Green New Deal

An opinion piece at Economist.com argues that Obama should resist the temptation to spend $150 billion on renewable energy technology to address the two challenges of economic meltdown and climate change. Obama's proposed subsidy-led approach risks repeating the ethanol subsidy quagmire. Put a limit on carbon emissions, but let the market decide how to do it, says the Economist.

Meanwhile, a newly-released report from WWF South Africa argues that significant investment in renewable energy in South Africa could address these same challenges without significantly increasing the price of electricity. Research presented by Andrew Marquard from the UCT Energy Research Centre "showed that achieving a target of 15% of electricity from a combination of wind and solar power would raise the price of electricity in 2020 by 15%. This is a smaller increase than what we have already seen in this year alone and less than the 20% increase that would result from investing in nuclear energy as an alternative to coal." Together with an aggressive energy efficiency drive and use of carbon finance under the UN's Clean Development Mechanism, this strategy could result in 18% lower average electricity costs by 2020 than would be the case under a coal-fired energy expansion programme. The study also suggests that the renewables option is not more expensive than nuclear.

The WWF proposal, like Obama's, uses subsidies:

[The WWF report] proposes that the capital investment required for a 15 percent renewable target could be enabled by a feed-in tariff to subsidise first wind energy and, once the tariff mechanism is proven, solar thermal.

There does seem to be recognition of the risks of this approach. The necessary regulatory framework is not yet in place, and will need to be formulated with care.

Derek Hanekom, the deputy minister of science and technology, acknowledged that South Africa had to "think big and think differently" as it implemented penalties and incentives to curb emissions. The government was "serious about the business at hand", he said.

Finance  is the big challenge, the report notes.

Feed-in tariffs are currently under development by NERSA, the national energy regulator. These incorporate a form of cross-subsidy that requires electricity users to pay for the renewable energy component of supply; but they are essential for establishing an industry of IPPs (independent power producers). Without this mechanism, there is no means for renewable energy to be sold to the grid. With the tariffs, even individual homeowners can start selling to Eskom, given the right regulatory and institutional frameworks.

Other forms of subsidy pose the greater risk, but the report argues that they may be worthwhile:

[...] these can be appropriate for strategic investments, and the creation of future competitive advantages for a country. Incentives are likely to therefore play an important role in supporting the concentrated solar thermal component of the programme. An investment in research, development and pilot plants will be required to enable the commissioning of a large scale thermal power tower after 2015. An investment on behalf of the South African government will be required to incentivise this work to occur within the country, and to position local players as industry front-runners. It is imperative that this initiative is embedded in industrial policy.

bursting the carbon bubble

After listening to the panel of IPCC experts on Tuesday night - which kinda spooked me - I needed to hear this on halting fossil fuel use: "Renewable energy could provide all global energy needs by 2090," according to a study just released by the European Renewable Energy Council and Greenpeace. But it all depends on political will. If there's one thing the IPCC scientists don't agree on, it's whether or not humanity has the gumption to make the changes necessary to avoid dangerous levels of climate change. Science and technology are not the obstacles. Does it require flooding of the Cape Flats before we take this thing seriously?

We've had a dot.com bubble, a financial bubble, and all kinds of other situations where human behaviour has taken us beyond reason. On a longer timescale, we are in a carbon bubble, bingeing on a resource that seems too good to be true - as indeed it is. Like every other bubble, this one will end. It's not possible to indefinitely sustain limitless growth based on borrowing beyond our means, ignoring the casualties, hoping that rational behaviour will ensure that things don't get out of control. And like every other bubble, things got out of control long before we recognised it. We explain away the early warning bells as aberrations, the messengers as freaks, and the first fatalities as fools who lost their nerve.

With this one, our "borrowing" is in the form of capital depletion (dipping into energy and water stores that are non-renewable within the timeframes that we work with) and destruction of habitat at a rate that is faster than Earth can regenerate its ecosystems.

stories from Africa

The latest issue of Farafina is now out, and I've got an article in there on carbon trading. If you aren't familiar with the bimonthly publication, check it out - it's an online and print magazine published in Nigeria as a forum for Africans "telling our own stories". The magazine publishes "everything from photo essays to cartoons, art interviews to political exposes, narrative essays to short stories."

Africa's unfulfilled potential

There could be more than three thousand clean energy projects producing a combined 170 gigawatts in Sub-Saharan Africa. That's more than twice the region’s current installed capacity. Instead, the region has a dismal 1.4% share of the 3,700 projects in the UNFCCC pipeline, as of September 1. According to a new World Bank report, "the achievable avoidance of future greenhouse gas emissions would total about 740 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per year, more than the region’s current annual greenhouse gas emissions (680 million tons of carbon dioxide equivalent)."

And for those who think it's not worth the cost premium of installing clean power generation, consider the status quo. According to World Bank energy specialist Reynold Duncan, it is estimated that the cost of load-shedding to the economies of Sub-Saharan Africa, as a result of the current energy infrastructure challenges, is about 2% of gross domestic product. Doing nothing costs more than Sir Nicholas Stern's estimate that it would take 1% of global GDP to address the challenges of global warming.

killing two birds with one stone

There are all kinds of mechanisms being investigated to reduce carbon in the atmosphere, but there are only two basic approaches: one is to reduce carbon emissions at source, and the other is to capture and store emissions. Right now, most viable strategies involve reduction at source, which can involve eliminating the processes that create emissions (like driving less), changing technologies (switching from coal-powered generation to solar), or improving efficiencies (using machines that make better use of their energy source).

Some carbon capture and storage mechanisms are also being used right now, like scrubbers that take carbon out of gas in smokestacks before it enters the atmosphere - but the holy grail for industries that don't really want to change business as usual is large-scale storage using underground cavities. That is an idea that is being promoted in some quarters, but it's not a thoroughly proven concept.

So here is an approach that stores carbon while also reducing the environmental impact of the building industry. A company called Calera is developing a process that uses the flue gas from power stations that run on natural gas or other fossil fuels, and creates a form of cement that uses the carbon in the gas. They bubble the gas through sea water:

The Calera process essentially mimics marine cement, which is produced by coral when making their shells and reefs, taking the calcium and magnesium in seawater and using it to form carbonates at normal temperatures and pressures. "We are turning CO₂ into carbonic acid and then making carbonate," Constantz says. "All we need is water and pollution."

The company employs spray dryers that utilize the heat in the flue gas to dry the slurry that results from mixing the water and pollution. "A gas-fired power plant is basically like attaching a jet engine to the ground," Constantz notes. "We use the waste heat of the flue gas. They're just shooting it up into the atmosphere anyway."

Normal Portland cement produces a ton of CO₂ emissions for every ton of cement produced, and this new process is efficient enough to sequester half a ton of carbon emissions for every ton of cement. Emissions from power generation would be reduced, and emissions from the creation of cement would also be reduced. Buildings, bridges and other structures made of concrete using this cement would essentially be storing carbon, reducing their environmental impact.

carbon efficiency - SA joins the leaders

If Africa has the potential to benefit from the rise of economic powerhouses outside the US, South Africa would do well to put itself on a low-carbon diet that will allow it to capitalise on markets that are sensitive to the carbon intensity of products. Recent announcements suggest that South Africa is on that trajectory. As reported in Engineering News, "South Africa now joins only a handful of developing countries, including China, Brazil and India, in moving ahead with mitigation programmes under a so-called 'comparability of effort' framework canvassed at the recent global climate change gathering in Bali."

With annual CO2 emissions of 800 million tons, South Africa has a few hard pills to swallow, but Environmental Affairs and Tourism Minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk sounds convinced that investment in mitigation now will reduce the cost of adaptation later. Unfortunately this will only hold true if the rest of the world does its bit, but if we want to show some leadership in this area, we can't join in the US-China game of "I'll diet if you do".

When we look at economic performance, we've got to start factoring in carbon efficiency as a measure of how well we are doing - if not to fight global warming, then at least to remain competitive in an increasingly carbon-aware world.

The necessary pieces are being put in place. Finance Minister Trevor Manuel announced a tax on nonrenewable energy in his February budget - effectively a carbon tax. Cabinet endorsed a 'strategic direction and framework for climate policy' last month. Van Schalkwyk says the Treasury may create a 'cap and trade' mechanism to control carbon emissions. The Department of Trade and Industry should follow with policy that will reduce energy demand for each unit of economic output. And municipalities are starting to make noises in favour of getting their residents and businesses to work towards the ten percent electricity reduction target that Eskom says is needed to address the supply shortfall. Building standards will start to change, and things like solar water heaters will become mandatory in new houses.

So be warned: it's more carrots, less beef for the lot of you. There's no pudding if you don't eat your veggies.

carbon tax policy for South Africa

South Africa's cabinet has adopted a policy that is planned to include carbon taxes and incentives for business transformation. While cabinet accepts there may be short-term pain, there should be long-term efficiency improvements and opportunities to improve South Africa's competitive position globally.

While it is predictable that business objects to the tax, their argument (at least as reported in Cape Business News) is flimsy. They say that government is unlikely to use the revenue efficiently. Well, maybe so, but what has that to do with the price of cheese? Business doesn't use energy efficiently because it is so unreasonably cheap in South Africa - should we ration their energy on those grounds? They also say that government should use incentives rather than taxes. Yes, I too would rather eat apple pie than broccoli, but that would make me fat, just as a high-carbon diet has made business dirty.

Presumably the businesses that object are proponents of a free market - at least where this is to their benefit - but targetted incentives are a more dangerous market intervention than a carbon tax that doesn't dictate how you should achieve carbon efficiency. Both are risky, but incentives depend heavily on government knowing what the solution is, while a tax doesn't make any such claim.

And for heaven's sake, business will benefit from reduced energy costs if they reduce their carbon diet, so it is quite possible that the increased cost of the tax will be offset by the reduced cost from improved energy efficiency. That would mean small pain for business, accompanied by environmental benefits and improved energy security. And continued access to global markets that will increasingly be excluding carbon-intensive products.

Note to Eskom: The CEO of Duke Energy, the US electricity utility that is the 12th largest CO2 emitter in the world, believes in the need to move to a low-carbon future. CEO James Rogers says "we need a sense of urgency, but not a sense of panic... a sense of hope, not a sense of fear." He says "energy efficiency is one of the five ways you generate electricity - it should be treated as a production option."

UK standards heading for zero carbon houses

The first zero carbon house built in the UK by a volume housebuilder was unveiled earlier this month. It has achieved a design rating of six stars (the highest level available) under the Code for Sustainable Homes, which stipulates that all UK homes built from 2016 must be zero-carbon. From this month, all new houses must have a rating against the code, which replaced the Ecohomes rating system for the assessment of new homes in England. Building standards will be made progressively tougher, leading up to the zero-carbon target date. The UK Green Building Council has defined when a house can be called zero carbon. The proposal is "that a zero-carbon house must produce almost all its energy on-site or very nearby in, say, a communal heat and power system". House builders have argued that this is too stringent and that off-site renewable power generation should be accepted.

measuring one city's carbon impact

In what is reported to be the first project of its kind, the UK City of Leicester will have its entire carbon emissions and carbon sinks calculated, and to have this compared with the social and economic wellbeing of its 270,000 residents. This will provide a basis for determining the success of strategies to reduce its footprint, and could become a model for other cities to adopt.

Academics will also look at how changing road networks, better public transport, maintaining green spaces and using low energy power and lighting can reduce the city's carbon footprint, as well as investigating how Individual Carbon Trading Schemes (ICTs) (where households are given an annual carbon allowance) would work.

hourly emissions mapping

There's a video of a new system of mapping CO2 emissions in the US that gives far more detail than previous models, with hourly updates based on air quality control data.

The new Vulcan model, however, can map CO2 emissions at local levels on an hourly basis. It can drill down to individual factories, power plants, roads, commercial districts and neighbourhoods, and identify the level of fuel type, economic sector and country/state.

An interesting point raised by one of the commenters on the linked article is that what we really need is a global map of each country's emissions, including the emissions associated with manufacture of imports. According to the article, a global version is on the cards. But I would guess that it would be far too difficult for a dynamic model to link emissions to imports and exports - that would be another exercise.