Category: Grantham work themes

Meeting global water needs: More than a pipe dream

Water + hands smallThe Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog 

by Dr Karl Smith, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering

Every waking hour, I ingest water. Not always in its purest form, but near enough. Energy is important and right now (and rightly so), carbon is capturing headlines.  But water is fundamental to our livelihoods.

The UN has designated 22 March World Water Day: “a day to celebrate water”.  And why not? Never mind that it’s essential to all life forms. For modern living, it’s  a necessity: we need 10 litres of water to make one sheet of paper; 182 litres to make a kilo of plastic.  We’re not about to run out of seawater, but what about drinkable freshwater? A glance at the UN’s water statistics  reveals the urgency of our situation.

A global challenge

In developing countries, 90% of wastewater flows untreated into water bodies.  An estimated 1.8 billion people worldwide drink water contaminated with faeces. By 2030, 47% of the world’s population will be living in areas of high water stress.

In 60% of European cities (population > 100,000 people), groundwater is being used faster than  it can be replenished. As the primary source of drinking water worldwide, groundwater is vitally important. In fact, groundwater comprises 97% of all global freshwater potentially available for human use (the UN don’t qualify this definition, but one can probably assume that 97% of all drinking water is groundwater – further enlightenment on this is welcome). Moreover, our use of groundwater is increasing by 1-2% per year.

If we look west to the US then we reach California – a drought stricken state with, according to senior water cycle scientist Jay Famiglietti of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, only one year of water left in its reservoirs and rapidly disappearing groundwater.

Focussing on cities

Dwindling water resources are a global challenge. However, at present (again, this is UN data), 54% of the world’s population live in cities. By 2050, this figure will approach 70%, with 93% of urbanisation occurring in developing countries.  If you reduce the problem to securing clean water for city dwellers, then it becomes markedly more manageable – at least, if you have big budgets.

London is currently tussling with the proposed Thames Tideway Tunnel (TTT), a £4.2 billion (at 2011 prices) “super sewer” designed to contain overflows of sewage, currently in the order of tens of millions of tonnes a year, and hence prevent the pollution of the river Thames.

Although it will help future-proof the capital against climate change, the TTT won’t do much else than divert sewer overflows: a big spend for one single solution.  Moreover, its carbon footprint is not small.  A shortcoming of some climate change adaptation interventions is that, through their production and often, operation, they may only amplify the root of the problem.

One solution, multiple benefits

Green roof
A green roof in Chicago

If we want value for money, then why not demand more than just one benefit?   One stone, but at the very least, two birds.

Consider combined heat and power (CHP) plants, which generate two energy types, at improved efficiencies of conversion, from a single fuel. Do we therefore need one pipe network for drinking water, one for waste water and one for stormwater? Plus an array of energy intensive pumps?

Urban floods are invariably caused by runoff from impermeable surfaces – roofs, roads and pavements.  A carpet of urban greenery can both trap and, via the plant root network and soil media, decontaminate runoff, removing the need for a centralised stormwater system. The grey city can grow green.

For cities to be self-sufficient and resource-smart, we can’t let stormwater dissipate into drains. Drinking harvested rainwater is problematic, but irrigation of city greenery – not only garden plants but also, fruit and vegetable crops – is not.

Plants are truly multi-functional. Their benefits include enhancements to human health and well-being, as well as mitigating the urban heat island effect and promoting biodiversity. This is the Blue Green Dream paradigm: the smart use of plants, in concert with the local environment and manmade systems such as storage tanks, to sustainably manage water resources and also, deliver myriad urban benefits.

 

The Blue Green Dream – a multi partner, Climate KIC funded, Imperial College led project – is harnessing ecosystem systems to achieve climate change resilience.  For further information, see the project website or contact the project manager, Dr Karl M. Smith.

High altitude agriculture – The challenges of adapting to the changing water supply in the Himalayas

by Bhopal Pandeya, Research Associate (ESPA Fellowship), Grantham Institute

Agricultural land
Agricultural lands in the Himalayan region

Mountains are often referred to as ‘water towers’ as they provide fresh water to people and biodiversity. The Himalayan region is one of the few hot spots where several big rivers originate and supply water to hundreds of millions of people across the mountains and further downstream. However, higher up in the mountains especially in trans-Himalayan region, there is very little accessible water for local communities. The region receives very low rainfall and thus water supply is largely dependent on the timely occurrence of snow fall and ice melts in the upper mountains. The Upper Kaligandaki Basin (located in Nepal) is one such area where water scarcity is very high. Upland communities are constantly facing serious water shortage which particularly affects their agricultural land.

In Upper Kaligandaki Basin, croplands are located along the river valleys which act as oases in the Himalayas. Traditionally, local people practice an intensive cropping system, growing different crops and vegetables to sustain their lives, and agricultural remains the main source of local livelihoods. But, local people are experiencing increasing difficulty with farming largely due to the unpredictable nature of water supply in local streams. They are now concerned by the changing pattern of snow fall in upper mountain areas and its impact on water flow in the lower regions. People are trying to cope with this situation by adopting various measures such as introducing more resilient crops like apple and walnut, using water harvesting systems and equitably sharing available water. This demonstrates local people’s extraordinary adaptive skills in managing their resources sustainably. To some extent, these measures are helpful in coping with these uncertainties.

apple trees
Apple farming in the Upper Kaligandaki Basin – an adaptive agricultural practice

Recent developments in the region, especially the construction of roads and the expansion of human settlements, are proving unsustainable and are making already scarce agricultural lands even more vulnerable. These activities lack proper consideration of how to maintain key ecosystem services provided by water and soil resources. Agricultural land and traditional water supply systems are particularly threatened by constant encroachment and land degradation (erosion and landslides) resulting from these activities. As a result, local communities’ main sources of livelihoods are in great danger. At the same time, the whole region is passing through a socio-cultural and demographic transformation which is also challenging especially considering the lack of enthusiasm of younger generations for farming.

Development activities clearly demand integration of a natural capital based approach

In this situation, an innovative approach can build a better understanding of these major ecosystem services and integrate them into local policy and decision making. As one elderly local firmly put it, “our farmlands are highly productive, no need to go abroad for earning… we can earn better here. We produce highly priced crops, fruits and vegetables. But, there are some big problems… water supply is becoming more disruptive, soil loss is extensive and there is also less and less participation of the younger generation in farming practices. We need to address these problems immediately, so we can improve the agricultural production and increase our household incomes”. Clearly there is a great need for a locally suited ecosystem services approach (guided by scientific, socio-political and economic understandings) to improve local livelihoods.

 

Find out more about the Mountain-EVO project

 

This post was originally published on the ESPA blog. View original post.

Hard Evidence: will climate change affect the spread of tropical diseases?

Asian Tiger Mosquito
The Asian Tiger Mosquito (Aedes albopictus) can transmit dengue fever

The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog 

By Dr Paul Parham, Honorary Lecturer in Infectious Disease Epidemiology

Many tropical diseases such as malaria, Chagas disease and dengue are transmitted to humans via mosquitoes and other carriers known as vectors. These vector-borne diseases continue to have a major impact on human health in the developing world: each year, more than a billion people become infected and around a million people die. In addition, around one in six cases of illness and disability worldwide arise from these diseases.

Malaria arguably continues to attract the most attention of all the vector-borne diseases by virtue of causing the greatest global disease burden. However, others such as dengue are not only resurgent in some regions, but threaten a vast proportion of the world’s population.

Climate change remains a substantial threat to future human health and since the behaviour of disease carriers like mosquitoes is known to be extremely sensitive to temperature and rainfall, it seems unquestionable that climate change will affect many, if not all, of these diseases. What is less clear, however, is the extent to which climate increases the risk of becoming infected in certain regions compared to other factors such as poverty or fragile health systems.

In addition, although the number of new cases of diseases such as malaria appears to be declining worldwide, it is still increasing in many regions for a variety of reasons; the continued spread of insecticide resistance, changes in land use, and difficulties in maintaining political interest pose considerable challenges. Which of these factors will be most influential over the coming decades remains up for debate and one that was raised in a special edition of Philosophical Transactions B.

Changes in risk

The latest research, however, is clear and consistent in many of its findings. Different diseases, transmitted by different vectors, respond in different ways to changing weather and climate patterns. Climate change is very likely to favour an increase in the number of dengue cases worldwide, while many important mosquito populations that are able to transmit devastating diseases are changing in their distribution.

The latest maps show that many areas of Europe (including the UK) could become increasingly hospitable for mosquitoes that transmit dengue over the coming decades (the map below shows a projected change in suitable habitat for the Aedes albopictus mosquito). Similarly, other mosquito range expansions are likely to occur in the US and eastern Asia. If dengue and/or chikungunya are imported into these regions, there will be a considerable increase in the worldwide number of vulnerable individuals.

European map of simulated Aedes albopictus habitat suitability based on one future climate projection for the period 2045-2054.
European map of simulated Aedes albopictus habitat suitability based on one future climate projection for the period 2045-2054.

It is also clear that small changes in these so-called risk maps can have very large public health impacts. Tick-borne diseases (such as Lyme disease) are also predicted to expand in range as climate changes. Although, as before, plenty of other factors are likely to contribute, meaning that direct causation is very hard to attribute.

It is important to remember too that climate change is not just global warming; the latter refers to an increase in global mean temperatures, but there is also an overwhelming body of evidence demonstrating that rainfall is at least as important for many vector-borne diseases. Rainfall episodes have also been shown to provide a very good early-warning sign a few months in advance for outbreaks of West Nile Virus.

New research on African anti-malaria mosquito control programmes that involve spraying houses (to kill indoor mosquitoes) and distributing bed nets also shows that both temperature and rainfall can influence the degree to which programmes decrease new infections and, crucially, their cost-effectiveness. However, whether or not this is substantial enough to affect regional policy decisions about scaling up mosquito control programmes depends on factors such as how rapidly insecticide resistance emerges, the human immune response to malaria, and country-specific conditions.

In terms of malaria elimination in Africa, adopting the same approach in all affected regions is unlikely to be the best way forward. However, there is some new evidence to suggest that if efforts continue to be concentrated on scaling-up current intervention programmes in regions close to elimination, the longer-term effects of climate change will become far less important. Indeed, one of the most effective ways of protecting human health against climate change in the long-term is to further strengthen current disease control efforts.

Mathematical models

As with the formulation of public health policies to deal with diseases such as Ebola, flu, and HIV, mathematical models are valuable tools that are widely used to make predictions about how different carrier-borne diseases are likely to respond to climatic changes. How reliable these predictions are is an important question and, like many areas of science, include unavoidable uncertainties. For example, people may change their behaviour and actions as climate change evolves – for example by migrating to other areas – which evidently makes forecasting more difficult.

New evidence has also shown that disease vectors may evolve in under a decade to changes in temperature, which conflicts with many current models that assume climate change only affects their ecology, not their evolution. Predictions that might be affected by climate change must therefore not only take account of these uncertainties, if they’re to be more reliable and useful, but also recognise that these predictions cannot strictly be disproved until the future arrives.

This remains a very active research field, but considerable progress in our understanding has been made over the last ten to 15 years. Better data on the links between vectors, diseases they carry and the environment is definitely required, as are better ways of quantifying disease risk for different populations and different diseases.

Seven steps to understanding climate impacts and assessing risks. Philosophical Transactions B

Seven steps to understanding climate impacts and assessing risks.
Philosophical Transactions B

Future challenges

Many diseases have received very little attention so far on how climate change may affect future trends. One example is onchocerciasis (river blindness), for which tentative predictions suggest that we might expect substantial increases in the number of disease vectors in certain African regions over the coming decades.

Almost all models are currently based on single diseases, but many populations are unfortunately burdened with multiple diseases at any one time; understanding how climate change affects interactions between these diseases has attracted little attention to date.

One other important challenge for the field is the mismatch between the data current global climate models are able to provide and the information required by local public health officials to make more informed decisions; continued improvements in computing power are essential to progress. The predictions of our current models are not perfect and improvements in our understanding are certainly required.

To date, we have tended to react to disease outbreaks as they occur, but we need an increased focus on being more proactive; we cannot stop outbreaks of many of these diseases, but proactive risk management is less expensive (and more effective) than responding after a crisis. Ultimately, the challenge is not to address specific health risks due solely to climate change, but instead to ensure sustained progress is made towards decreasing the number of deaths and cases of these diseases for future generations.

The Conversation

This article was originally published on The Conversation.
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The global health benefits of tackling climate change

The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog 

by Professor Paolo Vineis and Pauline Scheelbeek, School of Public Health
Cycling

It is sometimes claimed that addressing climate change with proper policies is too expensive and could lead to a further decline in the economy. However, the co-benefits of implementation of climate change mitigation strategies for the health sector are usually overlooked. The synergy between policies for climate change mitigation in sectors such as energy use (e.g. for heating), agriculture, food production and transportation may have overall benefits that are much greater than the sum of single interventions (Haines et al, 2009). Here we describe a few examples of climate change mitigation strategies that have important co-benefits for global health.

  1. Reducing CO2 admission by promotion of active transport

The transportation sector is often the single largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in urban areas. Policy makers have tried to reduce these emissions by discouraging car travel and promoting other means of (active) transport. Active transport, such as cycling and walking, increases daily physical activity. Physical inactivity is one of the leading causes of non-communicable diseases all over the world. It has been estimated that the combination of active travel and lower-emission motor vehicles would give large health benefits, notably from a reduction in the number of years of life lost from coronary heart disease (10-19% in London, 11-25% in Delhi according to Woodcock et al, 2009). Also obesity, which is increasing dramatically all over the world, particularly in children, could effectively be reduced by a more active lifestyle. A 30-minute walk per day could – on many occasions – be enough to even out slight caloric excess.

  1. Domestic energy management & reduction of cooking/heating emissions

Improving heating and cooking systems – for example by making them more efficient – reduces energy consumption. Improved models of stoves (electrical vs biomass) allow a 15-times reduction in the emission of particles and other pollutants, thus contributing to decreased emissions in the atmosphere. Especially in developing countries – where old stoves are common – these improvements could also have a considerable positive impact on health: cooking on simple wood or coal stoves currently forms a major source of indoor pollution and increases risk of certain chronic diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The potential effectiveness of this strategy was shown by Wilkinson et al: they calculated that if 150 million low-emission cookstoves were introduced in India, this could lead to the prevention of an estimated 1.3 million deaths from COPD and hundreds of thousands of deaths from other diseases such as coronary heart disease (Wilkinson, et al 2009). Air pollution is one of the biggest environmental causes of death worldwide, with household air pollution accounting for about 3·5-4 million deaths every year (Gordon et al, 2014).

  1. Reductions in CO2 through reduced meat production

meat production diagramMeat production is highly inefficient energetically: it requires an extremely high use of water and land per unit of meat.  One fifth of all greenhouse gases worldwide are related to methane production from livestock farms.  Reduction of meat intake by consumers would lower meat production and is therefore often promoted as climate change mitigation strategy. The figure shows that a high intake of meat is also associated with increased disease risk, in particular for certain cancers and cardiovascular disease (WCRF, 2007). Reduced meat consumption would therefore also have a major impact on public health. It has been estimated that a 30% reduction in livestock production in the UK would reduce cardiovascular deaths by 15% (Friel et al, 2009).

 

  1. Low carbon energy production

Non-renewable energy production, for example coal burning, is a major contributor to worldwide greenhouse gas emissions. Many countries have adopted policies to reduce polluting energy production and stimulate production of (renewable) energy through cleaner sources. For example, since 2000, the government in the Chinese Shanxi province has promoted several initiatives (including factory shutdowns) with the goal of reducing coal burning emissions. The annual average particulate matter (PM10) concentrations decreased from 196 μg/m3 in 2001 to 89 μg/m3 in 2010, which – as a matter of fact – is still very high for Western standards. It has been estimated that the DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life Years) lost in Shanxi had decreased by 56.92% as a consequence of the measures (Tang et al, 2014).  The IPCC 5th assessment report stresses that the main health co-benefits from climate change mitigation policies come from substituting polluting sources of energy for renewable and cleaner sources, with a considerable effect on the improvement of air quality.

 

Practical conclusions

The co-benefits from climate change mitigation for the health sector have not yet been completely identified and quantified. The topic does not appear on the priority list of political discourse: relevant sectors, including those involved in non-communicable disease prevention (Pearce et al, 2014), transportation, agriculture, food production and climate change (Alleyne et al, 2013), still work separately, while collaboration would improve the synergy between health improvement and climate change mitigation and maximise benefits for both.

 

References

Alleyne G, Binagwaho A, Haines A, Jahan S, Nugent R, Rojhani A, Stuckler D; Lancet NCD Action Group. Embedding non-communicable diseases in the post-2015 development agenda. Lancet. 2013 Feb 16;381(9866):566-74. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(12)61806-6

Friel S, Dangour AD, Garnett T, Lock K, Chalabi Z, Roberts I, Butler A, Butler CD, Waage J, McMichael AJ, Haines A.  Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: food and agriculture.  Lancet 2009; 374: 2016-25.

Gordon SB, Bruce NG, Grigg J, Hibberd PL, Kurmi OP, Lam KB, Mortimer K, Asante KP, Balakrishnan K, Balmes J, Bar-Zeev N, Bates MN, Breysse PN, Buist S, Chen Z, Havens D, Jack D, Jindal S, Kan H, Mehta S, Moschovis P, Naeher L, Patel A, Perez-Padilla R, Pope D, Rylance J, Semple S, Martin WJ 2nd. Respiratory risks from household air pollution in low and middle income countries. Lancet Respir Med. 2014 Oct;2(10):823-60. doi: 10.1016/S2213-2600(14)70168-7

Haines A, McMichael AJ, Smith KR, Roberts I, Woodcock J, Markandya A, Armstrong BG, Campbell-Lendrum D, Dangour AD, Davies M, Bruce N, Tonne C, Barrett M, Wilkinson P. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: overview and implications for policy makers. Lancet. 2009 Dec 19;374(9707):2104-14. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61759-1. Epub 2009 Nov 26.

Pearce N, Ebrahim S, McKee M, Lamptey P, Barreto ML, Matheson D, Walls H, Foliaki S, Miranda J, Chimeddamba O, Marcos LG, Haines A, Vineis P. The road to 25×25: how can the five-target strategy reach its goal? Lancet Glob Health. 2014 Mar;2(3):e126-8. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(14)70015-4.

Tang D, Wang C, Nie J, Chen R, Niu Q, Kan H, Chen B, Perera F; Taiyuan CDC. Health benefits of improving air quality in Taiyuan, China. Environ Int. 2014 Dec;73:235-42. doi: 10.1016/j.envint.2014.07.016. Epub 2014 Aug 27.

Wilkinson P, Smith KR, Davies M, Adair H,  Armstrong BG, Barrett M, Bruce N, Haines A, Hamilton I, Oreszczyn T,  Ridley I, Tonne C and Chalabi Z. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: household energy. 2009. The Lancet, 374: 9705 (P1917 – 29)

World Cancer Research Fund. Recommendations Booklet. Available from:  http://www.wcrf.org/

Woodcock J, Edwards P, Tonne C, Armstrong BG, Ashiru O, Banister D, Beevers S, Chalabi Z, Chowdhury Z, Cohen A, Franco OH, Haines A, Hickman R, Lindsay G, Mittal I, Mohan D, Tiwari G, Woodward A, Roberts I. Public health benefits of strategies to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions: urban land transport. Lancet. 2009 Dec 5;374(9705):1930-43. doi: 10.1016/S0140-6736(09)61714-1. Epub 2009 Nov 26.

Internship Experiences: Skidmore, Owings & Merrill

The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog

by Peter Blair, Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet DTP student

Thames-Basin
The Thames Basin, a Map Highlighting Urban Areas

The Thames Basin is set to face many challenges in the future: climate change, a growing population and economic requirements all present developmental challenges, as well as major sources of uncertainty. Having previously worked on a voluntary project producing a vision for planning in the Great Lakes Basin over the next hundred years, Skidmore Owings and Merrill (SOM) were interested in applying the same methodology to the Thames Basin to determine how we may best plan for the future in this area.

During the summer of 2014, prior to starting the NERC Science and Solutions for a Changing Planet Doctoral Training Partnership at Imperial College, I undertook the exciting opportunity of an internship with Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, looking at the future of planning of development in the Thames Basin.

Who are SOM?

SOM, short for Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, are a world-leading firm of architects, structural engineers and urban planners. They have designed buildings such as the Burj Khalifa and the Broadgate Tower (where their London office is now based), and have worked on the Imperial College Campus master plan, amongst many other projects.

What did I do?

I used SOM’s Great Lakes investigation as an inspiration for looking at planning in the Thames Basin, identifying the assets that the basin has, for example extensive infrastructure, a thriving economy, a history of innovation and a rare depth of culture, the issues that it faces, including overcoming archaic governance boundaries, managing water in the face of both drought and flood, and coping with the change and uncertainty that climate change brings. I produced a booklet identifying first ideas for a vision of what planning in the Thames Basin could be built around in the future. Elements of this vision include integrating the various planning documents that exist into a more cohesive, basin-level plan, recognition of the positive feedback cycles that exist between ‘green’ and ‘blue’ policies and using infrastructure to develop a holistically connected basin.

What did I gain?

I had a fantastic time at SOM: I met a lot of great people with amazing ideas and skills, and was also able to develop myself while there. The internship gave me the freedom and time to develop new skills that are hugely useful, but which I would probably not have had the opportunity to investigate otherwise. One example would be ArcGIS, which allows for the creative display of map-based data, and which I will be able to utilise as part of my PhD, but which I may never otherwise have had to opportunity to learn. I was also able to ‘dip my toe’ into the corporate environment, without having to jump straight in. This showed me the different emphasis which is placed on various aspects of work in business compared to academia: the importance of delivering a positivist message and looking at the big picture, distilling a great amount of information into a short message and using images to convey meaning.

What did SOM gain?

Hopefully SOM feel as though they have gained from my undertaking of this internship as well. As I was a short-term member of the team, SOM were able to work on a different kind of project that was perhaps less corporate and which required different skills. While many other members of the team were working on multiple projects at any one time, I was also able to give my focussed attention to the Thames Basin project. This internship has also strengthened the link between SOM and Imperial College, and building links with academia is something that SOM have been very keen to do.

 

Find out more about Peter’s PhD project

Climate change: positive messages on the international scene

By Dr Flora Whitmarsh, Grantham Institute

This blog forms part of a series addressing some of the criticisms often levelled against efforts to mitigate climate change.

smoke stacksThe Twentieth Session of the Conference of the Parties (COP 20) – the latest in a series of meetings of the decision making body of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change –began in Lima this week. Many in the media are quick to point to the difficulty of obtaining international agreement on greenhouse gas emissions reductions, and to denounce COP 15, which took place in Copenhagen in 2009, as a failure. Far from being a failure, the Copenhagen meeting paved the way for future climate change action. World leaders agreed ‘that climate change is one of the greatest challenges of our time’ and emphasised their ‘strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities’, and it was agreed that ‘deep cuts in global emissions are required’. The Copenhagen accord also said that a new Copenhagen Green Climate Fund would be established to support developing countries to limit or reduce carbon dioxide emissions and to adapt to the effects of climate change.

The last objective is in progress: the green climate fund was set up at COP 16, held in Cancun, Mexico in 2010, and several major countries have pledged money. Japan has pledged $1.5 billion, the US has pledged $3 billion, Germany and France have pledged $1 billion each, the UK pledged $1.13 billion and Sweden pledged over $500m. This brings us close to the informal target of raising $10 billion by the end of the year. The goal is to increase funding to $100 billion a year by 2020. There have also been several smaller donations. This is a key step in tackling climate change, because the gap between developed and developing countries in their ability to respond to climate change and their level of responsibility for causing the problem must be addressed.

Obtaining international agreement to reduce emissions is a real challenge. It is not surprising that it is difficult to reach consensus on a course of action between a large range of different countries at different stages of development who bear differing levels of responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions to date: the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change has 196 Parties. However, there has been significant progress towards global emissions reductions, led by the EU, China and the US.

UK commitments

Prior to the Copenhagen COP, the UK Climate Change Act was passed in 2008, and contains a legally binding commitment to reduce UK emissions by at least 80% on 1990 levels by 2050. In addition, the UK Committee on Climate Change has recommended an emissions reduction of 50% on 1990 levels by 2025 in order to meet the longer term target. Some have argued that by taking unilateral action, the UK put itself at risk of losing out economically to countries that had not made such pledges. Competitiveness concerns have been evaluated by the Committee on Climate Change, the body set up as part of the Climate Change Act to advise the UK government on emissions targets. The committee found that ‘costs and competitiveness risks associated with measures to reduce direct emissions (i.e. related to burning of fossil fuels) in currently legislated carbon budgets are manageable.’ Continued support from the EU emissions trading scheme may be needed in the 2020s, but this depends on progress towards a global deal.

By making this commitment the UK has been able to enter into negotiations with other countries from a position of strength. The UK is one of the leading historic emitters of carbon dioxide – it is, of course, the sum total of our emissions beginning in the industrial revolution that will, to a good approximation, determine humanity’s impact on the climate, not the emissions in any given year – and therefore it is right that the UK took the lead by making this commitment. Had we not made such a pledge, it would have put us in a more difficult position when negotiating with other countries, particularly those still on the path to development.

EU pledges

The UK is not now acting alone – other major countries have recently made significant emissions reduction pledges. The recent European Council agreement that the EU should cut emissions by 40% on 1990 levels by 2030 represents a step forward. It was decided that all member states should participate, ‘balancing considerations of fairness and solidarity.’ It was also decided that 27% of energy consumed in the EU should be from renewable sources by 2030, and a more interconnected European energy market should be developed to help deal with the intermittency of renewable sources of energy.

The EU target is still not quite as ambitious as the UK target. However, this latest EU agreement is a significant step in the right direction and demonstrates that international cooperation on a large scale is possible, albeit within a body like the EU with pre-existing economic ties. In addition, it generally costs more to cut emissions the faster the cuts are implemented. If the world is genuine in its commitment to tackling climate change, very significant emissions reductions are ultimately required, and delaying action means having to cut emissions more quickly at a later date – at a higher cost. In addition, the Committee on Climate Change found that despite short term increases in electricity prices, early action means that UK electricity prices are projected to be lower in the medium term compared to a fossil fuel intensive pathway, assuming there is an increase in the carbon price in the future.

China and the US

A recent development is the bilateral agreement between China and the US. China stated that its emissions would peak by 2030, by which time the country aims to get 20% of its energy from non-fossil fuel sources, and the US pledged to reduce its emissions by 26%-28% on 2005 levels by 2025. Some have suggested that the agreement does not go far enough because China’s emissions will continue to rise until 2030 under the deal, and the US target is not as stringent as the EU or UK targets. However, these pledges coming in the lead up to Lima from the two largest emitters globally are hugely significant, and pave the way for further progress.  China has already made significant progress in reducing the energy intensity (energy per unit of GDP) of its economy: the 11th Five Year Plan, covering the period 2006-2010 aimed to reduce energy intensity by 20%, and achieved a reduction of 19.1%. Despite some disruption to the energy supply, this success in meeting the target demonstrates the Chinese government’s track record of achieving its objectives on green growth. The current five year plan aims to cut energy intensity and carbon intensity (carbon emissions per unit of GDP) by a further 16% and 17% respectively on 2010 levels by 2015. It is right that developing countries should be able to grow their economies – China’s per capita GDP is still relatively low – and this has to be balanced with climate change targets.

The EU, China and the US together accounted for just over half of total global carbon dioxide emissions in 2013. Their pledges demonstrate that smaller groups of countries made up of the major emitters can make a difference without waiting for far-reaching international agreement on emissions reductions. Their willingness to act also has the potential to spur other industrialised countries into reducing their own emissions. More action is still needed, but there has been significant progress since the Copenhagen conference, which should pave the way for more ambitious pledges.

Why subsidise renewable energy?

by Ajay Gambhir, Grantham Institute

This blog forms part of a series addressing some of the criticisms often levelled against efforts to mitigate climate change.

 

It is often claimed that intermittent renewable sources of electricity (mainly wind and solar photovoltaics), are too expensive, inefficient and unreliable and that we shouldn’t subsidise them.

Wind turbines at a burning sunsetWhat are the facts?

Last year, governments spent about $550 billion of public money on subsidies for fossil fuels, almost twice as much as in 2009 and about five times as much as they spent subsidising renewables (IEA, World Energy Outlook 2014). This despite a G20 pledge in 2009 to “phase out and rationalize over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies” that “encourage wasteful consumption, reduce our energy security, impede investment in clean energy sources and undermine efforts to deal with the threat of climate change”.

Reducing the cost of renewables

There is a key reason why it makes sense to subsidise the deployment of renewable energy technologies instead of fossil fuels. They are currently more expensive than established fossil fuel sources of power generation such as coal- and gas-fired power stations, because the scale of the industries that produce them is smaller and because further innovations in their manufacture and deployment are in the pipeline. As such there needs to be a period of translating laboratory-stage innovations to the field, as well as learning and scaling-up in their manufacture, all of which should bring significant cost reductions. This is only likely to be possible with either:

  • a) a long-term, credible carbon price at a sufficient level to make the business case for developing and deploying renewable energy technologies instead of CO2-emitting technologies; or
  • b) some form of subsidy in the short to medium term, which creates a market for these technologies and provides businesses operating in a less-than-certain policy environment with the incentive to build industrial scale manufacturing plants to produce them (ever more economically as scale and learning effects take hold).

Unfortunately, there is unlikely to be a long-term, credible and significant (“long, loud and legal”) carbon price anytime soon, given the immense political lobbying against action to tackle climate change, and the lack of global coordinated emissions reduction actions, which means any region with a higher carbon price than others puts itself at risk of higher energy prices and lost competitiveness. Whilst subsidies are also likely to raise energy prices, their targeting at specific technologies (often under some fiscal control such as the UK’s levy control framework) means they should have less overall impact on prices. In addition, subsidies have helped to put some technologies on the energy map faster than a weak carbon price would have done and have given a voice to new energy industries to counter that of the CO2-intensive incumbents.

Nevertheless, subsidies should not remain in place for long periods of time, or at fiscally unsustainable levels. Unfortunately some countries, such as Spain, have fallen into that trap, with an unexpectedly high deployment of solar in particular leading to a backlash as fiscal costs escalated, rapid subsidy reductions and the stranding of many businesses engaged in developing these technologies. Germany’s subsidy framework for solar, with its longer term rules on “dynamic degression” levels (which reduce over time depending on deployed capacity in previous years) has proven a better example of balancing the incentive to produce and deploy new technologies with the need to manage fiscal resources carefully (Grantham Institute, 2014).

Reaching grid parity

Fortunately, the price of solar and onshore wind has fallen so much (through manufacturing and deployment scale-up and learning that the subsidies were aimed at in the first place) that they are now approaching or have achieved “grid parity” in several regions – i.e. the same cost of generated electricity as from existing fossil fuel electricity sources. Analysis by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute shows that solar PV, even in its more expensive form on houses’ rooftops, will approach the same level of electricity generation cost as (hard) coal and gas power stations in Germany within the next decade or so, with onshore wind already in the same cost range as these fossil fuel sources.  Subsidies should be phased out as the economics of renewables becomes favourable with just a carbon price (which should be set at a level appropriate to reducing emissions in line with internationally agreed action to avoid dangerous levels of climate change).

It’s important to note that grid parity of electricity generation costs does not account for the very different nature of intermittent renewables compared to fossil fuel power stations, which can very quickly respond to electricity demand peaks and troughs and help ensure that electricity is available as required. For example one common contention is that for every unit of solar capacity in northern latitudes, significant back-up of fossil fuel generation (most often gas turbines, which are quick to ramp up) is required to meet dark winter peak demand in the evenings. Indeed, analysis by the US Brookings Institute based on this principle (as given much publicity in The Economist in July 2014) suggested this would make solar PV and wind much more expensive than nuclear, gas and hydro power.

Unfortunately, and as reflected in the published responses to the Economist article, this analysis has proven to be too simplistic: not accounting for the fact that wind and solar provide complementarities since the wind often blows when the sun’s not shining; that electricity grids can span vast distances (with high voltage direct current lines) which effectively utilise wind and sunlight in different regions at different times; that there is a great deal of R&D into making electricity storage much cheaper; that electricity networks are going to become “smarter” which means they can more effectively balance demand and supply variations automatically; and that the costs of these renewable technologies are coming down so fast that (particularly in the case of solar) its economics might soon be favourable even with significant back-up from gas generation.

In summary, the world is changing, electricity systems are not what they once were, and there is a very sound economic case for meeting the challenge of climate change by deploying low-carbon renewable electricity sources. It is encouraging to see that there has been a rapid rise in the deployment of these technologies over the past decade, but more needs to be done to ensure that the low-carbon world is as low-cost as possible. This means supporting and therefore continuing to subsidise these critical technologies to at least some extent.

 

References

International Energy Agency (2014) World Energy Outlook 2014

Statement from the G20 in Pittsburgh, 2009, available at: https://www.g20.org/sites/default/files/g20_resources/library/Pittsburgh_Declaration.pdf

Grantham Institute, Imperial College London (2014) Solar power for CO2 mitigation, Briefing Paper 11, available at: https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/climatechange/Public/pdfs/Briefing%20Papers/Solar%20power%20for%20CO2%20mitigation%20-%20Grantham%20BP%2011.pdf

Fraunhofer Institute (2013) Levelized cost of Electricity: Renewable Energy Technologies, available at: http://www.ise.fraunhofer.de/en/publications/veroeffentlichungen-pdf-dateien-en/studien-und-konzeptpapiere/study-levelized-cost-of-electricity-renewable-energies.pdf

The Economist (2014a) Sun, Wind and Drain, Jul 26th 2014, available at: http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21608646-wind-and-solar-power-are-even-more-expensive-commonly-thought-sun-wind-and

The Economist (2014b) Letters to the editor, Aug 16th 2014, available at: http://www.economist.com/news/letters/21612125-letters-editor

How will Antartica’s ice-sheet contribute to 21st century sea level rise?

by Professor Martin Siegert, Co-director, Grantham Institute

Antarctic glacierOn 27th October I convened a meeting at the Royal Society of London to discuss the results of a recent 20-year research horizon scanning exercise for Antarctic Science (Kennicutt et al. 2014). Part of the discussion focused on the research needed to better quantify Antarctica’s likely contribution to sea level rise in the coming decades and beyond, as published in the new Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Synthesis Report.

The report states that, ‘Global mean sea level rise will continue during the 21st century, very likely at a faster rate than observed from 1971 to 2010, and will likely be in the ranges of 0.26 to 0.55 m [in the lowest emissions scenario] … and … 0.45 to 0.82 m [in the highest emissions scenario – the closest to “business as usual”]’. It also states that, ‘Based on current understanding, only the collapse of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic ice sheet, if initiated, could cause global mean sea level to rise substantially above the likely range during the 21st century.’ There is medium confidence that any additional sea level rise would be no more than tens of centimetres.

One of the speakers at the event, Prof. David Vaughan, the Director of Research at the British Antarctic Survey, supported the IPCC’s position by remarking that he knew of no glaciologist who would strongly advocate a different position to this, given the evidence at hand. As a glaciologist myself, I can easily accept Prof. Vaughan’s comment and I don’t believe it is controversial among the community. I was, however, provoked by it to consider the relevant issues a little further, given the uncertainties noted by the IPCC, and to take the opportunity to discuss it with colleagues at the meeting.

  Could ice sheet collapse lead to further sea level rise?

Historically, ice sheet responses to global warming have been responsible for sea level changes of a metre or more per century. As the glaciers retreated after the last ice age, sea levels rose by an average of over a metre per century between 20,000 years ago and 10,000 years ago – a total of 120 m. Records also show that the rate of sea level rise can exceed this, however. During the so-called ‘meltwater pulse 1a’ (MWP1a) episode around 15,000 years ago, an increase of around 7 m per century took place. The cause of MWP1a remains uncertain, with some pointing to the rapid decay of the North American ice sheet, whereas others link the change to Antarctica. It may be that both ice sheets were involved to some degree, and the details of the issue remain hotly debated. The point to note is that changes in the cryosphere are certainly capable of causing global sea level to rise at a higher rate than the IPCC suggests.

It is worth considering  whether we can rule out the possibility of a new meltwater pulse being locked in somewhere in Antarctica or Greenland, ready to be released to the ocean once some threshold has been reached. As the IPCC notes, several regions of the West Antarctic ice sheet (in particular) and East Antarctic ice sheet appear close to or at a physical threshold of change, where ground ice retreat into deeper (below sea level) terrain leads to further accelerated loss of ice to the sea (often referred to as marine ice sheet instability). Papers earlier this year by Joughin et al. (2014) and Rignot et al. (2014) point to such irreversible change having already begun in the Amundsen Bay region of West Antarctica. According to Joughin et al. (2014) the full effects of such change may take several hundred years, in line with the IPCC’s position. Evidence from the other side of West Antarctica demonstrates a region the size of Wales being highly sensitive to future ocean warming (Ross et al. 2012), and that such warmth may be delivered within a few decades (Hellmer et al. 2012). Across the continent in East Antarctica, the structure of the underlying bedrock reveals evidence of major ice recession in the past (Young et al. 2011), hinting that the ice sheet response to warming is not necessarily restricted to West Antarctica. Indeed while West Antarctica may be losing mass more quickly than anywhere else on the planet, the greatest potential for sea level change lies in East Antarctica, which about ten times greater in volume.

So, after considering Prof. Vaughan’s point that no glaciologist would differ markedly from the IPCC on Antarctic ice sheet collapse, I returned a question to him and those gathered: how can we be sure that the Antarctic ice sheet won’t respond to ocean warming more quickly than expected in certain regions? The answer is we can’t be certain even though, like Joughin et al. (2014), we may consider it unlikely. While I did not dispute Prof. Vaughan’s point, in the light of both recent findings and more established figures on how ice sheets can change during episodes of global warming, there is surely a non-zero risk of much greater sea level rise over the coming decades than the IPCC alludes to.

Quantifying this risk is difficult – maybe impossible at present – and as a consequence is likely to be highly controversial, which is why the IPCC does not tackle it. The problem is that quantifying a non-zero risk of global sea level rise over 1 m in the next 100 years is a far more challenging problem – for both scientists and decision makers – than restricting the debate to what we consider most likely. Maintaining this restriction on the debate is neither safe nor sensible, however.

Glaciologists will point to the research needed on the Antarctic ice sheet’s sensitivity to ocean warming to advance the debate. In 20 years as a glaciologist, I have been surprised on numerous occasions by what we discover about the flow and form of past and present ice sheets. I am utterly certain that amazing new discoveries lie ahead. For this reason, an appropriately sceptical scientific attitude is to accept that our knowledge of Antarctica remains woefully inadequate to be certain about future sea level rise, and to always challenge the consensus constructively.

The solution lies in our ability to model the ice-ocean system in a way that allows confident predictions of the ice sheet response to ocean warming. To do this we need two things. First is better input data, by way of high-precision landscaping beneath the ice sheet in regions most sensitive to change, and in areas where no data have been collected (and there are several completely unexplored parts of the continent). The data collected would also allow us to better understand the process of ice flow in key regions of potential change. A second advance needed is in the coupling of ice-sheet and ocean models. Both are challenging, but well within our abilities to achieve them. Indeed the horizon scanning exercise discussed last week made such investigations a priority.

The costs of decarbonising the UK

By Dr Flora Whitmarsh, Grantham Institute

money200The costs associated with reducing emissions in the UK have been discussed recently in the press. In an article in the Mail on Sunday, David Rose made the claim that energy policies shaped by the so-called “Green Blob” –  a term coined by Owen Paterson for what he called “the mutually supportive network of environmental pressure groups, renewable energy companies and some public officials” – will cost the UK up to £400 billion by 2030, and that bills will rise by at least a third.

How much will action on climate change actually cost? The quoted figure of £400 billion equates to 1-1.5% of cumulative UK GDP over the next sixteen years. The most recent analysis to be carried out by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change suggests that the costs of a low carbon economy would be around 1-4% of GDP globally by 2030. Analysis carried out by the AVOID consortium which includes Grantham Institute researchers found that the costs of staying within 2oC were 0.5-4% of global GDP, and a report on the costs of mitigation co-authored by the Grantham Institute put the costs at around 1% of global GDP. The figure quoted in the Mail on Sunday for the overall costs of decarbonisation is of the order of magnitude projected by experts, but these figures do not take into account the co-benefits of mitigation such as improved air quality and energy security. In fact a recent report by Cambridge Econometrics asserts that the UK’s decarbonisation pathway would lead to a net increase in GDP of 1.1% by 2030, due to structural changes in the economy and job creation resulting from the low-carbon transition.

Whilst these estimates relate to the economy-wide cost of using low-carbon energy rather than carbon-intensive sources such as fossil fuels, it is not immediately clear from them what this means for the cost of living. The rising cost of household energy is a key concern for people in the UK who have already seen significant increases in the average bill since 2004 mainly due to the rising cost of gas. In a report published in 2012, the Climate Change Committee concluded that support for low carbon technologies would add an average of £100 (10%) onto energy bills for a typical household by 2020 – where a typical household is one that uses gas for heating, and electricity for lighting and appliances. A further increase of £25 per household is projected by 2030, but this is less than in a scenario with high levels of investment in gas-fired power generation.

Furthermore, this could be partially offset by improvements in energy efficiency. The Climate Change Committee expects that by 2020 the replacement of old inefficient boilers will reduce bills by around £35 on average. The use of more efficient lights and appliances could reduce bills by a further £85, and improved efficiency in heating, mainly due to insulation, could save another £25 on average. However, making these savings would depend on having the right policies in place to encourage energy efficiency.

In defence of biomass energy

By Professor Colin Prentice, AXA Chair in Biosphere and Climate Impacts

Further to previous posts on this blog regarding Owen Paterson’s recent speech to the Global Warming Policy Foundation, I would like to take this opportunity to correct his dismissive statement about biomass energy as a potential contribution to decarbonized energy production in the UK. This is what the former Environment Secretary said:

forest-272595_1280

“Biomass is not zero carbon. It generates more CO2 per unit of energy even than coal. Even DECC admits that importing wood pellets from North America to turn into hugely expensive electricity here makes no sense if only because a good proportion of those pellets are coming from whole trees.

The fact that trees can regrow is of little relevance: they take decades to replace the carbon released in their combustion, and then they are supposed to be cut down again. If you want to fix carbon by planting trees, then plant trees! Don’t cut them down as well. We are spending ten times as much to cut down North American forests as we are to stop the cutting down of tropical forests.

Meanwhile, more than 90 percent of the renewable heat incentive (RHI) funds are going to biomass. That is to say, we are paying people to stop using gas and burn wood instead. Wood produces twice as much carbon dioxide than gas.”

There are two misconceptions here.

(1) It is extremely relevant that ‘trees can regrow’ – this is the whole reason why biomass energy is commonly accounted as being carbon neutral! To be genuinely carbon neutral, of course, every tonne of biomass that is burnt (plus any additional greenhouse gas emissions associated with its production and delivery to the point of use) has to replaced by a tonne of new biomass that is growing somewhere else. This is possible so long as the biomass is obtained from a sustainable rotation system – that is, a system in which the rate of harvest is at least equalled by the rate of regrowth, when averaged over the whole supply region.

Now it has been pointed out several times in the literature (e.g. Searchinger et al., 2009; Haberl et al., 2012) that if biomass is burnt for energy and not replenished (for example, if trees are cut down and the land is then converted to other uses), then it is not carbon neutral. Indeed, the carbon intensity of this form of energy production is at least as high as that of coal. Paterson may have been influenced by a report on this topic (RSPB, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, 2012) which drew attention to the “accounting error” by which energy derived from biomass might be classed as carbon neutral while actually being highly polluting. But this refers to an extreme scenario, whereby increased demand for forest products leads to no increase in the area covered by forests. In this scenario, biomass energy demand would have to be met from the existing (global) forest estate, drawing down the carbon stocks of forests and forcing builders to substitute concrete and other materials for wood. This would certainly be undesirable from the point of view of the land carbon balance; and carbon accounting rules should recognize the fact.

Nonethless, this extreme scenario is implausible. It assumes that the value of biomass as fuel would be comparable to that of timber (highly unlikely) and more generally that there would be no supply response to increased demand. In more economically plausible scenarios, the increased demand for biomass fuel is met by an increase in the use of by-products of timber production (which today are commonly left to decay or burnt without producing any energy), and by an increase in the amount of agriculturally marginal land under biomass production – including non-tree energy crops such as Miscanthus, as well as trees.

Paterson’s blanket dismissal of the potential for biomass production to reduce CO2 emissions is therefore not scientifically defensible. Sustainable biomass energy production is entirely possible, already providing (for example) nearly a third of Sweden’s electricity today. It could represent an important contribution to decarbonized energy production in the UK and elsewhere.

(2) It might seem to be common sense that planting trees (and never cutting them down) would bring greater benefits in extracting CO2 from the atmosphere than planting trees for harvest and combustion. All the same, it is wrong. The point is that just planting trees produces no energy, whereas planting trees for biomass energy production provides a substitute for the use of fossil fuels. There is an enormous difference. Indeed, it has been known for a long time that the total reduction in atmospheric CO2 concentration that could be achieved under an absurdly optimistic scenario (converting all the land that people have ever deforested back into forests) would reduce atmospheric CO2 concentration by a trivial amount, relative to projected increases due to burning fossil fuel (House et al., 2002; Mackey et al. 2013).

I thank Jeremy Woods (Imperial College) and Jonathan Scurlock (National Farmers Union) for their helpful advice on this topic, and suggestions to improve the text.

 

  References

Haberl, H. et al. (2012) Correcting a fundamental error in greenhouse gas accounting related to bioenergy. Energy Policy 45: 18-23.

House, J.I., I.C. Prentice and C. Le Quéré (2002). Maximum impacts of future reforestation or deforestation on atmospheric CO2. Global Change Biology 8: 1047-1052.

Mackey, B. et al. (2013) Untangling the confusion around land carbon science and climate change mitigation policy. Nature Climate Change 3: 552-557.

RSPB, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace (2012) Dirtier than coal? Why Government plans to subsidise burning trees are bad news for the planet. http://www.rspb.org.uk/Images/biomass_report_tcm9-326672.pdf

Searchinger, T. et al. (2009) Fixing a critical climate accounting error. Science 326: 527-528.

 

Paterson misses the point

By Dr Simon Buckle,  Grantham Institute

smoking chimneysOwen Paterson’s remarks on the UK response to climate change miss the point.  I do not disagree with him that the UK decarbonisation strategy should be improved.  In particular, there is a need for a more effective strategy on energy demand.  However, my preferred policy and technology mix would be very different to his and include the acceleration and expansion of the CCS commercial demonstration programme in order to reduce the energy penalty and overall costs of CCS. And without CCS, there is no way responsibly to use the shale gas he wants the UK to produce in the coming decades for electricity generation or in industrial processes, or any other fossil fuels.

However, these are second order issues compared to his call for scrapping the 2050 targets and the suspension of the UK Climate Change Committee.  On current trends, by the end of the century, the surface temperature of our planet is as likely as not to have increased by 4°C relative to pre-industrial conditions.  The present pause in the rise of the global mean surface temperature does not mean we do not need to be concerned.   We are fundamentally changing the climate system, raising the likelihood of severe, pervasive, and irreversible impacts on society and the natural systems on which we all depend.

A cost-effective policy to limit these very real climate risks must be based on concerted, co-ordinated and broad-based mitigation action.  This is needed to deliver a substantial and sustained reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions, which continue on a sharply rising trajectory.  The best way to create the conditions for such action by all the major emitting economies – developed and developing, in different measure – is through the UN negotiation process, supplemented by bodies such as (but not confined to) the Major Economies Forum.  The focus of this process is now on achieving a deal covering emissions beyond 2020, due to be finalised at the Paris summit at the end of next year.

There are encouraging signs of progress, e.g. in both the US and China, and the EU is due to agree its own 2030 targets at the end of this month.  But the process is difficult and protracted.  I agree with Paterson that 2050 is not the be all and end all.  I have argued here that the Paris talks should focus on how the next climate agreement can help us collectively to achieve a global peak in emissions before 2030, the first necessary step to any stringent mitigation target, rather than trying to negotiate a deal covering the whole period to 2050.

If Paris is a success, we might then re-assess whether or not the UK’s current mitigation targets are adequate or not.  But we are rapidly running out of time to achieve what the world’s governments profess to be their aim of limiting global warming to at most 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels.  The longer we delay mitigation action, the more difficult that challenge will be and the more expensive.  At some point soon it will become impossible in practical terms.

Given its leadership on this issue over many decades, UK action to scrap the Climate Change Act and/or suspend or abolish the Climate Change Committee would be severely damaging.  Seeking short-term domestic political advantage – which is what this move appears to be – through recommendations that would undermine national, European and international efforts to limit climate risks is irresponsible.   Sadly, this seems to be what the so-called political “debate” in the UK has been reduced to.

Feasibility and affordability of reducing greenhouse gas emissions

By Ajay Gambhir, Research fellow on mitigation policy at the Grantham Institute

wind turbines300The United Nations Climate Summit 2014, to be held in New York on 23rd September, comes at an important point in the calendar for discussions on how to address climate change. Next year will see nations submit pledges on their future greenhouse gas emissions levels, as part of the United Nations process culminating in the 21st Conference of the Parties (COP) in Paris at the end of 2015, the ambition of which is to secure a global agreement to tackle climate change.

There is now a rich body of evidence on the implications of mitigation at the global, regional and national levels. This note presents some of the evidence, revealed by research in the Grantham Institute over recent years, which supports the view that mitigation remains feasible and affordable.

Technologies and costs of a global low-carbon pathway

The Grantham Institute, in partnership with Imperial College’s Energy Futures Laboratory (EFL) demonstrated a relatively simple, transparent analysis of the relative costs of a low-carbon versus carbon-intensive global energy system in 2050. The report concluded that mitigation in line with a 2 degrees Celsius limit to global warming would cost less than 1% of global GDP by 2050 (excluding any potentially significant co-benefits from improved air quality and enhanced energy security).

Joint Grantham and EFL report: Halving global CO2 by 2050: Technologies and Costs

The importance of India and China

The two most populous nations, India and China, have undergone rapid economic growth in recent decades, resulting in significantly increased demand for fossil fuels, with associated increases in their CO2 emissions. Mapping pathways towards a low-carbon future for both regions presents challenges in terms of technology choices, affordability and the interplay with land, water and other resources. The Grantham Institute, in partnership with other research groups (including IIASA and UCL), has produced long-term visions of both regions using energy technology modelling and detailed technology and resource assessments, to set out pathways to very low-carbon economies which can be achieved at relatively modest costs. In addition, the Institute has undertaken assessments of the feasibility and cost of achieving the regions’ near-term (2020) Cancun pledges.

Grantham Report 1: An assessment of China’s 2020 carbon intensity target

Grantham Report 2: China’s energy technologies to 2050

Grantham Report 4: An assessment of India’s 2020 carbon intensity target

Grantham Report 5: India’s CO2 emissions pathways to 2050

Key sectors and technologies

Reports have been produced on a number of key technologies across all economic sectors and on the role that these can play in a low-carbon world: electric and other low-carbon vehicles in the transport sector; low-carbon residential heating technologies; other building efficiency and low-carbon options; and a range of technologies and measures to reduce emissions from industrial manufacturing.

The successful development and deployment of a range of low-carbon power sector technologies will be central to decarbonising the power generation sector over the coming decades, thereby providing the basis for low-carbon electrification in the building, transport and industrial sectors. The Institute has produced briefing papers on the technological status, economics and policies to promote solar photovoltaics and carbon capture and storage (including with bioenergy to produce net negative emissions).

Grantham briefing paper 2: Road transport technology and climate change mitigation

Grantham briefing paper 3: Carbon capture technology: future fossil fuel use and mitigating climate change

Grantham briefing paper 4: Carbon dioxide storage

Grantham briefing paper 6: Low carbon residential heating

Grantham briefing paper 7: Reducing CO2 emissions from heavy industry: a review of technologies and considerations for policy makers

Grantham briefing paper 8: Negative emissions technologies

Grantham briefing paper 10: Shale gas and climate change

Grantham briefing paper 11: Solar Power for CO2 mitigation

Grantham Report 3: Reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in the global building sector to 2050

Competitiveness

A critical consideration in any nation or region’s mitigation strategy is the degree to which a low-carbon transition might put its industries at risk of losing competitiveness against rivals in regions with less stringent mitigation action. In a landmark study using responses from hundreds of manufacturing industries across the European Union, researchers at the Institute, in partnership with the Imperial College Business School and Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, have produced robust evidence to support the contention that the EU’s Emissions Trading System has not produced any significant competitiveness impacts or industry relocation risks.

On the empirical content of carbon leakage criteria in the EU Emissions Trading Scheme – Ecological Economics (2014)

Industry Compensation under Relocation Risk: A Firm-Level Analysis of the EU Emissions Trading Scheme – American Economic Review (2014)

Global energy governance reform

The energy policies of governments around the world will, to a large extent, determine global greenhouse gas emissions.   Western governments cooperate on their energy policies through the International Energy Agency (IEA), which is a powerful advocate and analyst of low carbon energy strategies.  Unfortunately the IEA excludes developing nations, such as China, India, Brazil, Indonesia, from its membership.  The Grantham Institute is working with China’s Energy research Institute (ERI) to advise the Chinese government on China’s options for greater engagement in international energy cooperation, including closer association with the IEA.   China’s participation is important for world energy security and affordability – the other main objectives of energy policy –   as well as for climate mitigation.   A consultation draft report published by this ERI/Grantham project is at Global energy governance reform and China’s participation. An earlier report by the Grantham Institute with Chatham House is at Global energy governance reform.

Ocean heat uptake – checking the facts

The Climate and Environment at Imperial blog has moved. View this post on our new blog 

By Dr Flora Whitmarsh, Grantham Institute

The recent slowdown in global temperature rise has led to suggestions that global warming has stopped. In fact, the Earth system is still gaining heat, and the slowdown was likely caused by a series of small volcanic eruptions, a downward trend in the solar cycle, and increased heat uptake of the ocean. Writing in the Telegraph, Christopher Booker claims that a new paper by Professor Carl Wunsch (Wunsch, 2014) shows that ocean warming cannot explain the slowdown because the deeper ocean is in fact cooling rather than warming. Booker is incorrect in his interpretation of the paper, as Professor Wunsch explained in a letter of response to the Telegraph editor that was not published. Wunsch also wrote a letter to the editor of The Australian following a similarly misleading article in that newspaper. There are two threads to Christopher Booker’s argument in the Telegraph article. First, he suggests that the new paper refutes the idea that the pause is caused by an increase in ocean heat uptake, an interpretation that is untrue. Second, Booker gives a misleading interpretation of Wunsch’s appearance on the 2007 television documentary The Great Global warming Swindle in which Wunsch’s views were misrepresented by the documentary makers. Below, I describe the significance of ocean heat uptake and then discuss Booker’s two points in turn.

Figure 1
Figure 1: the amount of heat taken up by the upper ocean (above 700 m), deep ocean (below 700 m), atmosphere and earth, and the amount going into melting ice (IPCC, 2013).

   The significance of ocean heat uptake

The ocean is an important heat sink and has taken up over 90% of the extra heat absorbed by the Earth system over the last century. There is natural variation in the amount of heat being taken up by the ocean. This is part of the reason why the observed increase in surface temperatures has not been uniform in the past. All studies including this latest one agree that the ocean above 2000 m is absorbing a significant amount of heat and this is the main focus of studies trying to detect and attribute global warming. The study of the ocean below 2000m is interesting from a scientific point of view but is less relevant to the study of climate change because it takes a very long time for heat to mix to these lower layers. Heat is transferred to the deep ocean by the movement of water masses – the mixing driven by the small-scale movement of water molecules is too slow to be of much significance. Due to the locations of the major ocean currents, parts of the deep ocean such as the western Atlantic and the Southern Ocean in the Antarctic have been in contact with the surface relatively recently, meaning they would be expected to have warmed due to global warming. By contrast, much of the Pacific Ocean below 1500 m has not been in contact with the surface for around a thousand years – something that has been demonstrated by studying the radioactive decay of carbon-14 atoms  in a technique similar to the carbon dating of objects (Matsumoto, 2007 – see figure 2).

Figure 2
Figure 2: The circulation carbon-14 age of ocean water below 1500 m (Matsumoto, 2007). Much of the water in the deep Pacific Ocean has not been in contact with the surface for around 1000 years, meaning that its temperature is unlikely to have been influenced by human activities since the industrial revolution.

       What is happening in the deep ocean?

Christopher Booker writes, “Prof Carl Wunsch … has produced a paper suggesting not only that the warmists have no real evidence to support their claim other than computer modelling, but that the deeper levels of the oceans have, if anything, not been warming but cooling recently, thanks to climate changes dating back centuries.”

Figure 3
Figure 3: Change in ocean heat content between 1993 and 2011 below 2000 m depth, in units of 108 Joules. There has been heating at this level in the Western Atlantic and Southern Ocean and cooling elsewhere.

In the paper under discussion, Bidecadal Thermal Changes in the Abyssal Ocean, Wunsch looks at observations of ocean heat content. He found that the ocean as a whole and the top 700 m had gained heat since 1993, but that there had been an overall decline in heat content below 2000 m according to the available data. There has been a warming in the regions of the deep ocean below 2000 m where it would be expected due to the transport of water from the surface to the abyss by major ocean currents, i.e. the western Atlantic Ocean and the Southern Ocean (see figure 3). There was an observed cooling below 2000 m in other parts of the ocean including most of the Pacific. Much of the deep Pacific Ocean would not be expected to have warmed due to climate change because the water has not been in recent contact with the surface (figure 2). The available observations are very sparse and only about a third of the water below 2000 m was sampled at all during the period under discussion, meaning it is not known whether these results reflect a genuine cooling below 2000 m. Because there was heating in some places and cooling in others, it is particularly hard to accurately determine the mean from very sparse observations. The main conclusion of Wunsch, 2014 was in fact that more observations are needed to improve our understanding of processes involved in transporting water to the deep ocean. This is a subject which has received relatively little attention, with much more research effort being concentrated on the upper ocean. It is likely that this is partially due to the difficulty involved in observing the ocean at depth, and partly because the upper ocean is of interest due to its direct impact on weather patterns, for example through its role in the formation of El Niño and La Niña conditions. None of this changes the fact that the Earth system as whole is gaining heat, and that a significant proportion of that heat is being taken up by the ocean, mostly in the top 700 m. The paper doesn’t significantly change our understanding of the pause in surface temperature rise. We know that natural processes do change the amount of heat taken up by the ocean over time, and that surface temperature rise has not been uniform in the past. However, precisely quantifying how much heat has been taken up by the deep ocean is still not possible with current observations.

 

      The Great Global Warming Swindle

Referring to the 2007 television documentary, The Great Global Warming Swindle, Booker suggested that Wunsch had privately held “sceptic” views at the time the programme was aired, but didn’t feel able to express these views in public, “So anxious is the professor not to be seen as a “climate sceptic” that, [after being interviewed for] The Great Global Warming Swindle, he complained to Ofcom that, although he had said all those things he was shown as saying, he hadn’t been told that the programme would be dedicated to explaining the scientific case against global warming.” Professor Wunsch’s views on The Great Global Warming Swindle are explained at length on his professional webpage in an article dated March 2007. I will not paraphrase his comments in detail, but suffice it to say he states his belief that “climate change is real, a major threat, and almost surely has a major human-induced component”, and wrote to the documentary makers to say, “I am the one who was swindled” because they misrepresented his views by quoting him out of context. In an update written three months later, Wunsch made it clear that he did not complain to Ofcom under duress from other scientists. In fact, he felt so strongly that his opinions had been misrepresented that he filed his complaint despite threats by the documentary maker to sue him for libel. References Matsumoto, K. (2007), Radiocarbon-based circulation age of the world oceans, J. Geophys. Res., 112, C09004. Wunsch, 2014: Carl Wunsch and Patrick Heimbach, 2014: Bidecadal Thermal Changes in the Abyssal Ocean. J. Phys. Oceanogr., 44, 2013–2030.

Ocean warming in the media

A recent paper on ocean warming has been reported on in a number of newspaper articles, most recently by Christopher Booker in the Sunday Telegraph.

The author of the paper, Professor Carl Wunsch of MIT, wrote a letter to the editor of the Sunday Telegraph in response to Christopher Booker’s article. As the letter has yet to be published in the Sunday Telegraph, with the permission of Professor Wunsch we have decided to post it here.

Dear Editor,

In the Sunday Telegraph of 27 July 2014, Christopher Booker pretends to understand a highly technical paper on ocean warming to such a degree that he can explain it to his lay-audience. Had he made the slightest effort to contact me, I could have told him that the paper in reality says that the ocean is warming overall at a rate consistent with previous values – but that parts of the deepest ocean appear to be cooling. This inference is not a contradiction to overall warming. He imputes to me a wish to hide my views: nothing could be further from the truth. I believe that global warming is an extremely serious threat, but how that threat will play out in detail is scientifically still poorly understood. Anyone who interprets the complexity of change to mean global warming is not occurring and is not worrying, is ignorant enough to regard The Great Global Warming Swindle as a documentary – it is an egregious propaganda piece.

Carl Wunsch

Harvard University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Grantham Institute welcomes results of Energy and Climate Change Committee review of IPCC WG1 report

Uk ParliamentThe House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee report on the Working Group 1 contribution to the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report, which is published today, has found the IPCC process to be robust. The committee launched an inquiry into the IPCC WG1 report in October 2013, following criticism by some commentators of the IPCC review process and its conclusions.

The Grantham Institute submitted written evidence to the committee (you can read our evidence here) and our Chair Professor Sir Brian Hoskins was called before the committee to give oral evidence.

The committee found that “the IPCC has responded extremely well to constructive criticism in the last few years and has tightened its review processes to make its Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) the most exhaustive and heavily scrutinised Assessment Report to-date. The MPs call on the IPCC to continue to improve its transparency, however. The IPCC would benefit, they say, from recruiting a small team of non-climate scientists to observe the review process and the plenary meetings where the Summary for Policymakers is agreed.”

 

Commenting on the report Professor Joanna Haigh, Co-Director Grantham Institute said:

“Having assessed a significant quantity of submitted evidence, both written and oral, this report is overwhelmingly supportive of both the procedures and the conclusions of the IPCC. It concludes that the WG1 report is the best available summary of the state of the science of climate change, that improvements to IPCC procedures since the Fourth Assessment have ensured “the highest Quality of scholarship” and that there is no scientific basis for downgrading UK’s ambition to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In terms of procedures it recommends two areas of further improvement – the appointment by governments of some non-climate scientists as members of the Executive Committee, and to observe the review process, and a greater level of transparency in plenary meetings discussing the Summary for Policymakers – but these recommendations in no way reflect concern about the content of the Assessment. A whole chapter of the report is devoted to examining criticisms that have been levelled, from both inside and outside the scientific community, on the scientific conclusions but none is found to have significant bearing.

Such a robust report from an all party parliamentary committee surely means that we can now reduce efforts spent on dealing with the constituencies working to discredit the IPCC, concentrate on understanding the science behind climate and climate change and do our best to make sure that the government plays a leading role in achieving a global deal on climate change.”

 

Professor Sir Brian Hoskins, Chair of the Grantham Institute said:

“The committee recognises that the recent WG1 report of IPCC gives a very good summary of the science relevant to climate change, whilst there are some remaining issues on transparency.

The question now is how do we respond to the risk posed by climate change, and I am pleased to see that the Report is clear: it supports the basis for the advice given by the Climate Change Committee and the path the UK is taking towards its 2050 carbon reduction target, in particular the 4th Carbon budget recently confirmed by Government, it advises that the UK Government at the top level should play a major role in international discussions leading up to Paris 2015.”