Archive for category Environmental armageddon
The appliance of Italian science
Posted by Stephen Gardner in Environmental armageddon on September 30, 2011
Research scientists in Italy seem to have been particularly busy last week, publishing at least three significant reports. The first was about an apparent finding that needs to be proved and may or may not have major ramifications. The other two were observations of phenomena in the real world that will affect everyone. However, only the first garnered any media attention.
The first was the finding of the Opera project, at Gran Sasso near L’Aquila, that Einstein might have got it wrong. The discovery that tiny particles could apparently travel faster than the speed of light earned headlines worldwide, followed by a faster-than-the-speed-of-light debunking (see for example the Wall Street Journal). In fact the scientists who published the finding urged caution and asked others to test their work. So we shall see.
The second report was published by the European Commission Joint Research Centre’s Institute for Environment and Sustainability in Ispra, northern Italy. The institute’s data shows that world greenhouse gas emissions from manmade sources reached an all-time high of 33 billion tonnes in 2010.
There are several sobering aspects to this data. First, it shows that the Kyoto Protocol has not worked. Annex I countries (those with emission reduction targets) are likely in fact to collectively meet their target but only because of two historical accidents: the collapse of Soviet-bloc heavy industry, and the continuing financial and economic crisis, which led to major industrial production drops. Had these interruptions not happened, developed world emissions would be much higher.
The report also shows that any Kyoto Protocol related achievements have been rendered largely irrelevant by growth in emissions in non-Annex I countries, especially China. Chinese emissions have doubled since 2003, and in absolute terms are now well in excess of even US emissions. Chinese per capita emissions now exceed those of France and Spain (France is a low-carbon country due to nuclear power), and are on the same level as Italy. Alarmingly, the Chinese could be emitting on a per capita basis at the same high level as Americans by 2017 if current trends continue.
The enormous Chinese emissions growth is largely a consequence of installation of fossil fuel based energy generation, mainly from coal. Depending on who’s figures you look at (Chinese official statistics are treated with caution), in one year alone, between 2009-2010, Chinese coal consumption increased by between 5.9 and 10.1 percent. The building of dozens of coal-fired power plants in China locks in emissions for the next few decades and makes it unrealistic that global emissions will peak in 2015, as recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). This is especially the case because emissions in developed countries are not dramatically declining to compensate for the developing country increases.
The third – largely ignored – finding from Italy last week came from the Italian Glaciological Committee. It found that Italian glaciers have lost 37 percent of their volume in the last quarter of a century, with a speeding-up of the shrinkage since 2003. Italy’s glaciers could be gone completely by 2050, and the process is now likely to be irreversible, the scientists said.
This is a real-world illustration of the pace of global warming, the consequences of which are unpredictable, but which will involve loss of ice cover, rising sea levels, and chaotic weather patterns. The number of weather-related natural disasters is already increasing sharply, affecting more people (see CRED EM-DAT), and becoming more expensive, as the insurance industry well knows.
Unfortunately policy makers are ill-equipped to address the problem, even though they’ve been told enough times what the problem is. The inertia might be down to denial, the cumbersome structure of decision making, short-term thinking or inability to communicate the risks, but the result is the same: too little action, too late. But perhaps the scientists at Gran Sasso will really prove Einstein wrong, and we can send José Manuel Barroso back in time to sort it all out.
Planning pollution in Estonia
Posted by Stephen Gardner in Environmental armageddon on March 24, 2011
A European Commission state aid notice published on March 23 has shown how EU member state governments can work directly against agreements they make at EU level, in this case on combatting climate change. The Commission said it would open an investigation into Estonian state aid that will underpin the construction of two highly-polluting power plants.
The plants, to be built at Narva on Estonia’s border with Russia, will be fuelled by oil shale. This is, essentially, porous rock from which hydrocarbons can be squeezed. It presents many environmental problems. It produces more greenhouse gas than coal, and also poses a huge headache in terms of its mining and waste disposal. As this EU report says, “production of a barrel of shale oil can generate up to 1.5 tons of spent shale, which may occupy up to 25% greater volume than the original shale”. Oil shale is in any case a fairly crappy, low-grade fuel. The same report notes that “the heating value of oil shale is limited. In the best cases, it is comparable to that of brown coal or average forest residues, but less than half of that of average bituminous coal”.
Estonia is pretty much the only country where electricity is generated on a big scale by burning oil shale. In fact, Estonia gets most of its electricity from burning this dirty fuel. Instead of weaning itself off oil shale, and diversifying into renewables, the Estonian government wants to give up to €75 million per year, for the next 20 years (so €1.5 billion) to subsidise more burning of oil shale and lock itself into highly polluting electricity generation well beyond 2020.
This seems very shortsighted to say the least, especially from a government that has signed up to EU targets to reduce emissions by 20 percent by 2020 compared to 1990, and to increase the renewables share in the energy mix to 20 percent.
But the Estonians are not the only ones undermining the EU’s climate goals. Should the subsidy be allowed to go ahead, the power plants in Narva will be built by Alstom, the giant French engineering company.
And they will be doing so with French government blessing. France’s State Secretary of Economy, Finance, Industry and Foreign Trade, Pierre Lellouche was in Estonia to oversee the signing by state energy company Eesti Energia and Alstom of the contract to build the oil shale plants. Total contract size for Alstom (which the French state held a major share in until 2006, before selling it to another government favourite, Bouyges): €950 million.
Lellouche said the contract would help guarantee Estonia’s energy security. At least he didn’t have the brass neck of Estonian Minister of Economic Affairs and Communications Juhan Parts, who said “the new energy units will give us [a] cleaner environment and greener future for our children”. Eh?
Fortunately the Commission has stepped in and will investigate the state aid, but on the technical basis that it might create market distortions, rather than the common-sense basis that such aid for polluting industries is stupid and counterproductive. Let’s hope the Commission does forbid the aid.
This article was amended April 7 to take account of a reader’s comment (definition of oil shale).
Bombs away!
Posted by Stephen Gardner in Environmental armageddon on March 17, 2011
The unfolding situation in Japan and the European Union decision to stress test nuclear power plants brought to mind another pressing issue: nuclear bombs, and especially what happens when they are lost or damaged. A very interesting US Department of Defense document on this subject is available on t’internet describing ‘accidents involving US nuclear weapons, 1950-1980′.
These include an incident over the Mediterranean Sea in 1956 when an aircraft carrying two nuclear capsules disappeared and was never heard of or seen again; and another incident in 1956 at an unnamed “overseas base” (possibly RAF Lakenheath in the UK) when an aircraft slid off a runway and hit “a storage igloo containing several nuclear weapons”. Then, in 1965, an aircraft loaded with a nuclear weapon fell off an aircraft carrier into the Pacific, sinking unrecoverably into the depths. In 1966, over Spain, a B-52 carring four nuclear weapons was in collision with another plane, resulting in contaminated soil and vegetation, but apparently nothing more serious.
This one, meanwhile, could almost be slapstick comedy if it wasn’t so serious: in 1980 at an air force base in Arkansas, a “repairman dropped a heavy wrench socket, which rolled off a work platform and fell toward the bottom of the silo. The socket bounced and struck the missile, causing a leak from a pressurised fuel tank. The missile complex and surrounding area were evacuated…”. Fuel vapour subsequently exploded but thankfully the nuclear warhead didn’t go off.
The document also describes an incident in northern Greenland in 1968, when a B-52 with four nuclear weapons crashed and burned up. All the nuclear weapons were destroyed in the fire, says the report.
Or maybe not. A BBC investigation in 2008 established that only three of the bombs were accounted for. The fourth is presumably up there in the ice somewhere.
It is also likely that the US 1950-1980 list seriously underplays the number of incidents. It lists 32 accidents, but other reports refer to more, such as this one, which says the US Navy reported 233 “nuclear weapon incidents” between 1965 and 1983.
This provokes a couple of considerations. First, if this is a partial picture of US incidents, it doesn’t even bear thinking about how many times in the Soviet Union nuclear bombs were accidently dropped off ships, lost in the ice, or had wrenches dropped on them. Second, though the US military is hardly forthcoming, European countries are generally less likely to declassify information on nuclear accidents. In the UK for example, a serious accident at a US airbase in 1958 was believed to involve nuclear weapons, but the government always denied this, though of course it could just be that there was no nuclear accident…
So while the European Commission is thinking about stress testing nuclear plants, perhaps it could also put an appeal out to EU governments to disclose the extent of their nuclear arsenals, and to declassify information relating to nuclear weapon accidents and incidents. Of course it won’t happen because anything military is generally beyond the EU’s reach, but it would be nice to know the truth about how contaminated with radiation Europe already is.
PS: interesting Cablegate cable (from 2008) on nuclear power and Japan: http://cablesearch.org/cable/view.php?id=08TOKYO2993
Climate system scandal
Posted by Stephen Gardner in Environmental armageddon on May 27, 2010
Look closely enough at yesterday’s European Commission communication on ‘moving beyond a 20 percent greenhouse gas reduction’ and you will spot a scandal. It’s on page 3 and it reads like this: ‘With many allowances unused during the crisis, companies will be able to carry over some 5-8% of their allowances from the 2008-2012 period into the third phase of the ETS.’
What this means is that during the 2008-2012 period of the EU emissions trading system, companies were given more carbon allowances — pollution permits — than they needed. Partly this is a consequence of unforeseen events. Because of the deep recession, big steel firms and the like drastically cut their production between 2008 and 2009, emitting much less CO2 than expected, and so ending up with piles of unused emission allowances.
But partly, the allowance surpluses are down to bad planning, lobbying and the rewarding by governments of their favourite industries (ie those that threatened to relocate elsewhere if they did not get bumper carbon allowance handouts).
Because of the way the ETS was set up, the surpluses are held primarily by heavy industry, rather than by power plants. Here are a few examples. In Belgium, in 2008, ArcelorMittal received for its various plants 11,183,005 allowances. But it only used up 7,109,899 of them — a surplus of more than 4 million.
Another metal-basher, Corus, received in 2008 across various plants 11,414,550 allowances, but only used 6,953,746 of them. Massive German ironworks Hüttenwerke Krupp Mannesmann, meanwhile, got 8.6 million allowances but only used half of them.
These massive surpluses were: 1). given to these companies for free, and 2). can be carried over to the next phase of the ETS (2013-2020) and sold then. By my admittedly back-of-the-envelope calculations, the 5-8% cited in the Commission’s paper means between 520 million and 833 million surplus allowances EU-wide.
Here is the absolutely scandalous part: the companies holding these allowances can sell them for at least an estimated €16 each in the next phase. That means the most polluting companies in Europe are lining up to receive a windfall that could be as much as €13.3 billion from the ill-conceived emissions trading system.
And who precisely will deliver this windfall to billionaires like Lakshmi Mittal? Well, while EU governments were dishing out massive surpluses to their favourite manufacturers, they gave far smaller allocations to power plants. This was because power plants can’t flounce off to another country if they don’t get what they want. So the massive Drax power plant in northern England, for example, was given in 2008 9.5 million allowances, but had emissions equivalent to 22.3 million — a shortfall of 12.8 million.
But another reason power plants were given insufficient allowances was that they do not suffer any real negative effect from it — they simply pass on the cost to their customers in the form of higher electricity bills. So the ill-conceived ETS has resulted in households across Europe funnelling money into the pockets of some of the continent’s most polluting companies, who have no incentive to do anything in return, but just wait for the free money to roll in.
Increasing the EU’s 2020 emissions reduction target from 20 to 30 percent compared to 1990 levels would force a quicker burn through of the surplus but will not reduce the windfall. In fact, it might increase it, because the carbon price would likely rise. However, the Commission should scrap the rule that allows the 2008-2012 surplus to be carried forward to the next ETS phase. Of course in the face of the lobbying power of the steel industry and others, this is hardly likely to happen.
I’m impressed…
Posted by Stephen Gardner in Environmental armageddon, EU on March 9, 2010
…by Connie Hedegaard. Her pronouncements in the European Parliament this afternoon (9 March) mark an abrupt change of direction for European Union climate policy on a number of points.
First, she wants to reverse the EU position on the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol. Before December’s disastrous Copenhagen climate conference, the Commission was saying that Kyoto should be scrapped and replaced by a new treaty. This played up to what the US wanted but was a total obstruction when it came to dealing with developing countries. Now, Hedegaard says the US should come up with an acceptable alternative if it refuses to countenance Kyoto. This is a big change.
Second, she has put deeper emission cuts by the EU back on the agenda, saying the Commission will prepare an analysis of the options for going from a 20 percent to a 30 percent reduction (by 2020 relative to 1990), in time for the June European Council. It’s worth pointing out here that Commission president José Manuel Barroso came close to dropping completely even the suggestion of the 30 percent target from his recent EU2020 plan, so Hedegaard’s revival of it marks a notable victory.
Third, she is talking about starting to make emission reduction plans beyond 2020, with the Commission to produce by the end of the year a paper on “scenarios” until 2030. This is interesting because it forces the powers-that-be to start thinking in serious terms about how very deep emission cuts might be achieved. In principle, if the EU is to keep to its plan of keeping global warming to less than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, radical action post-2020 will be needed.
Will Hedegaard get her way, or will it all be too much to swallow for Italy, Poland and the other reactionaries? We will see. But in the meantime, another Commission announcement today suggests Hedegaard might have a lot to do if she is to change entrenched EU thinking.
The Commission today (9 March) green-lighted a German subsidy of €30 million to ArcelorMittal so it could install a system at one of its steel plants that will reduce carbon emissions by 16 percent (presumably reduce them in relative, rather than absolute terms, which is fine but of course may make no difference to overall emissions). In the long-run ArcelorMittal will benefit because it will cut its energy costs by installing the technology.
Why should ArcelorMittal get this subsidy? The EU is supposed to have a polluter pays principle, and ArcelorMittal made profits of $1.1 billion in the last quarter of 2009 alone. Why therefore should they be subsidised by the taxpayer? It is worth noting that ArcelorMittal reduced its costs in 2009 by $2.7 billion (see this report), ie. by closing plants and shedding jobs. Why is the steel giant given a big bung in return?
It is also worth noting that ArcelorMittal is sitting on a huge reserve of carbon allowances given to it as part of the EU’s emissions trading system (ETS). In fact, it has vastly more allowances than it needs, due to over-allocation and due to the recession, which led it to cut production, thus cutting its greenhouse gas emissions. These allowances are transferable to the next phase of the ETS, and can be sold after 2012, which means ArcelorMittal is already sitting on a windfall. The extra allowances freed up by the new technology paid for by the subsidy will boost the windfall even more.
I’m not impressed by that.
Fish farce
Posted by Stephen Gardner in Environmental armageddon on February 22, 2010
The European Commission has given its backing to a ban in international trade in the severely endangered bluefin tuna. Sort of. In fact, the Commission has said there should be a provisional listing of the bluefin in Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, meaning international trade in it would in principle be banned, but the ban should be deferred for one year, giving industry a last chance to put its house in order.
This semi-solution is no great surprise. The Japanese are prepared to pay huge sums for bluefin. There is big money at stake for the industrial fishing concerns and their lobbyists.
In any case, the Commission has been shovelling subsidies in the direction of the bluefin fishing fleets, as I wrote in December in the British magazine Private Eye.
Here is my Private Eye article:
Every Brussels policy edict comes with green edging nowadays. So, when in September Monaco suggested that the best way to conserve the highly endangered and emblematic Atlantic bluefin tuna was to ban international trade in it, the European Commission was quick to lend its support – only to huff and puff when Spain and other Mediterranean countries declined to back it up.
But behind all the talk of sustainability, EU money has been bankrolling the bluefin-decimating fleets. Spanish green MEP Raül Romeva has discovered that the Commission has paid €33.4 million since 2000 to vessels licensed for the bluefin fishery. These boats, many owned by industrial fishing conglomerates, are rather less concerned with conservation than they are with selling at premium prices to the Japanese as much of the giant tuna as possible.
And although the Commission has repeatedly talked about the need to reduce Europe’s fishing-fleet capacity, most of the subsidy has been spent on new vessels that will terrorise any remaining bluefin for years to come. EU money has helped pay for no fewer than 121 boats that participated in the bluefin fishery in 2009, including 15 purse seiners, hated by environmentalists because they indiscriminately scoop up sealife in giant drawstring bags. Meanwhile, scappage payments have been made for just nine vessels. Pass the salt and vinegar!
Copenhagen: facing failure
Posted by Stephen Gardner in Environmental armageddon on December 17, 2009
As the Copenhagen climate conference appears to be drawing to an inglorious end, it is worth reflecting on the basic problem for environmental policy: in most cases, environmental problems only get cleaned up when they become so bad that the short-term gains from exploiting resources whatever the pollution cost simply cannot be justified any more, no matter how sophisticated the lobbyists’ arguments.
Numerous studies (most recently the TEEB study) show that cleaning up pollution, not ripping up forests, not pouring chemicals into water and so on, will produce long-term benefits for us all. But these are intangible public benefits, and ranged against them are private benefits: huge profits for a few in the short-term from the pillaging of resources.
This seems to be at the heart of the Copenhagen climate non-consensus. Those who will lose out most from climate change are poor, developing countries, especially in Africa and Asia. But in the short or even medium term, what do rich countries have to gain from helping them out? Of course from the point of view of global equity and fairness, the rich world should pay to clean up the global pollution it has caused by pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere for the last century and a half. But tell that to those who control the purse-strings in wealthy countries.
African countries negotiating in Copenhagen have recognised their weak position – that the only real leverage they have is moral leverage – by scaling back their requests for climate adaptation cash.
I wrote recently about a case that illustrates well the priority given to short-term gain by those that have lobbying power, over the general good, when it comes to environmental questions:
Every Brussels policy edict comes with green edging nowadays. So, when in September Monaco suggested that the best way to conserve the highly endangered and emblematic Atlantic bluefin tuna was to ban international trade in it, the European Commission was quick to lend its support – only to huff and puff when Spain and other Mediterranean countries declined to back it up.
But behind all the talk of sustainability, EU money has been bankrolling the bluefin-decimating fleets. Spanish green MEP Raül Romeva has discovered that the Commission has paid €33.4 million since 2000 to vessels licensed for the bluefin fishery. These boats, many owned by industrial fishing conglomerates, are rather less concerned with conservation than they are with selling at premium prices to the Japanese as much of the giant tuna as possible.
And although the Commission has repeatedly talked about the need to reduce Europe’s fishing-fleet capacity, most of the subsidy has been spent on new vessels that will terrorise any remaining bluefin for years to come. EU money has helped pay for no fewer than 121 boats that participated in the bluefin fishery in 2009, including 15 purse seiners, hated by environmentalists because they indiscriminately scoop up sealife in giant drawstring bags. Meanwhile, scappage payments have been made for just nine vessels. Pass the salt and vinegar! (this article was originally published in Private Eye magazine).
Back in Copenhagen, the EU continues to insist it is leading the world in the fight against climate change, when in reality the only two countries that matter are China and the US. The EU’s climate policies may bring some productivity and innovation benefits but will make no difference when it comes to tackling global warming unless the US comes on board. China meanwhile is becoming more of a superpower every day, and can increasingly call the shots. A international climate deal will be a US-China deal. The rest of us can only hope that it does not totally marginalise us.
Heartwarming moment
Posted by Stephen Gardner in Environmental armageddon on December 13, 2009
The Danish police response to protests at the Copenhagen climate change conference has led to accusations of heavy-handedness and an excessive state response to a largely legitimate demonstration. It all sounds a bit like the G20 protests in London in April, but the Danes must have not bothered to look at that for any lessons that could be learned. They are accused of using the same “kettling” mass-segregation tactics that have now to a great extent been discredited in Britain.
Anyway, in the midst of the demonstration, Britain’s Department of Energy and Climate Change felt the need to send out a bizarre press notice consisting only of a photo captioned “A policeman and march participant share a smile at the climate march in Copenhagen.” Why the British government felt the need to do PR on behalf of the Copenhagen police is not clear, but for the record, here is that heartwarming image:
Heartwarming moment. Possibly love at first sight?
It’s Crown copyright, by the way.
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The Digger
Stephen Gardner is editor of Euro-correspondent.com, and Brussels freelance environment correspondent for the Bureau of National Affairs (US). He is also a contributor to other media such as the BBC and the UK magazines Ethical Corporation and Private Eye.
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