 2004 and 2013.  On a 4-3 vote Tuesday, the Virginia Water Control Board approved the certification of the Atlantic Coast Pipeline with an amendment that prevents it from becoming effective until the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality finishes reviewing and approving a series of plans and mitigation measures.

Toyota Motor Corp. has strengthened its partnership with battery producer Panasonic Corp.  They will work together on solid-state batteries for electric vehicles (EVs), among other things.  As EVs replace cars powered by internal combustion engines, one thing that will change is the auto repair shop, simply because EVs have far fewer parts to break down.

Akshat Rathi continued his series in Quartz about “The Race to Zero Emissions.”  You can read Part 5 here, Part 6 here, Part 7 here, and Part 8 here.  In addition, he has provided a game to test your ability to reduce carbon emissions from electricity generation.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.

Policy and Politics

The EPA will not block its scientists from freely discussing their work in public, Administrator Scott Pruitt promised lawmakers this week, in the wake of a recent incident in which researchers were barred from presenting findings on climate change at a conference.  However, he also told lawmakers that early in 2018 he plans to review the 2009 endangerment finding that climate change is a risk to human health by using the “red team/blue team” approach used by the military.  In further EPA news, the agency announced Wednesday that it will take comments on its proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan at upcoming hearings in San Francisco; Gillette, Wyoming; and Kansas City, Missouri.  The dates, times and venues have not yet been announced.  The House Science, Space, and Technology Committee held Congress’ first hearings on climate science in 1976, and it resulted in passage of bipartisan legislation to establish a National Climate Program Office.  Today, the Committee is best known for being hostile to climate scientists.  What happened?  Inside Climate News reviewed the transformation of this powerful committee to help answer that question.

While Suniva and SolarWorld have continued to appeal to President Trump to impose tariffs on imported solar panels, installers and others have argued that a tariff will cause more jobs in solar installation to be lost than will be gained in solar panel manufacturing.  Greentech Media had a detailed summary of the hearings.  Both the House and Senate versions of the tax-cut bill contain provisions that pose a threat to the development of wind and solar power.  Paraphrasing Martin Luther King Jr., who in turn had paraphrased the great abolitionist leader Theodore Parker, Bill McKibben wrote in Rolling Stone “The arc of the physical universe appears to be short, and it bends toward heat.  Win soon or suffer the consequences.”

More than 50 mayors from cities of all sizes wrapped up a climate change summit in Chicago on Wednesday, at which they signed a formal agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in their cities.  In order to do that, they will need to consider housing, land use, and transportation as a single system, since they are all intertwined, complementary, and reinforcing.  A recent study published in the journal BioScience showed how important it is to consider the sources used by any blogs you read on the subject of climate change.  Those that aren’t based on the peer-reviewed scientific literature can be very misleading.

Climate

In 2015 journalists from The New York Times accompanied a team of scientists to Greenland, where they were studying the fate of meltwater from the ice sheet.  The question being studied was whether the water flowed directly to the sea, or whether some was retained in cavities within the ice sheet.  The results of those studies have now been published in the Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences and the Times has an interesting article about the study, complete with excellent graphics.  Another article in the Times, which I missed last week deals with the mental stress of climate change on Inuit people.  It is accompanied by some wonderful watercolors.

Several climate change models are used by climate scientists to project future warming.  Because of differences between them, they provide a variety of projections.  Scientists at the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford, Calif. ranked the models by how well they simulated historical temperature changes.  When they then examined projections of future temperature changes they found that those that best simulated past temperature changes gave the highest projections of future changes, by around 15%, on average.

As wildfires once again raged across California, Robinson Meyer of The Atlantic examined the question of whether they were being made worse by climate change.  A paper this week in Nature Communication provided additional evidence linking the loss of Arctic sea ice with drought in California and extreme cold winter temperatures in the eastern U.S.  This does not bode well for the current California wildfires.  Another consequence of melting Arctic sea ice is more human activity, such as boat traffic and oil exploration.  As a consequence, conservationists are concerned about the impact on marine life that is not adapted to such activities.  One example is narwhals, which have a unique stress response that may not be compatible with human activities.

One impact of increased concentrations of CO₂ in the atmosphere is to make the oceans more acidic.  Consequently, scientists have been studying the impacts of increased acidity on a variety of marine species, such as shellfish.  A recent article in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, B, Biological Sciences reported on studies on mussels.  The acidity of sea water varies with location and in shallow coastal waters, where mussels grow, it also varies with time.  When the scientists subjected mussels to varying acidity levels they found that condition to be more stressful than constant exposure to waters with low acidity.

A new study in the journal The Condor: Ornithological Applications, found that some U.S. Pacific coast bird species are migrating earlier in the spring and later in the fall than they used to.  These changes appear to be linked to warmer, wetter climate conditions.  Climate change is also having an impact on birds in the UK, as documented in a new report.

Rivers in the Amazon are cycling between increasingly severe states of flood and drought, as predicted by climate change models, and the results are directly impacting local wildlife and the indigenous people who protect the forest, according to a new study published in the journal Conservation Biology.

Energy

A notice that was slated to be published Friday in the Federal Register by the Bureau of Land Management will suspend a rule to limit methane leaks from oil and gas operations on federal land.  On the other hand, the American Petroleum Institute announced on Tuesday that a consortium of oil and gas companies is undertaking a voluntary program to reduce their methane emissions.  Speaking of methane, last Friday the U.S. Forest Service gave its approval for the Mountain Valley Pipeline to cross the Jefferson National Forest and on Thursday of this week the Virginia Water Control Board approved the pipeline, its last major regulatory hurdle.  Finally, a note about pipelines in general.  Regulators are concerned that the oil leak from the Keystone Pipeline may have been caused by the weights that keep it from floating when it is below the water table.  One problem is that the regulators don’t know where the weights are.

Lithium-ion battery packs used in electric vehicles are selling at an average price of $209 a kWh, down 24% from a year ago and about a fifth of what it was in 2010, a Bloomberg New Energy Finance (BNEF) survey shows. Furthermore, according to a report by BNEF, the cost will likely fall to below $100 a kWh by 2025.  Of course, the price of the battery packs will depend in part on the price of lithium, which is now at a record high due to high demand and limited supply.  This is causing one of the world’s largest lithium producers to consider expanding into a fourth country.

According to new data from the U.S. Energy Information Agency (IEA), transportation has surpassed electricity generation as the biggest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S.  The transportation sector now emits 1.9 billion tons of CO₂ annually; the electric power sector emits 1.8 billion tons.  There is growing interest in electric vehicles (EVs) coupled with renewable energy as a way of reducing emissions from both sectors, but one deterrence is a lack of EV infrastructure.  This raises the question of whether car-sharing services can increase demand for both EVs and their infrastructure.  Of course, if the new EVs look as good as the concept cars shown at this year’s Los Angeles Auto Show, a lot of people won’t take too much convincing, particularly since EVs are cheaper to own and operate over four years than gasoline or diesel cars.  The IEA also reported that U.S. solar photovoltaic electricity output in the first nine months of 2017 grew 47% over the same period in 2016.

More than half of the EU’s 619 coal-fired power plants are losing money, according to a new report by Carbon Tracker.  Furthermore, stricter air pollution rules and higher carbon prices will push even more plants into unprofitability, with 97% losing money by 2030.

Read it and weep.  China’s share of the global market for protection against climate change more than tripled over the 13 years leading to 2015, according to a report commissioned by the German government and published by the Federal Environment Office.  Germany fell to second place and the U.S. finished third.

This week, Akshat Rathi started a series about carbon capture on Quartz.  The first article provided an overview, the second with the Allam cycle which uses supercritical CO₂ to drive the turbine in a gas-powered system to generate electricity, the third with negative-emissions concrete, and the fourth with a new process, invented by a teenager, that absorbs CO₂ at about 15% of the cost of the industry standard.  The series will conclude next week.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.

Policy and Politics

President Trump’s nominee to head NOAA, Barry Meyers, former CEO of AccuWeather, affirmed during his confirmation hearing on Wednesday that he accepts the scientific consensus that humans are causing global warming.  In addition, he said “I fully support the ability, as I said, of scientists to do their work unfettered.”  State department official Judith Garber said the U.S. is starting the process to ratify the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, which sets a phasedown path for HFCs, a group of potent greenhouse gases used as refrigerants in refrigerators and air conditioners.  President Trump’s trade representative requested more details about how low-cost imported solar panels have harmed U.S. manufacturers as the White House considers imposing tariffs.

Most of us concerned about climate change think of the Clean Power Plan (CPP) as a regulation to decrease CO₂ emissions.  In reality, it is much more, also reducing a host of other pollutants that impact human health, as was emphasized during testimony at the CPP hearings in Charleston, WV, this week.  Emily Atkin had an interesting commentary on the hearings in the New Republic.  While we were on break last week, Carbon Brief published an interview with everyone’s favorite climate scientist, Katharine Hayhoe.  It’s very interesting.  Writing at Southeast Energy News, Jim Pierobon examined the hurdles still to be faced as the McAuliffe and Northam administrations strive to have Virginia join the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI).

Climate

A new study, published in the journal PLoS One, has found that almost 14,000 coastal archeological sites and national monuments in the southeastern U.S. could be lost by the year 2100 because of sea level rise.  Meanwhile, in the Arctic, melting permafrost is threatening artifacts that have been preserved for centuries.  Speaking of sea level rise, in the last Weekly Roundup I provided a link to Bill McKibben’s review of Jeff Goodell’s new book The Water Will Come.  This week, Amy Brady posted an interview with Goodell.

Writing in Nautilus, Victor Gomes cataloged seven climate change impacts you may not have considered.  One impact not covered by Gomes is on the tiny creatures in the oceans that form the base of the food chain.  Amorina Kingdon took a brief look at them at Hakai Magazine.  Another consequence that you may not have considered is an increase in the number of child brides in Africa.

In a report to its clients on Tuesday, Moody’s Investors Service Inc. explained how it incorporates climate change into its credit ratings for state and local bonds.  If cities and states don’t deal with risks from surging seas or intense storms, they are at greater risk of default, and hence they will have to pay a higher interest rate for their bonds.  Speaking of risks, an analysis by NOAA showed the amount of rain that defines a “100-year storm” has risen by 3 to 5 inches in the Houston area since the last estimates were put in place in 2002.  Instead of expecting 12 to 14 inches in a day during a 100-year storm, the data show the area should expect 15 to 18 inches.

A report released Tuesday by the Ellen MacArthur Foundation said that the fashion industry currently creates 1.2 billion tons of carbon emissions per year–more than emissions from international flights and shipping combined.  It called on the fashion industry to alter its practices in order to become more sustainable.

A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences examined 20 conservation, restoration, and land management actions that could help the world reach the goals of the Paris Climate Agreement.

Warm waters in the Bering and Chukchi Seas have hampered sea ice development this fall.  And that’s not all.  A new report completed by 90 scientists for the Arctic Council concluded that the Arctic is warming twice as fast as the mid-latitudes and is likely to see average warming of up to 5°C as early as 2040.

Energy

Bloomberg New Energy Finance held a conference this week in Shanghai on the future of energy in Asia.  Anindya Upadhyay and Iain Wilson presented some of the highpoints from the conference for Bloomberg Technology, including the projection that the growing market for electric vehicles (EVs) will cut oil demand by 8 million barrels a day by 2040.  Furthermore, according to a UBS global autos survey released Tuesday, EVs will make up 16% of all car sales by 2025.  However, according to Bloomberg New Energy Finance, battery prices need to drop by more than half before electric vehicles will be competitive with cars powered by internal-combustion engines, something that is likely to happen by 2026.  Before Thanksgiving I included information about Tesla’s new long-haul truck.  Now Bloomberg Technology has questioned whether Elon Musk’s claims are achievable.

According to data from the federal Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration, between January 2010 and November 2017, natural gas pipelines leaked a total of 17.55 billion cubic feet of gas, killed nearly 100 people, and injured close to 500.  Jonathan Thompson of High Country News has prepared an interesting infographic using that data.  ExxonMobil was the only American-owned company to sign an agreement with seven other energy firms to crack down on emissions of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that producers tend to emit along the natural gas production chain.  A new study, published in the journal Environmental Science and Technology, sought to measure methane emissions from cattle, swine, and poultry production.  They found that total U.S. livestock methane emissions were 19.6 billion pounds per year, a figure close to that determined by the EPA.  Fuel cell technology based on methane as the energy source can produce electricity with fewer CO₂ emissions than a gas-fired turbine.  Consequently, they are being considered by some companies for powering their data centers.

Shell is increasing the capital expenditure for its new energies division, to $1billion-$2billion a year for 2018-2020, up from a previous plan of up to $1bn a year by 2020.  Furthermore, its new climate change target aims to cut the net carbon footprint of its products by 50% by 2050, and by 20% by 2035.  In addition, Shell has partnered with top carmakers to deploy ultra-fast chargers at 80 European highway sites in 2019.

About 5% of all K-12 schools in the U.S. are powered by the sun, and their solar capacity has almost doubled in the last three years, according to a new study by the Solar Energy Industries Association, The Solar Foundation, and Generation 180, a clean energy nonprofit.

The world’s largest lithium-ion battery has officially been turned on in South Australia.  The 100 MW battery, produced by Tesla, is paired to the neighboring Hornsdale Wind Farm, owned by French company Neoen, to bring greater reliability and stability to the state’s electricity grid.  Hyundai Electric & Energy Systems Co. is building a 150 MW unit that will go live in about three months in Ulsan near South Korea’s southeast coast.

About 2,800 new hydroelectric dams are planned across a region stretching from Slovenia to Greece, 37% of which will be built in protected areas such as national parks or Natura 2000 sites, sparking fears of disappearing mountain rivers and biodiversity loss.

India’s Minister for New & Renewable Energy expressed confidence that the country could achieve 200 GW of operational renewable energy capacity by March 2022 instead of the current target of 175 GW.

These news items have been compiled by Les Grady, member and former chair of the CAAV steering committee. He is a licensed professional engineer (retired) who taught environmental engineering at Purdue and Clemson Universities and engaged in private practice with CH2M Hill, the world’s largest environmental engineering consulting firm. Since his retirement in 2003 he has devoted much of his time to the study of climate science and the question of global warming and makes himself available to speak to groups about this subject. More here.