Carbon Copy

climate models underestimating GHG

Data published by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration now shows not only that concentrations of atmospheric carbon dioxide are rising, but that they are rising at an increasing rate that is higher than expected.

Scientists at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii say that CO2 levels in the atmosphere now stand at 387 parts per million (ppm), up almost 40% since the industrial revolution and the highest for at least the last 650,000 years.

[...]

Scientists say the shift could indicate that the Earth is losing its natural ability to soak up billions of tonnes of CO2 each year. Climate models assume that about half our future emissions will be reabsorbed by forests and oceans, but the new figures confirm this may be too optimistic. If more of our carbon pollution stays in the atmosphere, it means emissions will have to be cut by more than is currently projected to prevent dangerous levels of global warming.

[via the Guardian]

project for reduced emissions in SA

There's an online resource managed by Goedgedacht Trust, called Project 90 by 2030, with the vision that South Africans contribute to reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by changing the way they live:

Inspired by George Monbiot's thesis that global greenhouse gas emissions should be reduced by 90% by 2030, we have made 2007 to 2030 our timeframe within which to impact on individual South African citizen responses to climate change. Through organised groups, we will target the middle- and upper middle-class households, encouraging them to pay attention to the looming crises by acting urgently to ensure a sustainable future. We will challenge individual South Africans to change the way they live by 90% by the year 2030.

The site provides information on projects and programmes to help individuals in their lifestyle choices.

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.

what cyclists can do for carbon emissions

With all the cyclists in Cape Town last weekend for the Cape Argus Pick 'n Pay Cycle Tour, I did a bit of digging around to see what estimates have been made of how cycling could reduce carbon emissions in the city. Here’s what I found.

A survey of learners at 14 secondary schools in the Mitchell’s Plain suburb of Cape Town (The ICLEA Cities for Climate Protection report, Bicycle Infrastructure: Mitchell’s Plain Project, June 2004) showed that 66% walk, 2% use the train, 8% travel by car, 11% travel by taxi, 3% travel by public bus, 9% travel by school bus, and 1% travel by other modes. Calculations of CO2 (equivalent) emissions from these trips show that they produce 53 tons per annum – 31 tons from car travel, the rest from bus and minibus taxi travel.

CapeTown's total annual CO2 (equivalent) emissions from all sources have been estimated to be in the range of 17 to 21 million tonnes*, so the school sample's impact appears small - but the survey represented only a small portion of all Cape Town schools, and of course there are many other types of trips that could also be made by bicycle, given the right conditions.

carbon impacts: keeping it real

A new method of creating inexpensive lights from aluminium foil avoids the mercury pollution problem of CFL lights, but can somebody tell me how much energy goes into making the foil? A lot, I'd guess. In a similar vein, researchers have been checking whether the impacts of PV cell manufacture are worse than the the benefits of reducing the need for traditional power stations:

Making solar or photovoltaic cells requires potentially toxic heavy metals such as lead, mercury and cadmium. It even produces greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, that contribute to global warming. Still, the researchers found that if people switched from conventional fossil fuel-burning power plants to solar cells, air pollution would be cut by roughly 90 percent.

greening Paris - and Mumbai, Beijing, Chicago...

From Inhabitat, two innovative building projects in Paris.

Anti Smog is a project that takes "air rights" to new levels of sustainability:

[Architect] Callebaut describes the process as an intention to “absorb and recycle by photo-catalytic effect the cloud of harmful gases (Smog) from the intense traffic near Paris.” Under the smog eating exterior, the building houses public spaces with a central courtyard and natural lagoon, a place Callebaut envisions for teaching opportunities about urban ecology and renewable energy. The Solar Drop also harvests rainwater from green space on the roof for use inside the building.

Energy Plus is an office building intended to be zero-energy, generating all its energy requirements:

How does this building achieve its goal? For starters, the building will be heavily insulated - enough to reduce its energy use to about 16 kilowatts per square meter, which is considerably lower than that of a standard building. Cold water from the Seine river will be pumped throughout the offices eliminating the need for a standard air conditioner unit. And to actively contribute to the highest standard of energy efficiency, designers have engineered the building to have the largest solar array in the world installed in the roof. It is this solar array which will provide all the energy needs of the building, as well as providing additional energy to be fed back into the grid.

And the Wall Street Journal showcases the energy-saving strategies of nine cities from around the world. As usual, Africa doesn't feature.

community housing can play a leadership role

A year ago I would have assumed that it would be difficult to incorporate measures in low-cost community housing that would improve the sustainability performance of the buildings. For one thing, budgets are very tight. For another, community housing projects are led by government departments that tend to put carbon impacts low on their agendas. They have bigger issues to worry about, what with huge housing backlogs and tenants who can barely pay the rent and buy groceries every month.

Today, the challenges are the same, but the response is starting to change. I've blogged previously about the Cape Town Kuyasa housing project that incorporates solar water heating, insulated ceilings and energy-efficient lighting (and was a CDM project under the Kyoto Protocol).

Now in Toronto, the Community Housing Corporation (CHC) even has a green plan manager who is cutting the greenhouse gas emissions produced by their projects, and cutting their own costs along the way.

On a tour [of one of the CHC buildings], the manager points out all the green fixtures: low-flow toilets and shower heads in all 215 apartments; energy-efficient fridges, stoves and washers; compact fluorescent light bulbs in every socket; new and well-sealed balcony doors; and, in the basement, four spanking new efficient boilers. The exhaust is recaptured on the roof and used to preheat the air circulating into the hallways.

And this is not only in new buildings:

So far, the housing corporation has spent around $90 million on energy retrofits and thus cut its annual greenhouse gas emissions by 19,000 tonnes – the equivalent of taking about 10,000 cars off the road every year.

What makes this achievement even more remarkable is that this ecological saving is coming off an already small footprint. These tenants are "not living in 3,000-square-foot houses in the suburbs and driving their SUVs 50 miles to work and back every day," they are the city's poor. But there are lots of them, occuping 2,000 buildings run by the CHC, and only a few buildings have received this sustainability makeover, so the potential carbon reduction for the city is significant. And it's not being done for ethical reasons, but purely as a cost saving measure. Other developers should be taking note.

moving beyond point source emissions

The author of this Philadelphia Inquirer piece doesn't seem to realise just how much has been written and said about the importance of linking land use planning with transport planning. But she raises the point that regulatory controls to limit carbon emissions should not leave out sources that are a result of movement, and that changing vehicle technologies won't be enough on their own.

The suggestion is that we'll have to consider offering tax credits or other strategies to encourage synergy between land use decisions and transport decisions; and not only those decisions made by municipal planners, but also by developers, public transport operators, home owners and people who choose to use public transport - or not.

The author talks of creating "transit villages" or "urban transit hubs", which sound a lot like a combination of the transit-oriented development (TOD) concept and the idea of new mobility that has been growing in Europe and North America. Here are some useful references on new mobility, which has seen much less air play than TOD:

Moving the Economy has a section on New Mobility in Toronto, which is described as "a new industry cluster where transportation meets the new economy". Includes mention of New Mobility hubs.

Wikipedia definition of New Mobility includes a listing of some of the building blocks, or typical transportation strategies, that can form part of a New Mobility agenda.

An essay by Susan Zielinski on New Mobility in the winter 2006 edition of The Bridge, an online resource from the National Academy of Engineering. Additional links provided at the end of the essay.

The New Mobility Agenda provides extensive discussion on different aspects of the subject, with links to Wikipedia entries and an invitation to contribute to the discussion through this site and through Wikipedia.

New mobility hubs in particular - as discussed in the Zielinski essay - would be a particularly useful way to break out of the traditional way of providing public transport, not least because they give free play to market forces to respond to demand, within an appropriate policy and regulatory framework. They are not prescriptive, and are not limited to any particular size or type of place where transport services can be provided. The focus is on flexibility and responsiveness to meet diverse travel needs. Wouldn't that be a breath of fresh air?

carbon trading panacea

South African author and academic Patrick Bond, writing in Monthly Review, points out some of the dangers of carbon trading as a strategy to reduce carbon emissions. He rightly says that trading doesn't prevent industries from increasing their carbon output, and in fact endorses the right to pollute.

I agree that there are risks and shortcomings in the principle and practice of carbon trading, not least being the perception that nothing else needs to change. We must shift to a low-carbon economy, and we must not wait for carbon markets to do this for us.

But I don't believe that carbon trading is meant to be the ultimate solution. It's a step along the path to righting ecological wrongs, and has succeeded in preparing economies for more rigorous measures that surely need to be implemented soon. Just what those measures will be is a matter for international negotiation and the efforts of individual governments. Carbon trading is an early strategy to help ease our way to a low-carbon future with minimum economic pain.

There are people who argue, and I don't entirely disagree with them, that there is much wrong with the global economy and its relationships with social wellbeing - issues that go well beyond pollution, waste and the exploitation of resources. Indeed, some of the arguments against carbon trading are based on the observation that the Kyoto Protocol's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) have done nothing for communities in the developing world. These commentators would say that the economy actually needs an electric jolt, not a soothing balm; that it's time to change the game plan.

This is not so much an argument against carbon trading, however, as an argument against relying on market mechanisms to solve the world's problems.

The trouble with the carbon market is that it's a market loaded with interventions that have interfered with normal market logic. Apart from the inherent flaws in the emsissions trading concept, specific carbon markets such as the European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) have "done nothing to curb emissions" because the market itself wasn't working as it should. The biggest problem with this scheme is that targets for heavy emitters were too easy to reach. Caps were too low, carbon too cheap and politicians too involved.

The carbon market is neither free-market capitalism, nor straightforward intervention. It's a hybrid system, and it's not yet working - but that doesn't mean it can't have a role to play in addressing climate change.

If we want a wholesale change to the economic game, we need to look beyond carbon. Debating the merits of carbon reduction strategies is like arguing about when to issue a yellow card and when to throw a player off the field, not about whether we should be playing football at all.

Ultimately, Patrick Bond believes - as do I - that really we should just leave fossil fuels where they are; but there is no practical way to do that quickly and cleanly. We are left with messy half-measures and compromises, and one can only hope that all the players will help contribute to a long-term solution that will address concerns beyond market efficiency.

[via The Antidote]

trains and planes on the carbon battlefront

It's interesting to watch the railway and airline lobbies wage battle for the hearts of environmentally-conscious long-distance travellers. Trains and planes are competing with each other in a growing number of markets, but on the alternative fuels front, airlines are at a distinct disadvantage.

Given security of supply, railways could switch to biodiesel immediately, and trials have begun using blended fuels. (Interestingly, the first biodiesel-fueled trains were run in 2002 by Indian Railways.) Despite the marketing hype, it's not so clear that this would cut carbon emissions; but it would at least reduce dependence on fossil fuels, and the Indian approach of making biodiesel from plants such as jatropha, mahua and karanji would create jobs while avoiding some of the pitfalls of biofuels.

Then there's the approach of using electrified trains - in cities, at least - which removes the need for liquid fuel altogether, making it possible to use a mix of any energy sources that can be fed into the grid: wind, sun, sea... The solar panel on your roof could be doing its bit to get you to work in the morning.

Meanwhile, the airlines aren't giving up the fight. If they have fewer alternative fuels immediately available, they figure they can at least earn points by participating in climate change research to see what their impacts are, and what can be done. They've also got the fallback position of encouraging passengers to purchase carbon offsets, but have a long way to go, as a miniscule proportion of air travellers currently purchase offsets, and many of these are virtually worthless tree-planting exercises.

Sir Richard Branson is sitting pretty with a foot in both camps. In true Branson style, there's the $25 million Virgin Earth Challenge to see who can come up with the killer carbon reduction app. But as he has pointed out, the answer is not only about fuels and technologies. It's also about standards and operating procedures. Sometimes we just have to change the way we do things to reduce carbon outputs, and Sir Richard maintains that airline procedures could be tweaked to achieve just that. He has proposed towing aircraft to the runway, and the International Air Transport Association (IATA), which represents 250 airlines, says that "an overhaul of air traffic control operations could result in a 12 per cent reduction [in emissions] if it meant planes didn't have to circle while waiting for a landing slot."

They can fiddle - for now - but it is likely that the current round of climate change negotiations at the UNFCCC will bring international travel under the carbon emissions umbrella from which it is currently exempt. And as Climate Ark notes:

No government - or airline - will admit it, but limiting the number of flights individuals and airlines are allowed could be the long-term solution. Some economists argue that we are already going down the road towards carbon rationing. The only difference between carbon trading and carbon rationing is that in the former system, those who exceed their allocation, or ration, can buy in extra credits. In the future, this option may become prohibitively expensive, or illegal.

[Update on 27 January 2008: An article in the Guardian today points out some of the current thinking about improved airplane construction methods to reduce weight, new types of engines, and operational procedures that would reduce carbon impacts of air travel. Some believe that planes could halve their fuel consumption by 2020.]