The environment – Page 150 – a sibilant intake of breath

Garnaut Review interim report

The Stern Review – released in October 2006 by the British Government – is generally considered the most authoritative source on the economics of climate change. Among other things, it concludes that the cost of reducing global emissions is significantly less than the probable costs associated with letting climate change continue on its present course. Now, Australia has released a similar assessment, in the form of the Garnaut Climate Change Review.

Only the interim report is available so far, but it’s likely to make interesting reading for Canadians concerned about climate change. In many ways, the Canadian economy is more similar to that of Australia than it is to that of England. As such, this report may offer some especially useful insights.

P.S. I have some notes from a lecture Stern gave in Oxford.

British Columbia carbon tax

In a relatively big announcement today, British Columbia has announced a new carbon tax on gasoline, diesel, natural gas, coal, propane and home-heating fuel. Canada-wide, the combustion of fossil fuels represents about 70% of total emissions, with the remainder consisting of things like industrial process emissions and those associated with landfills. The B.C. tax takes effect on July 1st, starting at $10 a tonne and rising to $30 a tonne by 2012.

Like many proposed carbon taxes, the British Columbian scheme aims to be revenue neutral, with the funds collected being primarily redistributed back to consumers through reductions in other taxes and increased grants to low-income individuals. This somewhat reduces the environmental effectiveness of the tax, since some of the refunded money will be used to continue doing emissions intensive things, but it makes it easier to defuse claims that this is an excessive new burden on low income people. The projected emissions reduction for the next three years is 1 Mt per year – just 1.5% of the B.C. total, but a start. At present, British Columbia is in the middle of the pack when it comes to emissions among Canadian provinces: approximately on par with Quebec and Saskatchewan, but significantly behind Alberta and Ontario.

B.C. is also part of a regional climatic organization called the Western Climate Initiative, which aims to launch a cap-and-trade scheme for greenhouse gasses. With luck, such provincial and regional systems will yield both absolute reductions in emissions and useful lessons in policy design.

Costly delays at Yucca Mountain

Persistent delays at Yucca Mountain – the Congressionally appointed future home for American nuclear waste – could prove very expensive to taxpayers. Under an agreement between nuclear power utilities and the Department of Energy, firms are charged 1/10th of a cent per kilowatt hour for waste disposal. Yucca Mountain was meant to be open and accepting fuel in 1998.

So far, the delay has cost the American Treasury $342 million in rebates so far, and is projected to cost $11 billion if the facility doesn’t open before 2020. Given the tooth-and-nail resistance from the Nevada government, and the history of lengthy lawsuits in the United States, it’s not impossible that such a delay will occur. Meanwhile, wastes continue to be stored in relatively expensive and high-maintenance cooling ponds and dry storage casks. In the whole mess, consumers lose out twice. The costs for eventual disposal imposed on utilities were passed on to them; as taxpayers, they will also end up paying most of the cost for Yucca Mountain or whatever alternative long-term disposal facility is eventually used.

The situation could be even worse than it seems. Both Clinton and Obama have announced their opposition to the project. Presumably, having one of them win the presidency would return the whole process to the preliminary site selection phase, back where it was thirty years ago. Regardless of one’s position on nuclear power, the need to store the wastes that exist in a safe, economically viable, and long-term way is inescapable. Keeping the waste in a large number of small sites increases both costs and risks.

Canada also lacks a facility for the long-term storage of radioactive wastes.

Crystals for improved CO2 separation

One should always be cautious about noisy announcements regarding climate related technologies. The mainstream media is all-too-willing to repeat them without much investigation or consideration. That said, there is every likelihood that concern about climate change (and increasingly stringent regulations) will produce dramatic breakthroughs in climate relevant technologies. One area in which that could occur is in relation to carbon capture and storage. At present, this is quite an energy intensive process, largely because of the difficulty of separating CO2 from the other flue gasses being produced by a power plant or factory. Some new research suggests that zeolitic imidazolate frameworks could do this much more efficiently than the amine scrubbers currently being tested.

The authors suggest that these crystals could be and inexpensive and durable way to isolate CO2 for sequestration. Their central conclusions about the materials sound promising:

Members of a selection of these ZIFs (termed ZIF-68, ZIF-69, and ZIF-70) have high thermal stability (up to 390°C) and chemical stability in refluxing organic and aqueous media. Their frameworks have high porosity (with surface areas up to 1970 square meters per gram), and they exhibit unusual selectivity for CO2 capture from CO2/CO mixtures and extraordinary capacity for storing CO2: 1 liter of ZIF-69 can hold ~83 liters of CO2 at 273 kelvin under ambient pressure.

If so, they could help reduce the costs associated with installing and operating CCS equipment – a particular boon given the likelihood that coal use will remain a feature of many economies and some processes – like concrete manufacture – are extremely hard to decarbonize.

Technological options for mitigation

Black circles indicate a definite ‘yes,’ whereas hollow ones denote a partial ‘yes.’ For instance, it isn’t entirely clear whether nuclear fission can ever be economically viable in the absence of government subsidies. Empty squares denote a probable ‘no’ while question marks indicate situations too uncertain to render any judgment upon.

A few of these technologies are so speculative that it is hard to make a decision. That said, this is probably a relatively good summary of the state of the debate at the moment.

Climate change and sacrifice

As Tristan rightly identifies, climate change is really depressing stuff. Largely, this is because of how an understanding of the consequences of emitting greenhouse gasses makes us re-evaluate things previously believed to be excellent: from world travel and the space program to road trips and tasty steaks. Many things that one might previously have aspired to do now require either indifference to the suffering of others or intentional ignorance to carry out.

It’s not that it’s manifestly impossible to do these things in a low-carbon way, it’s just that doing so is too difficult and expensive for the huge majority of people to do at this time. Continent-crossing electric bullet trains powered by renewable energy would be great, but they are not available to those trying to cross North America today.

Given the total capacity of the planet to absorb greenhouse gases, it may be fundamentally impossible for the number of people alive today to ever do these kinds of things sustainably. As such, responding seriously to the threat of climate change requires pretty significant personal sacrifices and, to a considerable extent, a reduced expectation of how much energy-intensive stuff we can aspire to do in the course of our lives. Building a low-carbon society is a way of taking back the freedoms lent to us by hydrocarbon energy, but it definitely remains to be seen whether equivalent per-capita potential will be created by such means during the lifetime of anyone alive today.

GHG stocks, flows, and climate change

[Update: 22 January 2009] Some of the information in the post below is inaccurate. Namely, it implies that some level of continuous emissions is compatible with climate stabilization. In fact, stabilizing climate required humanity to have zero net emissions in the long term. For more about this, see this post.

On this blog, I have frequently cited a figure of about 750kg of carbon dioxide per person per year as sustainable. This is just what you get when you divide the approximate level of sustainable emissions (about 5,000 megatonnes) by the number of people alive on Earth. If each person emitted that much, the net radiative forcing effect of anthropogenic emissions would be approximately zero. That means the sum of the concentrations of all greenhouse gasses, multiplied by their global warming potential, would be in balance with the capacity of the planet to absorb those gasses.

Of course, suddenly achieving the transition to 750kg each would be extremely painful. Thankfully, achieving it instantly is not necessary. Right now, the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide (the most important greenhouse gas) is about 383 ppm. That compares with 280 ppm at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Scientists disagree about how much that concentration can rise before extremely harmful effects start to manifest themselves. The highest number generally suggested by reasonable people is 550 ppm, a more mainstream figure is 450 ppm, and some people even argue that we have already emitted enough that very harmful effects are inevitable, once lags in the climate system are overcome. At present, unsustainable global emissions are increasing the global concentration of carbon dioxide by about 2 ppm a year.

Acknowledging the uncertainty, let’s take 450 ppm as a best guess. That means we have about 67 ppm of shoulder room left. It is vital to note that this isn’t shoulder room for total emissions to rise; in the long run, they absolutely must fall dramatically. It is shoulder room in which we can keep emitting above unsustainable levels without wrecking the planet. The situation is akin to being in a lifeboat in a hot, dry climate with a barrel of water and a solar still that produces a small amount of water per day. The 750kg each is the output from the still. The 67 ppm is approximately how much we have left in the barrel. The question now becomes how to divide it. Here are some possibilities:

Continued unsustainable emissions in the developed world
Continued and increasing unsustainable emissions in the developing world
Additional security against abrupt or runaway change

We also have a choice about how to divide the use of barrel water across time. We might decide to drink lots of it in the early days, leaving less for later on. We might decide to save as much as we can. Of course, our capacity to do the latter is somewhat limited by the tragedy of the commons. It’s like there are a whole bunch of strangers in the lifeboat and any one can drink from the barrel without the others being able to stop them. You might end up with everyone trying to grab all they can early, even if saving most of the water for later would produce the best outcome for everyone.

Will we be able to find a way to moderate how much each person takes from the barrel? How much should we be willing to suffer in able to conserve some water for the future, or as a hedge against the possibility that 450 ppm is actually too high? These are among the toughest and most pressing questions in global climate change policymaking.

Cycle friendly London

Once again, London is demonstrating leadership in making progressive urban choices in response to climate change. The city is going to spend £500m on making London more cycle friendly: an initiative that will include 6,000 rental bikes, 12 car-free cycle corridors through the city, and an increased number of pedestrian only streets.

The bike rental scheme is modelled after a successful Parisian initiative, which was in turn inspired by successful community bicycle programs in the Netherlands. The bikes can be collected and deposited from special stalls that will be set up every 300m. The rates to be charged in London don’t seem to be available yet, but those in Paris are very reasonable: free for under 30 minutes, one Euro for an hour, and increasing progressively beyond that. The idea is to stimulate their use in making human-powered trips easier, not letting people use a bike for half a day. The Dutch seem to be the world leaders when it comes to public support for cycling, with 40% of Amsterdam traffic consisting of bikes and a 10,000 bike parking garage under construction at the main train station. Copenhagen, Tel Aviv, Barcelona, Brussels, Stockholm, Berlin, Frankfurt, Munich, Helsinki, and Vienna all have community cycling schemes of some sort.

Cities that are blessed with snow and ice-free roads year round (*cough* Vancouver *cough*) might want to think about something similar. You can’t built many kilometres of highway or subway line for £500m, but you can probably do quite a lot to promote a health-positive, community-centric, and virtually emissions-free transportation option.

Westjet v. The Canadian

For those pondering lower carbon options for traversing Canada, Via Rail has a Toronto-Vancouver train called The Canadian that makes the trip in a little over three days each way. Unfortunately, the tickets are ridiculously expensive. Even in a shared sleeper car, it costs about $1,700 round trip, compared with $500 – $600 for a much faster journey with Westjet.

The round-trip flight generates about 1,700kg of carbon dioxide equivalent, while the train produces about 727kg. It seems a bit crazy to spend three times the money and twelve times the time in order to avoid emitting as much carbon as the average Canadian does in sixteen days.

Hydroelectricity and bare winter mountaintops

Hydroelectricity is a crucial energy source for Canada: providing 59% of the national electricity supply (and 97% in Quebec), as well as energy for things like the Kitimat Aluminium Smelter. As such, there is good reason to be concerned about changes in mountain glaciers and snowpack arising from climate change. Ideally, you want snow and ice to accumulate in the mountains during the winter. That somewhat reduces the flow of water into reservoirs, which helps prevent the need to release large quantities because the dam is at capacity. Then, during the spring and summer, you want the ice to melt, helping to keep the water level in the reservoir relatively steady and allowing the continuous production of energy without threatening riverflow-dependent wildlife or downstream water usage.

Climate change is upsetting this dynamic in several ways. Warmer winters involve less snowfall, overwhelming dams during the wet season and failing to build up frozen reserves. Hot summers increase evaporation from reservoirs and water usage by industry and individuals. Some scientific evidence also suggests that climate change is exacerbating both the intensity of rainy and dry periods: further worsening the stability of water levels and the ability of dams to produce baseload energy reliably.

Mike Demuth, a glaciologist working for Natural Resources Canada, predicts the disappearance of all small to mid-sized glaciers in the Rockies within the next 50 to 100 years. The Athabasca and 29 other glaciers feed the Columbia River, which in turn provides 60% of the electricity used in the western United States (generated by the Grand Coulee Dam, Chief Joseph Dam, and others). The low cost of energy in the area has even led companies like Google to locate their server farms in the region. Not only is the loss of our mountain cryosphere likely to cause domestic problems, it is highly likely to eventually provoke a pretty serious international conflict.