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It was a bad year for carbon emissions, even in California

by colby551890 Posted on January 9, 2019

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Carbon emissions are rising in the the United States, and it looks like the golden green state of California is part of the problem. Despite putting up acres of solar panels, California’s electric system produced more greenhouse gases in 2018 than in the previous year.

It’s part of a larger trend across the country. A preliminary estimate out this week says carbon dioxide emissions climbed 3.4 percent last year, the second largest increase in two decades, according to the research firm Rhodium Group.

What happened? An unusually cold spell last winter led people to turn up their furnaces. And after years of modest growth, the U.S. economy picked up in 2018. There were more planes in the air, more trucks delivering packages, more offices cranking air conditioners, and more factories burning fossil fuels.

In 2017, California had a relatively wet year, and was able to run water through hydropower turbines when the sun set over solar panels. There was less water to spare last year, so the state turned to gas plants in place of dams.

The rise in power-sector emissions is especially concerning in California because the state has made curbing pollution from power plants a priority, enacting legislation to promote renewable energy and cap fossil fuels. Yet California’s emissions have risen and fallen in line with the rest of the country.

In 2018, for instance, emissions from electricity generation rose 1.9 percent across the country, and 2 percent in California.

California emissions from electricity generationCalifornia ISO

Trevor Houser, a climate and energy analyst at the Rhodium Group, said we shouldn’t make too much of California’s backsliding because the state had significant emissions reductions in the recent past. Last year’s 2 percent increase in electricity-sector emissions comes after a 9 percent decline in 2017 and a 13 percent decline in 2016. If you look at the three-year moving average, California is still making good progress when it comes to electricity.

Decarbonizing electricity is just the beginning of the challenge: “Far more important for California climate progress will be what happens in transportation, which is more than twice the emissions of the electric power in the state,” Houser said.

Rhodium Group

U.S. emissions peaked back in 2007, then quickly plunged with the Great Recession. A switch from coal power to natural gas and renewables also pushed down the country’s carbon pollution. All told, emissions fell 12 percent between 2007 and 2015. Since then, the country has continued to shift from super-polluting coal to less-polluting natural gas, but this report shows that we’ve been burning a lot more natural gas to make electricity.

Rhodium Group

Previously it had looked like the United States had a shot at meeting pledges made as part of the Paris climate talks, despite President Donald Trump’s rejection of that agreement. Now it’s painfully obvious. in Last year’s emissions have pushed the United States far off target.

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It was a bad year for carbon emissions, even in California

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Eclipse – J. P. McEvoy

by Myrna Posted on January 8, 2019

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Eclipse

The science and history of nature’s most spectacular phenomenon

J. P. McEvoy

Genre: Science & Nature

Price: $2.99

Publish Date: April 20, 2017

Publisher: William Collins

Seller: HARPERCOLLINS PUBLISHERS


J P McEvoy looks at remarkable phenomenon of a solar eclipse through a thrilling narrative that charts the historical, cultural and scientific relevance of solar eclipses through the ages and explores the significance of this rare event. In the year when Britain will be touched by a solar eclipse for the first time since 1927, J P McEvoy looks at this remarkable phenomenon through a thrilling narrative that charts the historical, cultural and scientific relevance of solar eclipses through the ages and explores the significance of this rare event. Eclipse shows how the English Astronomer Norman Lockyer named the element Helium from the spectra of the eclipsed Sun, and how in Cambridge Arthur Eddinton predicted the proof of Einstein’s General Relativity from the bending of sunlight during the famous African eclipse of 1919. During late morning on 11 August, 1999 the shadow of the last total eclipse of the Millennium will cut across the Cornwall Peninsula and skirt the coast of Devon before moving on to the continent, ending its journey at sunset in the Bay of Bengal, India. Britain’s next eclipse will be in September, 2090. Throughout history, mankind has exhibited a changing response to the eclipse of the sun. The ancient Mexicans believed the Sun and the Moon were quarrelling whilst the Tahitians thought the two celestial objects were making love. Today, astronomers can calculate the exact path the moon’s shadow will track during the solar eclipse. As millions encamp for the brief spectacle with mylar glasses, pin-hole cameras, binoculars and telescopes, space agency satellites and mountain-top observatories study the corona, flares and the magnetosphere of the Sun as the 125 mile-wide black patch zooms along the ground at 2000 mph. About the author J P McEvoy was born in the USA. He has published over 50 papers on his specialist subject, superconductivity. He has been involved in improving public understanding of science for many years. He wrote the TV series Eureka, describing great moments in science from Archimedes to the present. In addition to journalism and radio broadcasting, he has written two guides in the ‘Begginers’ series for Icon Books.

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Eclipse – J. P. McEvoy

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Inside the bill that set the ‘strongest clean energy requirement in the nation’

by IlanaSettles Posted on December 29, 2018

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This story was originally published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Washington, D.C., is positioning itself on the climate policy fast track. The District of Columbia city council voted unanimously last week to approve an expansive climate bill requiring utility providers to generate 100 percent of their energy supply from renewable sources by 2032. If D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser signs the legislation as expected, the provisions will put the nation’s capital on a faster, formally pledged timeline toward cutting utility emissions than any U.S. state. (Hawaii and California have both pledged state-wide goals of 100 percent renewable energy for electricity by 2045.)

While several smaller cities have already reached similar 100-percent renewable energy targets, Washington, D.C., is by far the largest city to make such a commitment. And that’s not all that’s in the bill. Together, the provisions were dubbed the “strongest clean energy requirement in the nation,” by Mark Rodeffer, D.C. Sierra Club chapter chair.

So what’s in D.C.’s bill? And what can the rest of us learn from it, at a time when cities and states are racing to fill the gap left by federal regulators to slow climate change?

What the bill regulates: Electricity and some transportation

D.C.’s new bill is intended to dramatically decrease emissions from one of the most common sources, electricity, by ratcheting up the requirements on utility providers. D.C.’s current law already mandates that utility providers derive 50 percent of their energy supply from renewable sources by 2032, with 5 percent carved out for solar. The new bill doubles these figures to 100 percent renewables by 2032 with 10 percent solar by 2041.

Buildings account for 74 percent of D.C.’s carbon emissions. And the bill also establishes a separate program to set benchmarks for energy efficiency for the largest buildings in the city, those with more than 10,000 square feet of gross floor area. The specific standards, however, have not yet been set. According to Cliff Majersik, the Institute for Market Transformation executive director who worked on the bill, D.C. will become the first U.S. jurisdiction “to require a broad swath of existing buildings to improve their whole-building energy performance.”

The bill also tackles another major contributor of emissions: transportation. While the bill won’t do anything to regulate residents’ private transportation choices, it will regulate the city’s own contributions: By 2045, all public transportation and privately owned vehicle fleets in D.C. will have to produce zero emissions.

How would the bill be implemented?

The burden falls on utility companies to meet benchmarks for renewable electricity — or pay a price. Every year, the city sets renewable energy standards for companies to hit that increase incrementally until they reach 100 percent in 2032. What happens if companies don’t meet those standards? The city requires electricity suppliers to to make compliance payments into D.C.’s Renewable Energy Development Fund.

There are other guaranteed revenue sources to fund other parts of the bill. Utility companies serving D.C. are already required to collect fees from customers who use natural gas and electricity. These fees are put toward a fund for D.C.’s energy efficiency efforts. But this bill temporarily raises those per-unit rates and creates a new fee on home heating and fuel oil to raise even more money for energy efficiency. (D.C. residents who make under a certain income, with the amount dependent on household size, will still be eligible for utilities discounts.)

Helping low-income residents transition to clean energy

Some of the revenue from increased fees will be used to help low-income communities adapt.

“Communities that have done the least to cause climate change [are] disproportionately bearing the burden of climate change,” Judith Howell, a member of the labor union 32BJ SEIU, said in a statement. “Working people in the U.S. and around the world will be extremely vulnerable to those changes.”

Thirty percent of the additional revenue will be put aside for programs like weatherization and bill assistance for low-income households, as well as job training in energy efficiency fields. At least $3 million annually will also be allocated toward energy efficiency upgrades in affordable housing buildings.

The criticism that watered down one requirement for utilities

In November, local energy company Pepco ran some misleading ads on Facebook urging D.C. residents to “act now” and “act boldly” to achieve a “sustainable vision.” When users clicked through to a petition, what it was asking was that its customers oppose a provision of the bill requiring Pepco to use long-term contracts for renewable energy.

WAMU’s Jacob Fenston wrote in November:

“Pepco wants residents to sound off on one small piece of the legislation: a requirement that Pepco purchase renewable energy under long-term contracts. According to the DOEE analysis, this provision would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent by 2032.”

Majersik told CityLab that the long-term contract provision Pepco opposed was stripped from the bill, but may be proposed as part of a new bill in 2019. Ultimately, Pepco supported the revised bill and released a statement calling the legislation an “important step toward advancing the cause of clean energy.”

Among the primary supporters of the bill was the D.C. Climate Coalition, which included over 110 advocacy organizations, faith groups, unions, consumer advocate organizations, and D.C. businesses.

Camila Thorndike, D.C. campaign director at the CCAN Action Fund said in a press release: “With the passage of this bill, we’re taking the power back from President Trump and taking control of our energy future.”

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Inside the bill that set the ‘strongest clean energy requirement in the nation’

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Solar Probe Sends Back First Image and Data From the Sun

by Posted on December 14, 2018

The Parker Solar Probe survived its first swoop around our star and will get even closer on its next two dozen trips

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Solar Probe Sends Back First Image and Data From the Sun

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How cities can lead on climate change solutions

by Mari3383776606 Posted on December 11, 2018

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This story was originally published by CityLab and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

This week, diplomats from about 130 countries are gathered in Katowice, Poland, for COP24, the latest in the annual series of climate change meetings convened under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. At the heart of the discussions this year is a grim report released in October by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — the Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees C (SR1.5).

The product of more than 90 scientists working from thousands of peer-reviewed studies, SR1.5 laid out the catastrophic effects of exceeding 1.5 degrees C warming over the coming decades. Much of the global news coverage that followed the report’s release focused on a chilling projection in the form of a 12-year deadline the IPCC established to limit the most disastrous impacts of planetary warming. “It’s a line in the sand,” said Debra Roberts, a co-chair of Working Group II of SR1.5.

But the report wasn’t just a grave warning: It was also a roadmap to solutions. These solutions were organized around four areas, or systems — energy, land use and ecosystems, cities and infrastructure, and industry. And while urban issues comprise one of those four areas, actions in cities are integral to each system transformation. Put another way: There is no way to save the planet without serious changes in how city-dwellers live, work, and move. That’s a point stressed in this summary of the IPCC report aimed at urban policymakers, which was released at COP24. (I was one of the 21 co-authors of this report.) The necessary changes to limit warming must be made not only by national governments and the private sector, but also by city leaders and the residents of urban areas.

As a co-chair of the working group on impacts, Roberts led the world’s top climate scientists through the assessment, drafting, and approval process. A scientist herself, Roberts is the head of the Sustainable and Resilient City Initiatives Unit, eThekwini Municipality, Durban, South Africa. In other words, she is a rare climate expert who’s familiar with the scientific, diplomatic, and urban policy issues that this unparalleled global challenge represents.

CityLab asked Roberts to talk about the role city residents can play in delivering climate action, the critical importance of local political decisions, and the responsibility we all have to talk about — and act on — climate change with our neighbors.

Q. What should city residents, far removed from these diplomatic processes, take away from the current climate negotiations and SR1.5 in particular?

A. There are two really important sets of messages. First, we are probably facing a serious existential threat as a species. Along with that very serious message is a second key message about the need for rapid and ambitious action. We are probably living in the most important period of our species’ history. But when you face such a big call to action, such an historic moment, the individual can really feel lost.

What is profoundly important to me about the 1.5 report is that it points to lines of response to this big challenge that we face as a species by identifying four systems that need to go through rapid, unprecedented transformations: energy, land use and ecosystems, urban, and industry. While the public and private sectors certainly have input, the report also calls out that the individual has a role to play, too.

If you think about the energy system, the report tells me is that every element of action is important — all the way from the international to the national, to what I do in my life. Think about energy systems. I should be able to make choices about what energy I use in my home. Am I able to go off-grid, generate my own electricity, and if I generate excess, put it back in the grid? And if those choices aren’t there, then I need to reflect on why I don’t have those options. If I don’t have leadership which is making it easy for me to make these choices, then I need to change leadership. It’s a real call to action on personal choices, and that we need to be more cognizant of the leaders we put in place at all spheres of government.

Q. The possible impacts outlined in SR1.5 can make the individual feel irrelevant. But there’s this line that I found really striking: “Humans are at the center of global climate change: Their actions cause anthropogenic climate change, and social change is key to effectively respond to climate change.” How do you put the human back in a story that was once so focused on nation-states and climate regimes?

A. The scientific literature puts people back. That’s why those four systems transitions are so important. When it comes to urban systems, yes we can choose what kind of transport we use. When it comes to land systems, by changing our diets we change the pressures on land. When you think about industry, we are consumers. We are very powerful in terms of our ability to purchase, and we can be more critical of the things we choose to consume. Those four systems are in the real world. They define many of the ways we live our lives, and they give us the power to influence the outcome.

Every level of activity counts, all the way from changing your lightbulbs to the other end of the spectrum at the climate negotiations. So it’s empowering but it also involves a strong responsibility. The science is very clear: There is no physical or chemical law which will stop us from limiting warming to 1.5 degrees C. There is nothing that stands in our way. In fact, the key element is the political and societal will to make these changes.

Q. In the U.S. recently, there’s been talk about a “Green New Deal” for climate change. Huge, society-spanning transformation is needed, in other words. But when you look through SR1.5 at the things that every individual in a city can do, they’re things like riding a bike or line-drying laundry. It all sounds so far from this sweeping historical mission.

A. What you and I do, literally in our day-to-day boring lives, is an important element in saving the world. This is a global project. Everybody has to be in on it. You cannot leave a single person out. Before, as you indicated, the scientific debate tended to alienate the person on the street with formulas and graphs and international negotiations that no one really understood. This report is clear: Hanging out your laundry counts. This change is possible, and we can all contribute to that change.

Q. How do you encourage the tougher choices that are tied to larger, structural issues — what are frequently referred to in climate science as enabling conditions — that are often determined at the regional and national levels?

A. We need multi-level governance structures that enable us to make choices well beyond the laundry. When I go to work, I must be able to take a public transport system or access a shared car. And if I’m driving that car, that car must be electrified. Those are the important things. Those are choices I do not have control over. I have control over the laundry I put out on the line. I don’t have a choice around bigger systems of transport, energy production systems, and so on. But the onus is still on me in terms of how democracies work — in calls to action, at the voting booth, in talking to my neighbors and talking to local leadership about this.

That requires more of you than the hanging of the washing. Those enabling conditions — which involve changing policies, promoting effective governance, deployment of technologies in the right kinds of spaces — require us to be active.

Q. In a previous conversation I did here with Michael Ignatieff, we talked about the roles that neighbors must play in making cities work. It’s an interesting frame in the climate space, when people sometimes feel helpless: Have they spoken with their neighbors?

A. Everyone has to be in, but it’s hard for me to imagine how I’m in a process with somebody sitting in Thailand. I’ve got a much better sense of the community I live in. I can say to my neighbors, “OK, where are your solar geysers [a kind of solar water heater]?” That puts it at a scale that is about human action, and I think that’s what this report does. It humanizes not only the impacts — look at how we are already impacted, and how the poor and vulnerable are already disadvantaged — but it put the humans back in the solution space again.

Q. You work in a city and in the international diplomatic arena. What is the status of urban expertise when you’re starting to develop a report like this?

A. The IPCC started out largely focused on the natural and physical sciences. But as it became clear that you weren’t going to be able to solve climate change through some mysterious new technology, or entirely mitigate your way out of it because of lack of political ambition, the social sciences have become a more prominent voice in the process. We have drawn in as many practitioners as we could as authors of the report, who have the ability to assess knowledge so that the report speaks to things that are important in the real world.

I, as a local government practitioner, can pick up the report and can see they’ve looked at the literature on things that are important to me. If you look to chapter 4, you’ll see a huge amount of work on the feasibility assessment. That’s what I need to know as a practitioner. I need to know if an action is likely to work, and what its enabling conditions are. There’s a drive to use the science to fulfill the original IPCC mandate of providing objective information on the causes of climate change, but we’re also becoming clearer and smarter around the solutions. The moment you talk about solutions, people must be in that space.

Q.The document has a unique place in diplomatic history, but is also part of a developing story where practitioners and urban perspectives are gaining prominence. But of course, if nation-states don’t step up, cities won’t have the enabling conditions they need to take action. You operate at both the municipal and international levels. How do you think about that landscape?

A. The practitioner community is a particularly important community. What do I do in my day job as a local government practitioner? I speak to local leadership and local communities about these issues. But I am sometimes limited by national laws and policies, then I have to go talk to the national government. Local government can become a force for change. We’ve experienced that throughout our own work at the city level. Often cities will lead best. People don’t phone the president if their house washes away. They phone the mayor. We’re most aware of where the challenges lie. Local government has an important role to knock on national government’s door and say, “Those policies work; those do not,” and explain how you might enable us to do our work better.

To me, the nation-state is not a hallowed thing. It must be in service of the people. And where it disconnects, we as local government bear that responsibility for refocusing their attention and resources where they need to be. The report underscores the importance of local government. It’s really where a lot of this action is going to happen.

Q. Local government possesses expertise, and, depending on the tax structure where you are, some resources. But you’re really talking about local government as advocate. A bit like the individual with his or her neighbor, the city must advocate with the nation-state.

A. I suppose that’s what we’re saying as a principle. To the individual, deal with your neighbor. As a local government, the national government is a neighbor of sorts. We need to pop our heads over the wall and say, look, we need things to change. This is not a time for complacency.

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Here’s a way to fight climate change: Empower women

by LaraeMcDonagh Posted on December 9, 2018

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This story was originally published by WIRED and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

“Gender and climate are inextricably linked,” said environmentalist and author Katharine Wilkinson on stage at TEDWomen last week, a gathering of women thought leaders and activists in Palm Desert, California.

Women, she says, are disproportionately affected by climate change. When communities are decimated by floods or droughts, tsunamis or fire, the most vulnerable among them suffer the most. Because women across the world have fewer rights, less money, and fewer freedoms, in those moments of extreme loss, women are often hit the hardest. “There’s greater risk of displacement, higher odds of being injured or killed during a natural disaster. Prolonged drought can precipitate early marriage, as families contend with scarcity. Floods can force last-resort prostitution as women struggle to make ends meet. These dynamics are most acute under conditions of poverty,” she says.

With several new reports painting an increasingly bleak picture of the state of the world’s climate, Wilkinson is delivering her message at a time when leaders on the global stage are looking for solutions. As thousands of people gather this week at a major climate summit known as COP24, Wilkinson is making a plea to open people’s eyes to one fact: Women’s rights are Earth’s rights. “In my experience, to have eyes wide open is to hold a broken heart every day,” she says.

But she has hope. Though women feel the effects of climate the most, they also represent an opportunity. “To address climate change, we must make gender equity a reality. And in the face of a seemingly impossible challenge, women and girls are a fierce source of possibility,” Wilkinson says. She and her team at the nonprofit Project Drawdown have been studying the real-world steps people can take to fix climate change, resulting in a best-selling 2017 book highlighting the top 100 solutions to reverse warming.

Her argument is that if women are empowered in three distinct ways, the downstream effects on the environment will make a huge difference in the fight for climate change. She argues that if women were treated more equally professionally, they’d have fewer kids and the land they farm would be more efficient, all of which would help save the planet.

“Women are the primary farmers of the world,” Wilkinson says. They produce 60 to 80 percent of the food in lower-income countries, she says, on small plots. These farmers are known as “smallholders.”

Yet due to local laws and entrenched biases, women farmers are given fewer resources and support from their governments, and they have fewer rights to their own land. For example, in some countries women are not allowed to own their own land, which makes it impossible for them to use the land as collateral for a loan to buy farming equipment. In other places, women are are not able to borrow money without a man’s signature. These restrictions hamper their ability to run their farms efficiently, leading to lower yields.

This is a problem not just for their earning potential, but for the Earth. Every year, humans clear-cut forests to create more agriculture land to grow crops to feed the world’s growing population. In turn, this deforestation increases the rate of climate change.

Instead of clear-cutting new land, why not work to make the existing farms run by women more efficient? “Close that gap and farm yields rise by 20 to 30 percent,” says Wilkinson. “Support women smallholders, realize higher yields, avoid deforestation, and sustain the life-giving power of forests.” If women’s farms yielded as much on average as farms run by men across the world, it would stop approximately 2 billion tons of CO2 from entering the atmosphere between now and 2050. “That’s on par with the impact household recycling can have globally,” she says.

Besides addressing inequality in agriculture, Wilkinson says giving women access to high-quality voluntary reproductive health care would have tremendous benefit for the climate.

“Curbing growth of our human population is a side effect,” she says — one that would reduce global emissions. Do that by making birth control and medical care more available to women across the world.

And do it by educating women. Wilkinson notes that more than 130 million women worldwide are denied access to school. Yet the more education a woman attains, the fewer children she has. From a conservation perspective, empowering women to have smaller families is an objectively positive outcome. “The right to go to school effects how many human beings live on this planet,” says Wilkinson.

With these three changes — empowerment of women farmers, increased global access to family planning, and the right to an education — Wilkinson and her team at Project Drawdown predict that by midcentury, improving gender equality could equal 1 billion fewer people on Earth.

“Gender equity is on par with wind turbines and solar panels and forests,” Wilkinson says, adding, “This does not mean women and girls are responsible for fixing everything. But we probably will.”

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Here’s a way to fight climate change: Empower women

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First Solar-Powered Car To Be Introduced in Late 2019

by WillisSteffan6 Posted on December 7, 2018

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First Solar-Powered Car To Be Introduced in Late 2019

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Global carbon emissions are on the rise, but don’t let that dash your hopes

by ClaraAgosto Posted on December 6, 2018

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Carbon dioxide, that invisible, earth-warming gas you keep hearing about, is anticipated to hit an all-time high in 2018. Emissions are expected to rise by 2.7 percent this year, according to new research. That’s compared to a 1.6 percent rise in 2017 and a plateau between 2014 and 2016.

What’s behind this disturbing shift? A rise in coal usage, particularly in India and China, as well as the United States’ continued dependence on oil and gas. That’s according to two studies published Wednesday by the Global Carbon Project, a group of 100 scientists from around the world. Unveiled the same week as the United Nations climate change conference in Poland, the new research puts in sharp perspective just how far the world still needs to go to address carbon emissions, even with renewables booming.

“The growing global demand for energy is outpacing decarbonization for now,” Corinne Le Quéré, a French-Canadian climate scientist and lead author of the research, said in a statement. “This needs to change, and change quickly.”

There’s a lot a stake with this spike in emissions. Most recently, the United Nations IPCC climate report warned of a societal and ecological collapse if we don’t keep the world below 2 degrees C warming. When it comes down to it, climate change means the loss of lives — as emissions go up, we’ll see more intense heatwaves, hurricanes, and wildfires.

It all sounds pretty grim, but some of the same researchers behind these reports found things to be optimistic about. Le Quéré, along with former U.N. climate office head Christiana Figueres and other climate experts, authored an analysis in Nature of the Global Carbon Project’s findings. What we’ve achieved so far, they write, seemed “unimaginable a decade ago.” Here are the roses among the thorns:

  1. “If current trends continue, renewables will produce half of the world’s electricity by 2030.”

The future is renewable. This isn’t just a hopeful thought — it’s already poised to be. The cost of solar has dropped a whopping 80 percent in the past decade, and renewables are now cheaper than coal. We already have a lot of the systems in place to shift the world away from gas and oil. Worldwide, more than half of new capacity for generating electricity is renewables.

Developing countries are leading the way on this one; in many, renewables account for the majority of new power generation. Now, the world’s developed nations (the largest polluters) need to catch up.

  1. “Big batteries will spread beyond utilities.”

Renewables have some issues to work out — namely, how to keep delivering power even when clouds cover the sun and the wind stops blowing. The good news is that batteries offer a promising solution for beautiful, continuous power storage. They’ve certainly come a long way from the tiny, forgotten devices scattered about the catch-all drawer in your kitchen: Battery technology is quickly improving, and the price of battery storage is anticipated to halve by 2030.

Advances in battery technology have led to demand for electric vehicles, and many car manufacturers are shifting over. The transition to batteries will allow “developing regions to leapfrog the need for fossil-fuel power plants and conventional distribution grids, just as mobile phones overtook landlines,” according to the commentary.

  1. “Most U.S. citizens live in a jurisdiction that still supports the Paris goals.”

National governments in key countries like Brazil and the United States threaten to undermine global progress on climate change. The good news is that local governments and businesses are stepping up their game. After President Trump announced his intent to withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, thousands of city officials promised to stick with the country’s original goals.

As the Nature analysis notes, “globally, more than 9,000 cities and municipalities from 128 countries, representing 16 percent of the world’s population, have reiterated their commitment to the Paris Agreement.” On top of that, more than 6,000 companies around the world have committed to the climate agreement, and 1,400 companies have factored a price on carbon into their business plans.

As global leaders now meet in Poland to determine how to hold onto a quickly destabilizing world, the task at hand is clear — at least in the abstract. The commentary states that the transition to renewables is “an economic imperative and an ecological necessity” and calls upon leaders to “accelerate that momentum and keep everyone on board.”

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Global carbon emissions are on the rise, but don’t let that dash your hopes

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Trump administration’s climate report raises new questions about nuclear energy’s future

by LGYJaymeknbiym Posted on November 30, 2018

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This story was originally published by the HuffPost and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Call it the nuclear power industry’s thirst trap.

The United States’ aging fleet of nuclear reactors ― responsible for one-fifth of the country’s electricity and most of its low-carbon power ― has never been more necessary as policymakers scramble to shrink planet-warming emissions. Yet the plants are struggling to stay afloat, with six stations shut down in the last five years and an additional 16 reactors scheduled to close over the next decade. So far, new coal- and gas-burning facilities are replacing them.

The nuclear industry blames high maintenance costs, competition from cheaper alternatives and hostile regulators concerned about radiation disasters like the 2012 Fukushima meltdown in Japan. But the country’s most water-intensive source of electricity faces what could be an even bigger problem as climate change increases the risk of drought and taxes already crumbling water infrastructure.

That finding, highlighted in the landmark climate change report that the Trump administration released with apparent reluctance last Friday, illustrates the complex and at times paradoxical realities of anthropogenic, or human-caused, warming. It also stokes an already hot debate over the role nuclear energy should play in fighting global warming, a month after United Nations scientists warned that carbon dioxide emissions must be halved in the next 12 years to avoid cataclysmic climate change leading to at least $54 trillion in damage.

The report ― the second installment of the Fourth National Climate Assessment, a congressionally mandated update on the causes and effects of anthropogenic warming from 13 federal agencies ― devoted its entire third chapter to water contamination and depletion. Aging, deteriorating infrastructure means “water systems face considerable risk even without anticipated future climate changes,” the report states. But warming-linked droughts and drastic changes in seasonal precipitation “will add to the stress on water supplies and adversely impact water supply.”

Nearly every sector of the economy is susceptible to water system changes. And utilities are particularly at risk. In the fourth chapter, the report’s roughly 300 authors conclude, “Most U.S. power plants … rely on a steady supply of water for cooling, and operations are expected to be affected by changes in water availability and temperature increases.”

For nuclear plants, that warning is particularly grave. Reactors require 720 gallons of water per megawatt-hour of electricity they produce, according to data from the National Energy Technology Laboratory in West Virginia cited in 2012 by the magazine New Scientist. That compares with the roughly 500 gallons coal requires and 190 gallons natural gas needs to produce the same amount of electricity. Solar plants, by contrast, use approximately 20 gallons per megawatt-hour, mostly for cleaning equipment, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group.

Nuclear plants are already vulnerable to drought. Federal regulations require plants to shut down if water in the river or lake that feeds its cooling drops below a certain level. By the end of the 2012 North American heat wave, nuclear generation fell to its lowest point in a decade, with plants operating at only 93 percent of capacity.

The availability of water is one problem, particularly for the majority of U.S. nuclear plants located far from the coasts and dependent on freshwater. Another is the temperature of the water that’s available.

Nearly half the nuclear plants in the U.S. use once-through cooling systems, meaning they draw water from a local source, cool their reactors, then discharge the warmed water into another part of the river, lake, aquifer, or ocean. Environmental regulations bar plants from releasing used water back into nature above certain temperatures. In recent years, regulators in states like New York and California rejected plant operators’ requests to pull more water from local rivers, essentially mandating the installation of costly closed-loop systems that cool and reuse cooling water.

In 2012, Connecticut’s lone nuclear power plant shut down one of its two units because the seawater used to cool the plant was too warm. The heat wave that struck Europe this summer forced utilities to scale back electricity production at nuclear plants in Finland, Germany, Sweden, and Switzerland. In France, the utility EDF shut down four reactors in one day.

“Already they’re having trouble competing against natural gas and renewable energy,” said John Rogers, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists. “Add onto that high water temperatures, high air temperatures and drought. It’s just another challenge.”

But water has yet to pose an existential crisis. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said that it considers climate change when reviewing applications for nuclear plants’ construction or operation permits and that it has never rejected one over concerns about dwindling cooling water resources.

“For plants on lakes and rivers, the basic consideration will continue to be whether or not the water level in that body is high enough to meet the conditions of the license,” said Scott Burnell, a spokesman for the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. “To this point, there have been no indications in the NRC’s analyses to suggest that plants would have to deal with the potential for the water bodies to no longer be able to fulfill their function.”

If or when that situation arises, a plant would have to propose a plan to maintain the requirements of the license, likely by reducing water intake and cutting electricity production, he said.

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There are ways to make nuclear plants more efficient with water. Closed-loop systems already cool 40 percent of the country’s reactors. For more than a decade, regulators and industry players have been discussing the feasibility of air-cooled condensers, which use electricity generated by the plant to power air conditioners that cool reactors without water. But the technology siphons roughly 7 percent of the power produced by the plant and has yet to be installed at any U.S. nuclear station, according to the industry-funded Nuclear Energy Institute.

Another approach is to use recycled water. To cool its three reactors, the Palo Verde nuclear plant in Arizona sources most of the 20,000 gallons it uses per minute from reclaimed sewage from a treatment plant near Phoenix — a technique hailed in 2016 as “a feat of engineering” amid a drought.

Breakthroughs like that could make nuclear an attractive option for powering solutions to water scarcity in the years to come, such as desalinating brackish or saltwater and moving it to drought-parched regions.

“That’s energy intensive,” said Matt Wald, a spokesman for the Nuclear Energy Institute. “If you want to do that without adding carbon emissions, you’re likely to look at nuclear power as a way to do that.”

That, however, gets to the heart of the biggest question looming over the nuclear industry: Is it, given the radioactive waste it produces, clean energy?

For the growing number of states and municipalities pledging to use 100 percent renewable energy by the middle of the century, the answer is maybe.

Hawaii became the first state to adopt a 100 percent renewable electricity rule in 2015, pledging to quit gas and coal by 2045. The law makes no mention of nuclear, probably because the archipelago state has no reactors and requires a minimum two-thirds vote from both houses of the legislature to approve the construction of a nuclear plant or radioactive waste site.

The 100 percent clean electricity bill that California passed in August mandates that the state generate 60 percent of its electricity from renewables like wind and solar by 2030. But it gives regulators another 15 years after that to complete the overhaul with energy sources considered nonrenewable, including nuclear power, large hydropower dams, and gas-fired power plants that capture and store emissions.

A statute that Atlanta passed in June to get the city to 100 percent clean electricity by 2035 is vague, listing nuclear as a source of clean energy but vowing to get all its power from renewables.

For the Sierra Club, the environmental giant making a huge push to get cities and states to go all renewable, nuclear power is “a uniquely dangerous energy technology for humanity” and “no solution to climate change.”

“There’s no reason to keep throwing good money after bad on nuclear energy,” Lauren Lantry, a Sierra Club spokeswoman, said by email. “It’s clear that every dollar spent on nuclear is one less dollar spent on truly safe, affordable, and renewable energy sources like wind, solar, energy efficiency, battery storage, and smart grid technology.”

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Trump administration’s climate report raises new questions about nuclear energy’s future

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Closing nuclear plants risks rise in greenhouse gas emissions, report warns

by aundreaburch71 Posted on November 18, 2018

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This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Looming climate breakdown is opening fresh divisions among environmentalists over nuclear energy, with a major advocacy group calling for struggling nuclear plants to be propped up to avoid losing their low-carbon power.

Nuclear is the single largest source of low-carbon electricity in the U.S. But a third of nuclear plants are unprofitable or scheduled to close, risking a rise in greenhouse gas emissions if they are replaced by coal or natural gas, a major Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report has found.

U.S. emissions could increase by as much as 6 percent if struggling plants are shuttered early, the report warns. This scenario has put pressure on many environmental groups to reevaluate their intrinsic opposition to nuclear energy as a dangerous blight that must be eradicated.

“We are running out of time to make the emissions reductions needed to avoid the worst impacts of the climate crisis,” said Steve Clemmer, director of energy research for the UCS climate and energy program. “Losing a low-carbon source of electricity like nuclear power is going to make decarbonization even harder than it already is. Nuclear has risks, it’s not a perfect technology, but there have to be trade-offs.”

The U.S., like the rest of the world, faces a steep challenge to avoid the worst ravages of heatwaves, drought, extreme weather, and flooding. The IPCC report states emissions must reach net zero by 2050 to avoid the most punishing climate change impacts, whereas the Trump administration is currently dismantling every major policy aimed at lowering emissions in the U.S.

The U.S. has an aging fleet of nearly 100 reactors at 60 nuclear plants, with many nearing the ends of their expected lifetimes. Five plants have shut down since 2013, with a further five set to shutter over the next eight years.

In total, a third of U.S. nuclear power plants are set to close down or are unprofitable largely due to a major shift to cheaper natural gas. As nuclear provides more than half of the United States’ low-carbon energy, this situation “raises serious concerns about our ability to achieve the deep cuts in carbon emissions needed to limit the worst impacts of climate change,” the UCS report states.

Replacements for nuclear will vary across the country. The huge Diablo Canyon plant in California, for example, will probably spawn a surge in renewable energy when it shuts in 2025. But in other states, such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, weak clean energy policies and the abundance of natural gas mean the closure of nuclear plants will probably raise emissions.

“Renewables can fill a lot of the gap but it’s a timing issue,” Clemmer said. “Over a long timeframe, we can ramp up renewables and phase out coal, gas, and nuclear generation, but we don’t have that time. We have to cut half of all emissions by 2030, according to the IPCC. We can’t physically ramp up renewables fast enough.”

Anti-nuclear campaigning has been a foundational shibboleth for groups such as Greenpeace, which has pointed to disasters such as Chernobyl in 1986 and Fukushima in 2011 as evidence that the sector should be shut down.

While the UCS have never been militant opponents of nuclear power, Clemmer said “we are getting a bit more vocal” about the benefits of keeping plants open as the scale of the climate crisis has become clearer.

Many opponents remain implacable, however.

“Nuclear reactors are a bad bet for a climate strategy,” said Gregory Jaczko, who was chair of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission during the Obama administration. “The Union of Concerned Scientist models don’t reflect the reality of the United States electricity market. Renewables are getting cheaper faster than expected and are in some cases the least expensive source of electricity.”

Jaczko said new nuclear is a “financial boondoggle,” with investments better placed in solar or wind. “Employing nuclear for climate change is like Dorothy seeking the Wizard of Oz to get home,” he added. “It’s an expensive enticing mirage.”

Clemmer said he agreed that new nuclear plants are enormously expensive, but said there was a case for the U.S. government to invest around $814 million a year to keep existing unprofitable plants online, given the cleaner energy they provide. “Environmental groups may come round to this, but I’m just not sure,” he said.

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Closing nuclear plants risks rise in greenhouse gas emissions, report warns

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