Category: The environment

Atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, etc – everything about life and the state of this planet

Modes of transport and distances travelled

Adding once again to our ever-present debate about the ethics of air travel, a study from the University of California, Berkeley concludes that the major reason planes are more problematic than trains or buses is that people simply travel farther in them. This has two major implications.

For one, it suggests that efforts to curtain short-haul air travel may have limited benefits. If a high-speed rail corridor between Toronto and Montreal would only lead to incremental improvements in emissions reductions, the better course may be to try to discourage as much travel as possible. This may be especially true given another major conclusion of the study: that a very significant share of the environmental impacts of travel arises from the infrastructure (roads, rails, airports), rather than the emissions of vehicles themselves.

For another, it suggests that investing the time and money to travel by bus or train may likewise be less green than would be ideal. The problem may not be choosing to go from Ottawa to Vancouver by air; it may be an inescapable problem of making the trip in the first place.

It is well worth having a look at the webpage for the study, as it contains a lot of additional information. The study’s conclusions were also described on Slate.

The atmospheric longevity of carbon dioxide

How long does carbon dioxide emitted by human beings remain in the atmosphere? It turns out, it is a tricky question. Different mechanisms remove carbon at different rates, and the responses of each system to higher concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere differ.

Probably the most important distinction is between sinks that have a capacity that can be exhausted and those that are effectively limitless. Oceans the biosphere are of the first kind, and they respond to carbon dioxide in the atmosphere relatively quickly. That being said, there is a limit to how much carbon dioxide the ocean can absorb (and the fact that it becomes more acidic while doing so is problematic) and there is only so much biomass the planet can sustain. Weathering rock that absorbs carbon and then subducts below the seafloor is an example of the second type of sink: though it operates very slowly and volcanic eruptions can return carbon that has been locked into the lithosphere back to the atmosphere. Even without such eruptions to worry about, natural weathering is not the route to a stable climate on a human timescale. As the Nature article linked above explains: “it would take hundreds of thousands of years for these processes to bring CO2 levels back to pre-industrial values.”

The article also comments on how long the temperature anomaly from anthropogenic emissions will persist: “whether we emit a lot or a little bit of CO2, temperatures will quickly rise and plateau, dropping by only about 1°C over 12,000 years.” We should make no mistake in understanding that our choices about how much carbon dioxide we emit will have a big impact on a huge number of future generations.

Treating carbon as a cost in government projections

A document from the British government defining their ‘shadow cost’ of carbon (PDF) also discusses an approach to government planning that has a lot of potential. Essentially, the document estimates what the maximum amount a rational actor concerned about both the present and the future should pay to reduce carbon emissions. It then calls for that price to be incorporated into government planning and assessments, just as any other cost would be. For instance, two different proposals for the design of a hospital could be compared in a way that treats the social cost of carbon just like any other expense. The result is a cost-benefit analysis that operates as though a socially optimal carbon tax exists, even when no such instrument exists in the wider economy.

In situations where carbon costs have already been partly or fully taken into account – for instance, if a government building is using electricity on which an upstream carbon tax has already been applied – then only the remaining portion of the shadow price of carbon would be applied.

The approach is exciting because it could spur carbon-rational government action, without the need to wait for an economy-wide price of carbon to emerge. That means earlier results. It also means opportunities to secure economies of scale. The government is a major purchaser of products and services, and a push to incorporate the social cost of carbon into government procurement would affect which products are available to the economy as a whole, and at what price. Another advantage is that each layer of government has the power to impose the requirement; provinces and municipalities that wish to move forward could do so without the need for cooperation from the layers of government above them.

Fuel price floors and funds for the future

While prices send important signals about availability and marginal cost, volatility in fuel prices can be quite problematic. It impedes effective planning, causes abrupt swings in capital and wealth allocation, and sometimes leaves people hoping for future low prices, rather than investing in efficiency now. At the same time, there is an issue of inter-generational equity when it comes to fossil fuels. They are marvellous things: portable, packed with energy, and thus far relatively cheap and easy to extract. Recent generations have benefitted handsomely for their use (though future generations may suffer even more from the consequences of the emissions). A case can be made that some fossil fuel use has served to benefit future generations, because it has helped create the conditions for their material prosperity. Other uses are unambiguously selfish. The difference is akin to that between borrowing to invest and borrowing to finance consumption.

There does seem to be a fairly straightforward mechanism through which both of these problems can be made more manageable. The government could put a floor on fuel prices: pocketing any difference between the market price and the sale price as revenues. Those could then be invested in a fund that will pay out annual dividends to future generations. This would be akin to the oil-funded pension system that has been established in Norway. In this way, members of future generations will at least profit in some proportion of this generation’s fossil fuel wealth. It would also simplify planning for all those who use fuels, since they would be certain of paying at least a pre-set amount at any point in the future.

This isn’t an approach that the world as a whole could take, or even any major players in it. If the government set a floor price of $2 for a litre of gasoline, gas suppliers could just expand their prices to that point and eliminate any payments to government. Since Canada isn’t large enough to substantially affect the international price of oil, however, there may be scope to tax the difference between the floor price and the international price for an equivalent amount of crude oil / coal / etc.

No doubt, this system would cause some economic and equity-related problems I haven’t anticipated. That being said, it is perhaps an example of the general kind of approach that governments should be considering.

Garnaut on managing risk

One of the better aspects of the Australian Garnaut Review of the economics of climate change is the straightforward language in which it is written. That particularly applies to the introductory and concluding chapters (PDF), the latter of which is entitled “Fateful choices.” Perhaps the finest passages in the whole work concern how we ought to respond to the uncertainty that remains in projecting future climatic change as a function of human emissions:

[T]he Review accepts the views of mainstream science ‘on a balance of probabilities’. That formulation allows the possibility that the views on climate change of the IPCC and the learned academies in all of the main countries of scientific achievement are wrong.

There is a chance that they are wrong. Just a chance. But to heed instead the views of the minority of genuine sceptics in the relevant scientific communities would be to hide from reality. It would be imprudent beyond the normal limits of human irrationality…

The mitigation process can be cut short, with due notice to those who have committed their capital to a new economy of low emissions, if at any time the international community comes to the view that new scientific knowledge establishes that the concerns of 2008 were erroneous to the extent that mitigation judgments based on them have become obsolete.

In this case, Australia would have paid 2 per cent of GNP as insurance against what would otherwise have been a high risk of immense damage. It would be a high price, but one that was reasonable on the basis of the evidence available at the time when decisions had to be made.

The consequences of inaction now are not similarly reversible. The arithmetic of Chapter 3 (PDF) about the new patterns of global growth takes away the time we may once have thought we had for experiment, talk, and leisurely decision making. It tells us that business as usual is taking us quickly towards what the science tells us are high risks of highly disruptive climate change…

On a balance of probabilities, the failure of our generation would lead to
consequences that would haunt humanity until the end of time.

The report concludes that an international agreement is vital. It needs to include a global goal for the concentration of carbon dioxide at the moment of stabilization (550 parts per million, perhaps, for an initial agreement – refined to 450 ppm in a subsequent iteration). The agreement needs to incorporate equity concerns, especially through the principle of contraction and convergence, and national commitments must add up to the global target.

It must be very much hoped that the UNFCCC Conference of Parties in Copenhagen next year will at least begin the process towards those outcomes. Barack Obama’s apparent seriousness about making climate change a priority is cause for optimism. If the US, China, India, Japan, and Europe can reach an accord, it seems likely that enough others will be drawn in to make the thing really work.

Canada’s new 90% target for non-GHG emitting electricity

Note: In light of a perceptive comment, I have made some revisions to the post below. In all cases, the old text is struck out.

In yesterday’s Speech from the Throne, the government pledged to increase the share of Canada’s electricity generated from non-emitting sources to 90% by 2020. Looking into the math behind this objective reveals just how ambitious it is. The following numbers are all somewhat approximate, but their precision is not important for revealing the underlying dynamic.

In order to have 90% non-emitting power, you need to have ten nine times more capacity in non-emitting sources like hydroelectricity, nuclear, and renewables than you have in emitting capacity like coal and natural gas plants. Right now, Canada has somewhere around 110 gigawatts (GW) of total installed electrical capacity: 70% of which is non-emitting. Using the following basic equation, we can work out how much non-emitting energy we need in order to reach the 90% objective, based on different scenarios for what happens to the emitting capacity:

0.90 = (gigawatts non-emitting) / (gigawatts non-emitting + gigawatts emitting)

In every case, you have ten nine times more non-emitting (clean) capacity than emitting (dirty) capacity. Therefore, getting to the 90% target while retaining all 33 GW of Canada’s dirty capacity means bumping our clean capacity from 77 GW to 330 297 GW – an increase of 253 220 GW.

To put that in perspective, 253 220 gigawatts is 230% of Canada’s current total electrical generating capacity. 253 220 gigawatts is more than thirty-seven thirty-two times the capacity of the Grand Coulee Dam and is equivalent to more than fourty thirty-five times the output of the Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. 253 220 gigawatts is more than eleven nine times the generating capacity of the Three Gorges Dam.

Things get worse if you expand Canada’s dirty electricity generating capacity. If we were foolish enough to double it, we would need 583 517 GW of new clean energy to achieve the 90% target. Cutting the dirty capacity by 50% from today’s level means we would need to build another 88 71.5 GW of clean capacity. If we cut the dirty capacity by 75%, we would be able to reach the 90% target with no new clean capacity built.

The reasons for all this are intuitive enough. It is like a lever where the arm on one side of the fulcrum is ten nine times longer than the other. If you want to balance out the weight on the long arm (equivalent to the dirty capacity), you need to add an awful lot of weight to the short arm (equivalent to clean capacity).

Of course, all this is rather misleading when considered in the abstract. It’s not as though doubling our dirty capacity would be just fine if we also built 583 517 GW of new dams, wind farms, and nuclear stations. What is important in the end is the total quantity of Canadian emissions: an outcome only partially influenced by the balance between zero-emission and high-emission electricity capacity. The fact that the 90% figure is unaffected by replacing coal plants with superior gas plants also demonstrates how problematic it is as a metric.

The final possibility to mention here is that of carbon capture and storage (CCS). If it proves effective and economical, applying it to existing dirty facilities would be equivalent to switching them into the clean column. Realistically, CCS will probably only ever capture 80-90% of the emissions from any facility it is coupled with. Applying that imperfect technology to a coal-fired behemoth like the Nanticoke Generating Station wouldn’t shift it from the dirty column to the completely clean one, but it would represent a useful chunk of real reduction in the quantity of climate-altering greenhouse gasses Canada is emitting into the atmosphere.

[Update: 8:11pm] For those interested in the numbers on this, please have a look at this post on Tyler Hamilton’s blog and the discussion below it.

ExRo promises more efficient wind turbines

A new type of generator for wind turbines promises to increase the range of wind speeds across which they generate electricity efficiently. The system, developed by ExRo Technologies of Vancouver, uses stacks of copper coils that can be activated and deactivated individually. That means the generator is capable of deriving small amounts of power from slow winds and larger amounts from faster winds. Crucially, the system also allows that to occur without the use of any moving parts: decreasing the cost and increasing the reliability.

For now, the company has only tested a laboratory-scale prototype. They are now aiming to scale up the technology for use in large multi-megawatt wind turbines. In some cases, it may even be economically efficient to install the new generators in existing wind turbines.

One reason for which the technology looks promising is that it could decrease the variance in power output from wind farms, decreasing the need to balance times of low output using energy storage or alternative forms of generation.

PickupPal and unhappy bus companies

Is a web-based service that helps those with spare seats hook up with those willing to pay for rides “facilitating the operation of an illegal transportation service?” The Ontario Highway Transport Board has decided that it is, in a case brought against PickupPal by unhappy operators of bus lines.

While I can see how liability issues arise in relation to safety, it doesn’t seem appropriate for the board to fine and try to shut down this service. As someone who travels frequently by Greyhound, I know that bus service in Canada could stand some competition-driven improvement. This sort of decentralized commerce seems like a pretty good way to reduce the environmental impacts of inter-city travel. After all, having a passenger or two travelling along with you does more for your passenger-kilometres per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted than buying a more efficient vehicle probably would.

While I can see the reason for the bus companies’ grievance – after all, they need to pay a fair bit to comply with commercial transport laws – on balance their complaint seems anti-competitive and likely to be environmentally harmful.

Climate change and forest management

Forest management is an area where climate-related challenges are considerable, particularly insofar as they relate to other ongoing developments. A case in point is forest fires. At one point, the ecological view was that fire suppression was beneficial for forest ecosystems. Now, it seems that the tide of opinion has shifted to the belief that fires have an important role to play in regulating forests. For instance, they are important for the propagation of giant redwoods (Sequoiadendron giganteum). Fires both clear the underbrush of plants that compete with the redwoods and cause redwood cones to open and release seeds. Also, the suppression of fires in British Columbia has increased the proportion of aged pine trees, which are more vulnerable than young ones to mountain pine beetle.

At the same time as fires are being recognized as an important natural element in forest life, we know that climate change is causing more and worse fires in North America, and will continue to do so. Should we step back from fire management, in the hope that fires will bolster biodiversity and resilience, or should we be more active in suppressing fires, so as to partially balance-out the warming effect of our emissions?

This touches upon a related question for conservation lands: namely, how should we respond to shifting biomes in parks? If a northern park like the Wapusk National Park in Manitoba seems likely to transition from taiga and tundra to boreal forest, should those charged with protecting it try to resist that change? The same question arises in relation to parks like Prince Albert National Park in Saskatchewan, where a transition from boreal forest to savannah and woodlands seems likely. It is entirely possible that nothing meaningful can be done to slow or stop the transition, but the possibility of doing so raises the question of what it means to protect nature in an era where no corner of it is unaffected by human activities.

One thing that we should certainly consider is doing a lot less monoculture planting. Regardless of whether the threat in question is weather, pests, or disease, a forest that contains a mixture of plant and animal species will be more resilient than one containing only a few. Hopefully, that is one of the major lessons that will be drawn from the ongoing mountain pine beetle outbreak in B.C.

Obituary for a father of the catalytic converter

Speaking of automobiles and the environment, it is worth noting that Carl D. Keith died on Friday. He was one of the creators of the three-way catalytic converter: a device that has reduced automobile emissions of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, and nitrous oxides significantly, improving the air breathed by billions of people around the world.

The advent of catalytic converters also accompanied the decline of leaded gasoline: Thomas Midgley‘s second deadly contribution to atmospheric chemistry, alongside the CFCs that destroy the stratospheric ozone layer.

It is regrettable that so little progress has been made on reducing the environmental impact of automobiles between the 1970s and the present. Hopefully, engineers of Keith’s mold will find themselves empowered by the world’s newfound concern about energy and the environment.