Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Climate Progress

Climate Progress


Must-see video: Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss

Posted: 14 Sep 2009 06:01 AM PDT

Just about everywhere you look ice is melting — see USGS report details "recent dramatic shrinkage" in U.S. glaciers, matching global decline.

Here is a very impressive presentation from a 2009 TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference:  "Photographer James Balog shares new image sequences from the Extreme Ice Survey, a network of time-lapse cameras recording glaciers receding at an alarming rate, some of the most vivid evidence yet of climate change."

Video beats even the best photographs, I think (see "Must see: Photographing Climate Change")..  Either way, the visual evidence is stunning, and may be the best response to efforts by deniers to push the nonsense of global cooling.

Related Posts:

Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) joins key Dems in proposal to boost carbon capture and storage in climate bill

Posted: 14 Sep 2009 05:48 AM PDT

http://mnpublius.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/robert_byrd_.jpgSen. Robert Byrd from the coal state of West Virginia has long been seen as a pretty rock solid 'no' vote on the climate bill.  Nate Silver's "Probability of Yes" vote for Byrd is 19.4%, and I've heard that's optimistic.  He said this summer he wouldn't vote for the House bill "in its present form" — although, like most Senators, he probably doesn't know what in it.

Still, he has decided to engage in the process of working with other Democratic senators to push carbon capture and storage technology.  His office press release quotes him saying:

"If our nation is to benefit from the next generation of clean coal technology, the private sector needs greater certainty and robust financial support in order to make the necessary investments….

I will continue to engage the Administration and the Senate to make sure that West Virginians have a seat at the table during this climate debate."

E&E News PM (subs. req'd) had a big story on this Friday night, with details on the proposal:

Five influential coal-state Senate Democrats floated today they say would help with the widespread commercial deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technologies.

Sens. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, Max Baucus of Montana, Mark Warner of Virginia, and Arlen Specter and Bob Casey of Pennsylvania stand out among a group of eight Democrats calling on the Environment and Public Works and Finance committees to include a range of special incentives for the electric utility and coal industries in cap-and-trade legislation this fall.

They requested several changes to the House-passed climate bill, H.R. 2454, including more funding and bonus allowances to power companies as they face greenhouse gas emission limits on their new and existing plants. That would essentially allow power plant owners to collect more money in allowances as they sequester more emissions.

You can read the proposal here, but I wouldn't bother because it's pretty okay and certain to change more than once as this process evolves.  It throws even more money at coal with carbon capture and storage, which I suspect is relatively pointless (see "Is coal with carbon capture and storage a core climate solution?")  And I doubt the money will even get spent because CCS is just too damn expensive (see Harvard stunner: "Realistic" first-generation CCS costs a whopping $150 per ton of CO2 — 20 cents per kWh!)

But I could be wrong, and it's early well worth finding out if CCS works..  That's especially true since if it does, the future is cofiring coal and biomass with CCS and producing negative-carbon electricity.  If more money for CCS gets Byrd's vote — at least to block a filibuster — and the votes of people like Baucus, it's well worth it.  True, he might well bail on the final bill, but engaging him in the process seems like a positive step.

The biggest flaw in the proposal seems to be that gives too much money upfront to new coal plants that promise to do CCS, but then has no penalties if they fail to deliver on the CCS.  That needs to be fixed, but I can't see many scenarios where new coal plants without CCS get built after this bill passes.  And the only CCS plants that get built will be ones that the government essentially covers most of the cost of, which means not bloody many until costs drop sharply, probably post-2030.

Here are more excerpts from the story:

Separately, the group suggested an exemption from new greenhouse gas technology standards on coal mines and landfill methane projects. Instead, they asked for both to be added to the list of domestic offset projects that industry could fund as an alternative to making their own direct emission reductions.

A Senate Democratic aide said this change could result in expanding the domestic offset pool by as much as 45 percent.

Without going into specifics, the group also urged the Senate to include language that addresses the legal liability for long-term carbon storage. And it encouraged the establishment of a $10 billion, 10-year program that would help get carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) technology into widespread use around the country — something that already is in the House-passed bill.

The senators also want to include a congressional finding that "it is in the public interest to achieve widespread, commercial-scale deployment of carbon capture and storage, both in America and throughout Asia before January 1, 2030."

The draft language is the result of a working group led by Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) established in April as part of a broader outreach campaign to senators who do not sit directly on the relevant committees writing the climate bill. Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) also signed onto the draft language.

"We believe our nation needs all sources of energy — including coal — to meet our future demands," the group wrote to EPW Chairwoman Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.). "We also know that other countries, such as China and India, depend heavily on coal as an energy resource. Therefore, widespread, commercial-scale deployment of carbon capture and sequestration technology for coal will be critical if we are to meet our national and global climate goals."

The senators said it is "imperative" that their legislative suggestions make it into the final climate change bill, though none of them promised that these requests alone would win their vote. Each said they have "other priorities" as the Senate forges ahead with its sweeping energy and global warming package….

"We're very encouraged to see such a diverse group of senators working together, making progress, and moving climate legislation forward," said Tony Kreindler, a spokesman at the Environmental Defense Fund.

"It is a good-faith effort to address the legal and regulatory barriers to widespread deployment of CCS," added Paul Bledsoe of the National Commission on Energy Policy,

UN suspends largest CDM auditor — Copenhagen needs to clean up the Clean Development Mechanism, Senate should keep House's tough offset language

Posted: 13 Sep 2009 04:15 AM PDT

Several months ago I met with the lead climate negotiator for a major European country.  I spelled out some of my oft-repeated concerns about international offsets aka the Clean Development Mechanism.  He kept nodding his head and said, "Work with us to fix it."

Here are the key points about the CDM:

  1. It's certainly not as bad as many people think (see excellent overview from Point Carbon here — "The CDM: Rip-offsets or real reductions?")
  2. The Europeans are going to insist on keeping it.  It remains a principal mechanism for having polluters pay for clean energy in developing countries.  We certainly need some such mechanism.
  3. Under the House climate bill, we don't have to participate in any international offset market that does not meet high standards for quality assurance.
  4. For all the lame and/or insufficiently audited CDM projects that became certified emissions reduction (CER) credits for the Europeans to buy instead of actual emissions reductions, they only bought about 80 million in 2008 and the average price was about $25/ton (see "Do the 2 billion offsets allowed in Waxman-Markey gut the emissions targets?").
  5. Many of the cheapest tons — the dubious Chinese HFC projects — are largely gone and the standards for CDM are certain to be tightened in whatever deal comes out of Copenhagen deal in the wake of ongoing news about questionable CDM oversight.
  6. The central conclusions of my recent analyses and discussions with leading experts this year remains true.  Large-scale, inexpensive international offsets don't exist nor will they.  Were the U.S. to enter the CDM market in a big way, prices would go up.  The overwhelming majority of emissions reductions in the climate bill as currently written will be met with domestic clean energy strategies (see "Game changer, Part 2: Unconventional gas makes the 2020 Waxman-Markey target so damn easy and cheap to meet).

That said, some in this country are trying to weaken in the Senate bill the international offsets oversight provisions found in the House clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill.  The latest story from the UK's Sunday Times, "Carbon-trading market hit by UN suspension of clean-energy auditor," should undercut the rationale for those efforts:

The legitimacy of the $100 billion (£60 billion) carbon-trading market has been called into question after the world's largest auditor of clean-energy projects was suspended by United Nations inspectors.

SGS UK had its accreditation suspended last week after it was unable to prove its staff had properly vetted projects that were then approved for the carbon-trading scheme, or even that they were qualified to do so.

The episode will be embarrassing for European lawmakers in the run-up to the global climate summit in Copenhagen, where they will attempt to lure big polluters such as America and China into a binding agreement to replace the Kyoto protocol. SGS is the second such company to be suspended – Norway's DNV was penalised last November for similar infractions.

The EU's carbon-trading system, which puts a price on pollution through carbon permits that can be bought and sold, is the key element in Europe's fight against climate change.

About a fifth of the $100 billion of credits traded annually come from projects funded under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). The heavily criticised programme allows industrialised countries to offset their pollution by buying "certified emission reductions credits" generated by low-car-bon schemes in the developing world. China and India are the biggest generators of the credits: more than 900 projects are now running, producing billions of credits, with thousands more in the pipeline.

Critics say the system is not sufficiently policed and allows western polluters to buy their way out of more costly carbon-cutting measures.

All such schemes must first be approved by organisations such as SGS. DNV was the single biggest auditor until it was suspended last year, when much of its workload was shifted to SGS, which was simply unable to cope.

Simon Shaw, chairman of EEA Fund Management, a backer of emission-reduction projects and an investor in Climate Exchange, the carbon-trading platform, said: "There was obviously a lack of resources. We knew this was coming."

UN inspectors said they found six irregularities in a recent spot check. The firm has now rectified these, but remains suspended until the UN verifies sufficient changes have been made. SGS could not be reached for comment.

Lawmakers are expected to reform the CDM in Copenhagen in December.

More vetting and oversight of projects are required — and tougher standards for auditors.  And that should improve quality and raise costs, both very good things.