Tag Archives: greenhouse gases

Mining the Earth to Save it

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The rush to secure green-energy metals is bringing new life to one of the world’s oldest mining hubs. Like the United States, Europe is worried that it is too reliant on China for supplies of once-obscure natural resources, such as lithium and rare-earth metals, that are seen as climate-friendly successors to oil and gas…. 

On both sides of the Atlantic, one of the best answers to long-simmering worries about green-energy security is to look north…, for example, to the “Canadian Shield,” a vast band of rock encircling Hudson Bay. The “Baltic Shield” that stretches across Scandinavia to western Russia is similarly mineral-rich. It helps explain why Sweden in particular has such a long mining heritage. In the mid-17th century, the country’s “Great Copper Mountain” near Falun provided two-thirds of the world’s copper. Even today, 80% of iron ore mined in the EU comes from a site near the Arctic town of Kiruna that Swedish state operator LKAB has exploited for well over a century.

The energy transition is an opportunity for Sweden’s mining complex. LKAB said in January 2023 that it had identified Europe’s largest body of rare-earth metals close to its existing Kiruna operation…Digging up the planet to save it is an awkward pitch. The only way for miners to counter accusations that they are adding to the problem they want to solve is by decarbonizing operations. Here Sweden is again helped by the geology of the Baltic Shield, whose river valleys are favorable for green-energy production. Roughly 45% of the country’s electricity comes from hydroelectric power, with much of the remainder provided by nuclear and wind. It is also cheap, particularly in the Arctic, where many mines are located. Against a favorable geopolitical backdrop, the biggest risk for investors is political. Mines, which can bring a lot of noise and relatively few jobs to an area, don’t tend to be popular locally.

There is a reason the West relies on autocracies for a lot of its oil.

Excerpts from Stephen Wilmot, For Mining EV Metals, the Arctic Is Hot, WSJ, Feb. 14, 2023

A Breach Too Far: 413 PPM

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The abundance of heat-trapping greenhouse gases in the atmosphere once again reached a new record in 2021, with the annual rate of increase above the 2011-2020 average. That trend has continued in 2021, according to the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) Greenhouse Gas Bulletin.

Concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2), the most important greenhouse gas, reached 413.2 parts per million in 2020 and is 149% of the pre-industrial level. Methane (CH4) is 262% and nitrous oxide (N2O)  is 123% of the levels in 1750 when human activities started disrupting Earth’s natural equilibrium.

Roughly half of the CO2 emitted by human activities today remains in the atmosphere. The other half is taken up by oceans and land ecosystems. The Bulletin flagged concern that the ability of land ecosystems and oceans to act as “sinks” may become less effective in future, thus reducing their ability to absorb carbon dioxide and act as a buffer against larger temperature increase…Such changes are already happening, for example, transition of the part of Amazonia from a carbon sink to a carbon source. 

The Bulletin shows that from 1990 to 2020, radiative forcing – the warming effect on our climate – by long-lived greenhouse gases increased by 47%, with CO2 accounting for about 80% of this increase…The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere breached the milestone of 400 parts per million in 2015. And just five years later, it exceeded 413 ppm. 

“Carbon dioxide remains in the atmosphere for centuries and in the ocean for even longer. The last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was 3-5 million years ago, when the temperature was 2-3°C warmer and sea level was 10-20 meters higher than now. But there weren’t 7.8 billion people then,” said Prof. Taalas.

Excerpt from Greenhouse Gas Bulletin: Another Year Another Record, WMO, Oct. 25, 2021

Fossil-Free in 2026

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Norrland (in Sweden) abounds in hydropower. Power that is cheap and—crucially—green, along with bargain land and proximity to iron ore, is sparking an improbable industrial revolution, based on hydrogen, “green” steel and batteries. SSAB, a steelmaker, is poised to deliver its first consignment of “eco-steel” from a hydrogen-fuelled pilot plant in Lulea, a northern city. 

Traditionally, to make steel, iron ore must be melted at high temperatures and reduced from iron oxide to iron, a process that typically involves burning fossil fuels, releasing huge amounts of carbon dioxide. Replacing them with hydrogen eliminates more than 98% of the carbon dioxide normally released. The hydrogen is made by electrolysing water, using electricity produced by hydro-power. This approach involves almost no carbon-dioxide emissions at all…..

Northern Sweden’s steelmaking leaps are being emulated elsewhere in Europe, in response to similar environmental pressures which will only increase if, as looks very likely, Germany’s Greens enter government after the election in September 2021. Europe produces a still significant 16% of the world’s steel. Big producers in Germany and Poland, where the industry is mostly coal-based and very dirty, are nervy. Even neighbouring Norway is in danger of losing out. It too has the gift of rich renewable-energy resources, but underinvestment means there may soon not be enough of this green electricity to meet the demands of both households and industry.

Excerpts from Green steel: Plentiful renewable energy is opening up a new industrial frontier, Economist, May 15, 2021

Can We Change Path? Saving Forests and Cutting Carbon

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No ecosystem is more important in mitigating the effects of climate change than tropical rainforest. And South-East Asia is home to the world’s third-biggest patch of it, behind the Amazon and Congo basins. Even though humans release carbon from these forests through logging, clear-felling for agriculture and other disruptions, some are so vast and fecund that the growth of the plants within them absorbs even more from the atmosphere. The Congo basin, for instance, locks up 600m tonnes of carbon a year more than it releases, according to the World Resources Institute (WRI), an international NGO that is equivalent to about a third of emissions from all American transport.

In contrast, such is the extent of clearing for plantations in South-East Asia’s rainforests, which run from Myanmar to Indonesia, that over the past 20 years they have turned from a growing carbon sink to a significant source of emissions—nearly 500m tonnes a year. Indonesia and Malaysia, home to the biggest expanses of pristine forest, have lost more than a third of it this century. Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar, relative newcomers to deforestation, are making up for lost time.

The Global Forest Watch, which uses satellite data to track tree cover, loss of virgin forest in Indonesia and Malaysia has slowed for the fourth year in row—a contrast with other parts of the world…The Leaf Coalition, backed by America, Britain and Norway, along with such corporate giants as Amazon, Airbnb, and Unilever, aims to create an international marketplace in which carbon credits can be sold for deforestation avoided. An initial $1bn has been pledged to reward countries for protecting forests. South-East Asia could be a big beneficiary,

Admittedly, curbing deforestation has been a cherished but elusive goal of climate campaigners for ages. A big un initiative to that end, called REDD+, was launched a decade ago, with Indonesia notably due for help. It never achieved its potential. Projects for conservation must jump through many hoops before approval. The risk is often that a patch of forest here may be preserved at the expense of another patch there. Projects are hard to monitor. The price set for carbon under the scheme, $5 a tonne, has been too low to overcome these hurdles.

The Leaf Initiative would double the price of carbon, making conservation more attractive. Whereas buyers of carbon credits under REDD+ pocketed profits from a rise in carbon prices, windfalls will now go to the country that sold the credits. Standards of monitoring are much improved. Crucially, the scheme will involve bigger units of land than previous efforts, the so-called jurisdictional approach. That reduces the risk of deforestation simply being displaced from a protected patch to an unprotected one.

Excerpts from Banyan: There is hope for South-East Asia’s beleaguered tropical forests, Economist, May 1, 2021

Dumping Carbon in the Seabed

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Oil companies have for decades made money by extracting carbon from the ground. Now they are trying to make money putting it back. Energy giants such as Exxon Mobil and Royal Dutch Shell are pushing carbon capture and storage (CCS)—where carbon is gathered and buried underground—as part of a drive to reduce both their own and their customers’ emissions. Executives say the service could become a new source of income when the industry is grappling with how to adapt to a lower-carbon economy.

Oil companies have long captured carbon from their operations, albeit mostly to produce more oil. Now they want to retool that skill as a service they can sell to heavy-polluting industries like cement and steel, burying their carbon in the ground indefinitely for a fee, rather than releasing it into the atmosphere. Yet critics question the environmental benefits and high cost of such projects.

In 2021, Shell, Total and Equinor launched a joint venture to store carbon in a rock formation thousands of feet beneath the seabed off the coast of Norway. The state-backed Northern Lights project is set to be the first time companies outside the oil industry will be able to pay to have their carbon gathered and stored. Most carbon-storage projects rely on government funding. Norway is covering about 80% of the $1.6 billion cost of the Northern Lights project, with the rest split equally between Shell, Equinor and Total.

Exxon has said it plans to form a new business unit to commercialize carbon capture and storage, forecasting it could become a $2 trillion market by 2040. Chevron has formed partnerships on storage projects, while BP is codeveloping storage projects in the U.K. and Australia. Oil executives’ sales pitch to carbon-intensive companies: We will provide your energy, then take back the carbon to minimize your footprint. Carbon capture and storage iss becoming a business rather than just a solution. 

The U.S. offers companies a tax credit of as much as $50 a metric ton of carbon captured, while the U.K., Norway and Australia have collectively committed billions of dollars of funding for carbon-capture projects. But There are  concerns about whether storage sites could leak carbon. In Europe, public resistance to land-based storage has led to the use of aquifers and depleted gas fields in the North Sea….In the Norway project, carbon will be transported by ship around the bottom of the country before being pumped offshore via a 68-mile pipeline and then injected into an aquifer under the seabed. BP is working on a similar concept for a project it will operate in northeast England, where carbon will be collected from a gas-power plant and various industrial sites, then stored under the North Sea. “We’ll capture the carbon, we’ll take it offshore, we’ll stuff it underground,” BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney recently said of the project. “Taking the carbon back is what I like to describe it as.”

Excerpts from Sarah McFarlane, Oil Giants Turn to Carbon Storage, Apr. 20, 2021

Chasing Super-Polluters

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A constellation of satellites will be flown this decade to try to pinpoint significant releases of climate-changing gases, in particular carbon dioxide and methane. The initiative is being led by an American non-profit organisation called Carbon Mapper.
It will use technology developed by the US space agency over the past decade.
The satellites – 20 or so – will be built and flown by San Francisco’s Planet company.
Planet operates today the largest fleet of Earth-observing spacecraft.

There are already quite a few satellites in the sky that monitor greenhouse gases, but the capability is far from perfect. Most of these spacecraft can sense the likes of methane over very large areas but have poor resolution at the local level, at the scale, say, of a leaking pipeline. And those systems that can capture this detail will lack the wide-area coverage and the timely return to a particular location. The Carbon Mapper project wants to fix this either-or-situation by flying multiple high-resolution (30m) sensors that can deliver a daily view, or better.

They will look for super-emitters – the actors responsible for large releases of greenhouse gases. These would include oil and gas infrastructure, or perhaps poorly managed landfills and large dairy factory facilities.

Often these emitters want to know they have a problem but just don’t have the data to take action. “What we’ve learned is that decision support systems that focus just at the level of nation states, or countries, are necessary but not sufficient. We really need to get down to the scale of individual facilities, and even individual pieces of equipment, if we’re going to have an impact across civil society,” explained Riley Duren, Carbon Mapper’s CEO and a research scientist at the University of Arizona…The aim is to put the satellite data in the hands of everyone, and with the necessary tools also to be able to understand and use that information….

Excerpt from Jonathan Amos Carbon Mapper satellite network to find super-emitters, Reuters, April 16, 2021

Green-Shaming ExxonMobil

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ExxonMobil’s shareholders concerned about greenery are angered by ExxonMobil’s continued carbon-cuddling. Those who care more about greenbacks are irked by its capital indiscipline. Right now, both are pushing in the same direction.

D.E. Shaw, a big hedge fund, is urging ExxonMobil to spend more wisely… More eye-catchingly, Engine No.1, a newish fund with a stake of just 0.02%, is trying to green-shame Mr Woods with a mantra as straightforward as ExxonMobil’s: if the company continues on its current course, and demand shifts quickly to cleaner energy, it risks terminal decline. The fund has launched a proxy battle by proposing four new directors; the current board, it complains, is long on blue-chip corporate credentials but short on energy expertise. Engine No.1’s agitation for a shake-up has won backing from, among others, Calstrs, which manages $283bn on behalf of California’s public-sector workers.

Most important, the tone from ExxonMobil’s three biggest institutional shareholders—BlackRock, Vanguard and State Street—has also shifted…In a recent letter to clients, Larry Fink, boss of BlackRock, talked of greener stocks enjoying a “sustainability premium” and dirty ones jeopardising portfolios’ long-term returns. He hinted that his firm—the world’s largest asset manager—might divest from firms that failed to appreciate the “tectonic shift” taking place. Vanguard, too, has called out ExxonMobil for flawed governance…

Excerpt from Schumpeter: The Long Squeeze, Economist, Feb. 6, 2021

Buy Carbon Stored in Trees and Leave it There

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For much of human history, the way to make money from a tree was to chop it down. Now, with companies rushing to offset their carbon emissions, there is value in leaving them standing. The good news for trees is that the going rate for intact forests has become competitive with what mills pay for logs in corners of Alaska and Appalachia, the Adirondacks and up toward Acadia. That is spurring landowners to make century-long conservation deals with fossil-fuel companies, which help the latter comply with regulatory demands to reduce their carbon emissions.

For now, California is the only U.S. state with a so-called cap-and-trade system that aims to reduce greenhouse gasses by making it more expensive over time for firms operating in the state to pollute. Preserving trees is rewarded with carbon-offset credits, a climate-change currency that companies can purchase and apply toward a tiny portion of their tab. But lately, big energy companies, betting that the idea will spread, are looking to preserve vast tracts of forest beyond what they need for California, as part of a burgeoning, speculative market in so-called voluntary offsets.

One of the most enthusiastic, BP PLC, has already bought more than 40 million California offset credits since 2016 at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. In 2019, the energy giant invested $5 million in Pennsylvania’s Finite Carbon, a pioneer in the business of helping landowners create and sell credits. The investment is aimed at helping Finite hire more foresters, begin using satellites to measure biomass and drum up more credits for use in the voluntary market.  BP has asked Finite to produce voluntary credits ASAP so they can be available for its own carbon ledger and to trade among other companies eager to improve their emissions math. As part of its shift into non-fossil-fuel markets, BP expects to trade offset credits the way it presently does oil and gas.“The investment is to grow a new market,” said Nacho Gimenez, a managing director at the oil company’s venture-capital arm. “BP wants to live in this space.”

Skeptics contend the practice does little to reduce greenhouse gases: that the trees are already sequestering carbon and shouldn’t be counted to let companies off the hook for emissions. They argue that a lot of forest protected by offsets wasn’t at high risk of being clear-cut, because doing so isn’t the usual business of its owners, like land trusts, or because the timber was remote or otherwise not particularly valuable.

If other governments join California and institute cap-and-trade markets, voluntary offsets could shoot up in value. It could be like holding hot tech shares ahead of an overbought IPO. Like unlisted stock, voluntary credits trade infrequently and in a wide price range, lately averaging about $6 a ton, Mr. Carney said. California credits changed hands at an average of $14.15 in 2019 and were up to $15 before the coronavirus lockdown drove them lower. They have lately traded for about $13.

These days, voluntary offsets are mostly good for meeting companies’ self-set carbon-reduction goals. BP is targeting carbon neutrality by 2050. Between operations and the burning of its oil-and-gas output by motorists and power plants, the British company says it is annually responsible for 415 million metric tons of carbon emissions.

Excerpts from Emissions Rules Turn Saving Trees into Big Business, WSJ, Aug. 24, 2020

An Impossible Made Possible: the Green Energy Revolution

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Since the cost of renewable energy can now be competitive with fossil fuels. Government, corporate and consumer interests finally seem to be aligning.  The stock market has noticed. After years of underperformance, indexes that track clean-energy stocks bottomed out in late 2018. The S&P Global Clean Energy index, which covers 30 big utilities and green-technology stocks, is now up 37% over two years, including dividends, compared with 18% for the S&P 500.

This year’s Covid crisis will delay some renewable projects, but could speed up the energy transition in other ways. Alternative-energy spending has held up much better than spending on oil and gas. Globally, clean-energy investment is now expected to account for half of total investment in the entire energy sector this year, according to UBS.  Moreover, the crisis has pushed governments to spend money, including on renewable technologies. The massive stimulus plan announced by the European Union last month is decidedly green. The German government increased electric-car subsidies as part of its pandemic-related stimulus package rather than rolling out a 2009-style “cash-for-clunkers” program. China’s plans include clean-energy incentives, too.

Solar and wind are now mature technologies that provide predictable long-term returns. Big lithium-ion batteries, such as those that power Teslas, are industrializing rapidly. More speculatively, hydrogen is a promising green fuel for hard-to-decarbonize sectors such as long-haul transport, aviation, steel and cement.  Many big companies—the likes of Royal Dutch Shell, Air Liquide and Toyota —have green initiatives worth many hundreds of millions of dollars. They are, however, a relatively small part of these large businesses, some of whose other assets may be rendered obsolete by the energy transition… Early-stage electric-truck maker Nikola jumped on its market debut this month to a valuation at one point exceeding that of Ford.

Investors might be better off looking at the established specialists in between. Vestas is the world’s leading manufacturer of wind turbines. Orsted, another Danish company, has made the transition from oil-and-gas producer to wind-energy supplier and aspires to be the first green-energy supermajor. More speculatively, Canadian company Ballard has three decades of experience making hydrogen fuel cells.

Rochelle Toplensky, Green Energy Is Finally Going Mainstream, WSJ, June 24, 2020

Hunting Down Polluters from Space

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When scanning for emissions from a mud volcano in western Turkmenistan in January 2019, a satellite called Claire came across a large plume of methane drifting across the landscape. … The company operating the satellite, GHGSAT passed details via diplomats to officials in Turkmenistan, and after a few months the leaks stopped. This largely unknown incident illustrates two things: that satellites can play an important role in spotting leaks of greenhouse gases and, rather worryingly, that the extent of such leaks is often greatly underestimated. The data from Claire suggested the leak in Turkmenistan had been a big one…142,000 tonnes of methane. This made the Turkmenistani leak far bigger than the 97,000 tonnes of methane discharged over four months by a notorious blowout at a natural-gas storage facility in Aliso Canyon, California, in 2015, which is reckoned to have been the worst natural-gas leak yet recorded in America. There have been other big leaks, too…

The reason for concern is that although methane, the main constituent of natural gas, does not linger in the atmosphere for anywhere near as long as carbon dioxide does, it is a far more potent heat-trapping agent. About a quarter of man-made global warming is thought to be caused by methane. And between a fifth and a third of the methane involved is contributed by the oil and gas industry. Methane can be detected spectroscopically. Like other gases, it absorbs light at characteristic frequencies. With a spectrometer mounted on a satellite it is possible to analyse light reflected from Earth for signs of the gas. As with the satellites that carry them, spectrometers come in many shapes and sizes. Tropomi can also detect the spectral signs of other polluting gases, such as nitrogen dioxide, sulphur dioxide and carbon monoxide.

Other methane-hunting satellites are coming. These include one due for launch in 2022 by Methanesat, an affiliate of the Environmental Defence Fund, an American non-profit organisation. The 350kg satellite will cost $88m to build and put into orbit. It will scan an area of land 200km wide with a resolution of 1km by 1km. According to Methanesat, it will be the most sensitive to emission levels yet, being able to detect methane concentrations as low as two parts-per-billion. Data collected by the satellite will be publicly available.

Excerpts from The Methane Hunters, Economist, Feb. 1 2020

The Eco-Villain of the 2020s: Moving

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[E]ven “green” transport risks becoming a villain… Transport has been the only sector in which greenhouse-gas emissions have consistently risen both in the U.S. and in the European Union… Road, aviation, waterborne and rail transportation put together now account for eight metric gigatons of carbon-dioxide equivalents, which is 24% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. In the U.S. this figure rises to 34%….To be consistent with the existing Paris Agreement goals, transport emissions need to peak around 2020 and then fall around 70% relative to 2015 levels, estimates by the International Energy Agency show.

In theory, electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles chart a clear path to lower emissions. Even once the costs of making the batteries and generating the electricity that feeds them is taken into account, most estimates suggest that they emit roughly half as much greenhouse gases as a gasoline car. But recent experience proves that consumer tastes can easily sabotage steps toward sustainability: In the U.S., rising demand for pickup trucks has offset any gain from electric vehicles. And faster economic development in emerging nations will inevitably mean higher emissions, even if each vehicle pollutes less.

In China and India, the number of motorized vehicles per person quintupled and tripled, respectively, between 2007 and 2017, according to U.S. Department of Energy data. Catching up with U.S. levels of motorization—which admittedly are very high—both countries would need two billion extra vehicles. Even if 100% of those were electric, they would add more emissions on their own than the total level allowed by the Paris goals.

Greenhouse gases coming from aviation also keep surging despite the fact that planes are becoming increasingly fuel efficient because air traffic growth has surged. Furthermore, while environmental policies have tended to focus on passenger transport, this misses a big chunk of the picture, because almost half of transportation emissions now come from freight.

Adoption of rail, a cleaner alternative, isn’t picking up. Meanwhile ocean freight, which is by far the most efficient form of transport per ton mile, faces a reckoning from new rules that take effect in January 2020 because it relies on the dirtiest fuel to be so economical.

Excerpts from  Jon Sindreu, In the Green Transition, Transportation Is the Next Big Baddie, WSJ, Dec. 23, 2019

Greening the Mining Industry

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An Australian regulator recently told Peabody Energy Glencore they couldn’t export coal from a new mine to countries that haven’t signed the Paris climate agreement. Two other Australian coal projects were scuttled in 2019, partly out of concern about greenhouse-gas emissions overseas.  Investors, too, are growing inquisitive about miners’ records on their customer emissions—partly out of fear about potential liability. Miners are responding by increasing carbon-impact disclosure, forming alliances with buyers and investing in technology to cut emissions from steel mills and power plants.  BHP  has said its scope 3 emissions—pollution mostly created when customers transport and use the commodities it produces—are almost 40 times greater than those generated at its own operations.

In the oil industry, facing similar pressures, there is friction among large companies over whether to commit to reducing greenhouse-gas emissions from products such as gasoline—in big part because emissions vary hugely depending on the vehicle…

Threats to miners’ business go beyond pushback on new projects. Consumer brands could stop buying commodities they consider too dirty, experts say. Many are already innovating with recycled materials.

In July 2019, BHP pledged to spend $400 million over five years to develop technologies that can reduce emissions both from its operations and its customers’.  “We won’t stop at the mine gate,” BHP Chief Executive Andrew Mackenzie said. …Rio Tinto is also drawing up scenarios for decarbonizing the steel industry. Success could materially affect the value of its core iron-ore business, it said.  Meantime, miners are touting their role in the shift to a low-carbon economy by producing commodities such as copper and nickel for wind turbines and electric vehicles.

Excerpts from Rhiannon Hoyle, Miners’ New Worry: Other People’s Pollution, WSJ, Oct. 9, 2019

Greening Natural Gas: How to Record Gas Leaks with Hand-Held Cameras

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Energy companies are producing record volumes of natural gas, thanks in part to the U.S. fracking boom. They have ambitious plans to make the cleaner-burning fuel a big part of the global energy mix for decades to come by sending tankers of liquefied gas around the world.But growing public concern over leaks and intentional releases of gas and its primary component, methane, threaten to derail the dominance of gas in the new energy world order.  Methane is far more potent than carbon dioxide in contributing to climate change. That makes it particularly harmful to the environment when it is discharged into the atmosphere.

In the U.S. alone, the methane that leaks or is released from oil and gas operations annually is equivalent to the greenhouse gas emissions from more than 69 million cars, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis using conversion formulas from the Environmental Protection Agency and emissions estimates for 2015 published last year in the journal Science….The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations body, says methane is even more potent than the estimates the EPA uses. By its calculation the annual releases would be equal to those of about 94 million cars, or roughly a third of the nation’s registered vehicles.

About 2.3% of the natural gas produced in the U.S. escapes directly into the atmosphere due in part to leaky equipment or intentional discharges, according to the Science study, which analyzed 2015 emissions. (Some discharges are legally permitted.) At that rate, it would have amounted to about $7.6 million worth of gas lost each day last year.  Another roughly $4.5 million in U.S. gas went up in smoke each day in 2018, World Bank data show, as energy companies burned fuel  (a practice known as flaring) they couldn’t move to market or chose not to ship because the cost of doing so would have exceeded the price the gas would fetch in some regions. Many companies drill primarily for oil and treat the gas released in the process as a byproduct.

Leaking and flaring are a global problem. As gas displaces coal for electricity production in the U.S. and other countries its side effects are drawing more attention, not just from environmental activists but investors fretting about how gas will compete over the long term against renewable energy sources such as wind and solar, which are dropping in price.

President Trump’s administration has moved to relax existing federal requirements for monitoring and fixing leaks. Still, from oil giants to the independent drillers powering the shale boom, companies are scrambling to rein in emissions over concerns from their executives, shareholders and environmentalists that gas waste could undermine the argument for gas as the “bridge fuel” to a cleaner future of renewables.

Methane is invisible to the naked eye, so companies detect leaks with infrared cameras and lasers. That can be a tall task—the gas can seep out of countless places, from wells to pipelines to storage facilities.  As a result, energy companies are increasingly supplementing manual inspections with aerial monitoring to survey large swaths of land checkerboarded with oil and gas infrastructure.  In West Texas, BP has begun monthly flights over its wells by a drone equipped with methane-detection equipment.   The company also is looking to cut back on flaring, which many companies do in the Permian Basin of Texas and New Mexico because they lack access to pipelines to move the product to market….BP is investing in a new gas-gathering and compression system that will allow it to send more gas to customers instead of burning it away…

Kairos,  a company, specializes in identifying larger methane releases by flying small planes about 3,000 feet above the ground. …Kairos has received funding from the Oil and Gas Climate Initiative, an industry organization whose members include Exxon Mobil Corp. and Chevron Corp. The companies in the organization have pledged to collectively cut average methane emissions to less than 0.25% of gas sold by 2025.

One reason companies are stepping up monitoring is that environmental activists are watching, using technology to record leaks as they seek to boost public awareness of methane emissions.  Sharon Wilson, an organizer for the advocacy organization Earthworks, visits the Permian almost every month to monitor leaks from oil and gas sites, using a hand-held infrared camera. She submits the footage as evidence in state regulatory complaints against energy companies and often posts it on YouTube…Earthworks has filed more than 100 complaints in Texas and New Mexico since the beginning of 2018. State regulators issued violations or compelled operators to make repairs or install new equipment in fewer than 10% of the instances as of July, according to estimates by the group.

Excerpts from Rebecca Elliott, The Leaks that Threaten the Clean Image of Natural Gas, WSJ,  Aug. 10, 2019

5,000 Eyes in the Sky: environmental monitoring

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The most advanced satellite to ever launch from Africa will soon be patrolling South Africa’s coastal waters to crack down on oil spills and illegal dumping.  Data from another satellite, this one collecting images from the Texas portion of a sprawling oil and gas region known as the Permian Basin, recently delivered shocking news: Operators there are burning off nearly twice as much natural gas as they’ve been reporting to state officials.

With some 5,000 satellites now orbiting our planet on any given day…. They will help create a constantly innovating industry that will revolutionize environmental monitoring of our planet and hold polluters accountable…

A recent study by Environmental Defense Fund focused on natural gas flares from the wells in the Permian Basin, located in Western Texas and southeastern New Mexico. Our analysis proved that the region’s pollution problem was much larger than companies had revealed.  A second study about offshore gas flaring in the Gulf of Mexico, published by a group of scientists in the Geophysical Research Letters, showed that operators there burn off a whopping 40% of the natural gas they produce.

Soon a new satellite will be launching that is specifically designed not just to locate, but accurately measure methane emissions from human-made sources, starting with the global oil and gas industry.  MethaneSAT, a new EDF affiliate unveiled in 2018, will launch a future where sensors in space will find and measure pollution that today goes undetected. This compact orbital platform will map and quantify methane emissions from oil and gas operations almost anywhere on the planet at least weekly.

Excerpts from Mark Brownstein, These pollution-spotting satellites are just a taste of what’s to come, EDF, Apr. 4, 2019

The Unquenchable Thirst for Oil

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Demand for oil is rising and the energy industry, in America and globally, is planning multi-trillion-dollar investments to satisfy it. No firm embodies this strategy better than ExxonMobil, the giant that rivals admire and green activists love to hate. As our briefing explains, it plans to pump 25% more oil and gas in 2025 than in 2017. If the rest of the industry pursues even modest growth, the consequence for the climate could be disastrous.

To date politicians, particularly in America, have been reluctant to legislate for bold restrictions on carbon. That is in part thanks to ExxonMobil’s attempts to obstruct efforts to mitigate climate change. …ExxonMobil’s policies on climate change remain marred by inconsistencies. In October the company said it was giving $1m, spread over two years, to a group advocating a carbon tax. ExxonMobil maintains that a carbon tax is a transparent and fair way to limit emissions. But the sum is less than a tenth of its federal lobbying spending in 2018. Moreover, the carbon tax it favours would include protection for oil companies from climate lawsuits.

The firm is also working to reduce leaks of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, from its wells, pipelines and refineries. However the American Petroleum Institute  (API) has been a main force urging Mr Trump’s administration to ease regulations on methane emissions. The API’s other efforts include lobbying against incentives for electric cars.  ExxonMobil is not alone in trying to sway the climate debate in its direction either. Shell, Total and BP are all members of the API. Marathon Petroleum, a refiner, reportedly campaigned to ease Barack Obama’s fuel-economy standards. BP spent $13m to help block a proposal for a carbon tax in Washington state in November. The Western States Petroleum Association, whose membership includes ExxonMobil and Shell, also lobbied to defeat that tax.

While oil companies plan to grow, trends in cleaner energy are moving in the wrong direction. Investments in renewables fell as a share of the total in 2017 for the first time in three years, as spending on oil and gas climbed. In 2018 carbon emissions in America grew by 3.4% as economic activity picked up, even as coal fell out of favour. Mr Woods maintains that any change to the energy supply will be gradual. “I don’t think people can readily understand just how large the energy system is, and the size of that energy system will take time to evolve,” he argues… Out at sea, ExxonMobil is working to increase production. By next year an underwater web of pipes will connect wells on the seabed to a vast vessel. From there the oil will be transferred to smaller tankers, then to the vast infrastructure that can refine and transport it until it reaches consumers in the form of fertiliser, plastic bottles, polyester or, most likely, petrol. From beneath the ocean floor to your car’s tank, for about the price of a gallon of milk.

Excerpts from  Crude Awakening, Economist,  Feb. 9, 2019; Bigger Oil, Economist,  Feb. 9, 2019

An Umbrella for the Sun: Geo-Engineering

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The idea of cooling the climate with stratospheric sunshades that would shield the planet from the sun’s warming rays moved up the international agenda in March 2019, with mixed results. On the one hand, new research suggested that it is theoretically possible to fine-tune such a shield without some of its potentially damaging consequences. Publication of this work coincided with a proposal at the biennial UN Environment Assembly (UNEA), held in Nairobi, Kenya, for an expert review of such geoengineering methods. This was the highest-level discussion of the topic so far. On the other hand, the more than 170 nations involved could not arrive at a consensus. In a fitting illustration of the heat surrounding geoengineering, the proposal was withdrawn at the eleventh hour.

Under the Paris Agreement, governments have pledged to keep average global warming to “well below” 2°C above pre-industrial levels and to try to limit maximum warming to 1.5°C. Many see these targets as wishful thinking: the planet is already roughly 1°C warmer than it was in pre-industrial times, global greenhouse gas emissions are still on the rise and national pledges to cut them fall short of what is needed to hit the 2°C target, let alone 1.5°C.

Faced with this, some think there is a need to turn down the global thermostat using geoengineering. This encompasses a range of possibilities, including technologies that suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and others that block incoming solar energy….  The unea resolution was tabled by Switzerland, and by the start of the week it had received support from most governments. It called for an expert review of the science of geoengineering,…Among the most controversial but also effective and affordable geoengineering options are planetary sunshades. By using high-flying aircraft, for instance, to spray a fine mist of mineral or man-made particles into the upper stratosphere, a portion of the sun’s incoming energy could be bounced back out into space before it gets a chance to warm the planet.  But there are challenges. Stratospheric particles eventually fall back to Earth in rain, so the effect is short-lived. A sunshade would need to be continually resupplied, which is one reason for an international governance framework. If a sunshade were allowed to dissipate while atmospheric CO2 concentrations remained high, global temperatures would rapidly shoot up, with devastating consequences in some regions of the world.  Another problem is the effect of solar geoengineering on the water cycle. Over the past decade, several studies have suggested that sunshades could disproportionately affect rainfall, bringing drought to some regions. But that argument may be oversimplified, according to the new study published in Nature Climate Change .

Position of Sunshade Relative to Earth, Moon and Sun from
http://mycgenie.seao2.info/pubs/Irvine_and_Ridgwell_2009.pdf

Switzerland’s proposal to study geo-engineering was blocked at the UNEA…Several delegates told the Economist that America and Saudi Arabia opposed the Swiss proposal to review geoengineering, preferring the issue to be assessed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), which is due to include something about the technologies in its next big report, expected in 2021. ..But the Swiss proposal was for a more comprehensive appraisal and one that would be delivered more quickly, by August 2020…. Indeed, there are concerns that some geoengineering methods could be unilaterally deployed by one or more nations, to the possible detriment of others.  The Americans, some said, did not appear to want to make room for conversations, let alone make decisions, about a framework for geoengineering that could restrict their future options.

Excerpts from  Sunny with Overcast Features: Geoengineering, Economist, Mar. 16, 2019

Ozone Layer Recovery Success

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The study, “Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion: 2018”, is the latest in a series of reports, released every four years, which monitor the recovery of ozone in the stratosphere, a layer that protects life on Earth from harmful layers of ultraviolet rays from the sun.  It shows that the concentration of ozone-depleting substances continues to decrease, leading to an improvement in the layer since the previous assessment carried out in 2014.

Ozone in parts of the stratosphere has recovered at a rate of 1-3 percent since 2000 and, at projected rates, Northern Hemisphere and mid-latitude ozone is scheduled to heal completely by the 2030s, followed by the Southern Hemisphere in the 2050s and polar regions by 2060.

This is due to internationally agreed actions carried out under the historic Montreal Protocol, which came into being over 30 years ago in response to the revelation that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and other ozone-depleting substances – used in aerosols, cooling and refrigeration systems, and many other items – were tearing a hole in the ozone layer and allowing dangerous ultraviolet radiation to flood through.

Next year, the Protocol is set to be strengthened with the ratification of the Kigali Amendment, which calls for the future use of powerful climate-warming gases in refrigerators, air conditioners and related products to be slashed…The writers of the report found that, if the Kigali Amendment is fully implemented, the world can avoid up to 0.4 percent of global warming this century, meaning that it will play a major role in keeping the global temperature rise below 2°C.

Excerpts from Healing of ozone layer gives hope for climate action: UN report, UN News, Nov. 5, 2018

Turning Oceans into Muck

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Oxygen is critical to the health of the planet. It affects the cycles of carbon, nitrogen and other key elements, and is a fundamental requirement for marine life from the seashore to the greatest depths of the ocean. Nevertheless, deoxygenation is worsening in the coastal and open ocean. This is mainly the result of human activities that are increasing global temperatures (CO2-induced warming) and increasing loads of nutrients from agriculture, sewage, and industrial waste, including pollution from power generation from fossil fuels and biomass.

Facts: During the past 50 years the area of low oxygen water in the open ocean has increased by 4.5 million km2. The world’ oceans are now losing approximately  1 gigaton of oxygen each year. The Millennium Ecosystem Assessment released by the UN in 2005 reported that nitrogen containing compounds (e.g. sewage, fertilizers) release into the oceans grew 80 percent from 1860 to 1990.  Increasing temperatures will reduce the capacity of the ocean to hold oxygen in the future. Oxygen deficiency is predicted to worsen in estuaries, coastal areas and oxygen minimum zones in the open ocean. The ocean’s capacity to produce oxygen will be reduced in the future.
Habitat loss is expected to worsen, leading to vertical and horizontal migration of species.

Oxygen deficiency will alter biogeochemical cycles and food webs. Lower oxygen concentrations are projected to result in a decrease in reproductive capacity and biodiversity loss. There are important local decreases of commercially important species and aquaculture production. Harmful Algal Blooms will be exacerbated from nutrients released in bottom waters due to hypoxia (e.g. in the Baltic Sea).Reduced ocean oxygen concentrations will lead to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions, thereby initiating feedbacks on climate change.

Excerpts from UNESCO, Jan. 2018

View Extensive Abstract

Background paper (pdf)

Global Ocean Oxygen Network: Through the participation of high level scientists from across the world, the IOC expert group, the Global Ocean Oxygen Network GO2NE, established in 2016, is committed to providing a global and multidisciplinary view of deoxygenation, with a focus on understanding its multiple aspects and impacts.

Cut or Pay up: Net Negative Carbon Emissions

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Sweden’s parliament passed a law in June which obliges the country to have “no net emissions” of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere by 2045. The clue is in the wording. This does not mean that three decades from now Swedes must emit no planet-heating substances; even if all their electricity came from renewables and they only drove Teslas, they would presumably still want to fly in aeroplanes, or use cement and fertiliser, the making of which releases plenty of carbon dioxide. Indeed, the law only requires gross emissions to drop by 85% compared with 1990 levels. But it demands that remaining carbon sources are offset with new carbon sinks. In other words greenhouse gases will need to be extracted from the air…

[I]f the global temperature is to have a good chance of not rising more than 2ºC above its pre-industrial level, as stipulated in the Paris climate agreement of 2015, worldwide emissions must similarly hit “net zero” no later than 2090. After that, emissions must go “net negative”, with more carbon removed from the stock than is emitted…

To keep the temperature below a certain level means keeping within a certain “carbon budget”—allowing only so much to accumulate, and no more. Once you have spent that budget, you have to balance all new emissions with removals. If you overspend it…you have a brief opportunity to put things right by taking out more than you are putting in…

Climate scientists like Mr Henderson have been discussing negative-emissions technologies (NETs) with economists and policy wonks since the 1990s. [But] NETs were conspicuous by their absence from the agenda of the annual UN climate jamboree which ended in Bonn on November 17th 2017.

 Reforesting logged areas or “afforesting” previously treeless ones presents no great technical challenges. More controversially, they also tend to invoke “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS). In BECCS, power stations fuelled by crops that can be burned to make energy have their carbon-dioxide emissions injected into deep geological strata, rather than released into the atmosphere….

The Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)  technologies that exist today, under development by companies such as Global Thermostat in America, Carbon Engineering in Canada or Climeworks of Switzerland, remain pricey. In 2011 a review by the American Physical Society to which Ms Wilcox contributed put extraction costs above $600 per tonne, compared with an average estimate of $60-250 for BECCS…

Much of the gas captured by Climeworks and other pure NETs firms (as opposed to fossil-fuel CCS) is sold to makers of fizzy drinks or greenhouses to help plants grow. It is hard to imagine that market growing far beyond today’s total of 10m tonnes. And in neither case is the gas stored indefinitely. It is either burped out by consumers of carbonated drinks or otherwise exuded by eaters of greenhouse-grown produce…..

One way to create a market for NETs would be for governments to put a price on carbon. Where they have done so, the technologies have been adopted. Take Norway, which in 1991 told oil firms drilling in the North Sea to capture carbon dioxide from their operations or pay up. This cost is now around $50 per tonne emitted; in one field, called Sleipner, the firms have found ways to pump it back underground for less than that. A broader carbon price—either a tax or tradable emissions permits—would promote negative emissions elsewhere, too…

Another concern is the impact on politicians and the dangers of moral hazard. NETs allow politicians to go easy on emission cuts now in the hope that a quick fix will appear in the future.

Excerpt from Sucking up Carbon, Combating Climate Change, Economist,  Nov. 18, 2017

Ozone Layer at 2016

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In 1974 scientists discovered that chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), chemicals used in refrigeration and as propellants in products such as hairsprays, release chlorine into the stratosphere as they decompose. This depletes the ozone that protects Earth from ultraviolet radiation. CFCs are also powerful greenhouse gases, which absorb solar radiation reflected back from the planet’s surface and so trap heat in the atmosphere.

Initially, the consequences for the ozone layer caused most concern. In 1985 a gaping hole in it was found above Antarctica. Two years later, leaders from around the world acted decisively. They signed a deal, the Montreal protocol, to phase out CFCs. Now ratified by 197 countries, it has prevented the equivalent of more than 135 billion tonnes of carbon-dioxide emissions, and averted complete collapse of the ozone layer by the middle of the century. Instead, by that point the ozone hole may even have closed up….

In order to manage without CFCs, firms replaced them in applications such as refrigeration, air-conditioning and insulation with man-made hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs). These substances do not deplete ozone and last in the atmosphere for just a short time. However, they still contribute hugely to global warming.  The average atmospheric lifetime for most commercially used HFCs is 15 years or less; carbon dioxide can stay in the atmosphere for more than 500 years. But, like CFCs, HFCs cause a greenhouse effect between hundreds and thousands of times as powerful as carbon dioxide while they linger. Total emissions are still relatively low, but are rising by 7-15% a year. Controlling HFC emissions has been under discussion for the past decade; America and China, the world’s two biggest polluters, made a deal on the issue in 2013, which paved the way for co-operation on limiting carbon emissions ahead of UN-sponsored climate talks in Paris last year. There leaders agreed to keep warming “well below” levels expected to be catastrophic.

Average global temperatures are already 1°C higher than in pre-industrial times….America wants action on HFCs speedy enough that emissions will peak in 2021 and then start to fall; after recent talks in Hangzhou between Mr Obama and Mr Xi China may be ready to commit to reaching that point by 2023. Brazil, Indonesia and Malaysia lean towards 2025, and India has lobbied for a later date, closer to 2030.

Some sectors firms are already preparing to move away from HFCs: in 2015 the Consumer Goods Forum, an international industry group whose members include Walmart and Tesco, began enacting a plan to phase out the substances.

A big question is what to use instead….Some HFCs commonly used in refrigeration could be replaced by others that would have an impact more than 1,000 times smaller. Honeywell, an electronics giant, already makes these less-damaging alternatives. But patents covering such substances have been a sticking point in past discussions, says Achim Steiner, until recently the head of the UN Environment Programme….Other possible replacements include isobutane, propane and propylene, all of which occur naturally. These hydrocarbons are cheap and non-toxic, and can be used as coolants without the same harm to the ozone layer….

Excerpts from The Montreal protocol, Economist, Sept. 24, 2016,at 58

Demand for Carbon Tax

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“You can argue that Big Oil is becoming Big Gas,” says Occo Roelofsen of McKinsey, a consulting firm. Others are going in for renewables. Total of France has a majority stake in SunPower, one of the world’s biggest solar-power firms. Eldar Saetre, the boss of Statoil, Norway’s state-run oil company, says that in 15 years there may be more opportunities outside oil and gas than within.

Plenty of oil firms (Exxon among them) are also calling for governments to enact a “carbon tax” on emitters of greenhouse gases. Their critics argue that this is less altruistic than it appears. For one thing, such a tax would hurt the coal industry especially, thereby boosting the oil firms’ gas businesses. And governments, especially in the developing world, where fossil-fuel demand is still surging, may find such a tax politically impossible anyway; the oilmen are calling for it, opponents say, in the knowledge that such countries will never introduce it….

On November 4th New York’s attorney-general, Eric Schneiderman, subpoenaed documents from Exxon to investigate how much it has known since the 1970s about the effects of fossil fuels on the climate. Exxon is reportedly being investigated under the Martin Act, dating back to 1921, which gives prosecutors wide-ranging powers to investigate securities fraud. Exxon says it has long disclosed information about the risks to its business from climate change, and from action to prevent it, in reports to its shareholders. But the firm’s run-in with the New York justice department may be a portent of what is to come.

Another worry for oil executives is pressure from investors spooked by the financial risks of climate change. Policymakers, such as Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, talk about the possibility of many oilfields turning into “stranded assets”, or “unburnable carbon”, if governments get serious about climate-change action. Anthony Hobley of Carbon Tracker, a climate-advisory firm, says that if the Paris pledges are taken at all seriously, the oil and gas industry may become “ex-growth”. Oil executives dispute that. But shareholders, if motivated, could force the industry to shrink just by limiting the funds they provide for new oil discoveries.

Curiously, the present situation may provide a foretaste of this—though cyclically, because of falling oil prices, rather than structurally, because of rising temperatures. Faced with a world awash in crude, oil majors are abandoning high-cost reserves in the Arctic, Canada, North Sea and Gulf of Mexico. One oil executive ruefully calls it a “practice run” for the day in the distant future when fears of global warming, or the emergence of cheap, clean alternative technologies, mean that demand for fossil fuels starts to wane.

Excerpt from Oil Companies and Climate Change: Nodding Donkeys, Economist, Nov. 14, 2015, at 61

Tar Sands from Canada to Europe

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Canada and the US have threatened to pull out of TTIP [Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership] trade talks unless the EU ignores the massive emissions of oil from tar sands – and the EU is collapsing under the pressure…For five long years the federal government and the oil industry have lobbied against the European Union labeling oilsands (also called tar sands) bitumen as ‘dirty oil’ in its Fuel Quality Directive (FQD).  A new report [authored by environmental groups] reveals the how recent involvement of the US in the lobby offensive to keep the EU market open for bitumen exports has tipped the scales in favour of oilsands proponents….

The report shows the EU Fuel Quality Directive, a piece of legislation designed to reduce global warming greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions in the EU’s transportation sector, is unlikely to acknowledge fuels from different sources of oil – conventional oil, oilsands, oil shale – have different carbon footprints.  All oil is the same – no matter how great the disparity in emissions  Instead all oils will more than likely be treated as having the same GHG emissions intensity ‘value’ in the Directive. This is exactly what Canada, the oil industry and now the US have been pushing for…

The EU has not fallen for the federal government’s argument that bitumen produces only marginally more GHG emissions than conventional oil in extraction, processing, and use.  A European Commission study found bitumen’s carbon footprint is between 12% – 40% higher than conventional oil as so much of the bitumen produced from the tar sands is burnt to fuel the energy-intensive extraction process.  The report reveals trade, not science, is the cause of the EU backing off from implementing the Fuel Quality Directive as it was originally meant to be implemented.

The US in some ways has been more open [than Canada] about its lobbying against the Fuel Quality Directive.  US Trade Representative Michael Froman confirmed he “raised these issues [of the FQD implementation] with senior Commission officials on several occasions, including in the context of the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnerships (TTIP).” The TTIP is the highly controversial trade agreement between the US and the EU currently under negotiation.  European Commission documents obtained by Friends of the Earth Europe reveal the US trade missions has “substantive concerns” with the Fuel Quality Directive singling out fuels produced from bitumen as having a higher carbon footprint than conventional oil.    Like Canada and the oil industry, the US wants all oil – regardless of GHG emissions – to be treated the same as conventional oil in the Directive…Recently eleven members of US Congress sent a letter to the US trade mission expressing their concerns “that official US trade negotiations could undercut the EU’s commendable efforts to reduce carbon pollution.”

Excerpts, Derek LeahyIgnore tar sands emissions! EU buckles under US, Canada pressure in TTIP talks, Ecologist, July 23, 2014

Un-addicted to Coal – United States

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The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency released on June 2, 2014 the Clean Power Plan proposal, which for the first time cuts carbon pollution from existing power plants, the single largest source of carbon pollution in the United States…

Power plants account for roughly one-third of all domestic greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. While there are limits in place for the level of arsenic, mercury, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particle pollution that power plants can emit, there are currently no national limits on carbon pollution levels.

[Goals to be achieved by 2030]

· Cut carbon emission from the power sector by 30 percent nationwide below 2005 levels, which is equal to the emissions from powering more than half the homes in the United States for one year;

· Cut particle pollution, nitrogen oxides, and sulfur dioxide by more than 25 percent as a co-benefit;

· Avoid up to 6,600 premature deaths, up to 150,000 asthma attacks in children, and up to 490,000 missed work or school days—providing up to $93 billion in climate and public health benefits; and

· Shrink electricity bills roughly 8 percent by increasing energy efficiency and reducing demand in the electricity system.

The Clean Power Plan will be implemented through a state-federal partnership under which states identify a path forward using either current or new electricity production and pollution control policies to meet the goals of the proposed program. The proposal provides guidelines for states to develop plans to meet state-specific goals to reduce carbon pollution and gives them the flexibility to design a program that makes the most sense for their unique situation. States can choose the right mix of generation using diverse fuels, energy efficiency and demand-side management to meet the goals and their own needs. It allows them to work alone to develop individual plans or to work together with other states to develop multi-state plans.

Also included in today’s proposal is a flexible timeline for states to follow for submitting plans to the agency—with plans due in June 2016, with the option to use a two-step process for submitting final plans if more time is needed. States that have already invested in energy efficiency programs will be able to build on these programs during the compliance period to help make progress toward meeting their goal.

Excerpt, EPA Proposes First Guidelines to Cut Carbon Pollution from Existing Power Plants/Clean Power Plan is flexible proposal to ensure a healthier environment, spur innovation and strengthen the economy, US EPA Press Release, June 2, 2014

Reversing Deforestation in the Amazon

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Brazilian policymakers can take some of the credit for a dramatic slowdown in the deforestation rate in the Brazilian Amazon, say experts – but that’s not the whole story.  In November Brazil (2012) announced deforestation rates in the Amazon declined 27 percent from August 2011 to July 2012, reaching the lowest rates ever recorded for the fourth consecutive year.  According to Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (INPE), 4656 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest were cleared over the twelve months, compared with 27,772 square kilometres in 2004.

Brazil’s government says this represents a 76 percent reduction since 2004 – coming close to the country’s commitment to reduce deforestation in the Amazon region 80 percent by 2020.  It has attributed the dramatic results to a package of policies known as PPCDAm (The Action Plan for Prevention and Control of Legal Amazon Deforestation) that were first implemented in 2004.

PPCDAm comprises more than 200 initiatives across 14 ministries that together aim to reduce deforestation in the Amazon…Over the last decade, the country has established new protected areas, indigenous lands and sustainable use areas covering 709,000 square kilometres.  This has decreased both deforestation and the incidence of fires – and crucially, more of them than previously are located near particularly threatened areas, making them more effective.We know every day where deforestation is going on in the Amazon…from detection to having people in the field stopping illegal loggers takes just five days….Brazil’s space agency, remote sensing centre, and law enforcement agencies collaborate to detect and precisely locate deforestation and forest degradation, and to apprehend perpetrators.  From detection to having people in the field stopping illegal loggers takes just five days….  Last year [Brazil]  confiscated 110 chainsaws, nine bulldozers, and 329 trucks…

Jorge Hargrave – who  worked with Wunder on the UNEP report (pdf) – and colleagues assessed the effectiveness of the PPPDAm policies.  They found that these policies were responsible for curbing deforestation – and that the command-and-control policies, particularly the issuance of environmental fines, had the most impact.  The government’s decision to focus on 36 specific municipalities where deforestation was most intense was also very effective, they found, as was the cross sector coordination and high-level political support for the program.

However, Hargrave also cautioned against over-confidence about the recent encouraging results. “It’s not clear that if the government changes or the policy changes, deforestation can’t go up again,” he said.  “In addition, the lack of land tenure security in the region was consistently identified as a key problem and the biggest bottleneck to further progress.”

In another recent study, Clarissa Costalonga e Gandour and colleagues from the Climate Policy Initiative showed that environmental policies are important – but are only part of the deforestation-reduction story.  The study found that agricultural prices – particularly meat and soybeans – had a significant impact on deforestation as well…The study makes special mention of a 2008 policy that made rural credit for agricultural activities in the Amazon conditional on proof of compliance with environmental regulations – with exceptions for smallholders.

Excerpts, KATE EVANS, How much credit can Brazil take for slowing Amazon deforestation – and how low can it go?, CIFOR, Jan. 15, 2013

Top Five Worst Polluters in Gas Flaring

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An international coalition led by the World Bank is calling for state-backed and private oil producers to reduce “gas flaring” by an additional 30 percent over the next five years, saying that doing so would be equivalent to taking 60 million cars off of the roads.  Analysts widely characterised the goal as both ambitious and significant, though it follows on an apparent levelling out in flaring reductions in recent years.

Since a major new push began in 2005, the World Bank-led Global Gas Flaring Reduction (GGFR)* partnership estimates that, through 2011, its actions have brought down gas flaring by 20 percent, eliminating around 274 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions.  But according to the GGFR – a coalition of 20 major oil companies and 19 countries..both the economic and environmental impacts of gas flaring require far greater reductions.  “A 30 percent cut in five years is a realistic goal,” Rachel Kyte, the World Bank’s vice-president for sustainable development, said…

Oil producers resort to flaring when gas, a by-product of oil, is brought up to the surface but cannot easily be repurposed for consumers. Instead, producers simply burn off the product, the value of which the World Bank, based here in Washington, puts at some 50 billion dollars a year.  The total amount of gas estimated to have been flared last year, about five trillion cubic feet, is said to equal the amount of natural gas used in the United States over a full year.

Environmentalists have long called for the outright banning of the practice, though flaring does in fact release far lower levels of greenhouse gases than simply allowing the gas to evaporate. However, the process does not deal with one notorious pollutant, nitrogen oxide, and still releases significant carbon dioxide, and thus significant greenhouse gas-related worries remain.

Alternative uses for this gas range from producing power, refining it for use in local markets, or even putting it back into the ground. But analysts say the economic benefits for companies in doing so are low.  Nonetheless, the World Bank reports slow but steady success in reductions, particularly since 2005. According to data released Mexico has cut its flaring by two-thirds and Azerbaijan by half in just two years, while Kuwait gotten its flaring down to just one percent of previous levels.  In addition, Qatar and Congo have been singled out for using the gas to make electricity.

Significant improvements have also been seen in many of the world’s worst flaring offenders. “Huge investments” by GGFR partners have reportedly helped Nigeria to reduce its flaring by nearly a quarter through 2011, while Russia, the most significant culprit in this regard, has reduced flaring by around 40 percent, though those figures rose last year.  Still, the World Bank warned that both of these countries, particularly Russia, in addition to Mexico, Iraq and Kazakhstan, need to make significant improvements.

Missing from this list, however, is one of the most significant outliers in the global push against gas flaring: the United States, which has increased its gas flaring by more than three times since 2007, more than any other country.  The U.S. is currently in the midst of a sea-changing boom in natural gas production, thanks almost entirely to new technologies (so-called hydraulic fracturing or “fracking”) that have allowed for the exploitation of previously off-limits gas deposits in shale and other geological formations.

Against the promising country-by-country numbers, total global gas flaring actually increased last year by around two billion cubic metres, which World Bank analysts have put down to output from Russia and, specifically, the U.S. state of North Dakota.  “The small increase underlines the importance for countries and companies to sustain and even accelerate efforts to reduce flaring of gas associated with oil production,” Bent Svensson, manager of the GGFR partnership, said when the 2011 figures became available in July. “It is a warning sign that major gains over the past few years could be lost if oil-producing countries and companies don’t step up their efforts.”

The U.S. is now the fifth-largest flarer, behind Russia, Nigeria, Iran and Iraq. While part of this is due to the multifold increase in production in recent years, it also appears to be due to a lag in implementing the necessary infrastructure.  “Due to insufficient natural gas pipeline capacity and processing facilities … over 35% of North Dakota’s natural gas production … has been flared or otherwise not marketed,” the U.S. government reported in late 2011. “The percentage of flared gas in North Dakota is considerably higher than the national average; in 2009, less than 1% of natural gas produced in the United States was vented or flared.”…But based on new EPA rules, “the U.S. is going to have 100 percent no-flaring by 2015, which will be pretty good in terms of the rest of the world,” Kyle Ash, a Washington-based legislative analyst with Greenpeace, an advocacy group, told IPS.

Excerpts, By Carey L. Biron, U.S. Outlier in New Push to Reduce Gas Flaring,Inter Press Service,Oct. 24, 2012

*The GGFR partners include: Algeria (Sonatrach), Angola (Sonangol), Azerbaijan, Cameroon (SNH), Ecuador (PetroEcuador), Equatorial Guinea, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), France, Gabon, Indonesia, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Khanty-Mansijsysk (Russia), Mexico (SENER), Nigeria, Norway, Qatar, the United States (DOE) and Uzbekistan; BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ENI, ExxonMobil, Marathon Oil, Maersk Oil & Gas, Pemex, Qatar Petroleum, Shell, Statoil, TOTAL; European Union, the World Bank Group; Associated partner: Wärtsilä.