India and the United States have reiterated their commitment to swiftly implement the Paris Climate Change Agreement and to boost solar energy and other low carbon technologies.
External Affairs Minister of India Sushma Swaraj with U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry, during the second India-U.S. Strategic and Commercial Dialogue in New Delhi on 31 August, where both countries reiterated their commitment to implement the climate pact
During the second India-U.S. Strategic and Commercial Dialogue in New Delhi on 31 August, External Affairs Minister of India Sushma Swaraj and Minister of State for Commerce and Industry of India Nirmala Sitharaman co-chaired a dialogue with U.S. Secretary of State John F. Kerry and U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker.
Following the meeting, the two countries issued a joint statement. Here is an excerpt relating to climate change and energy:
“In light of the commitment by Prime Minister Modi and President Obama to strengthen and expand the highly successful U.S.-India Partnership to Advance Clean Energy Deployment (PACE-D), and underscoring the vital importance of expanding access to public and private financing for clean energy development in order to enhance energy access and sustainable development, the Sides welcomed the progress on clean energy initiatives announced during the recent Summit.
The Sides recognised their collective efforts to advance the U.S.-India Clean Energy Finance (USICEF) initiative, the U.S.-India Clean Energy Hub, the expansion of USAID programme for Utility-level support and the U.S.-India Catalytic Solar Finance Programme, which will collectively mobilize public and private capital towards clean energy solutions.
Recognising the advanced progress of the U.S.-India Clean Energy Finance Task Force (Task Force), the Sides announced their intent to expand the Task Force’s work to include new clean energy finance initiatives for joint collaboration.
Recognising the U.S.-India Joint Clean Energy R&D Centre initiatives for technological innovation in clean energy, the two sides appreciated the expansion of the Partnership to Advance Clean Energy Research (PACE-R) through a fourth track on smart grid and energy storage technologies. The Sides noted the progress under the “Greening the Grid” initiative and collaboration for training of Indian professionals in the area of large scale integration of renewable energy into the Indian grid. Both governments reiterated their commitment to doubling their Clean Energy R&D Investment towards fulfillment of the objectives of Mission Innovation, resolved to increased cooperation between national labs, and announced the creation of the PACE Fellowship.
The United States affirmed its support for pursuing its membership of the International Solar Alliance (ISA), recognising the critical role it can play in the development and deployment of solar power.
The Sides also recognised the continued significance of efficient power generation technologies to address the challenges of climate change.
The Sides reaffirmed their commitment to combat climate change and its effects. They reiterated their resolve to work together and with others to promote full implementation of the Paris Agreement to address the urgent threats posed by climate change.
India and the United States recognise the urgency of climate change and share the goal of enabling entry into force of the Paris Agreement as early as possible. The United States re-stated that it will join the Paris Agreement as soon as possible this year.
India has similarly begun its processes to work towards this shared objective. The Sides reiterated their commitment to pursue low greenhouse gas emission development strategies in the pre-2020 period and to develop long-term low greenhouse gas emission development strategies.
The United States also remains committed, with other developed countries, to the goal of jointly mobilising $100 billion per year by 2020 to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation and adaptation action.”
It’s easy to kill an elephant, as hunters and ivory poachers have shown for quite some time. Creating one, however, is an entirely different story.
Poaching: Forest elephants are threatened with extinction
Among the forest elephants in Central Africa, females don’t typically breed until they’re 23 years old – “a markedly late age of maturity relative to other mammals,” notes Andrea Turkalo, a scientist for the Wildlife Conservation Society. Two years’ elapse from conception to birth. And a new calf comes along just once every five or six years.
Given their low birthrate and poachers’ massive killing of herds from 2002 to 2011, a new study’s description of that decade as “a lost century” doesn’t seem much like hyperbole. Commissioned by the conservation organisation, the study concludes that it will take forest elephants 90 years for their numbers to recover.
That’s a daunting projection, but the study doesn’t go so far as to say forest elephants are threatened with extinction. Loxodonta cyclotis lives in scattered groups; some populations are doing marginally well, others not so much. “I would not feel confident in saying the species will be extinct based on what we know currently,” said George Wittemyer, a professor of wildlife conservation at Colorado State University, who wrote the study with Turkalo. “Rather, it looks like we are at risk of losing important populations within the next decade if things do not change.”
The purpose of the study, published on Wednesday in the Journal of Applied Ecology, was “to fill in the massive lack of understanding of the basic biology of forest elephants,” Wittemyer said. They are among the largest animals to walk the Earth, but their numbers and biology are still largely unknown to science. The researchers analysed 80 surveys carried out between 2002 and 2011 throughout the Central African forest block in Gabon, Cameroon, Congo and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The work was funded by a long list of conservation groups, including the Jane Goodall Institute, and federal agencies, such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
The analysis yielded several disturbing findings. In the study years, the known populations of forest elephants declined by 62 percent. As a result, the giants are disappearing from their range. The remaining populations are only 10 percent of what their habitat could support because of killings by poachers hoping to cash in on China’s ivory black market. Development also is expanding into these areas and people occasionally kill forest elephants for meat.
The huge losses not only threaten forest elephants’ long-term survival but the health of the forest. Forest elephants are prolific fruit eaters, and their snacking spreads seeds far and wide. Their migration tramples the ground and opens paths, allowing seeds to take root and grow the forest. Failing to protect the elephants is akin to failing to protect forests that are crucial to absorbing carbon gases in a warming world, the researchers say.
A second purpose of the study was thinly veiled: activism. The Wildlife Conservation Society and the other funding groups are out to save elephants in both the forest and savanna, and the study is a message to international policymakers to get even tougher on the now-banned ivory trade. It’s also a message to the Chinese government to do more to reverse that country’s cultural yearning for ivory.
Wittemyer said historical data on forest elephants isn’t very accurate, but the survey analysis showed that their mortality has accelerated because of the ivory trade.
“This paper is really targeting policy around the ivory trade and awareness around the impact of the ivory trade on the species in the hopes that actions can reduce the economic incentives for poaching,” Wittemyer said. “We hope this paper will influence consuming nations … to change their behavior and to set in place policies that discourage ivory consumption.”
Beyond the arguments over medical benefits, cash crops, and cross-border “drug wars”, Montgomery Simus explains in The Source how the global footprint of cannabis trafficking is rapidly diversifying, complicating the lives of water, carbon and energy managers
Indoor cannabis cultivation uses six times as much energy as the pharmaceutical industry and generates 15 million tons of carbon, equivalent to the emissions from 3 million cars. Photo credit: Jessica Hyde / Dreamstime.com
On the desert edge of Las Vegas, Nevada, an organic farmer harnesses ample sun and soil – and water siphoned from the distant Colorado River – to offer his customers year-round access to local produce. They may come for fresh asparagus, eggplant or sweet peppers. But what they come running back for, he concedes, is his locally grown aromatic flowering herb: Cannabis sativa, otherwise known as marijuana.
His cash crop is facing competition, across the western US and abroad. The cultural fears and political bans that once forced cannabis growers quite literally into the closet are giving way to acceptance. Increasingly, marijuana is becoming just another taxable substance, like tobacco or beer.
Officials who haven’t legalised both its consumption and production often simply look the other way. Based on price signals from Europe and North Africa to the Americas and Oceania, import substitution in the cannabis market has been noticed in almost every developed country. Ted Leggett, an analyst at UN Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC), warns: “Cannabis is the dominant illicit drug in every region of the world, and its use is growing almost everywhere.”
In the US, the industry has exploded, with recent sales up 74 percent, to $2.7 billion following liberalisation, according to ArcView Group. As markets open up, business plans proliferate. Even Microsoft now helps track legalised marijuana “from seed to sale”.
Yet amidst all this growth arises a new fear: the impact of global trafficking on local water.
“Cannabis is a very much a weed that can grow in tough environments around the world and it can tolerate stresses much better than produce like broccoli,” says the Nevada grower, who asked not to be named as his license is up for renewal. “There may be windows of opportunity not to water as extensively as usual if we go back to a more organic approach to cultivation.”
Water goes up in smoke
Perhaps. But there’s little indication that water security has crossed growers’ minds. Indigenous to the rainy river valleys of Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent, marijuana is now grown worldwide in nearly every ecosystem and climate – even those, like Nevada, that lack rain. As reported by 420Intel, global patterns of cannabis cultivation have atomised from highly concentrated production in a few developing countries to decentralised production in almost every country, including those already suffering from depleted aquifers and desiccated river beds.
This complicates life for water professionals. Marijuana, it turns out, is one thirsty plant. While there is no universally accepted figure due to differences in species and cultivation methods, one recent peer-reviewed study estimates that a marijuana plant requires 22 litres of water a day – the same amount of water needed to sustain a head of broccoli for an entire growing season.
Sound mild? It adds up to a heavy footprint. In Northern California’s famed “Emerald Triangle” with an average outdoor marijuana planting density of 130,000 plants per square kilometre, that adds up to 430,000 cubic metres of water per square kilometre. That makes cannabis plants twice as thirsty as grape vines, on a par with almonds, and less than corn, potatoes or alfalfa.
Excessive water use in marijuana production may have become a more controversial and a volatile issue than the cultivation of the plant itself. Today, California Department of Fish and Wildlife helicopters circle high over steep timberland in Humboldt County’s coastal mountains, prowling for potential water diversions and environmental damage caused by the lucrative cash crop.
But excessive water demand isn’t the only vice of cannabis growers. Many degrade land and build dams which speeds erosion and clogs streams. Neighbours and downstream anglers complain of overuse of fertilisers and pesticides which pollute salmon habitat, as well as complaining about the “discarding of trash and haphazard management of human waste”. The US Forest Service estimates that it costs up to $15,000 per acre to clean up polluted watersheds from illegal marijuana growing operations.
Comparing crops
Water professionals and marijuana growers alike find it unfair to look at raw resource use and polluted runoff in isolation. All life requires water, and no use can be judged in a vacuum. As cannabis becomes legal, advocates argue that it’s better to compare productivity, measured by retail units (it takes seven litres to produce an eighth of a pound of cannabis) per cubic metre compared with say, almonds (400 litres per can), wine (1,300 litres per bottle), avocados (300 litres per pound) or a quarter pound of beef (1,500 litres).
There’s also the economic argument for maximising revenues per drop. Marijuana is a cash crop like no other – if you have the water to grow it. A report by the University of Denver’s Water Law Review gives a detailed economic breakdown of growing marijuana vs. growing potatoes on the same amount of land. All of the cost is built into water and the return for cultivating marijuana is much higher, says Nicholas Rising. “Growers can expect a return of about $0.22 to $6.67 per gallon of water “invested” in each plant of marijuana grown outdoors (assuming an eighth of marijuana harvested per plant). Compare those figures with the return of about $0.02 to $0.03 per gallon of water to grow one square foot, yielding about eleven to fourteen ounces, of potatoes.”
Complicating matters, cannabis puts pressure on another water resource: electricity. Indoor growers make huge energy demands on the grid. One study estimates that it takes as much energy to produce 18 pints of beer as it does just one marijuana joint.
Xcel Energy, which serves most of urban Colorado, annually sells some 300 gigawatt hours of electricity to cannabis growers alone, or enough to power some 35,000 homes. The US marijuana growing industry may soak up at least 1 percent of the country’s electricity and, if all states legalised cannabis, the industry could buy as much as $11 billion per year in electricity.
More research needed
Despite all the potential profit and peril, the water-energy impact of marijuana cultivation remains little understood. Energy and environmental systems analyst, Evan Mills, published a paper quantifying the carbon footprint of cannabis. It turned out to be huge. Among his findings: indoor cannabis cultivation uses six times as much energy as the pharmaceutical industry and generates 15 million tonnes of carbon, equivalent to emissions from three million cars.
Yet Mills focused only on indoor cultivation, where excessive waste comes from illicit activity. Covert growers, for example, use diesel generators to avoid suspicious electric bills, and install extremely bright and energy intensive UV lighting. Moving out into the sunlight will reduce the energy and carbon footprint.
But these traditional energy measures don’t include the power related to the water consumed in the growing process or the energy required to lift / move the water to where the plants are located.
“The embedded energy in the water used for illegal operations will also most likely decrease as pot cultivation is legalised and moves outdoors,” says Dr Zach Burt, a water expert in California. “Transporting and treating water increases both the embedded energy and the per-unit cost of water, so it is likely that both will decrease under legalisation. By legitimising the trade, the cannabis energy and carbon footprint is likely to decline.”
The price of energy is a constraint on water and lighting. And the Northwest Power and Conservation Council found that huge savings could be realised if farmers switched to efficient greenhouses and to LED lighting, and their yields would increase. But not everyone agrees, and the old traditional ways die hard.
According to energy efficiency consultant, John Morris, one cannabis grower in the West is converting a 90,000-square-foot warehouse. Despite installing energy efficient lighting and $2 million in rooftop solar panels, he still expects to pay around $1 million a month for electricity.
The grower in Las Vegas maintains that potency of outdoor plants is far lower than marijuana cultivated indoors. “While there are significant benefits to growing plants and produce in receptive natural settings like northern California and Oregon, there are bigger benefits in growing produce locally and avoiding the energy costs in transportation & distribution,” says Morris.
In short, it all comes back to the customer. At farmers’ markets, people like to know how and where and by whom their food is grown. The same “locavore” impulse drives buying decisions over how a drug of choice is cultivated. After legalisation, sustainable certification may not be far behind.
The World Bank and the International Water Association (IWA) on Thursday in Stockholm, Sweden at World Water Week declared their intentions to establish a global partnership to help countries, especially the poorest, improve water management.
High level of non-revenue water reflect huge volumes of water being lost through leaks, not being invoiced to customers, or both
The agreement essentially focuses on water that is pumped but then lost or unaccounted for, called non-revenue water (NRW).
In developing countries, roughly 45 million cubic meters of water are lost daily with an economic value of over $3 billion per year. Saving half of those losses would provide enough water to serve at least 90 million people, according to researchers.
They add that high levels of NRW reflect huge volumes of water being lost through leaks, not being invoiced to customers, or both. Reducing NRW can significantly improve the performance of public water utilities in developing countries.
The two international organisations have thus set out to collaborate on a joint programme that aims to capture good practices in the use of performance based contracts (PBCs) to reduce NRW, raise awareness on the issue of NRW, simplify and streamline the preparation of such contracts, and support their implementation in developing countries in the next few years. Furthermore, the partnership will build the market of suppliers at the local level.
The Public-Private Infrastructure Advisory Facility (PPIAF) has co-developed the initiative.
The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) has welcomed the establishment by US President Barack Obama of the largest nature reserve in the world, done through expanding a marine reserve in the state of Hawaii.
The marine reserve Papahanaumokuakea in Hawaii. Photo credit: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)/Andy Collins
“This decision is a powerful symbol of determination to protect the environment. It is a way to strengthen the resilience of societies threatened by climate change, to understand and protect the natural ecosystems on which our lives depend,” UNESCO’s Director-General, Irina Bokova, said in a statement released on Monday.
Located roughly 250 kilometres northwest of the main Hawaiian archipelago, the marine reserve Papahanaumokuakea was inscribed on the World Heritage List in 2010 for its rich biodiversity, considered to be unparalleled in the world. The archipelago is home to more than a fifth of known fish species.
The marine reserve has now been quadrupled in size, and the expansion comes just days before the opening of International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’ (IUCN) World Conservation Congress, also taking place in Hawaii.
“This is a strong reminder of the fundamental role of the ocean, its fauna and flora, to life on earth, just days before the opening of IUCN Congress on 1 September, in Honolulu,” Ms. Bokova said. “I see this as a call to the international community to commit fully to sustainable development and the implementation of the Paris Climate Agreement adopted in 2015.”
According to UNESCO, the Papahanaumokuakea reserve also has deep cultural significance. The Hawaiian people view the site as the embodiment of the concept of kinship between people and the natural world, and as the place where it is believed that life originates and to where spirits return after death.
The marine reserve also includes archaeological remains related to settlement and land use in pre-European times, and it stretches almost 2,000 kilometres from its southeast to its northwest limits.
Global attention at the ongoing World Water Week in Stockholm shifted to Africa on Wednesday as the continent launched its trail-blazing web-based monitoring and reporting framework on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Gerson Lwenge, head of the African water ministers
Touted as one of the most ambitious attempts at tracking progress on the attainment of the SDGs as they relate to the water and sanitation sector as well as the Africa Water Vision 2025, Agenda 2063 and other high level commitments, the Pan African Monitoring and Reporting System represents Africa’s readiness to learn from the mistakes in tracking the progress and implementation of the MDGs.
Developed by the African Minister Council on Water (AMCOW) with support from the African Water Facility (AWF) and the African Union, the Pan African Monitoring and Reporting System (http://www.africawat-sanreports.org:8081/IndicatorReporting/home) highlights the harmonised monitoring and reporting indicators for the whole of Africa while linking with other global monitoring and reporting processes.
Tanzanian Water and Irrigation Minister and President of the African Ministers Council on Water, Gerson Lwenge, said: “This launch demonstrates AMCOW’s commitment to aligning both our monitoring and reporting and various global processes in a way that better targets efficiency, effectiveness and greater impact. That way, we support harmonisation of efforts to monitor Sustainable Development Goal targets and other high-level commitments.”
“We are therefore linking the monitoring and reporting processes from Member States to sub-regional, continental and even global levels to reduce the burden and duplication of monitoring efforts at various levels. It is our hope to simplify for all stakeholders, the generation, assessment and dissemination of information on water security and sanitation across the continent of Africa,” Lwenge added.
Water Ministers from Benin, Sudan, Nigeria, Ghana, Ethiopia, South Africa, Burkina Faso, Uganda, Senegal, Egypt and Zambia who graced the Stockholm launch hailed the framework as “a timely response to making credible information generation, assessment and dissemination available to all stakeholders on the continent.”
Also present at the launch were representatives of AMCOW’s international development partners including the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), Global Water Partnership (GWP), USAID/WALIS, and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Global warming over the next century means that species will move (animal migration will occur) to cooler climates, but manmade barriers often stand in the way
Animal migration. Pink colour for mammals, blue for birds, and yellow for amphibians. Credit: Dan Majka/Migrations in Motion
Climate change is turning out to have a damning effect on living conditions for people, and scientists suspect that it will be the driver of mass human migrations. Just last week, an Alaskan village of 600 people held a special vote on whether to leave their island amid threats of coastal erosion. Extreme weather events – like the historic flood in Louisiana and persistent wildfires all over the U.S. – have also forced people out of their homes.
But humans aren’t the only ones affected by rising temperatures. Nearly 3,000 species of animals in the Western Hemisphere alone will have to find new habitats with more preferable climate conditions by the end of this century, according to a stunning new map by cartographer Dan Majka for the Nature Conservancy.
Called “Migrations in Motion”, the map outlines how species will move from their current habitats to their new ones while avoiding major manmade and natural barriers. Pink lines indicate the movement of mammals, while the blue and yellow lines represent the migration of birds and amphibians, respectively.
Animal migration in South America. Pink colour for mammals, blue for birds, and yellow for amphibians. Credit: Dan Majka/Migrations in Motion
The map draws on data from a 2013 study that looked at climate models and data on how human modification of the landscape to project the movement of 2,903 vertebrate species in North and South America. The researchers plotted the direction of each species’ migration route so that it avoided areas that have been heavily affected by humans.
Routes are also based on flow models of the “electric-circuit theory.” The idea is that more pathways result in more flow, while fewer pathways can lead to constraint and bottlenecks, says Brad McRae, a senior landscape ecologist at the Nature Conservancy who coauthored the study and who worked with Majka on the map.
So many species meant a lot of numbers to crunch into an understandable visualisation. Majka took inspiration from what he calls “one of the most compelling interactive visualisations of our time” – Fernanda Viegas’s and Martin Wattenberg’s wind map of the U.S, which was eventually adapted to depict the real-time wind patterns across the globe.
“Following in their footsteps, we thought it could be a compelling way to visualise a large amount of directional data,” Majka tells CityLab in an email. The result is an incredibly detailed simulation of animal migration through North and South America, with lines snaking in every direction.
“Where you have more lines or faster lines, that means you have a lot of things converging and trying to move through that area,” McRae says, adding that the model uses resistance to show how it’s easier for species to move through natural landscapes than through developed areas.
Zooming into the U.S., it becomes apparent that the lines become longer and denser along the East Coast. McRae says part of the reason is that the East Coast lacks a “strong elevation gradient,” which means species have to move further to reach cooler climates (whereas in the West, species can migrate up hills). Another reason, he says, is because the East is heavily developed, so animals tend to beeline into the Appalachians to find cooler climates.
In a separate study published this June, McRae and his colleagues looked at the effect of manmade barriers like roads, farms, and urban infrastructure on the the fragmentation of natural landscapes in the U.S., and how that affects animal migration. They found that overall, only 41 percent of natural lands in the U.S. connected enough for animals to move through. On the East Coast in particular, just two percent of natural lands are sufficiently connected.
“By presenting the data with a flow map,” Majka says, “we’re able to easily see large-scale patterns like the importance of the Appalachian spine and Rocky Mountains for allowing species to move up in elevation and up on latitude toward cooler climates.”
As detailed as the map seems, McRae points out that this is still a very coarse depiction of migration patterns, based on 50-by-50-kilometre grid cells. It paints the big picture of animal migration, but to really understand local patterns – and where a particular area needs to improve its natural-landscape connectivity – there needs to be more research.
McRae says cities play a key role. “Cities are a lot more sustainable in many ways than having population spread out on the landscape,” he says. “There are a lot of efficiencies to be gained in transportation and energy use and just the footprint that an individual household (leaves behind).” He adds that the Nature Conservancy is also looking at ways that underpasses and overpasses, as well as green spaces on rooftops, can help animals move through a city.
“The bottom line is that species will need to move or adapt, or die,” he says. “We’re hoping that these maps will help people realize that we need conservation efforts – not just preserving habitats in isolation, but keeping everything connected.”
The airport group has been participating in the Airport Carbon Accreditation programme since 2011. Over time, it has engaged with 37 partner companies on its airport sites to work with them to lower their collective carbon footprint. This has included airlines, freight companies, helicopter companies, retailers, restaurateurs, fuel providers, cleaning companies, security providers and more.
Nice Côte d’Azur Airport lowers carbon emissions by 75% per passenger kilogramme
In the intervening five years, Aéroport Nice Côte D’Azur has successfully reduced its carbon footprint, lowering its carbon emissions by 75% per passenger kilogramme and has now taken the additional step of purchasing recognised carbon offsets for the remainder of the carbon emissions under its direct control.
The Airport Carbon Accreditation programme, launched by the airport association ACI EUROPE in 2009, certifies airports at four different levels of accreditation covering all stages of carbon management (1. Mapping, 2. Reduction, 3. Optimisation and 3+. Neutrality). It is independently administered, institutionally-endorsed and has the support of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO), the European Union (EU) and others.
“Aéroport Nice Côte d’Azur today becomes the 25th carbon neutral airport in the world”
Reacting to the news of Nice Côte d’Azur’s achievement, Olivier Jankovec, Director General, ACI EUROPE commented: “I would like to warmly congratulate all of the team at Aéroports de la Côte d’Azur for their work and this historic achievement that sees Aéroport Nice Côte d’Azur become carbon neutral – the first in France. The demands of the 4 levels of certification of Airport Carbon Accreditation are rigorous, requiring strategic engagement and diligent work from the airport operator. Aéroport Nice Côte d’Azur today becomes the 25th carbon neutral airport in the world. During COP21, our industry formally committed to having 50 carbon neutral airports in Europe by 2030. With the good example of innovative airports like Nice Côte d’Azur, we are on the right track.”
Dominique Thillaud, Chairman of the Management Board of the Aéroports de la Côte d’Azur (ACA) Group, added: “Our group committed to reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of its daily activities. Today we are proud that the Nice platform is the first French airport to make it all the way to carbon neutrality – two years ahead of our initial target – and this in spite of increased capacity due to growing traffic. This reflects our strong dedication to emissions reductions across all the ACA Group, including the airports of Cannes Mandelieu and Saint-Tropez and demonstrates that we are doing our part to achieve the goals set at the COP21, joining several other European airports already certified at Level 3+.”
In parallel, the sister airports of Cannes Mandelieu and Saint-Tropez have become certified at Level 3 ‘Optimisation’ of the programme.
Niclas Svenningsen, who heads the Climate Neutral Now initiative at the UNFCCC Secretariat in Bonn, Germany, said: “Today’s announcement that Aéroport Nice Côte d’Azur has achieved carbon neutrality through Airport Carbon Accreditation is excellent news. We are very encouraged by the growing number of carbon neutral airports here in Europe, all the more so when it is one as prominent as Nice, in the country that hosted COP21.”
The U.S. is expected to reach a major carbon emissions milestone this year: For the first time, carbon dioxide emissions from burning natural gas for electricity in the U.S. are set to surpass those from burning coal – the globe’s chief climate polluter.
Huntington Beach natural gas fired power plant. Photo credit: FLICKR
Emissions from burning natural gas are expected to be 10 percent greater than those from coal in 2016, as electric companies rely more on power plants that run on natural gas than those that run on coal, according to U.S. Department of Energy data.
In 2015, the U.S. used about 81 percent more natural gas than coal for electricity, but because coal contains more carbon than natural gas does, emissions from burning both were about the same.
Natural gas consumption is expected to continue rising, however, and the EIA expects the U.S. will emit about 1.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide from natural gas in 2016, compared to about 1.4 billion metric tons from coal.
The milestone comes as an ample supply of low-cost natural gas encourages electric power companies to use more gas than coal. That trend is leading to to a continued decline in coal production.
U.S. climate policies, such as the Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan, are also encouraging utilities to shift away from coal as a way to cut greenhouse gas emissions. Countries that signed the Paris Climate Agreement are trying to limit emissions to prevent global warming from exceeding 2°C (3.6°F) above pre-industrial levels.
Natural gas emits about half as much climate change-driving carbon dioxide as coal. Perry Lindstrom, a greenhouse gas emissions analyst at the U.S. Energy Information Administration, said the rise of natural gas is reducing the carbon intensity – the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per unit of energy – of the energy Americans consume every day.
“You get more energy per metric ton of CO2 emitted from natural gas than from coal,” Lindstrom said.
Burning coal for electricity is about 82 percent more carbon intensive than burning natural gas.
There is a downside to the emissions milestone, however. Though natural gas burns cleaner than coal, producing natural gas and piping it to power plants leaks methane into the atmosphere.
Methane is a greenhouse gas more than 35 times as potent as carbon dioxide in driving climate change over the span of a century, and global atmospheric concentrations of it have been increasing steadily since 2007. That increase has been tied partly to U.S. natural gas production.
“While natural gas compares relatively favorably to coal when viewed through the CO2 lens, the reverse is true for methane,” said Cornell University biogeochemist Robert Howarth. “Some methane is emitted when we mine coal, but far more methane is emitted when we use natural gas, which is not surprising since natural gas is composed mostly of methane.”
Multi-national insurers with more than $1.2 trillion in assets under management have urged governments to commit to phasing out fossil fuel subsides by 2020 at the G20 leaders’ summit in Hangzhou, China next month.
A G20 leaders’ meeting
Insurance companies Aviva, Aegon NV and MS Amlin have signed a joint statement, along with the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries (IFoA) and Open Energi, warning governments of the risks of continuing to fund the production of oil, coal and gas.
Recent research by the Overseas Development Institute and Oil Change International found G20 governments spend $444 billion every year to support fossil fuel production – despite pledging every year since 2009 to phase out subsidies and prevent catastrophic climate change.
Now, a statement, signed by insurers and investors has urged G20 leaders to move beyond the rhetoric of previous years and commit to a specific timeline for rapidly phasing out fossil fuel subsidies.
Mark Wilson, CEO of Aviva plc, said: “Making a profit is essential in business. But we will only be in business in the future if we act sustainably and create wider long term social value. That’s just good business – and not acting sustainably is very bad business indeed.
“Climate change in particular represents the mother of all risks – to business and to society as a whole. And that risk is magnified by the way in which fossil fuel subsidies distort the energy market. These subsidies are simply unsustainable.
“We’re calling on governments to kick away these carbon crutches, reveal the true impact to society of fossil fuels and take into account the price we will pay in the future for relying on them. Energy subsidies should instead be used to create a sustainable future through the social, environmental and economic objectives set out in the UN Sustainable Development Goals.”
Shelagh Whitley, the lead Research Fellow working on subsidies at ODI, said: ‘These subsidies fuel dangerous climate change. If we are to have any chance of meeting the 2C target set at the Paris climate summit, then governments need to start a programme of rapid decarbonisation.
“It is extremely worrying therefore that the G20 energy ministers earlier this year acted as if Paris hadn’t happened by repeating the same empty promises they have been making since 2009.
“The finance sector recognises the importance of moving away from fossil fuels, governments need to realise they may be the only ones left not moving.”
