Tag Archives: carbon emissions

Forest loss

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Forest clearing for agriculture, Papua New GuineaThere is a curious twist in the ongoing debate over the protection of tropical forest.

In the west we say that we are worried by the rate of deforestation that is equivalent to an area twice the size of Tasmania every year or an area the size of Sydney every two days. And we are becoming more concerned when we hear that this deforestation, the cutting and burning of carbon stores, makes up around 13% of global greenhouse gas emissions from human activity.

No matter that many of the trees end up providing us with furniture or paper and the cleared land grows cows for our wrapped up burgers.

In an attempt to slow the rates of both legal and illegal logging, the west is talking up various financial incentives to reduce the rates of deforestation in the tropics. There have been stewardship payments before but this time we are proposing making payments for the carbon that stays in the forest if trees are not cut, an avoided emission.

Several labels have been used to describe this incentive for forest protection. It started as RED, reduced emissions from deforestation. Then a second ‘D’ was added to capture situations when forests are degraded but not felled. And now a ‘+’ has been included to cover the social and economic implications of both deforestation and the incentive mechanism.

So we now have the inclusive REDD+.

The idea is simple enough. An estimate is made of the carbon emissions that would happen if a forest were cut down completely and/or degraded as a result of timber harvest. A detailed set of carbon accounting rules and information on the forest is used to determine the amount of avoided emissions that would accrue from keeping the forest intact. Once the amount of avoided emissions is verified carbon credits can be issued and sold on international carbon markets for areas where the forest is protected. Those with a need for carbon credits and pay the market price for each ton of carbon dioxide to whomever is responsible for keeping the forest intact.

At first glance it seems like a great deal. Local peoples get paid to keep their forests standing and greenhouse gas emitters get to pay to offset their negative effects on the atmosphere.

And where these payments flow and are equal to or greater than the value that would accrue from clearing and cultivating their land, it will seem like a good deal for everyone.

Carbon emitters in the west pay real dollars to resource owners in developing countries to keep the trees standing.

Recall, however, what happened in the industrialised countries where just about everywhere land was cleared of forest for agriculture. Less than 3% of Western Europe still has natural forest, down from over 80% before agriculture. In the US where there are large tracts of inaccessible land unsuitable for agriculture where forests are still intact, some 40% of the forests in southern and northern states were cut down during the 1800’s.

Agriculture in these places was hugely successful. Crops were grown and sold each and every year that created wealth and with it innovation, industry and more wealth. Then that wealth created finance that generated even more wealth with lifestyles to match.

So with REDD+ actually we are asking that for modest payments spread out over a few decades and spurning the opportunities of the repeat revenue from agriculture, owners of tropical forests will forego the route to opportunity and wealth that, so far, is the only one we know works.

I wonder how many of us who already live in affluence would take that deal?

Not many is my guess. And yet conservative management of tropical forest remains is a critically important task. It is just that we must find an alternative development pathway to mobile phones, plasma TVs, education and health care that is both equitable and reliable.

At some point we must understand that we cannot be so numerous and still try to solve problems on the cheap.

Size of the task

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Opera House, Sydney HarbourIt is desirable to reduce greenhouse gas emissions so that the greenhouse effect doesn’t get out of hand and warm the world by amounts not seen for millions of years.

And should this warming happen too fast for our production systems to adjust, then desire must become an imperative.

Fair enough.

Now let’s consider the size of the task.

If we convert the current global energy use into oil equivalents – that is combine all the coal, oil, gas, hydroelectricity, nuclear and alternative sources and convert the energy we gain from them into the energy we get from a barrel of oil – we use the equivalent of 10 million barrels of oil an hour.

Or, if you prefer, 1,590 million litres an hour.

That’s enough to liquid to fill over 15,000 Olympic sized swimming pools every 24 hours or in less than two weeks fill Sydney Harbour, onE of the largest natural harbours in the world.

Plus this number is, believe it or not, getting larger by the day thanks to more people and rapid growth in demand from emerging economies.

10 million barrels an hour is colossal demand. No wonder superannuation funds invest in fossil fuel energy.

Perhaps the next time you lounge with a G&T by a swimming pool, imagine the pool, and a few thousand more, full of oil, and you may glimpse the size of the task.

Our energy demand is simply vast. And thanks to availability, some legacy issues and economics, most of this demand comes from fossil fuels. Partly because of the volume and locked in infrastructure for generation and delivery energy generation is a tough thing to shift, requiring huge investment in alternative sources, a clunky transition period, and unbridled commitment to change.

And because it will take time, any shift will require great tenacity.

It is a big ask and very unlikely that we will take on this transition voluntarily. It will be both difficult and costly. The engineering task alone is staggering: reworking energy grids, distributed generation, engine conversions and replacement. Even the decision to keep the grid or move to a distributed model is a big one.

Then there is the economics. New monies must be found to develop alternatives at scale and monies found to support uptake of what will initially be more expensive energy sources. Then those who have already invested heavily in fossil fuel power risk lost dividends, losing out to new investors. And more of us have invested than we might realize. Superannuation funds that will pay out for many a retirement, like the low risk of traditional energy investments.

The US and Europe are oil and coal dependent because their entrepreneurs and investors backed fossil fuels. New wealth in China, India and South America can be more flexible. They will invest for the far side of the transition, in the new technologies, not the status quo. In 100 years time it is unlikely that the old west will hold the purse strings, which is actually ok, if a little scary for those who have already invested.

Sydney Harbour

So the size of the task is huge, not just because we gobble 10 million barrels an hour, but also because we are not nimble enough economically to act swiftly.

So when the debate on a carbon price uses hip pocket rhetoric, remember the size of the task and know that change to something this big it is not going to be cheap

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It finally happened

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After back stabbing, vacuous argument and dithering for long enough for us to have been in and out of the next ice age, and despite (or perhaps because of) a hung parliament, yesterday Australian politicians passed a carbon pricing bill through the lower house by a couple of votes.

Champagne all round for the warmers, gnashing of teeth for the deniers and plenty of “why did they do that?” from the majority of the populace more concerned with their own stuff.

And a wry smile from the historians, for this is truly a moment for them to record.

It is the point at which a conservative country in a remote corner of the western world, bound to a colonial past that created significant wealth by exploiting natural resources, made a tentative, but hugely symbolic step towards accounting for externalities.

A brown economy allowed its politicians to introduce a policy that starts to capture the hidden environmental costs of doing business. Those costs that never make it onto the company accounts, the externalities, or what the policy people prefer to call spillover effects.

On the balance sheets of 500 companies and organisations with the largest greenhouse gas emissions there will now be a line item that will show they have made payments for an environmental impact. Not from a point of pollution into the creek that runs by their factory, or for installing mufflers to counteract machine noise, or the filters and scrubbers to remove particulates from the smoke stack, but for an invisible and diffuse environmental effect.

Truly this is historic.

And what history will record is that on 12th October 2011 Australia made its move down the road of major economic reform. It started the process of converting from a fossil fuel based economy with centralized energy infrastructure built with entrenched investment structures; to a fluid, entrepreneurial, environment friendly era of economic development.

And this happened because it realized that even though a capitalist system fits the human psyche like a glove, capitalism is not sustainable unless profit is real. It cannot be profit declared by hiding costs in the environment. For, in the end, the environment stops absorbing those costs and closes down, cutting off production.

There will, of course, be u-turns and moments of doubt about this historic decision. There will also be kick back from the old ways that claim emissions are just hot air. And those claims may turn out to be true.

Only this path is as inevitable as peak oil, because even if it’s not about emissions, it is about knowing and accounting the true environmental costs of doing business.

Only then we can live well and live within our means.

The missing link

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Some years ago I wrote an essay entitled ‘What if it’s not emissions’. I was not in denial or even sceptical about climate change, more concerned that we had become fixated with emission reduction as the solution to climate change. So convinced had we become that it was a given that if emissions came down, we would have fixed that awkward problem and all will be well with the world.

My real issue was that we risked putting all our eggs into the emission reduction basket.

Burning landfill site, GaboroneAfter more years of political inaction than seems decent, the Australian government has just released a clean energy future policy on climate change. And, guess what? We still have the same fixation. The proposal is all about emission reduction, initially through a tax on pollution followed by a cap and trade system to make emitting greenhouse gas so expensive that no rational business could afford such behaviour.

It might be about emissions, but the policy formulation sees only a modest reduction target – 5% below 2000 emission levels by 2020. This means in 2020 Australia is pledging to emit 509 million tCO2e in greenhouse gases or 56 million less than it did in 2009.

Only by 2020, even with the proposed intricate emissions reduction policy fully functional, emissions of 679 million tCO2e are predicted.

Actual emissions will increase because the Australian population will grow in numbers at roughly 890 people per day, the economy will grow and so will affluence. Economic growth will require energy to follow the historical trend of a doubling in consumption every 30 years. And although the policy does talk about energy efficiency and alternative sources, the required capacity increase will inevitably be met by traditional means.

Emissions growth will leave a shortfall in the target of 170 million tCO2e or 30% of current emissions. So it would seem that the emissions reduction basket has few eggs.

This again begs the question ‘What if it’s not emissions?’

Let us accept what the science tells us and agree that it is emissions that are a significant driver of the current climate warming. What the policy shows is that, rather like American debt ceiling, we cannot quite admit the severity of the problem. And, more importantly, we lack the courage to tackle the problem head on. It is just too hard and too scary.

And this would actually be ok if we hadn’t missed the critical issue in all this.

We have stopped talking about how 7 billion people are going to sustain growth in affluence on a warming planet. We have forgotten about adaptation. Forgotten that we will need to use water wisely, deliver sustainable production on farms, and manage our landscapes when the temperatures change, rains forget to fall, seasonality shifts, severe weather events become more frequent and the sea levels rise.

Less than $1 billion of the $25 billion revenue generated from the carbon tax will go incentive land management through carbon offset projects. They will mostly be Kyoto compliant activities such as permanent tree plantings and flaring methane – just as the international agreement to proceed with a second commitment period of the Kyoto protocol teeters.

There will be money for biodiversity initiatives. Good stuff, but just more of what we have already been doing.

What happened to incentives to revegetate the landscape and put carbon back into the soil? The critical activities that will help us manage that scarce water, produce reliable quantities of food and help save what is left of nature. Missing, presumed dead.

Seems like we should ask again, ‘What if it’s not emissions?’

Forest for the trees

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There is a consensus among climate scientists that the net greenhouse gas emission reductions we must achieve to keep warming below dangerous levels cannot happen without the agricultural sector. They are right, it can’t.

There are three reasons for this assertion.

The first is that emission reductions from energy efficiency, mitigation and renewable projects will struggle to keep pace with ever-growing emissions from global energy demand. Mitigation projects in energy sectors will slow emission rates but leave legacy emissions in the atmosphere.

The second reason follows from a need to deal with this legacy. Smart agricultural and forestry practices can suck back CO2 and store it in vegetation and soil – so-called biosequestration. In Australia the sequestration potential in agriculture alone is 100 million tonnes of CO2 emissions (CO2e) per annum, or a quarter of Australian anthropogenic emissions with the bonus that soil with more carbon in it is far better for production that soil with less.

The third reason, and the big one, is land clearing. Globally we are still cutting down forests to grow food at a rate of 35,000 hectares a day, or an area equivalent to the urban footprint of Sydney every five days. On its own, this source accounts for 18 per cent of global emissions.

The problem is how to reduce land clearing.

We have cleared vegetation ever since we invented agriculture some 10,000 years ago and even the Ancient Greeks knew that clearing altered climate. Yet we can’t stop ourselves, because mechanised agriculture has become the engine of prosperity from Persia to Pennsylvania. It is quite something to tell a government minister that his government should forego the economic opportunity and the social security a robust agricultural sector brings. “Why not develop available land,” he will say, “there are mouths to feed.”

It is much easier to sell the idea of keeping the trees to the indigenous land owner, who is pained when forced to fell his trees to fund his children’s education.

And this is the nub of the matter. For what we have cleared are forests – vast stands of carbon locked up in the timber and in the soil that supports the trees (at least 40 per cent of the carbon even in the tallest rainforest is in the soil as plant roots and organic matter). Even where the logs are taken for product, clearing releases the carbon from the tree branches and roots through fire or decomposition and as exposed soil dries out, so the carbon oxidises to the atmosphere.

Enter a hugely contentious solution called REDD, reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation. The text of the Copenhagen accord describes what it means:

“We recognise the crucial role of reducing emission from deforestation and forest degradation and the need to enhance removals of greenhouse gas emission by forests and agree on the need to provide positive incentives to such actions through the immediate establishment of a mechanism including REDD-plus, to enable the mobilisation of financial resources from developed countries.”

In short, the west pays to avoid deforestation and so help reduce that 18 per cent slice of global emissions.

REDD, and its latest manifestation REDD-plus (same idea but with wider scope), are criticised for two reasons.

REDD projects amount to welfare payments to the developing countries where the projects reside. And welfare is disliked by both giver and recipient.

Then there is a vociferous green argument against the market approach to delivery as in this case there will be cowboys and governments who rip off the funds before they reach the resource owners. So despite the accord, REDD has been slow to start.

Lost somewhat in this debate on clearing is another mechanism for reducing degradation of forests, Improved Forest Management (IFM).

This is where emission reduction comes from projects on lands designated for forestry. Mitigation is achieved through combinations of longer harvest rotations, improvements to silviculture, better harvest practices and a specific category of protecting forests that would otherwise have been logged.

Whatever the specifics IFM is more like a commercial transaction, industry to industry, and is more comfortable to buyers. The outcome is better managed forests that continue to sequester carbon while emissions are avoided. In the developing countries where these projects are most likely, the forests also remain to supply traditional use.

It would be unfortunate if arguments over REDD derailed or slowed the “immediate establishment of a mechanism …to enable the mobilisation of financial resources from developed countries,” as stated in Copenhagen, because IFM already exists as a mechanism that can deliver.

It would be cheeky to call IFM green, but it is definitely not REDD.

 

This piece first appeared in Climate Spectator in 2010.

Can you be too green?

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Back in 2009 the Australian Greens helped the opposition to vote down the then Labour governments Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme legislation. They said that it was weak on emission reduction targets; the proposed 5% was too distant from the minimum 25% the Greens wanted.

Now, as a much weaker carbon-tax-to-trading-scheme hybrid proposal is debated, they are prepared to compromise.  The Greens propose to accept a modest carbon price prior to a ramp up later. This is the very same approach they previously rejected. The fundamental premise of a cap-and-trade system is to manipulate supply and demand in a way that changes behaviour. The only difference with the current proposal is it begins with a clunky and hugely unpopular new tax.

After years of delay that has seen debate erode policy options and scarify public support, the Greens are agreeing to an option that is even less likely to achieve the outcomes they support.

It is time to call them on this blunder. Back in 2009 their inability to see that effective climate change policy is a long play, tipped the result over to inaction. Structural economic transitions never happen overnight. Economies adjust, they do not jump, and any policy that forces change too rapidly risks collapsing the system. Wise policy recognizes this and finds a more gentle and expedient path. The rough edges of a CPRS are a compromise worth taking to achieve smooth transition.

In 2009 the Greens missed this reality. The risk they take this time is to botch it again. They may accept the tax now only to balk again at the emission targets set in any subsequent trading scheme. Do so and decades of hard work progressing the environment into the public psyche and onto the political agenda will be undone.

Politicians of all hues need to understand that climate change policy is a once in a millennium opportunity. And for the Greens a carbon market will inject serious funds into the environment and begin the long and necessary process of business accounting for environmental costs. How else, other than through a market approach, will we see manufacturing, development and energy accounting for natural environmental services.

Perhaps when oil hits US$300 a barrel and our continued carbon intensity cripples our exports we will look back to 2009 and say, if only.  Let’s hope the same will not be said of 2011.

Lest we forget

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April 25 each year is a public holiday down under and every Australian knows why. It is ANZAC day, a time to remember the brave and courageous soldiers who lost their lives in war. Many thousands attend dawn services across the country come rain or shine.

Australians also know about the Easter and Christmas holidays when many a shrimp finds its way onto a barbie. A fair number also know the religious significance that prompts these days of leisure.

Earth Hour is not a holiday but it is a similar sort of homage, this time to the environment. It began in Australia and is now a global gesture toward restraint in our appetite for energy. There is not a holiday for the environment though. So World Environment Day (5th June) passes without notice; as do the minor events such as World Tree Day (18th September).

There is strong public opinion that the environment is important. Not long after the 2006 release of the documentary movie, The Inconvenient Truth, that went on to make over US$50 million worldwide, action on climate change was palpable. People in Australia took to the streets, “take action,” they said.

Since that time there has been policy paralysis.

Unable to handle lobby group pressure, fearful of what might happen to a carbon intense economy fueled by minerals revenue and coal-fired energy, and an unwillingness to take the real issues to the public, the politicians have achieved nothing.

Initially there was goodwill. Australia signed up to the Kyoto protocol in Bali and there was bi-partisan talk of a market mechanism to price carbon. But the greens said it was not enough and the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme was voted down. An odd call that.

The topic was rested.

Then there was failure in Copenhagen, little more in Cancun and deathly quiet over the prospects for Johannesburg. Leverage for the true believers has faded. The vacuum has been filled in part by skeptics, not about the science per se, but about the need to do anything about emissions. And the public seem to have forgotten what all the calls for policy initiatives were about.

We don’t remember that the idea was to become less emission intensive through energy conservation and shifts to alternative energy sources; perhaps even sequester some carbon into the landscape. It has also been convenient to forget that, given the way our economy works, a trading scheme was a handy mechanism to achieve these goals.

We also see to have forgotten that signing up to Kyoto means setting an emission reduction target. As at 2007 emissions were 597 million tCO2e or 77 million tCO2e more than the 5% reduction on 1990 levels. And emissions will, notwithstanding economic slowdowns, rise and grow the actual tonnage of reductions required in the absence of a policy to reverse the trend. Or, of course, Australia could renege on even a modest target.

The noise over a carbon tax is just a smokescreen, a handy way to keep the real policy issues hidden. Perhaps this is because a focused debate, something that talks about what was asked for, would remind us of what we may have forgotten. That a few short years ago most people wanted something done about the challenge of climate change.

Perhaps we should have a climate day, make it a holiday and then we will not forget.

Don’t argue the mechanism, set the target

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The UK Prime Minister David Cameron surprised everyone this week by proposing to write into law a 50% emission reduction target over 1990 levels by 2025.  A bold step perhaps, albeit one that serves his political ends as much as benefiting the atmosphere. The audacious move even managed to leave the environmentalists with nothing to argue about. Mr Cameron probably allowed himself a wry smile into his shaving mirror.

Naturally there is a get out of jail free card in the form of a review in 2014 to see if other European nations have followed the lead. Plus UK emissions are already 23% lower than 1990 thanks to initiatives on easily achieved reductions. Yet no one doubts the ambition, for it will become increasingly harder to close in on the target.

So why did Cameron impose such a mission on a country with an ailing economy and huge government debt requiring draconian actions to cut public spending? Because there is nothing like a mission impossible to galvanise people; a collective cause get people fired up enough to take action, innovate and embrace risk.

Cameron has taken a gamble. Success will see UK business change to be more efficient and grow new sectors in innovation, especially in clean energy, and the gamble is that a mature economy has the smarts to achieve it. Plus he has the market mechanism of the EU ETS and an electorate who already understand the cause. The downside is that cause may not be strong enough to ignite passions and the target too distant and potentially too costly. On balance though, what appears bold is solid politics and an understanding that transition to a less carbon intensive economy is inevitable; in short, leadership.

Not so surprising this week were opinion poll numbers in Australia.

The Prime Minister Julia Gillard is currently less popular and the Labour Party primary vote is lower than when the jitters struck and the party ousted her predecessor and she became Prime Minister almost a year ago. The pollsters take is that the Australian public is not listening anymore and they don’t want a carbon tax. Only it would be suicide for the government and the party to capitulate again. Somehow, someone somewhere has to come up with a policy on emissions.

The problem is that, unlike the UK, Australia is in a time of plenty. It may feel precarious to be so reliant on a resources boom and there are fiscal challenges, not least the effect of a strong currency on trade exposed sectors, but really, these are good times. And in good times mighty challenges have trouble finding traction. Any call for a ‘fight on the beaches’ spirit just sounds odd. So instead of a cause we have a 5% emission reduction target, a laughable proportion already massively exceeded by the UK.

Now suppose the PM embraced the risk and made a 50% emission reduction by 2025 her carbon policy. Forget the tax for the moment, go back to basics and set the target.

Such a policy has meaning, can be explained and provides the context for any number of mechanisms to achieve the result. The debate can then be about the most efficient way to reach the target.

Success would see Australia emit 225 MtCO2e in 2025.

In reality this will be a net emission, combining emission reductions and sequestration. Quietly amongst the ‘great big new tax’ spin the Carbon Credits (Carbon Farming Initiative) Bill 2011 is in front of parliament, the mechanics of a domestic carbon offset scheme that could see 20 MtCO2e per annum sequestered by the agricultural sector alone.

Take a punt on this offset option, educate for energy saving, keep the feed in tariffs, even try a CPS style market instrument and the target is achievable. And, best of all, the electorate will understand why it was all necessary.

Who knows, the public might even respond to such leadership in the polls.

Greens

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Recent raucous debate on climate change In the Australian parliament resulted in the Greens, a minor party with environmental leanings, voting twice with the opposition against a Climate Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) policy proposed by the government.

The CPRS legislation was an emissions trading scheme that would leverage market forces to drive behaviours of consumers and investors to cleaner more efficient energy options to lower emissions. I say ‘was’ because the policy option has just been shelved. This decision means that climate change will not be a central item in either government or opposition campaigns in the upcoming election, handy for both major parties.

And why did the Greens oppose the legislation? Because, they said, it did not go far enough. It was too weak and too kind to the heavy polluters. The reduction targets were a joke, so the rhetoric went.

This is a curious position for green politicians to take. The CPRS was an attempt to restructure the way we generate our energy and a mechanism that would money would be made from climate change adaptation measures. In other words legislation that would push more funds towards environmental benefit than any previous conservation measures in the country’s history. Instead there is no climate change policy and no serious debate on climate change legislation likely for at least another two years, possibly longer. And without a policy there is no emissions target at all.

Someone once said that the perfect can get in the way of the good. After the excesses that brought us anthropogenic climate change, it would be irony indeed if the desire for excess in redress scuppered the good.

Climate change policy on the shelf

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So it finally happened. The Australian government has given up on its climate change legislation. After failing twice to get the bill passed through the Senate, dithering under opposition pressure and then realizing they have a tight budget to deliver, the Climate Pollution Reduction Scheme has gone.

Action on climate change was the core platform that effectively won the last election for the Labour party to put them in office after more than a decade in opposition. Much was promised but all that happened was a photo opportunity for the prime minister in Bali, failed legislation and some tantrums in Copenhagen. Under Australian parliamentary law, two knockbacks on a bill is enough for the government to call an election, a double dissolution. They didn’t, instead they put the bill to one side until 2013 at the earliest.

An election is due, however, so why risk public frustration over broken promises? Because the analysts have figured that public interest, concern, will, call it what you will, has lapsed from the Inconvenient Truth fuelled clamor for policy action so prevalent during the last election campaign. The public will forget or forgive the failure to deliver policy on climate change because the issue is no longer important. At least not sufficiently to affect the result so long as climate change is not an election issue. A double dissolution would have put the issue front and centre, so better to just shelve the legislation.

The real reason the CPRS ended up on the shelf is money. Searching for the A$5 billion needed to fund health care reform and a budget already hit hard by huge incentive spending still in place to cushion the effects of the global financial crisis, the CPRS was simply too expensive. And, as everyone knows, voters vote with a hand firmly on their hip pockets.

Read more on the importance of climate change policy action at Greencollar Think Tank