Is clean tech China’s moon shot?
The global race to develop clean technology is not just about who can build the best solar parks or wind farms. It is also shaping up as a contest between Chinese-style capitalism and the more market-oriented approach fancied by the United States and Europe.
The question comes down to this: will China’s highly capitalized command-and-control economy trump laissez-faire in a low-carbon shift that is widely portrayed as the next industrial revolution?
The failure in Copenhagen to agree to replace the Kyoto Protocol with a new global climate treaty when it expires in 2012 has thrown the focus on national measures. And by almost all accounts, the Chinese are coming on strong.
Beijing’s top leaders have made clear their intention to have their nation dominate this new industry, up and down the value ladder.
And in their quest for the prize, they are not burdened by concerns facing their Western counterparts — such as the impact of wind turbines on landscapes, higher energy prices for consumers, or investor returns.
“Developed markets need to be aware that China is gaining in this space,” said David Russell, co-head of responsible investment at the 28 billion pound ($45 billion) British universities pension fund, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS).
The recession has made it tougher for Europe and America to effect meaningful climate policy change. And with most major nations piling on debt to stimulate flagging economies, politicians likely will find it harder to earmark additional voter money for clean technology.
Instead, recession-hit Western economies are hoping the private sector can plug an estimated worldwide $150 billion annual funding gap to avoid more extreme droughts and floods.
But investors almost always follow the returns, and if the performance is not there, they are not likely to risk their capital. For example, Britain’s USS allocates about half a percent of its assets to low-carbon and renewable energy funds, not including its investment in conventional energy companies, which themselves will have some green tinges.
It’s hard to imagine the West filling the clean tech funding gap if pension funds — which are as influential as they are big — don’t pony up more.
Russell says he would like to do more, but like other fund managers he has an obligation to pension holders. He and other fund managers say they won’t allocate more to green because their first duty is to guarantee payouts for their members, and while clean tech stocks can yield decent returns, they are often small and risky.
Since a trough in global equities last March, energy efficiency stocks have risen 126 percent and clean energy and technology by 88 percent, compared with wider global stocks’ 70 percent, a Deutsche report found this month.
But there are limited opportunities for investors. Oil majors, for example, dwarf the asset value of green companies, and cleantech funds can’t move the dial for the big funds whose participation is necessary to close the funding gap.
Spanish company plans New Mexico solar plant
A Spanish company plans to invest $1 billion to build a large solar energy production plant in New Mexico.
Gov. Bill Richardson joined Wednesday with executives of GA-Solar and its parent company, Gestamp Corp., to announce the photovoltaic solar plant. It will cover 2,500 acres near Santa Rosa in eastern New Mexico.
The plant will take four years to complete and will produce 300 megawatts of electricity, enough to supply power to 50,000 households a year.
The project will employ 300 construction workers and provide 75 permanent jobs.
Power produced by the plant will qualify for state tax breaks for renewable energy.
Madrid-based Gestamp is a multinational company producing automotive and steel components and has renewable energy projects.
Global warming to trigger more warming
Climate change caused by mankind will release extra heat-trapping gases stored in nature into the atmosphere in a small spur to global warming, a study showed.
But the knock-on effect of the additional carbon dioxide — stored in soils, plants and the oceans — on top of industrial emissions building up in the atmosphere will be less severe than suggested by some recent studies, they said.
“We are confirming that the feedback exists and is positive. That’s bad news,” lead author David Frank of the Swiss Federal Research Institute WSL said of the study in Thursday’s edition of the journal Nature.
“But if we compare our results with some recent estimates (showing a bigger feedback effect) then it’s good news,” Frank, an American citizen, told Reuters of the report with other experts in Switzerland and Germany.
The data, based on natural swings in temperatures from 1050-1800, indicated that a rise of one degree Celsius (1.6 degree Fahrenheit) would increase carbon dioxide concentrations by about 7.7 parts per million in the atmosphere.
That is far below recent estimates of 40 ppm that would be a much stronger boost to feared climate changes such as floods, desertification, wildfires, rising sea levels and more powerful storm, they said.
Carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere have already risen to about 390 ppm from about 280 ppm before the Industrial Revolution. Only some models in the last major U.N. climate report, in 2007, included assessments of carbon cycle feedbacks.
Frank said the new study marks an advance by quantifying feedback over the past 1,000 years and will help refine computer models for predicting future temperatures.
Harsh winter a sign of disruptive climate change, report says
This winter’s extreme weather — with heavy snowfall in some places and unusually low temperatures — is in fact a sign of how climate change disrupts long-standing patterns, according to a new report by the National Wildlife Federation.
It comes at a time when, despite a wealth of scientific evidence, the American public is increasingly skeptical that climate change is happening at all. That disconnect is particularly important this year as the Obama administration and its allies in Congress seek to enact legislation to curb greenhouse gas emissions and revamp the nation’s energy supply.
“It’s very hard for any of us to grasp how this larger warming trend is happening when we’re still having wintry weather,” said National Wildlife Federation climate scientist Amanda Staudt, the new report’s lead writer.
The study charts how climate change is linked to more heavy precipitation, including intense snowstorms like the one that blanketed the D.C. area last month. The Great Lakes region is also experiencing more snow, the report says, because during warmer winters, “the lakes are less likely to freeze over or are freezing later [and] surface water evaporation is recharging the atmosphere with moisture.”
Richard Somerville, who was a lead writer of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 2007 report, said the public needs to grasp that it is important to reduce carbon dioxide quickly because it stays in the atmosphere for centuries.
“That’s where the scientific urgency comes from, not a particular weather event,” Somerville said. “There’s a scientific case for rapidly reducing emissions.”
While the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported last week that 2009 tied as the second-warmest year on record, this week two new public opinion polls have confirmed a trend reported last fall: As Washington has focused more on climate change, the American public has come to believe in it less.
On Wednesday, Yale and George Mason universities released a survey showing that just 57 percent of people said global warming “is happening.” That was down 14 percentage points, from 71 percent, in October 2008. Fifty percent of people said they were “very” or “somewhat” worried about global warming, down 13 points from 2008.
Edward Maibach, a George Mason professor, said two outside events may have played a role in the change: First came the recession; then Congress took up legislation to limit greenhouse gases, spurring industry groups and politicians to warn that tackling climate change would kick the economy while it was down.
“Global warming is not necessarily a conversation that most Americans want to actively participate in,” Maibach said.
A poll released Monday by the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press made a similar point: Respondents were asked to rank 21 issues in terms of their priority. Global warming came in last.
That was not a surprise, as it has been last before.
But this time it was worse than usual: Just 28 percent of respondents listed global warming as a top priority, down from 35 percent in 2008.
Previous in TP Climate Progress
Language Intelligence: Lessons on persuasion from Jesus, Shakespeare, Lincoln, and Lady Gaga
Egypt’s fertile Nile Delta falls prey to climate change
AFP, January 28 – The Nile Delta, Egypt’s bread basket since antiquity, is being turned into a salty wasteland by rising seawaters, forcing some farmers off their lands and others to import sand in a desperate bid to turn back the tide.
Australia “faces worse bushfires without CO2 deal”
Reuters, January 27 – Australia faces a possible 300 percent increase in extreme bushfires by 2050 unless world leaders can agree to dramatically cut greenhouse gas emissions, a new report said on Thursday.
More on ‘Global warming to trigger more warming’: read
Temperature and CO2 feedback loop ‘weaker than thought’ and Amplification of Global Warming by Carbon-Cycle Feedback Significantly Less Than Thought, Study Suggests. And note: Professor Tim Lenton from the University of East Anglia said: “It looks intriguing and comforting if [this study is] right. The immediate problem I can see is that past variations in CO2 and temperature over the last millennium were very small, and this group are assuming that the relationship they derive from these very small variations can be extrapolated to the much larger variations in temperature we expect this century. We have plenty of reason to believe that the shape of the relationship may change (be nonlinear) when we ‘hit the system harder’”.
Bacteria Transformed into Biofuel Refineries
Scientific American, January 27 – Synthetic biology has allowed scientists to tweak E. coli to produce fuels from sugar and, more sustainably, cellulose.
Jatropha too good to be true?
MB.com.ph, January 27 – To its fans, jatropha is a miracle crop, an eco-friendly answer to India’s growing energy needs, but some experts are starting to question whether the wonder-shrub is too good to be true. (…) new research shows jatropha, which has received huge government backing in recent years, yields less than experts had first predicted and is now being grown on fertile farmland – undermining two of its best selling points.
Ecologists outline necessary actions for mitigating and adapting to a changing climate
ScienceDaily, Janunary 26 -Global warming may impair the ability of ecosystems to perform vital services — such as providing food, clean water and carbon sequestration — says the nation’s largest organization of ecological scientists.
Scientists Warn Doing Nothing Will Likely Lock in Worst Consequences of Climate Change
Union of Concerned Scientists, January 26 – Three top U.S. climate scientists stressed on a telephone press conference today the United States must rapidly reduce its global warming emissions to avoid the worst consequences of climate change.
Economic growth cannot buy the planet more time
BBC News, January 26 – Global economic growth – in its current form – cannot continue if nations are serious about curbing climate change, says Andrew Simms. In this week’s Green Room, he warns that the consumer society cannot “have its planet and eat it”.
Canadian scientist says UN’s global warming panel ‘crossing the line’
Canada.com, January 26 – A senior Canadian climate scientist says the United Nations’ panel on global warming has become tainted by political advocacy, that its chairman should resign, and that its approach to science should be overhauled.
Also see: ‘UK’s top scientist urges care in presenting results of climate change’ (The Guardian, January 27)
IPCC condemns natural disasters claim as misleading and baseless
The Guardian, January 26 – The UN body that summarises climate science for governments has condemned as “misleading and baseless” claims that it overstated the effect of global warming on natural disasters.
Oceans ‘under new threat’ (audio)
BBC News, January 26 – Scientists are warning of the dangers of ocean acidification which is beginning to have an impact on the fundamental biology of marine ecosystems. In the 250 years since the start of the industrial revolution the acidity of the seas has increased by 30 percent.
Rocky Mountain glaciers fading fast: researchers
The Windsor Star, January 25 – Much of Alberta’s Rocky Mountain glaciers will melt away by 2100, turning white rivers of ice into rock and earth-brown landscapes, according to new research from the University of Calgary.
If China wants to change course and become clean by the massive opportunities today for clean energy economics, they will “eat our lunch.” This is because the US does not have so-called free market capitalism in “energy.” With trillions of dollars of historic (and current) direct and indirect subsidies for “fuels,” i.e. coal, oil, gas and uranium, and larger “external” costs (like public disease and death), the US is closer to “controlled-market corporatism.” A massive, poisoned Ponzi scheme of ecological bankruptcy, and of course, little job development.
Where is my nuclear bailout bucket?
Geoengineering (slightly less random than dumping effluent willy-nilly, that is) scrutinized again:
“The idea of deliberately manipulating Earth’s energy balance to offset human-driven climate change strikes many as dangerous hubris,” said David Keith of the University of Calgary in Canada, Edward Parson of the University of Michigan and Granger Morgan of Carnegie Mellon University, writing in the journal Nature.
“Many scientists have argued against research on solar radiation management, saying that developing the capability to perform such tasks will reduce the political will to lower greenhouse gas emissions. We think that the risks of not doing research outweigh the risks of doing it,” they wrote.”
More:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/simulated-volcanoes-and-manmade-sun-blocks-can-rescue-the-planet-1881336.html
So this type of geoengineering trades:
PRO-> a momentary drop in temperatures (the short time the dust stays in upper atmosphere)
CON 1-> less sunlight= slower reclaiming of CO2 from atmosphere into land greenery and ocean .. resulting in a faster rise in CO2 in atmosphere.
CON 2-> unpredictable side effects, acid rains from acid dust killing plant leaves make con 1 point worse.
CON 3 -> dim sky with sun haze? A lot of uncertainty in long term effects
Am I wrong? The pro/con balance seems to be to be on the con side heavily. There is a lot more than risking to reduce the polical will, it seems to me that a few people watched “The Matrix” a bit too much.
In commenting upon feedbacks, and suggesting that they may be less significant than previously modeled, Frank says:
“The data, based on natural swings in temperatures from 1050-1800…”
While this may be true about some of the near-term feedbacks, I believe it is important to put this in context. Specifically, there are monster feedbacks that fall outside this arena, such as the PETM and the Permian Die Off. Given that skeptics, deniers, and delayers are combing the news to find ways to distort things, I think it’s irresponsible to talk about “good news” without providing this larger context.
It’s sort of like saying the Tsunami is coming, but the good news is the surf won’t be high until then, and it’ll arrive a little later than we thought.
Gove:
Con 4 — a Harvard study suggests that particulates and acid rain dramatically increase human mortality rates.
Giove: You neglected to mention that any geo-engineering that does not reduce CO2 does nothing to mitigate ocean acidification! A serious threat that is happening behind our backs so to speak. Ocean acidification has increased by ~30% to date with already visible impacts. This change in ocean chemistry makes it increasingly difficult to make shells on ALL life that has evolved that protection, from the smallest to the big guys. Many of the smallest make up the BASE of the FOOD CHAIN!
We have “Geo-engineered” ourselves into this mess with total disregard and ignorance to to our actions. Worse, we dig the whole deeper as our knowledge and awareness tells us to stop.
Even worse, we scamper around looking for solutions with dubious effects when the obvious solution looms large in our sights… LOWER CO2 production and fast!
Yes until now our approach to geo-engineering has been the same of that adopted by a restless 3 year old left alone in the control room of a nuclear plant ….