Tag Archives: Climate Change

Climate Solutions, Sustainable Energy

This Climate Solution is a Sleeping Giant

A breakthrough technology evolution that can have an enormous, immediate impact

By Nick Mandala, for Positive Energy Action, republished by permission

Sometimes, the most effective and powerful solutions are right in front of us, yet somehow the potential is not immediately recognized.

This is a story about using available knowledge and technology to reduce climate warming GHG emissions to zero, while at the same time creating a new economic model for housing, transportation and, well, life on earth.

Two of the greatest challenges of our time (and one could argue, of all time) are climate change and the affordability crisis in housing worldwide.

Some data on housing, published by WeForum:

  • The housing crisis could impact 1.6 billion people by 2025, the World Bank says.
  • The world needs to build 96,000 new affordable homes every day to house the estimated 3 billion people who will need access to adequate housing by 2030, UN-Habitat says.

Superficially it would seem that these two challenges are in conflict; doesn’t it cost more to build zero carbon or even carbon negative homes? (negative carbon = produces more energy than it consumes)

What if a combination of existing methods, materials and technology could help solve both problems at once?

< R. Buckminster Fuller, (American architect, designer, inventor, and writer, best known for his geodesic domes) believed in the the ability of technological advancement to do “more and more with less and less until eventually you can do everything with nothing,” that is, an accelerating increase in the efficiency of achieving the same or more output (products, services, information, etc). >

”An accelerating increase in the efficiency of achieving the same or more output”

Before tackling the recipe for creating significantly more affordable housing, while at the same time battling climate change in a big way, it’s helpful to begin with an analogy from sustainable transport design.

Electric vehicles have been around, in primitive form, since the 1830s, nearly two decades before the oil industry officially began in the US.

But, in essence, it took 163 years before efficiency and battery technology were sufficiently developed to make transportation as cheap in an EV as in an ICE car.

( It can be argued that this accomplishment could have happened nearly a century sooner, if not for the threat it posed to the fossil fuel industry.)

The history of the ICE automobile is often one of ignoring efficiency until simply burning more fuel without limits became an issue. R. Buckminster Fuller (see above) designed a “Dymaxion” car in the early 1930s that could transport up to 11 passengers, reach speeds of up to 90 miles per hour, and ran 30 miles per gallon. The combined average mpg for cars and consumer trucks was sill less than 30 in 2011, nearly 80 years later.

The dawn of the EV era, finally

Tesla takes the efficiency of its vehicles very seriously and has made great strides in achieving long battery range and, with the model 3, increased affordability. The three main areas where EV efficiency can be increased are the materials (weight), the highly aerodynamic design (drag coefficient) and, of course, the battery design.

Aptera, a startup company that is targeting 2023 for initial mass production of its radically designed EV, is taking this focus on efficiency a step further in creating a solar powered car.

A great challenge to using solar panels on a passenger vehicle is the small surface-area that is available to mount the panels. For this reason every aspect of the design must be hyper-optimized.

Astoundingly, the Aptera is slated to release a model that can travel 1000 miles on a charge and, under ideal conditions, never need to be charged at all (100% self-charging via integrated solar panels).

Currently the biggest limitation is that the solar panels can only add 40 miles of range per day, meaning if you drive less than 40 miles per day on average you would never need to spend a cent plugging into grid power.

How do they do it? Special hyper-efficient PV panels, a drag coefficient nearly half of a Tesla Model 3 (1.3 vs. 2.3) and an aerodynamic design that makes it look as crazy as you can imagine. (Oh yea, and only 3 wheels)

If this story continues, and companies like Aptera are able to achieve additional incremental gains in efficiency to produce even better solar powered cars, transportation itself could become affordable at a level inconceivable in the current economic system.

Imagine buying a modestly priced vehicle (Aptera’s base model is currently priced at $25k) and never paying to charge it for the life of the car.

This is approaching an example of the “until eventually you can do everything with nothing” part of the quote above. Further gains are possible with continued design evolution.

What if a home, or housing community, could have “Aptera-like” performance?

Aptera formula:

  1. Solar powered
  2. Battery back up
  3. Hyper-efficient design to optimize 1+2

AM51 concept:

  1. Solar powered
  2. Battery back up (or geothermal, pumped hydro, etc + hyper-efficient heat pumps and other future tech appliances)
  3. Hyper-efficient design to optimize 1+2

At AM51 we are working to take decades of accumulated knowledge and use similar design principals, first pioneered by “Bucky” Fuller, in creating a complete “living system” for homes and communities.

The preconception that aerodynamic design and precision to create hyper-efficiencies is fine for cars, boats, aircraft, etc, but of little use in buildings / homes is where the communication challenge lies.

We use the term living system, because, like an EV, all the elements must be designed to work together with optimum performance in order to reach the twin goals of less than zero carbon emissions and achieving that at a price below current, traditionally built, homes and communities.

Also, a combination of the “core and shell” basically the equivalent of the body in a car, along with the power source (rooftop solar) each have to be hyper-efficient and work together at maximum performance.

Add to this eco-friendly insulation and HVAC systems, and something magical happens.

The EV design analogy is apt, also, because we incorporate batteries for backup and load management.

Where the analogy diverges is in the design of the building itself. Drag coefficient is less relevant (unless we create a flying house) but instead the thermal profile and material choices have a huge impact.

The thermal profile is the area where the greatest gains are possible. Traditional homes (and buildings generally) were never designed to take efficient energy use for climate control into account. (This would be the equivalent of driving a rectangular “block-car” EV -Hummer?- and watching your battery reserve disappear in minutes.)

Getting into the details of how exactly the thermal profile is achieved is beyond the scope of this article, however, what we can say is that the increased efficiency (compared to a home built with traditional methods) is achievable to between 80-94%.

In plain English, this is a measurement of how much less energy is needed to heat and cool the home, along with the standard average usage for typical residents (cooking, TVs, computers, etc).

Starting in the 70s, refined in the 90s, passive house standards are the underlying scientific foundation of our work in designing the ultimate thermal profile for homes.

This standard has been underappreciated and is often considered “expensive” which is only true if you look at only one aspect of the design in isolation (like triple pane windows, for example).

As part of a complete system, the real cost, not just in climate terms, is comparable, and, as discussed below, can be significantly less when every element is properly measured. Vastly less expensive and more efficient heat pumps or other new innovative HVAC systems already offset much of the added construction costs of superior materials and quantities.

Every home a power plant and a grid interactive citizen

Unlike an EV such as the Aptera, the roof area of an average sized home has space for a larger number of panels. Therefore, using standard current PV systems, an AM51 home, with an over 85% more efficient energy demand profile, can power itself using only a portion of the space available.

With a system that uses the entire available area, a significant amount of excess power is available to share with the public grid, in exchange for compensation.

All of this can be magnified, particularly in a community setting, once grid-interactive systems and net metering become standard, and laws adapt to maximize this potential.

In a nutshell, our goal is to create a system where a community functions as individual hyper-efficient homes, combined with shared solar power and backup.

The calculated benefits to this total system design are “beyond Aptera” in their potential impact at scale.

This comparison shows the real cost difference between a fully electric home built using traditional methods and an AM51 hyper-efficient home. The savings also reflect the higher energy costs for all-electric homes vs. cheap gas and oil. Many States are planning to require all electric single family home construction by 2023-2025.

Imagine a home that, once paid for via mortgage at a price at or below a traditional home, does not generate a cent in energy bills for up to 25 years…

…and, additionally, will generate monthly income, thus reducing the monthly payments, in some cases significantly.

All of this, while having a negative carbon footprint (more energy produced than consumed), and causing enormous reductions in GHG emissions at scale…

For many, utility bills are not the greatest concern or cost factor they focus on when imagining the cost of home ownership. But the potential – the freedom of a “grid-optional” lifestyle – and the incredible comfort, health and well-being attached to a perfectly climate controlled indoor environment – all this and many more benefits, once experienced, we believe will eventually make traditional home environments obsolete.

“You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

-R. Buckminster Fuller

Adaptation to hotter heat waves and “polar vortexes”, and other unexpected weather events that are now increasingly likely, is an important topic.

Having a living system that can be counted on to keep you warm in winter, cool in the raging summer heat, and all for zero dollars beyond the basic initial costs, must become a minimum standard as we go forward.

Fractalize™, the coup de gras of affordability for the grid-interactive, hyper-efficient home

So much for battling climate change through efficient design and synergistic systems.

In order to reach even greater affordability, for most even more important and extremely meaningful in getting homes to those in need, AM51 homes and communities will need a construction method to reduce actual costs even further.

Labor shortages in construction and supply chain issues for materials, are two major factors that are driving costs up.

Our completely unique pre-manufactured building system, Fractalize™, takes on both issues and more.

With modern, yet simple, computer and robotic assisted manufacturing of building blocks, optimized specifically for home construction, and made exclusively out of plant-based materials (wood and other) far less labor is required.

Building times are up to 10X faster and minimal assembly crews, with no heavy machinery, are all that’s needed.

Again, the specific details of the hybrid-deep-tech-low-tech system are too complex for this article, but the end result of the added layer of efficiency (in this case efficient execution of construction) can result, by our calculations, in up to 15% lower construction costs overall, with additional cost-benefits from the speed to market.

The automated Fractalize™ manufacturing system is planned for mini factories near each region where homes and communities are needed.

It can also be adapted to make use of cost benefits in non-OECD developing economies where using local supply-chain logistics and available labor can lower prices much more for those unique circumstances.

As for North America, imagine owning a home and having your home pay you, provide free energy for a quarter century, yet cost up to 20% less than a comparable home, built old-style!

This, combined with unprecedented healthy, comfortable living, convenience, and elegance will proclaim a new architectural century. And with an Aptera in the driveway you’ll never pay a cent for transportation or utilities for the life of your home and car. Bucky would be winking at the thought…

Books, Climate Solutions, Earth Day

These Books take a Hard look how Climate Change & Capitalism Clash

Video

Above: Photo Collage / Lynxotic / Simon & Schuster

Naomi Klein’s new book is third in a venerated series on problems we face as a species

As the disasters mount and more and more are definitively linked to man-made climate change and global warming, millions around the globe recognize the need for solutions. More and more the solutions arise, only to be blocked or derailed by the same phenomena: corrupt governments beholden to status quo power and short-sighted corporate greed.

This dynamic; available solutions being actively opposed by business and governments that answer to those powerful corporate entities, even as they mount massive multi-million dollar ad campaigns to “green-wash” their image and try to appear aligned with the very solutions they violently oppose is nearly all pervasive.

Meanwhile, as the problems continue to grow, it has become clear that we, that is to say humanity and its future survivors, are not just fighting a battle against the problem itself, the rapidly deteriorating climate caused by Carbon dioxide (CO2), the primary greenhouse gas emitted through human activities, but even more so a political battle is underway which pits an entire entrenched, unequal and corrupt system (regardless of ideology) against the very issue that needs to be tackled in order for our species to survive.

Without solving the problem of Capitalism’s built-in bias toward profit at any cost, any solution to the climate crisis will be stopped or hindered before it can take root and make enough impact to give us a chance against the looming disasters.

Recently Greta Thunberg posted a statement that governments were literally doing nothing, while at the same time preaching and advertising their “commitment” to solving the problem.

Naomi Klein represents a voice, a top selling author, that has stayed focused on this specific aspect of the challenge for decades. The documentary based on her best-selling book “This Changes Everything” (trailer below) is now a classic and zeros in on the monumental importance of this problem, and how the political and economic systems of the world will require massive and immediate change if we are to survive.

This is not about the tired tropes of Socialism vs Capitalism vs Communism and so on, but rather about the specific corruption and suicidal deception that threatens us all, as fake dedication to solving the problem is paraded simultaneously with efforts that double-down on protecting the homicidal status quo of greed and destruction.

Now, with the Biden administration touting its green status and the green new deal, there must be accountability and more than just words and slogans. The new book shown below is an in-depth look at just what needs to happen to confront the political gridlock and the tendency for real solutions to be blocked or destroyed in the crib.

On Fire: The (Burning) Case for a Green New Deal

Click photo for more on “On Fire“.

Naomi has been at the forefront reporting on the many ways the economy has waged war one planet and people for over 20 years.

An instant bestseller, On Fire shows Klein at her most prophetic and philosophical, investigating the climate crisis not only as a profound political challenge but also as a spiritual and imaginative one. Delving into topics ranging from the clash between ecological time and our culture of “perpetual now,” to the soaring history of humans changing and evolving rapidly in the face of grave threats, to rising white supremacy and fortressed borders as a form of “climate barbarism,” this is a rousing call to action for a planet on the brink. An expansive, far-ranging exploration that sees the battle for a greener world as indistinguishable from the fight for our lives, On Fire captures the burning urgency of the climate crisis, as well as the fiery energy of a rising political movement demanding a catalytic Green New Deal.

Within this text, you will find her essays, written whilst in the midst of natural disasters, dire warnings of the future that is waiting for us if we do nothing to change. The long-forms essays display both the prophetic and philosophical while also challenging the spiritual and imaginative.

Her writings span events ranging from the smoky skies of the Pacific Northwest, the barren Great Barrier Reef to the post-hurricane Puerto Rico and many other climate crises.

This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate

Click photo for more on “This Changes Everything“.

Author Naomi Klein wants readers to embrace the radical, that there is no longer the option to remain at the status quo. Climate Change isn’t just something to be “fixed” it is a crisis that requires immediate action. Also now a feature documentary.

In her book she exposes climate change deniers, delusions of geoengineers, why mainstream green initiatives have failed thus far and how capitalism will only make things worst.

The most important book yet from the author of the international bestseller The Shock Doctrine, a brilliant explanation of why the climate crisis challenges us to abandon the core “free market” ideology of our time, restructure the global economy.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Click photo for more on “The Shock Doctrine“.

Klein introduces us to a new term, disaster capitalism, how those who experience catastrophic events (i.e. war/extreme violence or tsunami/ natural, ect) not only had to suffer from the disaster but also were being taken advantage by “rapid-fire corporate makeovers”.

“The Shock Doctrine” shows how economic policies have capitalized on crises, how at the core of disaster capitalism is to use a cataclysmic event to radicalize privatization.

In her groundbreaking reporting, Naomi Klein introduced the term disaster capitalism. Whether covering Baghdad after the U.S. occupation, Sri Lanka in the wake of the tsunami, or New Orleans post-Katrina, she witnessed something remarkably similar. People still reeling from catastrophe were being hit again, this time with economic shock treatment, losing their land and homes to rapid-fire corporate makeovers. 

The Shock Doctrine retells the story of the most dominant ideology of our time, Milton Friedman’s free market economic revolution. In contrast to the popular myth of this movement’s peaceful global victory, Klein shows how it has exploited moments of shock and extreme violence in order to implement its economic policies in so many parts of the world from Latin America and Eastern Europe to South Africa, Russia, and Iraq.

Watch Trailer for Documentary: ‘This Changes Everything’

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Climate Solutions, Science, Sustainable Energy

Meet the power plant of the future: Solar + battery hybrids are poised for explosive growth

By pairing solar power and battery storage, hybrids can keep providing electricity after dark.

Joachim Seel, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Bentham Paulos, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Will Gorman, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

America’s electric power system is undergoing radical change as it transitions from fossil fuels to renewable energy. While the first decade of the 2000s saw huge growth in natural gas generation, and the 2010s were the decade of wind and solar, early signs suggest the innovation of the 2020s may be a boom in “hybrid” power plants.

A typical hybrid power plant combines electricity generation with battery storage at the same location. That often means a solar or wind farm paired with large-scale batteries. Working together, solar panels and battery storage can generate renewable power when solar energy is at its peak during the day and then release it as needed after the sun goes down.

A look at the power and storage projects in the development pipeline offers a glimpse of hybrid power’s future.

Our team at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that a staggering 1,400 gigawatts of proposed generation and storage projects have applied to connect to the grid – more than all existing U.S. power plants combined. The largest group is now solar projects, and over a third of those projects involve hybrid solar plus battery storage.

While these power plants of the future offer many benefits, they also raise questions about how the electric grid should best be operated.

Why hybrids are hot

As wind and solar grow, they are starting to have big impacts on the grid.

Solar power already exceeds 25% of annual power generation in California and is spreading rapidly in other states such as Texas, Florida and Georgia. The “wind belt” states, from the Dakotas to Texas, have seen massive deployment of wind turbines, with Iowa now getting a majority of its power from the wind.

This high percentage of renewable power raises a question: How do we integrate renewable sources that produce large but varying amounts of power throughout the day?

Joshua Rhodes/University of Texas at Austin.

That’s where storage comes in. Lithium-ion battery prices have rapidly fallen as production has scaled up for the electric vehicle market in recent years. While there are concerns about future supply chain challenges, battery design is also likely to evolve.

The combination of solar and batteries allows hybrid plant operators to provide power through the most valuable hours when demand is strongest, such as summer afternoons and evenings when air conditioners are running on high. Batteries also help smooth out production from wind and solar power, store excess power that would otherwise be curtailed, and reduce congestion on the grid.

Hybrids dominate the project pipeline

At the end of 2020, there were 73 solar and 16 wind hybrid projects operating in the U.S., amounting to 2.5 gigawatts of generation and 0.45 gigawatts of storage.

Today, solar and hybrids dominate the development pipeline. By the end of 2021, more than 675 gigawatts of proposed solar plants had applied for grid connection approval, with over a third of them paired with storage. Another 247 gigawatts of wind farms were in line, with 19 gigawatts, or about 8% of those, as hybrids.

The amount of proposed solar, storage and wind power waiting to hook up to the grid has grown dramatically in recent years, while coal, gas and nuclear have faded. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Of course, applying for a connection is only one step in developing a power plant. A developer also needs land and community agreements, a sales contract, financing and permits. Only about one in four new plants proposed between 2010 and 2016 made it to commercial operation. But the depth of interest in hybrid plants portends strong growth.

In markets like California, batteries are essentially obligatory for new solar developers. Since solar often accounts for the majority of power in the daytime market, building more adds little value. Currently 95% of all proposed large-scale solar capacity in the California queue comes with batteries.

5 lessons on hybrids and questions for the future

The opportunity for growth in renewable hybrids is clearly large, but it raises some questions that our group at Berkeley Lab has been investigating.

Here are some of our top findings:

  • The investment pays off in many regions. We found that while adding batteries to a solar power plant increases the price, it also increases the value of the power. Putting generation and storage in the same location can capture benefits from tax credits, construction cost savings and operational flexibility. Looking at the revenue potential over recent years, and with the help of federal tax credits, the added value appears to justify the higher price.
  • Co-location also means tradeoffs. Wind and solar perform best where the wind and solar resources are strongest, but batteries provide the most value where they can deliver the greatest grid benefits, like relieving congestion. That means there are trade-offs when determining the best location with the highest value. Federal tax credits that can be earned only when batteries are co-located with solar may be encouraging suboptimal decisions in some cases.
  • There is no one best combination. The value of a hybrid plant is determined in part by the configuration of the equipment. For example, the size of the battery relative to a solar generator can determine how late into the evening the plant can deliver power. But the value of nighttime power depends on local market conditions, which change throughout the year.
  • Power market rules need to evolve. Hybrids can participate in the power market as a single unit or as separate entities, with the solar and storage bidding independently. Hybrids can also be either sellers or buyers of power, or both. That can get complicated. Market participation rules for hybrids are still evolving, leaving plant operators to experiment with how they sell their services.
  • Small hybrids create new opportunities: Hybrid power plants can also be small, such as solar and batteries in a home or business. Such hybrids have become standard in Hawaii as solar power saturates the grid. In California, customers who are subject to power shutoffs to prevent wildfires are increasingly adding storage to their solar systems. These “behind-the-meter” hybrids raise questions about how they should be valued, and how they can contribute to grid operations.

Hybrids are just beginning, but a lot more are on the way. More research is needed on the technologies, market designs and regulations to ensure the grid and grid pricing evolve with them.

While questions remain, it’s clear that hybrids are redefining power plants. And they may remake the U.S. power system in the process.

Joachim Seel, Senior Scientific Engineering Associate, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory; Bentham Paulos, Affiliate, Electricity Markets & Policy Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and Will Gorman, Graduate Student Researcher in Electricity Markets and Policy, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, Sustainable Energy

First there was Doom scrolling, then Greenwashing now we have HopeFishing.

Yes, it’s a thing.

Possibly even worse than greenwashing, HopeFishing is when bad actors exaggerate and accelerate the fantasy of how we can solve the climate crisis, using solutions that either don’t yet exist, or that may actually be harmful if they were ever implemented.

There are entire web sites, which we will not link to for obvious reasons, that publish stories every day about a new invention or discovery that is “sure” to save the world.

Not all of the featured solutions are totally bogus, the clever publishers add in just enough “real” information to keep you guessing, but our informal research showed that 8 out of 10 were either total speculation or something that has been tried in a tiny sample in a lab and would, if ever, come to market in perhaps decade, for example.

Why is this so bad, you say? Because when these faux solutions, always hyped to the hilt, are so outrageously fantastic, that when taken at face value, can overshadow any real solution that might be available today, right now.

An example of this is hyper-efficient design of homes and buildings combined with sustainable energy generation and storage. A perfect combination of existing design techniques and currently available advanced technology these solutions are reedy to activate immediately.

This incredible mix is available and should be, must be, implemented worldwide as fast as possible. Doing so would reduce the cost of shelter, at a time with the affordable housing crisis is exploding worldwide, and at the same time lower carbon and greenhouse gas emissions for all structures built this way to beyond zero (in other words, using less energy than is produced, all from clean renewable sources).

This Climate Solution is a Sleeping Giant

Unfortunately, stories about such realistic and practical ideas will not be published by HopeFishing sites. The all-to-real situation is that a bias toward “deep-tech” and intellectual property generating solutions already exists and many of these are also still in R&D and might never actually work in the general marketplace.

Worse, those who are led to believe that these exaggerated claims and world rescuing solutions are going to be ubiquitous “any day now” are lulled into a state of apathy and complacency. And, all this at a time when the precise opposite is so urgently needed. HopeFishing. As deadly or more deadly than climate denial.

At the same time, those profiting off these “happy” non-news stories can tell themselves they are the good guys, just pointing out how wonderful humans are for inventing a world saving solution every day, sometimes multiple times per day.

Partial HopeWashing is also not ideal which makes things harder to understand

Some, such as Elon musk, “innocently” introduced products and services like the Tesla Semi EV, which is, finally, set for a product launch on December 1, 2022. Five years after it was first announced. As for the Cybertruck, which has yet to see the light of day, or for example, the full self driving feature, which has been announced, over and over and over, yet still has potentially years until it will be fully functional.

This all seems harmless enough but when taken to the next level, where say, a remedy is put forward that claims all electric cars will have batteries that can run for thousands of miles and take seconds to charge, and then, upon deeper research, it turns out this idea is simply a thought, or even a projection of an imaginary claim: at that point it becomes HopeFishing.

Another example of a partial level of this is Cement and Steel. These two materials, heavily used for building and construction, produce some of the highest levels of “embodied” carbon – meaning to manufacture them for use, a large amount greenhouse gasses must be released into the atmosphere. (causing and worsening global warming)

Wouldn’t it be nice if there were alternative versions of these materials that do not harm the environment during manufacture? Sure it would. But it would also be a gold-mine, or like all the world’s gold mines combined, to whoever figures out how to to this with little or no added costs.

Here are just a few companies that have been heavily funded to solve this problem already:

Key Companies Profiled by Fact.MR:

  • CarbiCrete
  • Carbon Cure
  • Cemex
  • CeraTech
  • Ecocem Ireland Lt
  • Heidelberg Cement
  • Holcim
  • Kiran Global Chems Ltd.

This is an old list, there are many, many more that have been formed since this list was published. And that is not including the same scenario for steel.

Again, what’s the problem here? For one, it is an example of how “racing forward to recreate the past” dominates the climate solutions marketplace. Instead of looking for different ways to build our infrastructure with less of these materials, we are desperately trying to find a way to imitate the cheap, massively subsidized growth patterns of the last 150 years.

An alternative building material, and there are some out there, that does not require a patented invention just to exist will very likely be minimized while these highly supported “lottery tickets” will be touted and exaggerated back and forth as they all try to dominate a future market in the trillions of dollars.

Secondly, the partial HopeWashing effect comes into play. How should someone who does not spend the time or have the expertise to research the claims of these companies ever hope to grasp just how close they actually are (or aren’t) to removing billions of tons of high carbon producing materials from the supply chain?

And if the answer, after arduous research and due diligence and sober calculation, is that the solution is certain to be too late? Once again the money and effort spent chasing happy unicorns and rainbows (and the past) will already be gone.

Therefore, the funding and attention that should be paid to immediately viable less obviously obscenely-lucrative solutions will be passed over, potentially for years or decades.

And if that happens, HopeFishing will turn out to be far deadlier than climate denial, GreenWashing or any other nefarious game of self-deception humans play on themselves.

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Books, Climate Solutions

Passive House is at the Heart of the Next Wave of Sustainable Infrastructure

Transportation has been the focus, due to Tesla’s rise, but houses and commercial buildings are next

When Tesla was still just an oddball upstart, there was plenty of skepticism that they would survive, let alone change the industry and define sustainable transportation and the future of EVs. This was before Tesla’s stock price soared, even as the climate crisis has become more serious.

Although the stock market is as irrational as ever, on another level the massive rise in market cap for the once underdog sustainable energy focused company can also be seen as a vote from the general public – a vote for the transition away from fossil fuels and toward a sustainable energy future..

Fast forward to 2022 and there is an entirely different situation in the automotive and transportation industries. The entire industry is shifting, rapidly, to 100% electric vehicle production and competing for the climate conscious upwardly mobile customer base that was first identified by Tesla’s “S3XY” marketing methods and designs.

Another underdog – Passive House is ready for the next wave of climate conscious changes

Although sustainable transportation infrastructure still has a long way to go and many issues to overcome, the speed of the transition over the last decade is, nevertheless, impressive.

The next phase of the transition toward sustainable energy infrastructure as a whole, however, is clearly going to be energy generation, solar, wind, geothermal and beyond. This will include design and construction of dwellings and commercial real estate with an eye toward efficient ways to decrease the carbon footprint and create structures that have a low carbon cost (embodied carbon and green cement, use of natural materials, etc.).

Passive house, a concept first pioneered in Germany, is at the center of the coming design revolution in architecture and sustainable construction. Andreas Benzing, of A.M.Benzing Architects PLLC has been at the forefront of the New York, NY movement (as executive director of NY Passive House) as it has grown for nearly two decades and is now ready to break out.

Emphasizing the active role that passive house can play in reaching ‘peak performance’ for dwellings and commercial structures, Benzing elucidates his credo and underscores the similarities to Tesla’s higher-end approach to EV’s, now poised to spearhead a similar revolution in architecture; “We strive to better user experience and comfort, engineer to easily achieve peak performance, and maximize the durability of quality materials.”

The books below are a few that show the history and concepts behind passive house from various perspectives. Houses and buildings that have a reduced carbon footprint, while at the same time generate energy from sustainable sources are becoming feasible and all have as a foundation the passive house standard for highly efficient design.

The New Net Zero

Click photo for more about The New Net Zero

The new threshold for green building is not just low energy, it’s net-zero energy. In The New Net Zero, sustainable architect Bill Maclay charts the path for designers and builders interested in exploring green design’s new frontier net-zero-energy structures that produce as much energy as they consume and are carbon neutral.

In a nation where traditional buildings use roughly 40 percent of the total fossil energy, the interest in net-zero building is growing enormously-among both designers interested in addressing climate change and consumers interested in energy efficiency and long-term savings. Maclay, an award-winning net-zero designer whose buildings have achieved high-performance goals at affordable costs, makes the case for a net-zero future; explains net-zero building metrics, integrated design practices, and renewable energy options; and shares his lessons learned on net-zero teambuilding.

Designers and builders will find a wealth of state-of-the-art information on such considerations as air, water, and vapor barriers; embodied energy; residential and commercial net-zero standards; monitoring and commissioning; insulation options; costs; and more.

The comprehensive overview is accompanied by several case studies, which include institutional buildings, commercial projects, and residences. Both new-building and renovation projects are covered in detail. 

The New Net Zero is geared toward professionals exploring net-zero design, but also suitable for nonprofessionals seeking ideas and strategies on net-zero options that are beautiful and renewably powered.

Passive House Details

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Passive House Details introduces the concepts, principles, and design processes of building ultralow-energy buildings. The objective of this book is to provide design goals, research, analysis, systems, details, and inspiring images of some of the most energy-efficient, carbon-neutral, healthy, and satisfying buildings currently built in the region. Other topics included: heat transfer, moisture management, performance targets, and climatic zones. Illustrated with more than 375 color images, the book is a visual catalog of construction details, materials, and systems drawn from projects contributed from forty firms. Fourteen in-depth case studies demonstrate the most energy-efficient systems for foundations, walls, floors, roofs, windows, doors, and more.

The Greenest Home

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Passive is the new green. Passive Houses–well insulated, virtually airtight buildings–can decrease home heating consumption by an astounding 90 percent, making them not only an attractive choice for prospective homeowners, but also the right choice for a sustainable future. The Greenest Home showcases eighteen of the world’s most attractive Passive Houses by forward-thinking architects such as Bernheimer Architecture, Olson Kundig Architects, and Onion Flats, among many others. Each case study consists of a detailed project description, plans, and photographs. An appendix lists helpful technical information. Including a mix of new construction and retrofit projects built in a variety of site conditions, The Greenest Home is an inspiring sourcebook for architects and prospective homeowners, as well as a useful tool for students, and builders alike.

The Solar House

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Passive solar heating and passive cooling–approaches known as natural conditioning–provide comfort throughout the year by reducing, or eliminating, the need for fossil fuel. Yet while heat from sunlight and ventilation from breezes is free for the taking, few modern architects or builders really understand the principles involved.

Now Dan Chiras, author of the popular book The Natural House, brings those principles up to date for a new generation of solar enthusiasts.

The techniques required to heat and cool a building passively have been used for thousands of years. Early societies such as the Native American Anasazis and the ancient Greeks perfected designs that effectively exploited these natural processes. The Greeks considered anyone who didn’t use passive solar to heat a home to be a barbarian 

In the United States, passive solar architecture experienced a major resurgence of interest in the 1970s in response to crippling oil embargoes. With grand enthusiasm but with scant knowledge (and sometimes little common sense), architects and builders created a wide variety of solar homes. Some worked pretty well, but looked more like laboratories than houses. Others performed poorly, overheating in the summer because of excessive or misplaced windows and skylights, and growing chilly in the colder months because of insufficient thermal mass and insulation and poor siting.

In The Solar House, Dan Chiras sets the record straight on the vast potential for passive heating and cooling. Acknowledging the good intentions of misguided solar designers in the past, he highlights certain egregious–and entirely avoidable–errors. More importantly, Chiras explains in methodical detail how today’s home builders can succeed with solar designs.

Now that energy efficiency measures including higher levels of insulation and multi-layered glazing have become standard, it is easier than ever before to create a comfortable and affordable passive solar house that will provide year-round comfort in any climate.

Moreover, since modern building materials and airtight construction methods sometimes result in air-quality and even toxicity problems, Chiras explains state-of-the-art ventilation and filtering techniques that complement the ancient solar strategies of thermal mass and daylighting. Chiras also explains the new diagnostic aids available in printed worksheet or software formats, allowing readers to generate their own design schemes.

The Passivhaus Designer’s Manual

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Passivhaus is the fastest growing energy performance standard in the world, with almost 50,000 buildings realised to date. Applicable to both domestic and non-domestic building types, the strength of Passivhaus lies in the simplicity of the concept. As European and global energy directives move ever closer towards Zero (fossil) Energy standards, Passivhaus provides a robust ‘fabric first’ approach from which to make the next step.

The Passivhaus Designers Manual is the most comprehensive technical guide available to those wishing to design and build Passivhaus and Zero Energy Buildings. As a technical reference for architects, engineers and construction professionals The Passivhaus Designers Manual provides: 

  • State of the art guidance for anyone designing or working on a Passivhaus project;
  • In depth information on building services, including high performance ventilation systems and ultra-low energy heating and cooling systems; 
  • Holistic design guidance encompassing: daylight design, ecological materials, thermal comfort, indoor air quality and economics; 
  • Practical advice on procurement methods, project management and quality assurance;
  • Renewable energy systems suitable for Passivhaus and Zero Energy Buildings; 
  • Practical case studies from the UK, USA, and Germany amongst others;
  • Detailed worked examples to show you how it’s done and what to look out for;
  • Expert advice from 20 world renowned Passivhaus designers, architects, building physicists and engineers.

Lavishly illustrated with nearly 200 full colour illustrations, and presented by two highly experienced specialists, this is your one-stop shop for comprehensive practical information on Passivhaus and Zero Energy buildings.

The New Net Zero
Passive House Details
The Greenest Home
The Solar House
The Passivhaus Designer’s Manual

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Books

Fight Climate Emergency by Nationalizing US Fossil Fuel Industry, Says Top Economist

“If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC’s findings seriously, it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far,” writes Robert Pollin.

In the wake of a United Nations report that activists said showed the “bleak and brutal truth” about the climate emergency, a leading economist on Friday highlighted a step that supporters argue could be incredibly effective at combating the global crisis: nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.

“With at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion.”

Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Pollin, an economics professor and co-director of the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, noted the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and high gas prices exacerbated by Russia’s war on Ukraine.

“If we are finally going to start taking the IPCC’s findings seriously,” Pollin wrote, “it follows that we must begin advancing far more aggressive climate stabilization solutions than anything that has been undertaken thus far, both within the U.S. and globally. Within the U.S., such measures should include at least putting on the table the idea of nationalizing the U.S. fossil fuel industry.”

“With at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion”

Asserting that “at least in the U.S., the private oil companies stand as the single greatest obstacle to successfully implementing” a viable climate stabilization program, Pollin made the case that fossil fuel giants should not make any more money from wrecking the planet, nationalization would not be an unprecedented move in the United States, and doing so could help build clean energy infrastructure at the pace that scientists warn is necessary.

The expert proposed starting with “the federal government purchasing controlling ownership of at least the three dominant U.S. oil and gas corporations: ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips.”

“They are far larger and more powerful than all the U.S. coal companies combined, as well as all of the smaller U.S. oil and gas companies,” he wrote. “The cost to the government to purchase majority ownership of these three oil giants would be about $420 billion at current stock market prices.

Emphasizing that the aim of private firms “is precisely to make profits from selling oil, coal, and natural gas, no matter the consequences for the planet and regardless of how the companies may present themselves in various high-gloss, soft-focus PR campaigns,” Pollin posited that “with at least ExxonMobil, Chevron, and ConocoPhillips under public control, the necessary phaseout of fossil fuels as an energy source could advance in an orderly fashion.”

“The government could determine fossil fuel energy production levels and prices to reflect both the needs of consumers and the requirements of the clean-energy transition,” he explained. “This transition could also be structured to provide maximum support for the workers and communities that are presently dependent on fossil fuel companies for their well-being.”

Pollin pointed out that some members of Congress are pushing for a windfall profits tax on Big Oil companies using various global crises—from Russia’s war to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic—to price gouge working people at the gas pump. The proposal, he wrote, “raises a more basic question: Should the fossil fuel companies be permitted to profit at all through selling products that we know are destroying the planet? The logical answer has to be no. That is exactly why nationalizing at least the largest U.S. oil companies is the most appropriate action we can take now, in light of the climate emergency.”

The economist highlighted the long history of nationalizing in the United States, pointing out that “it was only 13 years ago, in the depths of the 2007–09 financial crisis and Great Recession, that the Obama administration nationalized two of the three U.S. auto companies.”

In addition to enabling the government to put the nationalized firms’ profits toward a just transition to renewables, Pollin wrote, “with nationalization, the political obstacles that fossil fuel companies now throw up against public financing for clean energy investments would be eliminated.”

Nationalization “is not a panacea,” Pollin acknowledged. Noting that “publicly owned companies already control approximately 90% of the world’s fossil fuel reserves,” he cautioned against assuming such a move in the U.S. “will provide favorable conditions for fighting climate change, any more than public ownership has done so already in Russia, Saudi Arabia, China, or Iran,” without an administration dedicated to tackling the global crisis.

Pollin is far from alone in proposing nationalization. Writing for Jacobin last month, People’s Policy Project founder Matt Bruenig argued that “an industry that is absolutely essential to maintain in the short term and absolutely essential to eliminate in the long term is an industry that really should be managed publicly.”

“Private owners and investors are not in the business of temporarily propping up dying industries, which means that they will either work to keep the industry from dying, which is bad for the climate, or that they will refuse to temporarily prop it up, which will cause economic chaos,” he wrote. “A public owner is best positioned to pursue managed decline in a responsible way.”

In a piece for The New Republic published in the early stage of the pandemic a few years ago, climate journalist Kate Aronoff—like Pollin on Friday—pointed out that nationalization “has a long and proud tradition of navigating America through times of crisis, from World War II to 9/11.”

As Aronoff—who interviewed New College of Florida economist Mark Paul—reported in March 2020:

In a way, nationalization would merely involve the government correcting for nearly a century of its own market intervention. All manner of government hands on the scales have kept money flowing into fossil fuels, including the roughly $26 billion worth of state and federal subsidies handed out to them each year. A holistic transition toward a low-carbon economy would reorient that array of market signals away from failing sectors and toward growing ones that can put millions to work right away retrofitting existing buildings to be energy efficient and building out a fleet of electric vehicles, for instance, including in the places that might otherwise be worst impacted by a fossil fuel bust and recession. Renewables have taken a serious hit amid the Covid-19 slowdown, too, as factories shut down in China. So besides direct government investments in green technology, additional policy directives from the federal level, Paul added, would be key to providing certainty for investors that renewables are worth their while: for example, low-hanging fruit like the extension of the renewable tax credits, now on track to be phased out by 2022.

While Pollin, Bruenig, and Aronoff’s writing focused on the United States, campaigners are also making similar cases around the world.

In a June 2021 opinion piece for The Guardian, Johanna Bozuwa, co-manager of the Climate & Energy Program at the Democracy Collaborative, and Georgetown University philosophy professor Olúfẹ́mi O Táíwò took aim at Royal Dutch Shell on the heels of a historic court ruling, declaring that “like all private oil companies, Shell should not exist.”

“Governments like the Netherlands could better follow through on mandates to reduce emissions if they held control over oil companies themselves,” the pair added. “It is time to nationalize Big Oil.”

JESSICA CORBETT April 8, 2022

Climate Solutions, Earth Day, Observation, Sustainable Energy

The World Must Transition to 200% Renewable Energy Sources: no, that’s not a misprint

Video

net-zero by 2050 was a joke, but nobody’s laughing

Attitude matters. Imagine that in the run-up to the 20xx Olympics your country declared: we will strive to not-lose and achieve net-zero gold medals!

OK maybe not the best metaphor but still – why aim to not trigger armageddon by… 2050?

  • It is international scientific consensus that, in order to prevent the worst climate damages, global net human-caused emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) need to fall by about 45 percent from 2010 levels by 2030, reaching net zero around 2050. –

Once that lofty non-goal was agreed upon by governments across the globe, it quickly became apparent that virtually none of them were doing anywhere near what it would take to get to said uninspired non-goal.

The idea was (and still is) to drag and under-achieve as long as politically possible and then suddenly, in the final stretch, accelerate efforts (with resources controlled by future politicians) and reach net-zero. And then declare victory.

People want more than net-zero. People need more than net-zero. At the very least there has to be a better name, and a serious plan to make it actually happen.

You are going to hear a lot about minus-zero carbon soon. The reason is a good one. When the stakes are as high as the extinction of all life on earth, just getting to a tie score is not a good plan. So those who are in the trenches, working on solutions for global warming and reducing the carbon footprint, are search also for better ways to communicate what the goal is and what it means.

This, hopefully, can lead to a focus on a goal, or at least the articulation of a desire, that can inspire people to become highly active, even agitated, perhaps even alarmed, and begin the hard work and striving that it will take to get to a net-positive outcome for all of us.

And, who exactly decided that it would be a good idea to prolong the carbon carnival as long as possible in the first place? Carbon emitters and oil profiteers perhaps?

60 years of feet dragging, obfuscation and deliberate blocking of any solutions threatening the status quo have already come and gone.

Also, if energy is clean and abundant, why not use more? Energy is good, more energy use, if clean and sustainable, could be better. It can give us amazing things. Efficient use is good too, of course, but this is a mind-set issue. This is thought error or a thought liberation.

Minus-zero carbon x 100% (with 200% energy availability) is a much better goal and represents a thought liberating idea.

Perfection can’t be the enemy of good in the energy arena

Do we need architects and inventors, innovators and scientists, and massive amount of ammunition in the form of trillions of dollars in funding, from both public and private sources? Hell yes.

And must these magicians and Mavericks do amazing things that were believed impossible just a short while ago? Absolutely. Is this a ‘moon-shot’ to, not just save, but catapult humanity into a better future? You bet-ur-a%$ it is.

That means that the challenges of finding better tech, examples such as for soil regeneration, or more efficient battery storage, or for alternatives to rare earth metals, if they are too, um, rare need to be figured out and set into motion, fast. It means inventing and discovering tech that does not exist, that has not been tried or even sought after, why never sought? Because oil was cheap and available, so don’t stress it, Bub.

watch video

And, there are those out there, already today, that are thinking beyond net-zero in 2050. There are those that want more, that know that we need more. Those that understand that political inertia and corrupt vested interests are not the excuses we want written on our tombstones.

And why not look for half-full glasses or beliefs manifested into action? Why not aim for something that makes us want to get up, stand up, and make something possible that looks like hope and feels like success and winning?

Decentralized solutions are coming, in every part of life

The reality is that it is not only the world’s energy infrastructure that needs a total makeover. Financial inequality, political and economic systems are fragile and failing, regardless where.

There is a whiff of collapse that could turn into a whirlwind and then could derail any progress made, as we plunge into dark ages, even before factoring in the catastrophic climate challenges.

We need new, innovative ways to learn, to communicate, interact and collaborate. And these are emerging – if you don’t believe in crypto, web3 or any other new directions that many are seeing as alternatives to broken systems of the past, you at least have to acknowledge that actively looking for a better way, one that does represent a solution, is what is needed even as the current systems are failing us.

So if you don’t agree with the ideas for change and proposed ways to improve methods for human interaction and coexistence, come up with new ideas and put them forth, ok?, maybe we have to try and strive and stumble until a truly better way presents itself.

Give yourself and all you have into actions that will finally change the direction from one that spells doom, in this case continuing to burn carbon in insanely massive amounts while we fight, disagree and kill one another (war, etc.), to something new, something that at least could have a chance to win the peace.

Losing is unacceptable for-real this time. Winning isn’t everything, no sir, it’s the only thing. And starting on 04-22-2022 this net-zero BS needs to be sent to Mars, or perhaps Uranus.

Meanwhile here on earth we gotta get busy building the only thing that will prevent oblivion: a tiny taste of utopia that will grow from a seed into a raging forest of real, not fossilized, success.

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Climate Solutions, Earth and Ecology, Observation

The Real Dream of Clean Energy: Video Eureka Moment from Cleo Abram

Video

Reducing fossil fuel use is important, but it’s more important to increase zero carbon energy production

Increasing sustainable energy production is possibly the most important goal for the world today. This idea is mostly couched, however, in negative terms, the idea that without a shift to clean, green sustainable sources climate change will destroy the future.

This is an important and essentially true statement.

However the automatic association of sustainable energy as being inevitably connected to less energy availability is a false premise. One that can be proven wrong with positive action towards building clean energy infrastructure, not as a defensive, desperate survival goal, but as a natural expansion of more energy and power that could lead to increased prosperity for the human race.

Deeply embedded thought patterns prevent us, perhaps, from imagining a world where more energy is not associated with more pollution, eventual depletion of a finite and limited resource and ultimately death, destruction and a CO2 induced climate catastrophe.

Optimism and abundance are linked with hope and a dream of a better standard of living for all. That dream is possible not with less energy use, but rather, more and cheaper energy availability that can be created by building a global, sustainable, renewable energy infrastructure.

A change in thought and perspective is necessary and could be more powerful than the sun

Utopia is a word that will get you laughed at, while oblivion is becoming the expected outcome of our century. Predicted by R. Buckminster Fuller in his book ‘Utopia or Oblivion‘, the choice we face in this century is not oblivion and catastrophic suffering or ‘business as usual’, it is not survival vs extinction, it is survival by unleashing utopian potential or total annihilation.

The paradox of sustainable energy is that, without it becoming the primary energy production system for the planet, combined with reduced consumption of fossil fuels until 100% sustainability is reached, oblivion or at least massive pain is assured; while at the same time, achieving 100% carbon free, clean energy from sustainable sources like solar, wind and geothermal, can create virtually unlimited increases in beneficial uses of energy, leading to an almost utopian potential for quality of life.

Thinking is the Difference Between Utopia or Oblivion

The clarity of realizing that clean sustainable energy ubiquity means unlimited energy consumption is non-destructive, and can end the malthusian nightmare of finite resources, that so many have fought over and even died for, is truly mind altering.

More is less, is another way to say it. Or at least more consumption and benefits, but none of the negative costs to the environment that we have come to see as inextricably linked to fossil fuel energy production and use.

At the same time it also harkens back to Elon Musk and Tesla’s mission statement. Tesla has had a vision for sustainable energy that is S3XY; more luxury, more beauty, more fun.

That mind-set, a mind set of abundant clean unlimited energy from sustainable sources, used to power beautiful powerful EVs, has made the company the enormous success that it is and ushered in an era EV production as job #1 throughout the entire auto industry.

The genius of this perspective centers on the idea that humans, when striving toward a positive goal, are always more powerful and successful than they are when simply trying to avoid a negative outcome.

Interestingly, the dream of reaching Mars, Musk’s other stated goal, is both positive and negative, since one reason for the urgent need to establish colonies there could be the destruction of earth due to climate disaster, caused by a failure to create a sustainable clean energy infrastructure in time.

It is the power and dream of much more abundant energy that can remove the idea from our minds that energy consumption is inherently bad, just because it does have negative ramifications galore when the source for that energy is dirty fossil fuels.

The Utopian Mindset must begin to permeate our consciousness if we are to overcome the challenges of 2000-2050 and beyond

Energy abundance is not the only type of abundance that our minds must learn to accept as possible for our species if we hope to turn things around. Bitcoin, for example, is currently being scapegoated in the media generally and is having endless disinformation hurled at its proof of work mining system based on the premise that it uses “too much” energy and too much of that energy is sourced from fossil fuels at this time.

But why not focus on the real problem? Why not see that a monumental and heroic effort to rid the world of dependence on “bad” and ultimately finite and limited sources of energy from fossil fuels and shift, ultimately, 100% of production to clean and renewable sources, needs to be job #1 for team earth?

Again, in an all-or-nothing scenario there is no option to equivocate. The negative reasons that fossil fuels must be phased out as soon as possible (‘the stick’ as per Cleo Abram in her video below) become more inevitable each minute and are already threatening everything humans have accomplished to date.

The positive motivation is less obvious for most at this point (‘the carrot’) and yet is ultimately more powerful (S3XY!) since it carries with it the hope that we can not only avert disaster, death and destruction, but can build a clean, abundant and infinitely expandable energy supply that could be used to build the first tentative steps toward a utopian dream.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

6 months after the climate summit, where to find progress on climate change in a more dangerous and divided world

Six months ago, negotiators at the United Nations’ Glasgow climate summit celebrated a series of new commitments to lower global greenhouse gas emissions and build resilience to the impacts of climate change. Analysts concluded that the new promises, including phasing out coal, would bend the global warming trajectory, though still fall short of the Paris climate agreement.

Today, the world looks ever more complex. Russia is waging a war on European soil, with global implications for energy and food supplies. Some leaders who a few months ago were vowing to phase out fossil fuels are now encouraging fossil fuel companies to ramp up production.

In the U.S., the Biden administration has struggled to get its promised actions through Congress. Last-ditch efforts have been underway to salvage some kind of climate and energy bill from the abandoned Build Back Better plan. Without it, U.S. commitments to reduce emissions by over 50% by 2030 look fanciful, and the rest of the world knows it – adding another blow to U.S. credibility overseas.

Meanwhile, severe famines have hit Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Extreme heat has been threatening lives across India and Pakistan. Australia faced historic flooding, and the Southwestern U.S. can’t keep up with the wildfires.

As a former senior U.N. official, I’ve been involved in international climate negotiations for several years. At the halfway point of this year’s climate negotiations, with the next U.N. climate conference in November 2022, here are three areas to watch for progress and cooperation in a world full of danger and division.

Crisis response with long-term benefits

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has added to a triple whammy of food price, fuel price and inflationary spikes in a global economy still struggling to emerge from the pandemic.

But Russia’s aggression has also forced Europe and others to move away from dependence on Russian oil, gas and coal. The G7 – Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the U.K. and the U.S. – pledged on May 8, 2022, to phase out or ban Russian oil and accelerate their shifts to clean energy.

In the short term, Europe’s pivot means much more energy efficiency – the International Energy Agency estimates that the European Union can save 15%-20% of energy demand with efficiency measures. It also means importing oil and gas from elsewhere.

In the medium term, the answer lies in ramping up renewable energy.

There are issues to solve. As Europe buys up gas from other places, it risks reducing gas supplies relied on by other countries, and forcing some of those countries to return to coal, a more carbon-intense fuel that destroys air quality. Some countries will need help expanding renewable energy and stabilizing energy prices to avoid a backlash to pro-climate policies.

As the West races to renewables, it will also need to secure a supply chain for critical minerals and metals necessary for batteries and renewable energy technology, including replacing an overdependence on China with multiple supply sources.

Ensuring integrity in corporate commitments

Finance leaders and other private sector coalitions made headline-grabbing commitments at the Glasgow climate conference in November 2021. They promised to accelerate their transitions to net-zero emissions by 2050, and some firms and financiers were specific about ending financing for coal plants that don’t capture and store their carbon, cutting methane emissions and supporting ending deforestation.

Their promises faced cries of “greenwash” from many climate advocacy groups. Some efforts are now underway to hold companies, as well as countries, to their commitments.

A U.N. group chaired by former Canadian Environment Minister Catherine McKenna is now working on a framework to hold companies, cities, states and banks to account when they claim to have “net-zero” emissions. This is designed to ensure that companies that pledged last year to meet net-zero now say how, and on what scientific basis.

For many companies, especially those with large emissions footprints, part of their commitment to get to net-zero includes buying carbon offsets – often investments in nature – to balance the ledger. This summer, two efforts to put guardrails around voluntary carbon markets are expected to issue their first sets of guidance for issuers of carbon credits and for firms that want to use voluntary carbon markets to fulfill their net-zero claims. The goal is to ensure carbon markets reduce emissions and provide a steady stream of revenue for parts of the world that need finance for their green growth.

Climate change influencing elections

Climate change is now an increasingly important factor in elections.

French President Emmanuel Macron, trying to woo supporters of a candidate to his left and energize young voters, made more dramatic climate pledges, vowing to be “the first major nation to abandon gas, oil and coal.”

With Chile’s swing to the left, the country’s redrafted constitution will incorporate climate stewardship.

In Australia, Scott Morrison’s government – which supported opening one of the world’s largest coal mines at the same time the Australian private sector is focusing on renewable energy – faces an election on May 21, 2022, with heatwaves and extreme flooding fresh in voters’ minds. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro faces opponents in October who are talking about protecting the climate.

Elections are fought and won on pocketbook issues, and energy prices are high and inflation is taking hold. But voters around the world are also experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand and are increasingly concerned.

The next climate conference

Countries will be facing a different set of economic and security challenges when the next round of U.N. talks begins in November in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, compared to the challenges they faced in Glasgow. They will be expected to show progress on their commitments while struggling for bandwidth, dealing with the climate emergency as an integral part of security, economic recovery and global health.

There is no time to push climate action out into the future. Every decimal point of warming avoided is an opportunity for better health, more prosperity and better security.

Rachel Kyte, Dean of the Fletcher School, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, Observation, Sustainable Energy

Solarpunk: Visions of a just, nature-positive world

Credit / Image: Fernanders Sam)

What does a sustainable civilisation look like and how do we get there? A burgeoning movement of artists and activists is seeking answers.

“It is 2050. In most places in the world, the air is moist and fresh, even in cities. It feels a lot like walking through a forest, and very likely this is exactly what you are doing. The air is cleaner than it has been since before the Industrial Revolution. We have trees to thank for that. They are everywhere.”

In the current moment, these words from Christiana Figueres and Tom Rivett-Carnac’s 2020 book The Future We Choose might seem like pure fantasy. The world they describe seems so far from the present, where over 90% of the Earth’s population breathes air deemed unsafe by the World Health Organization, scientists warn that humans are causing “irreversible” changes to the climate and nature is declining globally at an unprecedented rate.

But a burgeoning artistic and political movement known as “solarpunk” is trying to bring this lush, verdant world closer to reality.

Credit / Illustration: Dustin Jacobus

Solarpunk imagines an optimistic future where humans have overcome the major environmental and social crises of our time and in the process created a safe, just world powered by clean energy and organised around collaborative social ideals.

It rejects the pessimism of cyberpunk, which paints the future as a corporate-controlled and environmentally degraded dystopia. As stated in a manifesto written collectively by the online solarpunk community, “as our world roils with calamity, we need solutions, not only warnings”.

The concept of solarpunk originally emerged in the late 2000s, when a handful of artists on the social media platform Tumblr began sharing drawings of futuristic green cities. Over time, the aesthetic and ethos evolved into a more robust vision for the world, and in the process has been embraced by other art forms. There are now published collections of solarpunk literature, subgenres of music, movements within architecture and even tabletop role-playing games.

At the core of this vision is the idea that humans can coexist in harmony with the rest of nature. A solarpunk world is one where vast swathes of land have been returned to wilderness, rooftop gardens dot the skylines of high-tech cities and vertical farms provide food to their residents.

Responsible use of technology is also a prominent theme. Solar, wind and wave power have entirely replaced fossil fuels as sources of energy, while widespread 3D printing has made it much easier to produce things locally, creating resilient, self-sufficient communities.

Increasingly, artists and writers in the solarpunk movement also describe a world that is just and safe for marginalised groups – especially those facing the brunt of the climate and ecological crisis today. “BIPOC [black, indigenous and people of colour] and queer people are safe in solarpunk futures,” says Brianna Castagnozzi, co-editor-in-chief of Solarpunk Magazine.

Although it may seem utopian and idealistic, solarpunk attempts to answer real questions being asked more and more often in light of the unfolding climate and ecological crisis. What can be saved? What does a truly sustainable civilisation look like? How do we get there?

It may be a big ask, but it’s increasingly clear that the scale of the environmental crises facing humanity demands transformational changes to the way we live, as well as the way we think. Art has the power to shape our attitudes, so perhaps it’s time – as Nigerian poet Ben Okri said recently – for artists of all kinds to “dedicate our lives to nothing short of re-dreaming society”.

Credit / Image: Luc Schuiten – Architect)

This article was originally published on China Dialogue by Joe Coroneo-Seaman under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics, Science

‘Our House Is Truly on Fire’: Earth Now Has 50% Chance of Hitting 1.5°C of Warming by 2026

“The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic,” said the head of the World Meteorological Organization. “It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”

The World Meteorological Organization warned Monday that the planet now faces a 50% chance of temporarily hitting 1.5°C of warming above pre-industrial levels over the next five years, another signal that political leaders—particularly those of the rich nations most responsible for carbon emissions—are failing to rein in fossil fuel use.

“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise.”

In 2015, by comparison, the likelihood of briefly reaching or exceeding 1.5°C of global warming over the ensuing five-year period was estimated to be “close to zero,” the WMO noted in a new climate update. The report was published amid a deadly heatwave on the Indian subcontinent that scientists say is a glimpse of what’s to come if runaway carbon emissions aren’t halted. Thus far, the heatwave has killed dozens in India and Pakistan.

Signatories to the Paris climate accord have agreed to act to limit the global average temperature increase to well below 2°C—preferably to 1.5°C—by the end of the century. Climate advocates have deemed the 1.5°C target “on life support” following world leaders’ refusal to commit to more ambitious action at the COP26 summit in Glasgow late last year.

“We are getting measurably closer to temporarily reaching the lower target of the Paris Agreement,” Petteri Taalas, the secretary-general of the WMO, said in a statement Monday. “The 1.5°C figure is not some random statistic. It is rather an indicator of the point at which climate impacts will become increasingly harmful for people and indeed the entire planet.”

“For as long as we continue to emit greenhouse gases, temperatures will continue to rise,” Taalas added. “And alongside that, our oceans will continue to become warmer and more acidic, sea ice and glaciers will continue to melt, sea level will continue to rise and, our weather will become more extreme. Arctic warming is disproportionately high and what happens in the Arctic affects all of us.”

Dr. Leon Hermanson, a climate expert at the U.K. Met Office who led the WMO report, stressed that a short-lived breach of the 1.5°C threshold would not mean that the world is guaranteed to fall short of the Paris accord’s most ambitious warming target, which climate experts and campaigners have long decried as inadequate.

Such a breach, however, would “reveal that we are edging ever closer to a situation where 1.5°C could be exceeded for an extended period,” said Hermanson.

The WMO’s latest research also estimates that there is a 93% chance that at least one year between 2022 and 2026 will be the warmest on record. Currently, 2016 and 2020 are tied for the top spot.

Even if global warming is limited to 1.5°C by 2100, countless people across the globe will still face devastating heatwaves, droughts, and other extreme weather, with the poor facing the worst consequences.

Meanwhile, key ecosystems could be damaged beyond repair in a 1.5°C hotter world. One recent study found that 99% of the world’s coral reefs would experience heatwaves that are “too frequent for them to recover” if the planet gets 1.5°C warmer compared to pre-industrial levels.

Scientists behind the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report cautioned last month that if there’s to be any hope of keeping warming to 1.5°C or below by 2100, “it’s now or never.”

“Without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, it will be impossible,” said Jim Skea, co-chair of IPCC Working Group III.

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Climate Solutions, Movies, Netflix

New Climate Doc Premieres on Netflix as Youth Await Major Court Decision

Video

The award-winning documentary titled YOUTH v GOV premiered globally on the streaming platform Netflix Friday as the youth plaintiffs featured in the film await a decision that could put their historic climate lawsuit on a path to trial.

“In under two hours, you get an inside look at nearly seven years of Juliana v. United States,” said Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel at Our Children’s Trust, in a statement about the independent film. “And it’s not over. We are determined to get to trial because our young clients deserve to take the stand and have their evidence heard by a judge.”

The documentary—directed by scientist and filmmaker Christi Cooper—focuses on the federal suit filed in 2015 and its 21 plaintiffs. The Our Children’s Trust legal team, which represents the young people, argues that by contributing to the climate emergency, the U.S. government is violating their clients’ constitutional rights to life, liberty, and property, and failing to protect essential public trust resources.

Shortly after settlement negotiations between the  U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) and attorneys for the Juliana youth ended without resolution last November, federal lawmakers and advocacy groups sent President Joe Biden and other leaders in his administration letters in support of the plaintiffs.

“The question now is whether the Biden administration will keep fighting tooth and nail to keep them silenced, and whether our courts will stand up for their constitutional rights,” Olson said Friday. “After 50 years of the government—both Democrats and Republicans—knowingly making the climate crisis worse, I’m not betting on partisan politics. But I do have faith in the judiciary.”

The plaintiffs—now ages 14 to 26—are waiting for a court to rule on a motion to amend their complaint, which could put the case on track for a trial.

Since talks with the DOJ concluded, climate scientists have reiterated warnings about the need for systemic changes on a global scale, Congress has failed to pass a package containing key climate measures, and Biden has facedcriticism for not taking executive action to address the planetary emergency.

“I think for a lot of young people right now, life is really scary, because we’ve never seen a moment like this in history, and our feelings about our life and our future [are] all because of choices that we had no participation in,” says 26-year-old Kelsey Juliana—the named plaintiff in the case—during the first two minutes of the film.

“And so the plaintiffs joined this case,” Juliana adds, “because we all know who’s to blame and what needs to be done.”

https://twitter.com/MarkRuffalo/status/1520092989564985344?s=20&t=aNOtJQZVA_KWn-I0lHWhNA

The Netflix release of the film—which has won over two dozen awards at film festivals worldwide—was met with excitement by climate action advocates.

“Put this on your must watch list this weekend!” tweeted the Wisconsin Environmental Health Network. “Let’s get this important documentary into Netflix’s trending now category!”

Noting that one of the plaintiffs—21-year-old Xiuhtezcatl Martinez—is based in Boulder, Matt Benjamin, a member of the Colorado city’s council, also highlighted the doc on Twitter.

“Make sure to check out this film streaming tonight on Netflix,” he said. “It’s inspirational. It’s emotional. It fills me with hope that our younger generations will take control of their future.”

Originally published on Common Dreams and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

Rising authoritarianism and worsening climate change share a fossil-fueled secret

Around the world, many countries are becoming less democratic. This backsliding on democracy and “creeping authoritarianism,” as the U.S. State Department puts it, is often supported by the same industries that are escalating climate change.

In my new book, “Global Burning: Rising Antidemocracy and the Climate Crisis,” I lay out connections between these industries and the politicians who are both stalling action on climate change and diminishing democracy.

It’s a dangerous shift, both for representative government and for the future climate.

Corporate capture of environmental politics

In democratic systems, elected leaders are expected to protect the public’s interests, including from exploitation by corporations. They do this primarily through policies designed to secure public goods, such as clean air and unpolluted water, or to protect human welfare, such as good working conditions and minimum wages. But in recent decades, this core democratic principle that prioritizes citizens over corporate profits has been aggressively undermined.

Today, it’s easy to find political leaders – on both the political right and left – working on behalf of corporations in energy, finance, agribusiness, technology, military and pharmaceutical sectors, and not always in the public interest. These multinational companies help fund their political careers and election campaigns to keep them in office.

In the U.S., this relationship was cemented by the Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United. The decision allowed almost unlimited spending by corporations and wealthy donors to support the political candidates who best serve their interests. Data shows that candidates with the most outside funding usually win. This has led to increasing corporate influence on politicians and party policies.

When it comes to the political parties, it’s easy to find examples of campaign finance fueling political agendas.

In 1988, when NASA scientist James Hansen testified before a U.S. Senate committee about the greenhouse effect, both the Republican and Democratic parties took climate change seriously. But this attitude quickly diverged. Since the 1990s, the energy sector has heavily financed conservative candidates who have pushed its interests and helped to reduce regulations on the fossil fuel industry. This has enabled the expansion of fossil fuel production and escalated CO2 emissions to dangerous levels.

The industry’s power in shaping policy plays out in examples like the coalition of 19 Republican state attorneys general and coal companies suing to block the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

At the same time that the energy sector has sought to influence policies on climate change, it has also worked to undermine the public’s understanding of climate science. For instance, records show ExxonMobil participated in a widespread climate-science denial campaign for years, spending more than US$30 million on lobbyists, think tanks and researchers to promote climate-science skepticism. These efforts continue today. A 2019 report found the five largest oil companies had spent over $1 billion on misleading climate-related lobbying and branding campaigns over the previous three years.

The energy industry has in effect captured the democratic political process and prevented enactment of effective climate policies.

Corporate interests have also fueled a surge in well-financed antidemocratic leaders who are willing to stall and even dismantle existing climate policies and regulations. These political leaders’ tactics have escalated public health crises, and in some cases, human rights abuses.

Brazil, Australia and the US

Many deeply antidemocratic governments are tied to oil, gas and other extractive industries that are driving climate change, including Russia, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and China.

In “Global Burning,” I explore how three leaders of traditionally democratic countries – Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Scott Morrison of Australia and Donald Trump in the U.S. – came to power on anti-environment and nationalist platforms appealing to an extreme-right populist base and extractive corporations that are driving climate change. While the political landscape of each country is different, the three leaders have important commonalities.

Bolsonaro, Morrison and Trump all depend on extractive corporations to fund electoral campaigns and keep them in office or, in the case of Trump, get reelected.

For instance, Bolsonaro’s power depends on support from a powerful right-wing association of landowners and farmers called the União Democrática Ruralista, or UDR. This association reflects the interests of foreign investors and specifically the multibillion-dollar mining and agribusiness sectors. Bolsonaro promised that if elected in 2019, he would dismantle environmental protections and open, in the name of economic progress, industrial-scale soybean production and cattle grazing in the Amazon rainforest. Both contribute to climate change and deforestation in a fragile region considered crucial for keeping carbon out of the atmosphere.

Bolsonaro, Morrison and Trump are all openly skeptical of climate science. Not surprisingly, all have ignored, weakened or dismantled environmental protection regulations. In Brazil, that led to accelerated deforestation and large swaths of Amazon rainforest burning.

In Australia, Morrison’s government ignored widespread public and scientific opposition and opened the controversial Adani Carmichael mine, one of the largest coal mines in the world. The mine will impact public health and the climate and threatens the Great Barrier Reef as temperatures rise and ports are expanded along the coast.

Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris climate agreement – a move opposed by a majority of Americans – rolled back over 100 laws meant to protect the environment and opened national parks to fossil fuel drilling and mining.

Notably, all three leaders have worked, sometimes together, against international efforts to stop climate change. At the United Nations climate talks in Spain in 2019, Costa Rica’s minister for environment and energy at the time, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, blamed Brazil, Australia and the U.S. for blocking efforts to tackle climate injustice linked to global warming.

Brazil, Australia and the U.S. are not unique in these responses to climate change. Around the world, there have been similar convergences of antidemocratic leaders who are financed by extractive corporations and who implement anti-environment laws and policies that defend corporate profits. New to the current moment is that these leaders openly use state power against their own citizens to secure corporate land grabs to build dams, lay pipelines, dig mines and log forests.

For example, Trump supported the deployment of the National Guard to disperse Native Americans and environmental activists protesting the Dakota Access Pipeline, a project that he had personally been invested in. His administration also proposed harsher penalties for pipeline protesters that echoed legislation promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council, whose members include lawmakers and lobbyists for the oil industry. Several Republican-led states enacted similar anti-protest laws.

Under Bolsonaro, Brazil has changed laws in ways that embolden land grabbers to push small farmers and Indigenous people off their land in the rainforest.

What can people do about it?

Fortunately, there is a lot that people can do to protect democracy and the climate.

Replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy and reducing the destruction of forests can cut greenhouse gas emissions. The biggest obstacles, a recent U.N. climate report noted, are national leaders who are unwilling to regulate fossil fuel corporations, reduce greenhouse gas emissions or plan for renewable energy production.

The path forward, as I see it, involves voters pushing back on the global trend toward authoritarianism, as Slovenia did in April 2022, and pushing forward on replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy. People can reclaim their democratic rights and vote out anti-environment governments whose power depends on prioritizing extractive capitalism over the best interests of their citizens and our collective humanity.

Eve Darian-Smith, Professor of Global and International Studies, University of California, Irvine

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Earth Day, Sustainable Energy

A ‘100% renewables’ target might not mean what you think it means. An energy expert explains

In the global effort to transition from fossil fuels to clean energy, achieving a “100% renewables” electricity system is considered ideal.

Some Australian states have committed to 100% renewable energy targets, or even 200% renewable energy targets. But this doesn’t mean their electricity is, or will be, emissions free.

Electricity is responsible for a third of Australia’s emissions, and making it cleaner is a key way to reduce emissions in other sectors that rely on it, such as transport.

So it’s important we have clarity about where our electricity comes from, and how emissions-intensive it is. Let’s look at what 100% renewables actually implies in detail.

Is 100% renewables realistic?

Achieving 100% renewables is one way of eliminating emissions from the electricity sector.

It’s commonly interpreted to mean all electricity must be generated from renewable sources. These sources usually include solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal, and exclude nuclear energy and fossil fuels with carbon capture and storage.

But this is a very difficult feat for individual states and territories to try to achieve.

The term “net 100% renewables” more accurately describes what some jurisdictions — such as South Australia and the ACT — are targeting, whether or not they’ve explicitly said so.

These targets don’t require that all electricity people use within the jurisdiction come from renewable sources. Some might come from coal or gas-fired generation, but the government offsets this amount by making or buying an equivalent amount of renewable electricity.

A net 100% renewables target allows a state to spruik its green credentials without needing to worry about the reliability implications of being totally self-reliant on renewable power.

So how does ‘net’ 100% renewables work?

All east coast states are connected to the National Electricity Market (NEM) — a system that allows electricity to be generated, used and shared across borders. This means individual states can achieve “net 100% renewables” without the renewable generation needing to occur when or where the electricity is required.

Take the ACT, for example, which has used net 100% renewable electricity since October 2019.

The ACT government buys renewable energy from generators outside the territory, which is then mostly used in other states, such as Victoria and South Australia. Meanwhile, people living in ACT rely on power from NSW that’s not emissions-free, because it largely comes from coal-fired power stations.

This way, the ACT government can claim net 100% renewables because it’s offsetting the non-renewable energy its residents use with the clean energy it’s paid for elsewhere.

SA’s target is to reach net 100% renewables by the 2030s. Unlike the ACT, it plans to generate renewable electricity locally, equal to 100% of its annual demand.

At times, such as especially sunny days, some of that electricity will be exported to other states. At other times, such as when the wind drops off, SA may need to rely on electricity imports from other states, which probably won’t come from all-renewable sources.

So what happens if all states commit to net 100% renewable energy targets? Then, the National Electricity Market will have a de-facto 100% renewable energy target — no “net”.

That’s because the market is one entire system, so its only options are “100% renewables” (implying zero emissions), or “less than 100% renewables”. The “net” factor doesn’t come into it, because there’s no other part of the grid for it to buy from or sell to.

How do you get to “200% renewables”, or more?

It’s mathematically impossible for more than 100% of the electricity used in the NEM to come from renewable sources: 100% is the limit.

Any target of more than 100% renewables is a different calculation. The target is no longer a measure of renewable generation versus all generation, but renewable generation versus today’s demand.

Australia could generate several times more renewable energy than there is demand today, but still use a small and declining amount of fossil fuels during rare weather events. Shutterstock

Tasmania, for example, has legislated a target of 200% renewable energy by 2040. This means it wants to produce twice as much renewable electricity as it consumes today.

But this doesn’t necessarily imply all electricity consumed in Tasmania will be renewable. For example, it may continue to import some non-renewable power from Victoria at times, such as during droughts when Tasmania’s hydro dams are constrained. It may even need to burn a small amount of gas as a backup.

This means the 200% renewable energy target is really a “net 200% renewables” target.

Meanwhile, the Greens are campaigning for 700% renewables. This, too, is based on today’s electricity demand.

In the future, demand could be much higher due to electrifying our transport, switching appliances from gas to electricity, and potentially exporting energy-intensive, renewable commodities such as green hydrogen or ammonia.

Targeting net-zero emissions

These “more than 100% renewables” targets set by individual jurisdictions don’t necessarily imply all electricity Australians use will be emissions free.

It’s possible — and potentially more economical — that we would meet almost all of this additional future demand with renewable energy, but keep some gas or diesel capacity as a low-cost backstop.

This would ensure continued electricity supply during rare, sustained periods of low wind, low sun, and high demand, such as during a cloudy, windless week in winter.

The energy transition is harder near the end — each percentage point between 90% and 100% renewables is more expensive to achieve than the previous.

That’s why, in a recent report from the Grattan Institute, we recommended governments pursue net-zero emissions in the electricity sector first, rather than setting 100% renewables targets today.

For example, buying carbon credits to offset the small amount of emissions produced in a 90% renewable NEM is likely to be cheaper in the medium term than building enough energy storage — such as batteries or pumped hydro dams — to backup wind and solar at all times.

The bottom line is governments and companies must say what they mean and mean what they say when announcing targets. It’s the responsibility of media and pundits to take care when interpreting them.

This article is by James Ha, Associate, Grattan Institute and republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

Offshore wind farms could help capture carbon from air and store it long-term – using energy that would otherwise go to waste

Video

Off the Massachusetts and New York coasts, developers are preparing to build the United States’ first federally approved utility-scale offshore wind farms – 74 turbines in all that could power 470,000 homes. More than a dozen other offshore wind projects are awaiting approval along the Eastern Seaboard.

By 2030, the Biden administration’s goal is to have 30 gigawatts of offshore wind energy flowing, enough to power more than 10 million homes.

Replacing fossil fuel-based energy with clean energy like wind power is essential to holding off the worsening effects of climate change. But that transition isn’t happening fast enough to stop global warming. Human activities have pumped so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere that we will also have to remove carbon dioxide from the air and lock it away permanently.

Offshore wind farms are uniquely positioned to do both – and save money.

Most renewable energy lease areas off the Atlantic Coast are near the Mid-Atlantic states and Massachusetts. About 480,000 acres of the New York Bight is scheduled to be auctioned for wind farms in February 2022. BOEM

As a marine geophysicist, I have been exploring the potential for pairing wind turbines with technology that captures carbon dioxide directly from the air and stores it in natural reservoirs under the ocean. Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment.

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Capturing CO2 from the air

Several research groups and tech startups are testing direct air capture devices that can pull carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere. The technology works, but the early projects so far are expensive and energy intensive.

The systems use filters or liquid solutions that capture CO2 from air blown across them. Once the filters are full, electricity and heat are needed to release the carbon dioxide and restart the capture cycle.

For the process to achieve net negative emissions, the energy source must be carbon-free.

The world’s largest active direct air capture plant operating today does this by using waste heat and renewable energy. The plant, in Iceland, then pumps its captured carbon dioxide into the underlying basalt rock, where the CO2 reacts with the basalt and calcifies, turning to solid mineral.

A similar process could be created with offshore wind turbines.

If direct air capture systems were built alongside offshore wind turbines, they would have an immediate source of clean energy from excess wind power and could pipe captured carbon dioxide directly to storage beneath the sea floor below, reducing the need for extensive pipeline systems.

Researchers are currently studying how these systems function under marine conditions. Direct air capture is only beginning to be deployed on land, and the technology likely would have to be modified for the harsh ocean environment. But planning should start now so wind power projects are positioned to take advantage of carbon storage sites and designed so the platforms, sub-sea infrastructure and cabled networks can be shared.

Using excess wind power when it isn’t needed

By nature, wind energy is intermittent. Demand for energy also varies. When the wind can produce more power than is needed, production is curtailed and electricity that could be used is lost.

That unused power could instead be used to remove carbon from the air and lock it away.

For example, New York State’s goal is to have 9 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2035. Those 9 gigawatts would be expected to deliver 27.5 terawatt-hours of electricity per year.

Based on historical wind curtailment rates in the U.S., a surplus of 825 megawatt-hours of electrical energy per year may be expected as offshore wind farms expand to meet this goal. Assuming direct air capture’s efficiency continues to improve and reaches commercial targets, this surplus energy could be used to capture and store upwards of 0.5 million tons of CO2 per year.

That’s if the system only used surplus energy that would have gone to waste. If it used more wind power, its carbon capture and storage potential would increase.

Several Mid-Atlantic areas being leased for offshore wind farms also have potential for carbon storage beneath the seafloor. The capacity is measured in millions of metric tons of CO2 per square kilometer. The U.S. produces about 4.5 billion metric tons of CO2 from energy per year. U.S. Department of Energy and Battelle

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has projected that 100 to 1,000 gigatons of carbon dioxide will have to be removed from the atmosphere over the century to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) compared to pre-industrial levels.

Researchers have estimated that sub-seafloor geological formations adjacent to the offshore wind developments planned on the U.S. East Coast have the capacity to store more than 500 gigatons of CO2. Basalt rocks are likely to exist in a string of buried basins across this area too, adding even more storage capacity and enabling CO2 to react with the basalt and solidify over time, though geotechnical surveys have not yet tested these deposits.

Planning both at once saves time and cost

New wind farms built with direct air capture could deliver renewable power to the grid and provide surplus power for carbon capture and storage, optimizing this massive investment for a direct climate benefit.

But it will require planning that starts well in advance of construction. Launching the marine geophysical surveys, environmental monitoring requirements and approval processes for both wind power and storage together can save time, avoid conflicts and improve environmental stewardship.

Originally published on The Conversation by David Goldberg, Lamont Research Professor, Columbia University and republished under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Books, Climate Solutions

Climate Change Books: Why 04-22-22 will mark the Beginning of a New Era in Human History

photo bookshop / Ingram / Lynxotic collage

For 50 years warnings have been ignored: now it will be actions and solutions that matter

As a child I was fascinated with the Geodesic Dome and other inventions, such as the Dymaxion Car by R. Buckminster Fuller. I devoured his books but one stood out in particular. ‘Utopia or Oblivion‘, an obscure title that was difficult to read due to the pregnant prose and the seemingly overwrought message ( and title), the text shocked my young mind.

Originally published in 1963, decades before my birth, is is now nearly 60 years since it came out. What was shocking to me, at the time I first read it, was that the warnings in the book, made abundantly and overtly clear in the title and body, were not heeded, and that basically after decades passed the issue of fossil fuels being a non-sustainable resource was virtually ignored, with prejudice.

In 1963 the ozone layer was for all practical purposes still intact. Climate change, and / or global warming, caused by massive carbon emissions and the whole nasty, familiar story of today, was not even a consideration.

It was enough to know, unequivocally, that oil and other fossil fuels were a finite resource, and therefore will one day run out, that made it imperative, according to Fuller, to begin the necessary journey to building a world without them.

A book written by a genius, scientist, innovator and sage

This book ‘did the math’ and the science and concluded that humankind (still called mankind in those days) would have two fates possible in the next century (our century, f.y.i.): Utopia or Oblivion. To understand why this is absolutely right, in my opinion, I recommend reading the 448 pages of the book, 8 times, as I have.

In the many years since I first read this, now 59 year old book, the only thing that has changed is that his predictions of a world where humanity would face extinction (or be rescued by the realization that utopia is possible once we, as a species, make it possible) are now more definitely certain than ever.

Elon Musk, someone who would likely agree with much of the science in the book, is trying to get the “light of human consciousness‘ to Mars, since Earth’s survival hangs in the balance.

In the years since the documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” (2006) was released, scores of scientists and world leaders have repeatedly warned of the increasing dangers, with actual occurrences and measurements producing evidence, mountains of evidence month by month. It has reached a point where, even in the USA which has the highest percentage of climate change skeptics, over 70% of the population, nevertheless, believes the threat is serious, important, and real.

Image: SAP/Qualtrics

Finally, nearly 60 years after R. Buckminster Fuller’s seminal work, there is a consensus in the world that this is a problem that must be solved.

Not something to debate or consider. Nothing to prove or produce evidence of in order to justify acting on, we all believe (as a majority) that the solutions must be found and the actions needed to implement those chances must be started immediately.

Some of us, for example anyone who read ‘Utopia or Oblivion’ during the last 59 years, or anyone who ‘did the math’ and understood that oil and fossil fuels are not, and never were, meant to be a permeant source of energy for humanity, are ready to act.

Therefore, this article, and many more you will have the opportunity to read in celebration of Earth Day 2022, is designed to invite you to act now, if only by reading and learning about the challenges we face.

And then, armed with knowledge and understanding, to begin today, on 04-22-2022, the first day of a new era in human history, the beginning of transition to the sustainable, clean energy era. Utopia, then must be achieved, in order to prevent Oblivion.

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History

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WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE
ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW‘S 10 BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
A NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALISTA major book about the future of the world, blending intellectual and natural history and field reporting into a powerful account of the mass extinction unfolding before our eyes Over the last half-billion years, there have been Five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the sixth extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us. In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before. Interweaving research in half a dozen disciplines, descriptions of the fascinating species that have already been lost, and the history of extinction as a concept, Kolbert provides a moving and comprehensive account of the disappearances occurring before our very eyes. She shows that the sixth extinction is likely to be mankind’s most lasting legacy, compelling us to rethink the fundamental question of what it means to be human.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER – In this urgent, authoritative book, Bill Gates sets out a wide-ranging, practical–and accessible–plan for how the world can get to zero greenhouse gas emissions in time to avoid a climate catastrophe.Bill Gates has spent a decade investigating the causes and effects of climate change. With the help of experts in the fields of physics, chemistry, biology, engineering, political science, and finance, he has focused on what must be done in order to stop the planet’s slide to certain environmental disaster. In this book, he not only explains why we need to work toward net-zero emissions of greenhouse gases, but also details what we need to do to achieve this profoundly important goal. He gives us a clear-eyed description of the challenges we face. Drawing on his understanding of innovation and what it takes to get new ideas into the market, he describes the areas in which technology is already helping to reduce emissions, where and how the current technology can be made to function more effectively, where breakthrough technologies are needed, and who is working on these essential innovations.

Finally, he lays out a concrete, practical plan for achieving the goal of zero emissions–suggesting not only policies that governments should adopt, but what we as individuals can do to keep our government, our employers, and ourselves accountable in this crucial enterprise. 
As Bill Gates makes clear, achieving zero emissions will not be simple or easy to do, but if we follow the plan he sets out here, it is a goal firmly within our reach.

The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable

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Are we deranged? The acclaimed Indian novelist Amitav Ghosh argues that future generations may well think so. How else to explain our imaginative failure in the face of global warming? In his first major book of nonfiction since In an Antique Land, Ghosh examines our inability–at the level of literature, history, and politics–to grasp the scale and violence of climate change. 
The extreme nature of today’s climate events, Ghosh asserts, make them peculiarly resistant to contemporary modes of thinking and imagining. This is particularly true of serious literary fiction: hundred-year storms and freakish tornadoes simply feel too improbable for the novel; they are automatically consigned to other genres.

In the writing of history, too, the climate crisis has sometimes led to gross simplifications; Ghosh shows that the history of the carbon economy is a tangled global story with many contradictory and counterintuitive elements. Ghosh ends by suggesting that politics, much like literature, has become a matter of personal moral reckoning rather than an arena of collective action. But to limit fiction and politics to individual moral adventure comes at a great cost. The climate crisis asks us to imagine other forms of human existence–a task to which fiction, Ghosh argues, is the best suited of all cultural forms. His book serves as a great writer’s summons to confront the most urgent task of our time. 

No Planet B: A Teen Vogue Guide to the Climate Crisis

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An urgent call for climate justice from Teen Vogue, one of this generation’s leading voices, using an intersectional lens – with critical feminist, indigenous, antiracist and internationalist perspectives. As the political classes watch our world burn, a new movement of young people is rising to meet the challenge of climate catastrophe. This book is a guide, a toolkit, a warning and a cause for hope.


I hope that this book embodies Teen Vogue’s motto of making young people feel seen and heard all over the world. I hope that it forces their parents, communities, loved ones, friends, and–most importantly–those in power to see that the health of our planet depends on how quickly and drastically we change our behaviors. I hope it forces them all to respond. –From the foreword by Teen Vogue editor-in-chief, Lindsay Peoples Wagner

The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming

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#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER – “The Uninhabitable Earth hits you like a comet, with an overflow of insanely lyrical prose about our pending Armageddon.”–Andrew Solomon, author of The Noonday Demon

With a new afterwordIt is worse, much worse, than you think. If your anxiety about global warming is dominated by fears of sea-level rise, you are barely scratching the surface of what terrors are possible–food shortages, refugee emergencies, climate wars and economic devastation. An “epoch-defining book” (TheGuardian) and “this generation’s Silent Spring” (The Washington Post), The Uninhabitable Earth is both a travelogue of the near future and a meditation on how that future will look to those living through it–the ways that warming promises to transform global politics, the meaning of technology and nature in the modern world, the sustainability of capitalism and the trajectory of human progress. The Uninhabitable Earth is also an impassioned call to action. For just as the world was brought to the brink of catastrophe within the span of a lifetime, the responsibility to avoid it now belongs to a single generation–today’s. Praise for The Uninhabitable Earth“The Uninhabitable Earth is the most terrifying book I have ever read. Its subject is climate change, and its method is scientific, but its mode is Old Testament. The book is a meticulously documented, white-knuckled tour through the cascading catastrophes that will soon engulf our warming planet.”–Farhad Manjoo, The New York Times

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History
How to Avoid a Climate Disaster
The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable
No Planet B: A Teen Vogue Guide to the Climate Crisis
The Uninhabitable Earth: Life After Warming
Also can be viewed on Amazon

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Climate Solutions, News

These energy innovations could transform how we mitigate climate change, and save money in the process – 5 essential reads

Building solar panels over water sources is one way to both provide power and reduce evaporation in drought-troubled regions. Robin Raj, Citizen Group & Solar Aquagrid

Stacy Morford, The Conversation

To most people, a solar farm or a geothermal plant is an important source of clean energy. Scientists and engineers see that plus far more potential.

They envision offshore wind turbines capturing and storing carbon beneath the sea, and geothermal plants producing essential metals for powering electric vehicles. Electric vehicle batteries, too, can be transformed to power homes, saving their owners money and also reducing transportation emissions.

With scientists worldwide sounding the alarm about the increasing dangers and costs of climate change, let’s explore some cutting-edge ideas that could transform how today’s technologies reduce the effects of global warming, from five recent articles in The Conversation.

1. Solar canals: Power + water protection

What if solar panels did double duty, protecting water supplies while producing more power?

California is developing the United States’ first solar canals, with solar panels built atop some of the state’s water distribution canals. These canals run for thousands of miles through arid environments, where the dry air boosts evaporation in a state frequently troubled by water shortages.

“In a 2021 study, we showed that covering all 4,000 miles of California’s canals with solar panels would save more than 65 billion gallons of water annually by reducing evaporation. That’s enough to irrigate 50,000 acres of farmland or meet the residential water needs of more than 2 million people,” writes engineering professor Roger Bales of the University of California, Merced. They would also expand renewable energy without taking up farmable land.

Research shows that human activities, particularly using fossil fuels for energy and transportation, are unequivocally warming the planet and increasing extreme weather. Increasing renewable energy, currently about 20% of U.S. utility-scale electricity generation, can reduce fossil fuel demand.

Putting solar panels over shaded water can also improve their power output. The cooler water lowers the temperature of the panels by about 10 degrees Fahrenheit (5.5 Celsius), boosting their efficiency, Bales writes.

2. Geothermal power could boost battery supplies

For renewable energy to slash global greenhouse gas emissions, buildings and vehicles have to be able to use it. Batteries are essential, but the industry has a supply chain problem.

Most batteries used in electric vehicles and utility-scale energy storage are lithium-ion batteries, and most lithium used in the U.S. comes from Argentina, Chile, China and Russia. China is the leader in lithium processing.

Geologist and engineers are working on an innovative method that could boost the U.S. lithium supply at home by extracting lithium from geothermal brines in California’s Salton Sea region.

Brines are the liquid leftover in a geothermal plant after heat and steam are used to produce power. That liquid contains lithium and other metals such as manganese, zinc and boron. Normally, it is pumped back underground, but the metals can also be filtered out. https://www.youtube.com/embed/oYtyEVPGEU8?wmode=transparent&start=0 How lithium is extracted during geothermal energy production. Courtesy of Controlled Thermal Resources.

“If test projects now underway prove that battery-grade lithium can be extracted from these brines cost effectively, 11 existing geothermal plants along the Salton Sea alone could have the potential to produce enough lithium metal to provide about 10 times the current U.S. demand,” write geologist Michael McKibben of the University of California, Riverside, and energy policy scholar Bryant Jones of Boise State University.

President Joe Biden invoked the Defense Production Act on March 31, 2022, to provide incentives for U.S. companies to mine and process more critical minerals for batteries.

3. Green hydrogen and other storage ideas

Scientists are working on other ways to boost batteries’ mineral supply chain, too, including recycling lithium and cobalt from old batteries. They’re also developing designs with other materials, explained Kerry Rippy, a researcher with the National Renewable Energy Lab.

Concentrated solar power, for example, stores energy from the sun by heating molten salt and using it to produce steam to drive electric generators, similar to how a coal power plant would generate electricity. It’s expensive, though, and the salts currently used aren’t stable at higher temperature, Rippy writes. The Department of Energy is funding a similar project that is experimenting with heated sand. https://www.youtube.com/embed/fkX-H24Chfw?wmode=transparent&start=0 Hydrogen’s challenges, including its fossil fuel history.

Renewable fuels, such as green hydrogen and ammonia, provide a different type of storage. Since they store energy as liquid, they can be transported and used for shipping or rocket fuel.

Hydrogen gets a lot of attention, but not all hydrogen is green. Most hydrogen used today is actually produced with natural gas – a fossil fuel. Green hydrogen, in contrast, could be produced using renewable energy to power electrolysis, which splits water molecules into hydrogen and oxygen, but again, it’s expensive.

“The key challenge is optimizing the process to make it efficient and economical,” Rippy writes. “The potential payoff is enormous: inexhaustible, completely renewable energy.”

4. Using your EV to power your home

Batteries could also soon turn your electric vehicle into a giant, mobile battery capable of powering your home.

Only a few vehicles are currently designed for vehicle-to-home charging, or V2H, but that’s changing, writes energy economist Seth Blumsack of Penn State University. Ford, for example, says its new F-150 Lightning pickup truck will be able to power an average house for three days on a single charge.

How bidirectional charging allows EVs to power homes.

Blumsack explores the technical challenges as V2H grows and its potential to change how people manage energy use and how utilities store power.

For example, he writes, “some homeowners might hope to use their vehicle for what utility planners call ‘peak shaving’ – drawing household power from their EV during the day instead of relying on the grid, thus reducing their electricity purchases during peak demand hours.”

5. Capturing carbon from air and locking it away

Another emerging technology is more controversial.

Humans have put so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere over the past two centuries that just stopping fossil fuel use won’t be enough to quickly stabilize the climate. Most scenarios, including in recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reports, show the world will have to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, as well.

The technology to capture carbon dioxide from the air exists – it’s called direct air capture – but it’s expensive.

Engineers and geophysicists like David Goldberg of Columbia University are exploring ways to cut those costs by combining direct air capture technology with renewable energy production and carbon storage, like offshore wind turbines built above undersea rock formations where captured carbon could be locked away.

The world’s largest direct air capture plant, launched in 2021 in Iceland, uses geothermal energy to power its equipment. The captured carbon dioxide is mixed with water and pumped into volcanic basalt formations underground. Chemical reactions with the basalt turn it into a hard carbonate.

Goldberg, who helped developed the mineralization process used in Iceland, sees similar potential for future U.S. offshore wind farms. Wind turbines often produce more energy than their customers need at any given time, making excess energy available.

“Built together, these technologies could reduce the energy costs of carbon capture and minimize the need for onshore pipelines, reducing impacts on the environment,” Goldberg writes.

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Stacy Morford, Environment + Climate Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, Earth and Ecology, Sustainable Energy

Electrifying homes to slow climate change: 4 essential reads

The latest reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change show that to avoid massive losses and damage from global warming, nations must act quickly to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. The good news is that experts believe it’s possible to cut global greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 through steps such as using energy more efficiently, slowing deforestation and speeding up the adoption of renewable energy.

Many of those strategies require new laws, regulations or funding to move forward at the speed and scale that’s needed. But one strategy that’s increasingly feasible for many consumers is powering their homes and devices with electricity from clean sources. These four articles from our archives explain why electrifying homes is an important climate strategy and how consumers can get started.

1. Why go electric?

As of 2020, home energy use accounted for about one-sixth of total U.S. energy consumption. Nearly half (47%) of this energy came from electricity, followed by natural gas (42%), oil (8%) and renewable energy (7%). By far the largest home energy use is for heating and air conditioning, followed by lighting, refrigerators and other appliances.

The most effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from home energy consumption is to substitute electricity generated from low- and zero-carbon sources for oil and natural gas. And the power sector is rapidly moving that way: As a 2021 report from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory showed, power producers have reduced their carbon emissions by 50% from what energy experts predicted in 2005.

“This drop happened thanks to policy, market and technology drivers,” a team of Lawrence Berkeley lab analysts concluded. Wind and solar power have scaled up and cut their costs, so utilities are using more of them. Cheap natural gas has replaced generation from dirtier coal. And public policies have encouraged the use of energy-efficient technologies like LED light bulbs. These converging trends make electric power an increasingly climate-friendly energy choice.

The U.S. is using much more low-carbon and carbon-free electricity today than projected in 2005. Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, CC BY-ND

2. Heat pumps for cold and hot days

Since heating and cooling use so much energy, switching from an oil- or gas-powered furnace to a heat pump can greatly reduce a home’s carbon footprint. As University of Dayton sustainability expert Robert Brecha explains, heat pumps work by moving heat in and out of buildings, not by burning fossil fuel.

“Extremely cold fluid circulates through coils of tubing in the heat pump’s outdoor unit,” Brecha writes. “That fluid absorbs energy in the form of heat from the surrounding air, which is warmer than the fluid. The fluid vaporizes and then circulates into a compressor. Compressing any gas heats it up, so this process generates heat. Then the vapor moves through coils of tubing in the indoor unit of the heat pump, heating the building.”

In summer, the process reverses: Heat pumps take energy from indoors and move that heat outdoors, just as a refrigerator removes heat from the chamber where it stores food and expels it into the air in the room where it sits.

Another option is a geothermal heat pump, which collects warmth from the earth and uses the same process as air source heat pumps to move it into buildings. These systems cost more, since installing them involves excavation to bury tubing below ground, but they also reduce electricity use.

3. Cooking without gas – or heat

For people who like to cook, the biggest sticking point of going electric is the prospect of using an electric stove. Many home chefs see gas flames as more responsive and precise than electric burners.

But magnetic induction, which cooks food by generating a magnetic field under the pot, eliminates the need to fire up a burner altogether.

“Instead of conventional burners, the cooking spots on induction cooktops are called hobs, and consist of wire coils embedded in the cooktop’s surface,” writes Binghamton University electrical engineering professor Kenneth McLeod.

Moving an electric charge through those wires creates a magnetic field, which in turn creates an electric field in the bottom of the cookware. “Because of resistance, the pan will heat up, even though the hob does not,” McLeod explains.

Induction cooktops warm up and cool down very quickly and offer highly accurate temperature control. They also are easy to clean, since they are made of glass, and safer than electric stoves since the hobs don’t stay hot when pans are lifted off them. Many utilities are offering rebates to cover the higher cost of induction cooktops.

4. Electric cars as backup power sources

Electrifying systems like home heating and cooking made residents even more vulnerable to power outages. Soon, however, a new backup system could become available: powering your home from your electric vehicle.

With interest in electric cars and light trucks rising in the U.S., auto makers are introducing many new EV models and designs. Some of these new rides will offer bidirectional charging – the ability to charge a car battery at home, then move that power back into the house, and eventually, into the grid.

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Only a few models offer this capacity now, and it requires special equipment that can add several thousand dollars to the price of an EV. But Penn State energy expert Seth Blumsack sees value in this emerging technology.

“Enabling homeowners to use their vehicles as backup when the power goes down would reduce the social impacts of large-scale blackouts. It also would give utilities more time to restore service – especially when there is substantial damage to power poles and wires,” Blumsack explains. “Bidirectional charging is also an integral part of a broader vision for a next-generation electric grid in which millions of EVs are constantly taking power from the grid and giving it back – a key element of an electrified future.”

Editor’s note: This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

Jennifer Weeks, Senior Environment + Energy Editor, The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

How fast can we stop Earth from warming?

The ocean retains heat for much longer than land does. photo / adobe stock / lynxotic

Richard B. (Ricky) Rood, University of Michigan

Global warming doesn’t stop on a dime. If people everywhere stopped burning fossil fuels tomorrow, stored heat would still continue to warm the atmosphere.

Picture how a radiator heats a home. Water is heated by a boiler, and the hot water circulates through pipes and radiators in the house. The radiators warm up and heat the air in the room. Even after the boiler is turned off, the already heated water is still circulating through the system, heating the house. The radiators are, in fact, cooling down, but their stored heat is still warming the air in the room.

This is known as committed warming. Earth similarly has ways of storing and releasing heat.

Emerging research is refining scientists’ understanding of how Earth’s committed warming will affect the climate. Where we once thought it would take 40 years or longer for global surface air temperature to peak once humans stopped heating up the planet, research now suggests temperature could peak in closer to 10 years.

But that doesn’t mean the planet returns to its preindustrial climate or that we avoid disruptive effects such as sea level rise.

I am a professor of climate science, and my research and teaching focus on the usability of climate knowledge by practitioners such as urban planners, public health professionals and policymakers. Let’s take a look at the bigger picture.

How understanding of peak warming has changed

Historically, the first climate models represented only the atmosphere and were greatly simplified. Over the years, scientists added oceans, land, ice sheets, chemistry and biology.

Today’s models can more explicitly represent the behavior of greenhouse gases, especially carbon dioxide. That allows scientists to better separate heating due to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from the role of heat stored in the ocean. https://www.youtube.com/embed/_WUNMzC98jI?wmode=transparent&start=0 Why global warming is ocean warming.

Thinking about our radiator analogy, increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases in Earth’s atmosphere keep the boiler on – holding energy near the surface and raising the temperature. Heat accumulates and is stored, mostly in the oceans, which take on the role of the radiators. The heat is distributed around the world through weather and oceanic currents.

The current understanding is that if all of the additional heating to the planet caused by humans was eliminated, a plausible outcome is that Earth would reach a global surface air temperature peak in closer to 10 years than 40. The previous estimate of 40 or more years has been widely used over the years, including by me.

It is important to note that this is only the peak, when the temperature starts to stabilize – not the onset of rapid cooling or a reversal of climate change.

I believe there is enough uncertainty to justify caution about exaggerating the significance of the new research’s results. The authors applied the concept of peak warming to global surface air temperature. Global surface air temperature is, metaphorically, the temperature in the “room,” and is not the best measure of climate change. The concept of instantly cutting off human-caused heating is also idealized and entirely unrealistic – doing that would involve much more than just ending fossil fuel use, including widespread changes to agriculture – and it only helps illustrate how parts of the climate might behave.

Even if the air temperature were to peak and stabilize, “committed ice melting,” “committed sea level rise” and numerous other land and biological trends would continue to evolve from the accumulated heat. Some of these could, in fact, cause a release of carbon dioxide and methane, especially from the Arctic and other high-latitude reservoirs that are currently frozen.

For these reasons and others, it is important to consider the how far into the future studies like this one look.

Oceans in the future

Oceans will continue to store heat and exchange it with the atmosphere. Even if emissions stopped, the excess heat that has been accumulating in the ocean since preindustrial times would influence the climate for another 100 years or more.

Because the ocean is dynamic, it has currents, and it will not simply diffuse its excess heat back into the atmosphere. There will be ups and downs as the temperature adjusts.

The oceans also influence the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because carbon dioxide is both absorbed and emitted by the oceans. Paleoclimate studies show large changes in carbon dioxide and temperature in the past, with the oceans playing an important role.

The chart shows how excess heat – thermal energy – has built up in ocean, land, ice and atmosphere since 1960 and moved to greater ocean depths with time. TOA CERES refers to the top of the atmosphere. Karina von Schuckman, LiJing Cheng, Matthew D. Palmer, James Hansen, Caterina Tassone, et al., CC BY-SA

Countries aren’t close to ending fossil fuel use

The possibility that a policy intervention might have measurable impacts in 10 years rather than several decades could motivate more aggressive efforts to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. It would be very satisfying to see policy interventions having present rather than notional future benefits.

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However, today, countries aren’t anywhere close to ending their fossil fuel use. Instead, all of the evidence points to humanity experiencing rapid global warming in the coming decades.

Our most robust finding is that the less carbon dioxide humans release, the better off humanity will be. Committed warming and human behavior point to a need to accelerate efforts both to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and to adapt to this warming planet now, rather than simply talking about how much needs to happen in the future.

Richard B. (Ricky) Rood, Professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation, Politics

Dozens Arrested as Scientists Worldwide Mobilize to Demand ‘Climate Revolution’

Photo Credit / Scientist Rebellion Twitter @ScientistRebel1

“If everyone could see what I see coming,” said one scientist, “society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years.”

More than 1,000 scientists across the globe chained themselves to the doors of oil-friendly banks, blocked bridges, and occupied the steps of government buildings on Wednesday to send an urgent message to the international community: The ecological crisis is accelerating, and only a “climate revolution” will be enough to avert catastrophe.

“World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane.”

What organizers described as “the world’s largest-ever scientist-led civil disobedience campaign” kicked off just days after the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report detailing the grim state of efforts to limit global warming to 1.5°C by century’s end, a target set by the Paris accord.

As one of the report’s authors put it during a press call earlier this week, “Unless there are immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, 1.5°C is beyond reach.”

Warning that the IPCC report’s language was watered downat the behest of governments unwilling to rapidly phase out fossil fuels, scientists and their allies took that message further during their direct actions on Wednesday, operating under the slogan “1.5°C is dead, climate revolution now!”

“I’m taking action because I feel desperate,” said U.S. climate scientist Peter Kalmus, who along with several others locked himself to the front door of a JPMorgan Chase building in Los Angeles. A recent report found that the financial giant is the biggest private funder of oil and gas initiatives in the world.

“It’s the 11th hour in terms of Earth breakdown, and I feel terrified for my kids, and terrified for humanity,” Kalmus continued. “World leaders are still expanding the fossil fuel industry as fast as they can, but this is insane. The science clearly indicates that everything we hold dear is at risk, including even civilization itself and the wonderful, beautiful, cosmically precious life on this planet. I actually don’t get how any scientist who understands this could possibly stay on the sidelines at this point.”

The Los Angeles demonstration was accompanied by other protests across the U.S., the largest historical emitter of planet-warming carbon dioxide and home to some of the most powerful fossil fuel companies in the world.

In Washington, D.C., climate scientists chained themselves to the White House fence and were ultimately arrested as they demanded that U.S. President Joe Biden declare a “climate emergency,” a step that would unlock a range of tools needed to combat global warming.

“We have not made the changes necessary to limit warming to 1.5°C, rendering this goal effectively impossible,” said Dr. Rose Abramoff, one of the scientists arrested at the White House. “We need to both understand the consequences of our inaction as well as limit fossil fuel emissions as much and as quickly as possible.”

“I’m taking action to urge governments and society to stop ignoring the collective findings of decades of research,” Abramoff added. “Let’s make this crisis impossible to ignore.”

Similar acts of civil disobedience were held across the globe as scientists took to the streets to demand that governments ramp up their transitions to renewable energy as the climate crisis intensifies extreme weather, endangers critical ecosystems, and takes lives worldwide.

In Madrid, Spain, scientists splashed red paint on the walls and steps of the Congress of Deputies to decry lawmakers’ inaction in the face of the existential climate threat. More than 50 scientists were arrested during the demonstration, according to organizers.

Scientists also mobilized in Germany, blocking a bridge near the country’s parliament building.

In an op-ed published in The Guardian on Wednesday, Kalmus warned that “Earth breakdown is much worse than most people realize.”

“The science indicates that as fossil fuels continue to heat our planet, everything we love is at risk,” he wrote. “For me, one of the most horrific aspects of all this is the juxtaposition of present-day and near-future climate disasters with the ‘business as usual’ occurring all around me. It’s so surreal that I often find myself reviewing the science to make sure it’s really happening, a sort of scientific nightmare arm-pinch. Yes, it’s really happening.”

“If everyone could see what I see coming,” Kalmus added, “society would switch into climate emergency mode and end fossil fuels in just a few years.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by JAKE JOHNSON and republished

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

Rebellious Climate Scientists Have Message for Humanity: ‘Mobilize, Mobilize, Mobilize’

In face of the “escalating climate emergency,” the advocacy group Scientist Rebellion warns that IPCC summary to global policymakers remains “alarmingly reserved, docile, and conservative.”

Amid a weeklong global civil disobedience campaign to demand climate action commensurate with mounting evidence about the need for swift decarbonization, Scientist Rebellion is highlighting specific gaps between what experts say is necessary and what governments allowed to be published in a summary of the United Nations’ latest climate assessment.

“We need a billion climate activists…The time is now. We’ve waited far too long.”

The landmark report on mitigation by Working Group III of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—part of the U.N.’s sixth comprehensive climate assessment since 1992 and possibly the last to be published with enough time to avert the most catastrophic consequences of the planetary crisis—was compiled by 278 researchers from 65 countries.

The authors, who synthesized thousands of peer-reviewed studies published in the past several years, make clear over the course of nearly 3,000 pages that “without immediate and deep emissions reductions across all sectors, limiting global warming to 1.5°C is beyond reach.”

Meanwhile, a 64-page Summary for Policymakers (SPM) of the report—a key reference point for governments—required the approval of all 195 member states of the IPCC and was edited with their input.

Following a contentious weekend of negotiations in which wealthy governments attempted to weaken statements about green financing for low-income nations and fossil fuel-producing countries objected to unequivocal language about the need to quickly eliminate coal, oil, and gas extraction, the IPCC document was published several hours later than expected on Monday.

“Despite the escalating climate emergency and the total absence of emissions cuts, the framing of the final version of the SPM is still alarmingly reserved, docile, and conservative,” Scientist Rebellion, an international alliance of academics who are advocating for systemic political and economic changes in line with scientific findings, said Tuesday in a statement.

“The science has never been clearer: to have any chance of retaining a habitable planet, greenhouse gas emissions must be cut radically now,” the group continued. “Limiting warming to 1.5°C and responding to the climate emergency requires an immediate transformation across all sectors and strata of society, a mobilization of historic proportions: a climate revolution.”

“The IPCC [has] avoided naming the major culprits for 30 years, which is one reason for the absence of real emissions cuts,” the group added. “Facts detailing the complicity of the world’s richest countries in fueling the climate crisis have been watered down by the IPCC’s political review process.”

Scientist Rebellion proceeded to contrast the final version of the SPM—”the document that garners almost all attention”—to an early draft of a summary of the Working Group III report on mitigation that IPCC authors associated with the group leaked last August out of concern that their conclusions would be diluted by policymakers.

Peter Kalmus, a Los Angeles-based climate scientist and author who is participating in this week’s direct actions, told Common Dreams that the shortcomings of governments and policymakers have driven him to act.

Kalmus said he was willing to engage in civil disobedience and risk arrest this week, “because I’ve tried everything else I can think of over the past decade and nothing has worked. I see humanity heading directly toward climate disaster.”

With humanity “currently on track to lose everything we love,” he said, the scientific community must intensify its efforts.

“If we don’t rapidly end the fossil fuel industry and begin acting like Earth breakdown is an emergency, we risk civilizational collapse and potentially the death of billions, not to mention the loss of major critical ecosystems around the world,” said Kalmus. “This is so much bigger than me. Expect climate scientists to be taking such actions repeatedly in the future and in large numbers.”

On Wednesday, direct actions by scientists took place in Berlin, Germany; The Hague, Netherlands; Bogata, Colombia, and other cities.

https://twitter.com/wirereporter/status/1511705115517935617?s=20&t=LlCjWCRAmgFIMD1RfOn4uw

In its Tuesday assessment, Scientist Rebellion documented how the political review process weakened or eliminated language about carbon inequality and the need for far-reaching socio-economic transformation to slash greenhouse gas (GHG) pollution in the final SPM:

Example 1: Section B6 of the report originally stated that “institutional inertia and a social bias towards the status quo are leading to a risk of locking in future GHG emissions that may be costly or difficult to abate.” This has been replaced with “global GHG emissions in 2030 associated with the implementation of nationally determined contributions… would make it likely that warming will exceed 1.5°C during the 21st century.” The final version also no longer mentions that “vested interests” and a focus on an “incremental rather than a systemic approach” are limiting factors to ambitious transformation.

Example 2: The leaked SPM stated that “within countries, inequalities increased for both income and GHG emissions between 1970 and 2016, with the top 1% accounting for 27% of income growth,” and that “top emitters dominate emissions in key sectors, for example the top 1% account for 50% of GHG emissions from aviation.” Neither statement appears in the final version.

“While the SPM—being approved line-by-line by all governments—is reserved, docile, and conservative, the situation is clear,” said Scientist Rebellion.

The group went on to quote U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres, who said Monday that “we are on a fast track to climate disaster.”

As Common Dreams reported Monday, more than 1,000 scientists in at least 25 countries on every continent in the world are expected to participate in strikes, occupations, and other actions this week to highlight “the urgency and injustice of the climate and ecological crisis,” and several demonstrations are already underway. 

Guterres, for his part, said Monday that “climate activists are sometimes depicted as dangerous radicals, but the truly dangerous radicals are the countries that are increasing the production of fossil fuels.”

For his part, Kalmus acknowledged it was going to take much more than a series of direct actions by scientists to turn the tide against inaction.

“We need a billion climate activists,” Kalmus said. “I encourage everyone to consider where we’re heading as a species, and to engage in civil disobedience and other actions. The time is now. We’ve waited far too long.”

“Mobilize, mobilize, mobilize,” he said, “before we lose everything.”

Originally published on Common Dreams by KENNY STANCIL and republished under a Creative Commons license (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0).

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Climate Solutions, News, Observation

On top of drastic emissions cuts, IPCC finds large-scale CO₂ removal from air will be “essential” to meeting targets

A Climate Change Concept Image

Sam Wenger, University of Sydney and Deanna D’Alessandro, University of Sydney

Large-scale deployment of carbon dioxide removal (CDR) methods is now “unavoidable” if the world is to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions, according to this week’s report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

The report, released on Monday, finds that in addition to rapid and deep reductions in greenhouse emissions, CO₂ removal is “an essential element of scenarios that limit warming to 1.5℃ or likely below 2℃ by 2100”.

CDR refers to a suite of activities that lower the concentration of CO₂ in the atmosphere. This is done by removing CO₂ molecules and storing the carbon in plants, trees, soil, geological reservoirs, ocean reservoirs or products derived from CO₂.

As the IPCC notes, each mechanism is complex, and has advantages and pitfalls. Much work is needed to ensure CDR projects are rolled out responsibly.

How does CDR work?

CDR is distinct from “carbon capture”, which involves catching CO₂ at the source, such as a coal-fired power plant or steel mill, before it reaches the atmosphere.

There are several ways to remove CO₂ from the air. They include:

  • terrestrial solutions, such as planting trees and adopting regenerative soil practices, such as low or no-till agriculture and cover cropping, which limit soil disturbances that can oxidise soil carbon and release CO₂.
  • geochemical approaches that store CO₂ as a solid mineral carbonate in rocks. In a process known as “enhanced mineral weathering”, rocks such as limestone and olivine can be finely ground to increase their surface area and enhance a naturally occurring process whereby minerals rich in calcium and magnesium react with CO₂ to form a stable mineral carbonate.
  • chemical solutions such as direct air capture that use engineered filters to remove CO₂ molecules from air. The captured CO₂ can then be injected deep underground into saline aquifers and basaltic rock formations for durable sequestration.
  • ocean-based solutions, such as enhanced alkalinity. This involves directly adding alkaline materials to the environment, or electrochemically processing seawater. But these methods need to be further researched before being deployed.

Where is it being used right now?

To date, US-based company Charm Industrial has delivered 5,000 tonnes of CDR, which is the the largest volume thus far. This is equivalent to the emissions produced by about 1,000 cars in a year.

There are also several plans for larger-scale direct air capture facilities. In September, 2021, Climeworks opened a facility in Iceland with a 4,000 tonne per annum capacity for CO₂ removal. And in the US, the Biden Administration has allocated US$3.5 billion to build four separate direct air capture hubs, each with the capacity to remove at least one million tonnes of CO₂ per year.

However, a previous IPCC report estimated that to limit global warming to 1.5℃, between 100 billion and one trillion tonnes of CO₂ must be removed from the atmosphere this century. So while these projects represent a massive scale-up, they are still a drop in the ocean compared with what is required.

In Australia, Southern Green Gas and Corporate Carbon are developing one of the country’s first direct air capture projects. This is being done in conjunction with University of Sydney researchers, ourselves included.

In this system, fans push atmospheric air over finely tuned filters made from molecular adsorbents, which can remove CO₂ molecules from the air. The captured CO₂ can then be injected deep underground, where it can remain for thousands of years.

Opportunities

It is important to stress CDR is not a replacement for emissions reductions. However, it can supplement these efforts. The IPCC has outlined three ways this might be done.

In the short term, CDR could help reduce net CO₂ emissions. This is crucial if we are to limit warming below critical temperature thresholds.

In the medium term, it could help balance out emissions from sectors such as agriculture, aviation, shipping and industrial manufacturing, where straightforward zero-emission alternatives don’t yet exist.

In the long term, CDR could potentially remove large amounts of historical emissions, stabilising atmospheric CO₂ and eventually bringing it back down to pre-industrial levels.

The IPCC’s latest report has estimated the technological readiness levels, costs, scale-up potential, risk and impacts, co-benefits and trade-offs for 12 different forms of CDR. This provides an updated perspective on several forms of CDR that were lesser explored in previous reports.

It estimates each tonne of CO₂ retrieved through direct air capture will cost US$84–386, and that there is the feasible potential to remove between 5 billion and 40 billion tonnes annually.

Concerns and challenges

Each CDR method is complex and unique, and no solution is perfect. As deployment grows, a number of concerns must be addressed.

First, the IPCC notes scaling up CDR must not detract from efforts to dramatically reduce emissions. They write that “CDR cannot serve as a substitute for deep emissions reductions but can fulfil multiple complementary roles”.

If not done properly, CDR projects could potentially compete with agriculture for land or introduce non-native plants and trees. As the IPCC notes, care must be taken to ensure the technology does not negatively affect biodiversity, land-use or food security.

The IPCC also notes some CDR methods are energy-intensive, or could consume renewable energy needed to decarbonise other activities.

It expressed concern CDR might also exacerbate water scarcity and make Earth reflect less sunlight, such as in cases of large-scale reforestation.

Given the portfolio of required solutions, each form of CDR might work best in different locations. So being thoughtful about placement can ensure crops and trees are planted where they won’t dramatically alter the Earth’s reflectivity, or use too much water.

Direct air capture systems can be placed in remote locations that have easy access to off-grid renewable energy, and where they won’t compete with agriculture or forests.

Finally, deploying long-duration CDR solutions can be quite expensive – far more so than short-duration solutions such as planting trees and altering soil. This has hampered CDR’s commercial viability thus far.

But costs are likely to decline, as they have for many other technologies including solar, wind and lithium-ion batteries. The trajectory at which CDR costs decline will vary between the technologies.

Future efforts

Looking forward, the IPCC recommends accelerated research, development and demonstration, and targeted incentives to increase the scale of CDR projects. It also emphasises the need for improved measurement, reporting and verification methods for carbon storage.

More work is needed to ensure CDR projects are deployed responsibly. CDR deployment must involve communities, policymakers, scientists and entrepreneurs to ensure it’s done in an environmentally, ethically and socially responsible way.

Sam Wenger, PhD Student, University of Sydney and Deanna D’Alessandro, Professor & ARC Future Fellow, University of Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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