Between the Poles

Paris COP21 agreement aims to hold climate warming to less than 2 °C

Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Paris on Saturday approved a global agreement on climate change. They agreed to

• Hold the increase in the global average temperature to well below 2 °C above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit the temperature increase to 1.5 °C above pre-industrial levels
• Reach global peaking of greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible so as to achieve a balance between anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases in the second half of this century
• Implement and support reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation
• establish the global goal on adaptation of enhancing adaptive capacity, strengthening resilience and reducing vulnerability to climate change

Each Party shall communicate a nationally determined contribution every five years and be informed by the outcomes of the global stocktake.

Developed country Parties shall provide financial resources to assist developing country Parties with respect to both mitigation and adaptation

Accelerating, encouraging and enabling innovation is critical for an effective, long-term global response to climate change and promoting economic growth and sustainable development.

Parties shall cooperate in taking measures to enhance climate change education, training, public awareness, public participation and public access to information.

In order to build mutual trust and confidence and to promote effective implementation, an enhanced transparency framework for action and support, with built-in flexibility which takes into account Parties’ different capacities and builds upon collective experience is hereby established.

Each Party shall regularly provide the following information:

• A national inventory report of anthropogenic emissions by sources and removals by sinks of greenhouse gases, prepared using good practice methodologies accepted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)
• Information necessary to track progress made in implementing and achieving its nationally determined contribution.

The Parties to the Paris Agreement shall periodically take stock of the implementation of this Agreement to assess the collective progress towards achieving the purpose of this Agreement and its long-term goals (referred to as the “global stocktake”).  The Parties shall undertake its first global stocktake in 2023 and every five years thereafter.

This Agreement shall be open for signature and subject to ratification, acceptance or approval by States and regional economic integration organizations that are Parties to the Convention.

This Agreement shall enter into force after at least 55 Parties to the Convention accounting in total for at least an estimated 55 percent of the total global greenhouse gas emissions have deposited their instruments of ratification, acceptance, approval or accession.

At any time after three years from the date on which this Agreement has entered into force for a Party, that Party may withdraw from this Agreement by giving written notification to the Depositary.

Be Inspired Awards at Year in Infrastructure 2015: Operational analytics reduces water utility power bill by A$3 million

At the Year in Infrastructure conference in London SA Water is one of the finalists for the annual Be Inspired Innovation in Roads Awards. Today Rowan Steele presented an overview of how SA Water, based in Adelaide, South Australia, has applied operation analytics to reduce the water utility's power bill by A$3 million.

South Australia has been suffering from an extended drought for nearly a decade and has just built a desalinization plant to provide more reliable water to their customers. 

About 40% of the South Australian power generation is now renewable.  Most of this is wind (33%) and solar (8%).  Fluctuating sources of power generation means that the price of electricity can range widely from -A$1000 to A$13,000 per megawatt hour (Mwh).

The drought, the new desalinization plant and the fluctuating cost of power introduced complexity into managing what used to be a fairly simple water network.

To address these issues SA Water decided to invest significantly in IT to help manage the water network better.  They acquired a hydraulic model that allowed them to simulate the network under different conditions.  They also invested in an operational analytics tool. 

Together these applications have helped them optimize their network in various ways, such as optimizing chlorine dosing (water from the desal plant has very little organics compared to river water), minimizing electric power costs and reducing water age in some parts of the network.  The benefits have been significant.  They not only have been able to reduce their power bill by A$3 million, but also have cut their network operating costs by nearly a A$ million.  It has also resulted in improved water quality.  For example, they can map water age geographically for their entire service area.  More fundamentally it has given them much greater insight into sources of revenue and the costs of various aspects of operating a water network.

Climate justice: India commits to reducing emissions intensity by a third by 2030

India has just released its commitments (INDC) to reducing emissions prior to the Paris COP meeting.  India houses 30% of the world's poor (363 million people) and 24% of the global population without access to electricity (304 million).  The challenge for India is tackling climate change while at the same time improving the standard of living of its third of a billion poor.

On a per capita basis India is barely on the same chart as the U.S. and Canada.  Depending on what is included in the calculation, India is the world's third or sixth largest emitter.  On a per capita basis India is 137th.  Per capita emissions in the US in 2011 were 4.5 tonnes of carbon, while India's were 0.45 tonnes, 1/10 of U.S per capita emissions. 

On a per capita basis electric power usage is also extremely low in India.  Indian per capita electricity consumption reached 1010 kilowatt-hour (kWh) in 2014-15.  In comparison, China has a per capita consumption of 4,000 kWh and developed nations average about 15,000 kWh per capita.

India is taking climate change seriously.  A year or two ago India announced a voluntary goal of reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP by 20–25% by 2020 compared to 2005 levels.  Despite having no obligations per the Convention (UN Framework Convention on Climate Change), a number of policy measures were initiated to achieve this goal. India's emission intensity per unit of GDP has decreased by 12% between 2005 and 2010. The United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) in its Emission Gap Report 2014 recognized India as one of the countries on course to achieving its voluntary goal.  The energy intensity of the economy has decreased from 18.16 goe (grams of oil equivalent) per Rupee of GDP in 2005 to 15.02 goe per Rupee GDP in 2012, a decline of 2.5% per annum.

In its just released Intended Nationally Determined Contribution (INDC) for the period 2021 to 2030, India has committed to reducing the emissions intensity of its GDP by 33 to 35 percent by 2030 from 2005 levels.  Even more impressively, it has committed to achieving 40 % cumulative electric power installed capacity from non-fossil fuel based energy resources (renewables and nuclear) by 2030.  It also committed to creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.

A detailed estimate of the cost of India's climate change program has not yet been finalized, but it is recognized that significant international resources will be required to achieve its goals. The amount will depend on the gap between the actual cost of the implementation of India's commitment in the INDC and what can be allocated from India's domestic sources. A preliminary estimate suggests that at least US$ 2.5 trillion (at 2014-15 prices) will be required for meeting India's climate change actions between now and 2030.

One of the things India is doing to help achieve both emissions reduction and improving the standard of living of its poorest citizens is developing 100 smart cities (under the Smart Cities Mission).  These next generation cities will provide core infrastructure and a decent quality of life to its citizens by building a clean and sustainable environment. Smart solutions like recycling and reuse of waste, use of renewables, protection of sensitive natural environment will be incorporated to make these cities climate resilient.

The Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) is a new urban renewal mission launched by the Government of India for 500 cities with the objective of ensuring basic infrastructure services such as water supply, sewerage, storm water drains, transport and development of green spaces and parks by adopting climate resilient and energy efficient policies and regulations.

The Indian Government has recently launched the Clean India Mission with the objective of making the country clean and litter free by applying modern solid waste management in about 4041 towns covering a population of 306 million. It includes constructing 10.4 million household toilets and half a million community and public toilets.

Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) are being introduced across India. The first two corridors are the 1520 km long Mumbai-Delhi (Western Dedicated Freight Corridor) and the 1856 km long Ludhiana-Dankuni (Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor). The projects are expected to reduce emissions by about 457 million ton CO2 over a 30 year period.

Delhi Metro is India’s first municipal rail project to earn carbon credits. Delhi Metro has already installed 9 solar power generation facilities and plans to increase their number.

India has recently formulated a Green Highways (Plantation & Maintenance) Policy to develop 140,000 km long “tree-line” with plantation along both sides of national highways.

In India forest and tree cover has increased in recent years as a result of national policies for the conservation and sustainable management of forests.  Forests and tree cover has increased from 23.4% in 2005 to 24% of India's geographical area in 2013.  The Indian Government's long term goal is to bring 33% of its geographical area under forest cover.  India has improved the carbon stock in its forest by about 5%, from 6,621.5 million tonnes in 2005 to 6,941 million tonnes in 2013.

World deforestation slowing

I blogged earlier about Ontario and Quebec protecting a significant proportion of the world's boreal forests and an agreement between environmental organizations and forest companies also designed to protect forest resources across Canada.

According to the FAO, the world's total forest area is about 4 billion hectares, which is 31% of total land area. The most forest-rich countries are the Russian Federation, Brazil, Canada, the United States and China, which together account for more than half of the total forest area.  Forests store a vast amount of carbon estimates by the FAO to be about 289 gigatonnes (Gt) of carbon in their biomass alone.

The rate of deforestation in the 1990s was about 16 million hectares per year.  In the last decade (2000-2010) this rate has dropped to around 13 million hectares per year.  Both Brazil and Indonesia, which had the highest net loss of forest in the 1990s, have significantly reduced their rate of loss.  For the world as a whole, carbon stocks in forest biomass decreased by an estimated 0.5 Gt annually during the period 2005–2010, mainly because of a reduction in the global forest area.

Large scale planting of trees and natural expansion of forests in some countries and regions have reduced the net loss of forest area significantly. The net change in forest area in the period 2000–2010 is estimated at –5.2 million hectares per year, down from –8.3 million hectares per year in the period 1990–2000.

South America and Africa continue to have the largest net loss of forest.  Oceania also reported a net loss of forest, partly due to forest fires and drought in Australia.  The area of forest in North and Central America is about the same in 2010 as in 2000. The forest area in Europe continued to expand, although at a slower rate than in the 1990s. Asia, which had a net loss in the 1990s, reported a net gain of forest in the period 2000–2010, primarily due to the large-scale afforestation reported by China and despite continued high rates of net loss in many countries in South and Southeast Asia.

Bipartisan panel recommends US initiate research into climate remediation technology

The Task Force on Climate Remediation of the U.S. Bipartisan Policy Center (BPC) has released a report entitled Geoengineering: A National Strategic Plan for Research on the Potential Effectiveness, Feasibility, and Consequences of Climate Remediation Technologies recommending that the Federal Government initiate a research program into climate remediation technologies, also known as geoengineering, to understand the risks, costs, and feasibility of these technologies.

Two justifications for the recommendation are offered.

• the physical risks of climate change are real and growing
• national security, the risk of deployment of climate remediation technologies by other countries is real

The Task Force says that the Unites States must research climate remediation technologuies in order to assess the risks and benefits of different techniques, and secondly, to evaluate steps other nations may take.

A 2009 report Geoengineering the Climate by the Royal Society provides a detailed assessment options for mitigating the effects of global climate change. It divides geoengineering methods into two categories;

Carbon Dioxide Removal (CDR)
Removing CO2 from the atmosphere address the root cause of climate change, rising CO2 concentrations. These are beleived to be low risk, but work very slowly to reduce global temperatures.

Solar Radiation Management (SRM)
These methods are intended to reflect a small percentage of the sun's light and heat away from the Earth. They do not address the root cause, rising CO2 levels, but act quickly, and so may be the only way to lower global temperatures quickly in the event of a climate crisis

The Royal Society report recommended:

• Increased efforts towards mitigating and adapting to climate change.
• Considering CDR and SRM geoengineering methods as part of a wider package of options for addressing climate change.
• CDR methods should be regarded as preferable to SRM methods.
• Funding a 10 year geoengineering research programme at a level of £10million per annum.
• That the Royal Society develop a code of practice for geoengineering research and recommendations for governance.

The UK has already initiated the Stratospheric Particle Injection for Climate Engineering (SPICE) project, which is supported by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Universities of Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, and Oxford, the Met Office, and Marshall Aerospace.  The project was created to investigate a solar radiation management (SRM) technology involving the injection of reflective aerosol particles into the Earth's upper atmosphere.

The first SPICE experiment, scheduled for this month, is led by the University of Bristol and involves hoisting one end of a one kilometer long hose using a balloon, then pumping a fluid up to it and spraying it into the atmosphere. The first test will use water, but the intended materials would be sulphate aerosols of the type injected into the atmosphere from volcanic eruptions.  However, criticism has pushed the scheduled time for the experiment back by six months to allow for more public consultation.

Governance

The BPC Task Force recommends that the federal government begin a program of research on climate remediation coordinated by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).

The Tsk Force recommends that OSTP should be guided by an advisory commission responsible for,

1. advising the government on how to set up an effective and adequately funded scientific program commensurate with the scale of the problem
2. identifying and recommending policies and practices that ensure effective scientific research is conducted in a manner consistent with the principles articulated in this report
3. recommending criteria for federal agencies to use in deciding whether to approve field research based on the level of risk posed by the proposed activity
4. conducting public communication and engagement activities   

The Task Force also recommends international cooperation, specifically with nations that have the requisite scientific, technological, and financial qualifications to establish common norms and expectations for climate remediation research.