Dateline: Copenhagen

The Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority has found that transit buses running on compressed natural gas emit less carbon monoxide, particulate matter, and oxides of nitrogen than their diesel counterparts.

T. Boone Pickens is at it again. Following on his initial $62 million ad campaign touting the benefits of both wind power and natural gas, he’s back on the advertising trail. This time, Mr. Pickens’ ad campaign focuses on the role of natural gas in reducing our dependence on imported oil through increasing its use in transportation.

Pickens is proposing that natural gas be deployed strategically in fleets of heavy trucks as a first priority, and not advocating a broader immediate takeover of the transport sector by natural gas as the primary fuel as he seemed to do initially.

His plan triggers a broader set of questions. Whether it’s because we agree to address humans’ contribution to climate change, or because we see the necessity of transforming an energy economy currently primarily reliant on coal, oil and natural gas—three finite fossil fuels—we are at a profound juncture regarding what that 21^st century low-carbon energy economy can and should look like.

Natural gas is an interesting fuel in that mix. It is the least carbon intensive of the three fossil fuels. New-found reserves in “unconventional” formations have altered supply estimates dramatically.

But important questions remain regarding use of the resource. At what cost can these unconventional sources be exploited? What are the environmental, economic and community impacts to be expected? At what scale will we choose to develop the resource, and what then are commensurate impacts?

What is the most strategic deployment of the resource? Is Mr. Pickens right about the merits of increasing use of natural gas in the transportation sector? What are the infrastructure investments required to make that happen effectively and is that also factored in to a broader strategy regarding an optimal low-carbon transportation vision for the U.S.?

From the perspective of lowering carbon in the atmosphere, the first best strategy resides in the power production sector. Retiring coal plants that have reached or are near the end of their useful life and repowering a good portion of those with cleaner burning natural gas could have an enormous effect on GHG contributions from the U.S. power sector.  Thinking through further innovations on combined heat and power and significant efficiency gains in which natural gas can be an ally is also a sound strategy.

Strategic deployment of all fossil fuels going forward is an extraordinarily important topic. We owe it to ourselves to place that question squarely before us for hard and honest examination. 

Because we agree with Mr. Pickens that natural gas may have a particularly distinct role to play in reducing greenhouse gas emissions and transforming our energy economy, Worldwatch has started a specific initiative on natural gas, renewables and energy efficiency. Strategic deployment recommendations will be part of that. Stay tuned!

Video of Worldwatch’s Copenhagen event on Natural Gas, Renewables and Efficiency: Pathways to a Low-Carbon Economy is available on the American Clean Skies Foundation website.

COP 15 attendees queue outside the Bella Center

The Copenhagen UN climate conference ended last Saturday with a weak agreement, not the groundbreaking treaty many had hoped for. Not only did Worldwatch send its biggest team ever to the Danish capital; with more than 100 heads of governments and many more parliamentarians and dignitaries, COP-15 became the largest assembly of world leaders in diplomatic history. The Copenhagen conference had been planned out for two years in many small informal and large official meetings, following the 2007 Bali Action Plan in which nations had agreed to finalize a binding agreement this December. The outcome falls far short of this original goal. Delegates only “noted” an accord (“the Copenhagen Accord”) struck by the United States, Brazil, China, India, and South Africa that has two key components: first, it sets a target of limiting global warming to a maximum of 2 degrees Celsius over pre-industrial times; second, it proposes $100 billion in annual aid for developing nations starting in 2020 to help them reduce emissions and adapt to climate change.

2 degrees Celsius is seen by mainstream science as a threshold for dangerous climatic changes including sea-level rise and accelerated glacier melt, as well as more intense floods, droughts, and storms. Many scientists also believe that a majority of worldwide ecosystems will struggle to adapt to a warming above that mark, and more recently have set the threshold even lower, at 1.5 degrees Celsius. The accord, however, lacks any information on how this goal of preventing “dangerous” climate change, which had already been set by the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention, would be achieved. It is generally assumed that in order to keep global warming below 2 degrees, worldwide emissions have to peak before 2020 and have to be at least halved before mid-century, but the Copenhagen accord doesn’t outline global emissions scenarios nor individual countries’ pathways towards either of these two goals. Regarding the money for developing countries, the declaration does not specify precisely where the $100 billion annual support would come from nor who would profit from it.

Accordingly, the assessment of the accord was mixed. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon praised the Copenhagen Accord as “an important beginning” and U.S. President Obama said that “for the first time in history, all of the world’s major economies have come together to accept their responsibility to take action on the threat of climate change.” Others, like German chancellor Angela Merkel, could hardly hide their disappointment. “The decision has been very difficult for me. We have done one step, we have hoped for several more,” Merkel said. Likewise, many U.S. commentators considered the deal just a small step forward, however an essential one in the domestic context. A friend of mine wrote to me that “without the accord, the Senate process would be dead. I think we can push forward domestically with the elements in the accord.”

The next COP is set for November 2010 in Mexico City, with a likely high-level preparatory meeting mid-year on invitation of the German government. “We have a big job ahead to avoid climate change through effective emissions reduction targets, and this was not done here,” said Sergio Serra, Brazil’s climate change ambassador. Worldwatch might have to send an even bigger team to the Mexican capital.

In an article in the November/December 2009 [PDF] edition of World Watch Magazine (“Livestock and Climate Change”), authors Robert Goodland and Jeff Anhang argue that livestock emissions have been severely underestimated. In their view, livestock and their byproducts account for at least 32.6 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent each year, or 51 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions.  Based on their analysis, Goodland and Anhang recommend a radical decrease in meat consumption in order to help slow climate change.

Goodland and Anhang’s numbers are far above those reported in a widely cited 2006 report, Livestock’s Long Shadow, by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization. It  estimates that 18 percent of annual worldwide GHG emissions are attributable to cattle, buffalo, sheep, goats, camels, pigs, and poultry. “Livestock and Climate Change” has stirred intensive discussion in a number of fora. While some readers supported the authors’ assessment and recommendations, others disagreed with either or both.

We want to provide everyone who is interested in this important debate—experts or not—with an open forum for discussion. While the magazine’s masthead clearly states that “Opinions expressed in World Watch are those of the authors, and do not necessarily reflect the positions of the Worldwatch Institute,” scientific integrity and the search for viable sustainability solutions are the foundation of the Institute’s daily work.

We invite you to contribute to the discussion by commenting on the article here. The most constructive and compelling comments will also be printed in a future issue of World Watch. In addition, please check out our blog, Nourishing the Planet, where the Worldwatch food and agriculture team argues for a different, and in their view more effective, way to address mixed-crop livestock and sustainable food than the Goodland/ Anhang article recommends.

Photo courtesy of Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

As a former Minister of the Environment turned Chancellor, Angela Merkel had already proven those wrong who surmised that environment positions are a dead end to high-rising political aspirations; now she became only the second German politician (after Konrad Adenauer, the first head of a German government after the Second World War, in 1957) who received the honor to address the U.S. Congress; and as a widely respected leader on environmental issues who is, at the same time, the leader of a conservative party, she would be well positioned to appeal to cautious Republicans when talking about climate change and energy reformation—at least I had hoped so in a recent interview with Reuters.

Angela Merkel in her speech on Capitol Hill yesterday, just weeks after her reelection for a second term (this time as a leader of a center-right coalition) was moved by the honor and the standing ovations she received from U.S. lawmakers even before she had started her speech. Following up on her promises, she spent a good portion of her talk on climate change, urging Congress and the Obama administration to take bold steps to address the issue, in her view one of the “great tests” of the 21st century. “We all know we have no time to lose,” she said.

But her remarks did not resonate with most Republicans. While Merkel’s remarks were met with passionate applause from Democrats, almost the entire Republican side—including key swing voters, such as Independent Senator Dick Lugar from Indiana and Republican Senator Olympia Snowe from Maine—remained silent. When the Chancellor pointed out that reducing greenhouse gas emissions would spur economic and jobs growth worldwide, the same partisan gulf occurred.

Already earlier in the day, Republicans had refused to attend the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee’s markup of Senators John Kerry’s (D-Mass.) and Barbara Boxer’s (D-Calif.) important climate bill (Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act). The only one out of seven Republican Senators on the committee who showed up for the meeting was Sen. George V. Voinovich (Ohio) who briefly expressed the Republican opposition to the committee’s proceedings. In their view, the Environmental Protection Agency has not done enough economic analysis of the Kerry-Boxer bill. Democrats, however, accuse their opponents of pure gamesmanship pointing out that the Kerry-Boxer bill is modeled after the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, which passed the House side of Congress earlier this year and underwent intense economic scrutiny, including from the EPA.

Angela Merkel can tell a great success story about green jobs creation in Germany. The country—home to Audi, BMW, Mercedes, Opel, and Volkswagen—is on track to have more people employed in the environmental technology sector than in the automobile industry as early as 2015. It has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by more than 20% since the beginning of the 1990s. But it seemed yesterday as if only half of the U.S. representatives were ready for Merkel’s optimism—one that has often been echoed by President Obama in the past.  Regarding the Copenhagen UN climate summit, Merkel said: “I’m convinced, once we in Europe and America show ourselves ready to adopt binding agreements, we will also be able to persuade China and India to join in ….No doubt about it, in December, the world will look to us, to the Europeans and to the Americans. ” Thus far, only half of America looks back.

For yet another week, the news is abuzz about companies quitting the Chamber of Commerce because of its campaign against legislative action to address climate change. The Chamber’s opposition to the Environmental Protection Agency’s plan to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from coal fired-power plants and its active campaigning against the Waxman-Markey climate bill have been quoted as the main reason for Apple, PG&E, Nike and others leaving the Chamber or its board. The situation resembles that of the Global Climate Coalition, which lost its members because of its outdated positions, and was finally deactivated in 2002.

This should not come as a surprise. With its reactionary policies against climate protection, the Chamber is not only choosing to ignore the urgency of climate change and its devastating impacts, but is failing to recognize the significant economic benefits and opportunities that climate protection offers to citizens and businesses across the country. A recent study by Illinois State University’s Center for Renewable Energy concluded that the wind energy industry in Illinois alone could not only provide clean renewable energy, but also generate $1.9 billion in economic benefits for the traditional coal state over the next 25 years. Similarly, the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy demonstrated in a recent study that the smart use of energy can lead to hundreds of thousands more jobs, lower costs, and reduce emissions over the next ten years. But economic benefits from climate protection measures go far beyond clean renewable energy and energy efficiency sectors. Just today, the Environmental and Energy Study Institute (EESI) released new research results, indicating that climate protection measures could create 4.5 million additional jobs in the US at all levels of skill, training and salaries, such as welders, factory workers, computer analysts and many more.

Instead of investing in fuel and resource extraction and imports and protecting fading industry practices, effective climate legislation would shift resources towards the development of innovative and clean technologies and job-creation. Why would forward-looking businesses subscribe to a fundamental opposition to such legislation?

Noel Kempff Mercado National Park, Bolivia

The environmental movement is largely in agreement that international climate negotiators should include avoided deforestation measures in the successor agreement to the Kyoto Protocol (see my Eye on Earth story, published yesterday, about environmental groups and industry applying joint pressure on the United States to support such forest policies). Groups are divided, however, on whether funding should only support national programs, such as park police and deforestation monitors, or whether an international policy known as Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (or REDD) should also allow for programs that provide money directly to forest communities.

Greenpeace International raised concern about “sub-national” proposals last week by questioning the emissions reductions achieved by the world’s first avoided deforestation project funded by carbon offsets. The dispute over this single project highlights the difficulties in establishing sub-national REDD projects. But such projects may be necessary, proponents say, or else a scarcity of affordable carbon offset options will lead to a sharp rise in the cost of many cap-and-trade programs.

The project in question is the Noel Kempff Climate Action Project. U.S. energy companies American Electric Power, BP-Amoco, and Pacificorp teamed with The Nature Conservancy in 1997, spending $11.35 million to buy the logging concessions in Bolivia’s Noel Kempff Mercado National Park and establish a buffer zone that surrounds the park. Communities within the buffer zone receive payments to support eco-tourism operations and other sustainable forest management initiatives. The Nature Conservancy describes the project as “an example of how well-designed forest carbon projects can result in real, scientifically measurable, and verifiable emissions reductions with important benefits for biodiversity and local communities.”

But Greenpeace, in a report released last week, calls the entire project a “carbon scam.” The Noel Kempff project was originally estimated to sequester 55 million metric tons of carbon dioxide for the next 30 years, but recent estimates ratcheted down the emissions savings to 5.8 million metric tons. The discrepancy allowed the polluting companies to overestimate how much emissions they helped to avoid. A “fixed and consistent” estimate has still not been established, the Greenpeace report said.

Jonathan Hoekstra, managing director of The Nature Conservancy’s climate change program, responded to the report’s criticisms in an email. He said the group estimated emissions reductions at a time when proper methods were not yet established. Essentially, the project had to peer into a crystal ball and predict 30 years of deforestation based on previous timber extraction rates and the forest’s carbon sequestration potential. “Initial estimates of emissions reductions were just that, estimates—based on anecdotal evidence and interviews with experts,” he wrote. “The business-as-usual baseline (the emissions that would have happened if logging continued) was lowered as methodologies improved and as monitoring data indicated.”

What’s clear, Hoekstra said, is that 1,034,107 metric tons of carbon dioxide emissions were avoided from 1997 to 2005 due to the Noel Kempff project. The Bolivian government would have otherwise lacked the funds to terminate the region’s timber concessions or expand the national park, he added.

Several standards have emerged in recent years that better estimate how forests such as Noel Kempff sequester carbon dioxide. Whether any method can accurately predict future forest loss remains to be seen.

We’ve heard a lot in recent months about India’s international positioning on climate change, but what is opinion like at home? Is everyone in agreement with the formal government position? And what is the key to stronger Indian engagement with the international climate regime? A working paper [PDF] on this subject was recently released by Navroz Dubash, a Senior Fellow at India’s Centre for Policy Research. It looks not only at the state of opinion within India’s government, corporations and civil society on how India should respond to the climate challenge, but also proffers that what is most needed in advance of the negotiations in Copenhagen is to build trust.

Dubash suggests that there is broad domestic agreement in India on three key points. Firstly, that India is being unfairly labelled a major emitter by the international community, secondly, that India has an ongoing and considerable development challenge, and thirdly, that India is moving in the right direction climate change mitigation is concerned. ”Climate diplomats from other countries would do well to recognize this reality,” says Dubash.

However, he also argues that opinion is far more divided at home around how India should respond to the climate challenge, with three major streams of opinion characterizing the debate. He describes as Growth First Stonewallers those who, frequently sceptical of the science, believe that pressures to respond to climate change are primarily a strategy employed by industrialized nations to keep emerging economies such as India and China at bay. As such, these pressures are a threat to Indian interests. Stonewallers, according to Dubash, see addressing climate change as less important than India’s economic development.

The second are Progressive Realists. These Realists recognise that climate change poses a significant threat to India, but are deeply skeptical of the international process as a fair or effective way to address the climate problem. Seeing pressure on developing countries primarily as an attempt by industrialized countries to shift the burden of action away from their shores, they are resigned to focus on domestic climate change action through clean development efforts resulting in climate ”co-benefits,” while at the same time avoiding the ”obligations and constraints of an international regime.” Dubash describes this as India’s increasingly predominant position, with a shift from its former Stonewaller center of gravity.

Finally, Dubash highlights a ”small but increasingly vocal group” of Progressive Internationalists. Although in agreement with India’s Realists that the rich world is using India as an excuse for inaction and that equity must be paramount within any global climate change agreement, these Internationalists are of the opinion that India should work with, not separately from the global policy regime, aligning its efforts at home to facilitate and condition a stronger global deal. They argue, that a weak global climate deal resulting in weak action on climate change will result in greater inequities for the poor in the future, who will be the first to suffer the impacts of climate change and who are primarily located in developing countries. These Internationalists, describes Dubash, are in the distinct minority and perceived by most in India as naïve. Fears abound that a more concerted engagement from India with the international regime will result in greater constraints on India but little change in global dynamics and commitments.

Recent political developments in Bangkok have done little to allay these fears, with reports of a new proposal from some industrialised nations to scrap the Kyoto Protocol. Dubash argues that a split between India’s progressive thinkers driven by different opinions on the international climate regime is weakening India’s ability to respond to climate change. To bring these groups together, a far more progressive approach to the international negotiations will be required from all countries with trust building and signals of good faith an essential factor. ”A renewed Indian climate politics…will require far stronger signals of good faith from the international community, and industrialized countries in particular,” says Dubash in his paper, going on to elaborate what this would imply.

For a full recount of this insightful overview, please see the full paper.

Oct 24: International Day of Climate Action

350.org, an international campaign dedicated to building a movement to unite the world around solutions to the climate crisis, is organizing a global day of action on October 24, 2009. The focus of the campaign is on the number 350 – as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. As of right now, there are close to 1800 actions happening in 140 countries, as our friend Bill McKibben, founder and Director of 350.org, writes in a letter we just received. Worldwatch supports the goals of the 350 degree campaign and its events on October 24. Read McKibben’s letter, posted below.

Take Action October 24^th

By Bill McKibben

For the last 20 years or so, there’s been a reasonable excuse for not building a movement big and tough enough to tackle climate change: It had no chance. Washington was filled with such obstructionists that everybody knew meaningful change on a scale large enough to dent the carbon concentration in the atmosphere was pretty much doomed.

Well, we screwed up that excuse last November. With the advent of the Obama administration, there was suddenly at least the possibility of real change. It’s populated by people who believe in science, who think about the future instead of obsessing over the past, and who even believe in working with other countries.

But it would be utterly foolish to imagine they can do what they need to do by themselves.

For one thing, the scale of change required is so massive it must frighten even Barack. Look, in the last couple of years the science has been unremittingly dark. We now know that global warming is not a future problem—that it’s crashing over our heads right now. We know that from the evidence around us: the melting Arctic ice, the rapidly dying forests of the north, the spike in methane releases from beneath the tundra. And we know it from our best scientists: James Hansen and his team at NASA have said, unequivocally, that any concentration of carbon in the atmosphere greater than 350 parts per million is not compatible with the planet “on which civilization developed and to which life is adapted.” That’s Not Good News, since the current level is 387 parts per million and rising. That’s Not Good News because it means that we need to move very, very fast—Hansen’s data indicates that if the planet hasn’t stopped burning coal by 2030, we’ll overwhelm the planet’s systems and never get back where we need to go.

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If the world continues its emitting ways unchanged, we could face upward of 1,000 parts per million of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) concentration in the atmosphere, or a warming of 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 degrees Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial periods. This is a business-as-usual case that in all likelihood would result in a very uncomfortable future for the planet and its inhabitants.

Alternatively, the world could step up and address this challenge head-on in Copenhagen. In a newly released excerpt for policymakers from the World Energy Outlook 2009, the International Energy Agency (IEA) reminds us that the energy sector is pivotal in reducing emissions and can smooth the road toward a Copenhagen agreement.

G8 countries have agreed on a maximum allowable warming of 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels (the world’s temperature has already increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius since the 1850s). To make this happen, science demands limiting carbon dioxide to a maximum of 450 ppm CO2e, or 350 ppm of CO2 alone. It is this alternative path that the IEA models in comparison to the business-as-usual case outlined above.

Efficiency is the heavyweight in this analysis, contributing 57 percent of the world’s total energy-related emissions abatements by 2030. The vast majority of these emissions abatements from efficiency would take the form of improvements at the consumer end, such as more efficient appliances in homes and vehicles on the street. Of course, there is still enormous room for efficiency progress at power plants as well.

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Will the current momentum translate into a strong agreement at Copenhagen?

With the Copenhagen Climate Conference now just over four months away, there are plenty of reasons to be discouraged about the prospect of surmounting humanity’s greatest challenge.

While scientists report accelerated Arctic melting, and warn that we are already perilously close to overshooting the maximum safe level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, climate negotiations are proceeding at a glacial pace. U.S. discussions with China and India have not yet moved beyond bland generalities, and even across the Atlantic, most of the deep sores opened with Europe during the Bush era have not yet been closed. Meanwhile, the odds of the U.S. Congress approving climate change legislation this fall are growing long.

But this is not the time for despair—much less to give up on tackling the greatest threat of our generation. Around the globe, new policies are beginning to reverse the surge in greenhouse gas emissions that marked the early years of this century.

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