Green Earth Africa

The world’s leaders should have reached a deal long ago to limit greenhouse gas emissions. In the absence of such a deal, the European Union’s plan to regulate the carbon emissions of all airplanes that land or take off from European airports is a reasonable attempt to address an urgent problem.

Aviation amounts to about 2 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions, a share projected to rise quickly as air traffic surges. The European Union wants to cut these emissions by 3 percent next year compared with a 2004-2006 base line, using a cap-and-trade scheme that would force airlines to buy permits to cover emissions that exceed their target.

Starting next year, any airline flying in or out of a European airport would need permits for emissions for the entire flight. The International Air Transport Association estimates that the average fare on flights in and out of Europe would rise by $21 to $45, or 2.2 percent to 4.6 percent.

The plan faces enormous opposition: China has threatened a trade war. India has protested. And the Air Transport Association of America, the airline lobby, has blasted the scheme as a costly and illegal invasion of sovereignty because it charges American carriers for carbon emitted in American airspace. The group has filed a lawsuit to stop the rules before the European Court of Justice.

The Obama administration has objected, and a bill barring American airlines from participating in the scheme has bipartisan support in the House. “This is the wrong way to pursue the right objective,” Susan Kurland, an assistant transportation secretary, told Congress. “The right way forward is a global solution built on strong domestic action rather than a system imposed on us from outside.”

These arguments are not very strong. Airlines will be given a ceiling and allocated permits; they will have to buy additional permits only if they exceed the cap. Those that boost efficiency could have a surplus of permits to sell.

American airlines are already making progress. The Transportation Department says American airlines have emitted 15 percent fewer emissions from 2000 through 2009 while carrying about 15 percent more passengers and cargo. Further, the European scheme is no more intrusive on foreign sovereignty than, say, the tax the United States levies on travelers who enter or leave the country.

A global deal would be great. But international talks to regulate airlines’ emissions have been going on fruitlessly for almost 15 years. The European Union’s plan is a much needed first step to controlling a growing source of dangerous emissions. It may even encourage nations to work toward something broader.

Exclusive: Record rise, despite recession, means 2C target almost out of reach

Economic recession has failed to curb rising emissions, undermining hope of keeping global warming to safe levels Photograph: Dave Reede/All Canada Photos/Corbis

China pushes ahead with an emissions trading scheme, while American initiatives remain sunk in Congressional quicksand

A power plant in Pinghu, China. A cap-and-trade system would help China to reduce carbon emissions by 40-45% below 2005 levels by 2020. Photograph: Philippe Lopez/AFP/Getty Images

A UN report outlines path to kickstart economic growth after the recession, without generating a rise in emissions

The UN proposes to spend $362bn on developing renewable forms of energy. Photograph: Graham Turner

The United Nations has set out its blueprint of how to green the world’s economy, in order to kickstart economic growth after the recession, without generating an accompanying rise in greenhouse gas emissions.

As I reported last night, the UN estimates that about $1.3 trillion, equivalent to about 2% of global GDP, will need to be invested overall.

Now that the details are published, here’s how that figure breaks down:

• $362bn (£223bn) for energy, to develop renewable forms of power and help to increase energy efficiency.

• $194bn on transport, including the development of cleaner and greener forms of transport, the provision of more public transport infrastructure and ways to better design cities.

• $134bn on buildings – to be spent equipping buildings better for future stresses, including through insulation and improved weather-proofing.

• $134bn on tourism – greening tourism could give many countries access to a vibrant, growing sector of the economy, as well as reducing the damage that travel does currently.

• $108bn for agriculture, in order to raise productivity, make the most of scarce water supplies, and preserve soil fertility.

• $108bn on fishing, to better manage declining fish stocks. Much of the money may have to go on compensating fishermen, because the UN calculates that the world’s fishing fleet should be halved.

• $108bn on waste and recycling, to cut the amount of waste going to landfills by about 70% within two decades.

• $108bn on water and sanitation, to help preserve existing water supplies, prevent the wasteful use of irrigation, and give millions of people access to safe water supplies and decent sewage treatment.

• $76bn for industry to improve efficiency and cut down on the wasteful use of natural resources.

• $15bn to halve deforestation in the next 20 years.

Harvard economist Robert Stavins has a good piece, “Beware of Scorched-Earth Strategies in Climate Debates.”  In it, he reposts an op-ed co-authored with Dick Schmalensee, who served on President George H.W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, on the self-destructive nature of conservative demagogueing against the very market-based solutions conservatives developed years ago when they actually cared about clean air and clean water and the health and well-being of our children.

Robert Stavins is Director of the Harvard Environmental Economics Program.

With the apparent collapse last week of U.S. Senate consideration of a meaningful climate policy, it is important to reflect on what could be a very serious long-term casualty of these acrimonious climate policy debates, namely the demonizing of cap-and-trade and the related tarnishing of market-based approaches to environmental protection.

In an op-ed which appeared on July 27^th in The Boston Globe (click here for link to the original op-ed), Richard Schmalensee and I commented on this unfortunate outcome of U.S. political debates and described the irony that the attack on cap-and-trade – and carbon-pricing, more broadly – has been led by conservatives, who should take pride as the creators of these cost-effective policy innovations in three Republican administrations.

Rather than summarize (or expand on) our op-ed, I simply re-produce it below as it was published by The Boston Globe, with some hyperlinks added for interested readers.

By the way, for anyone who is not familiar with Dick Schmalensee, let me note that he is the Howard W. Johnson Professor of Economics and Management at MIT, where he served as the Dean of the Sloan School of Management from 1998 to 2007.  Also, he served as a Member of the Council of Economic Advisers in the George H. W. Bush administration from 1989 to 1991.

LAST WEEK, the Senate abandoned its latest attempt to pass climate legislation that would limit carbon dioxide emissions, putting off any action until the fall at the soonest. In the process, conservative Republicans dubbed the cap-and-trade system “cap-and-tax.’’ Regardless of what they think about climate change, however, they should resist demonizing market-based approaches to environmental protection and reverting to pre-1980s thinking that saddled business and consumers with needless costs.

In fact, market-based policies should be embraced, not condemned by Republicans (as well as Democrats). After all, these policies were innovations developed by conservatives in the Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and George W. Bush administrations (and once strongly condemned by liberals).

In the 1980s, President Ronald Reagan’s Environmental Protection Agency successfully put in place a cap-and-trade system to phase out leaded gasoline. The result was a more rapid elimination of leaded gasoline from the marketplace than anyone had anticipated, and at a savings of some $250 million per year, compared with a conventional no-trade, command-and-control approach.

In June 1989, President George H. W. Bush proposed the use of a cap-and-trade system to cut by half sulfur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants and consequent acid rain. An initially resistant Democratic Congress overwhelmingly endorsed the proposal. The landmark Clean Air Act amendments of 1990 passed the Senate 89 to 10 and the House 401 to 25. That cap-and-trade system has cut sulfur dioxide emissions by 50 percent, and has saved electricity companies — and hence shareholders and ratepayers — some $1 billion per year compared with a conventional, non-market approach.

In 2005, George W. Bush’s EPA issued the Clean Air Interstate Rule, aimed at achieving the largest reduction in air pollution in more than a decade, including reducing sulfur dioxide emissions by a further 70 percent from their 2003 levels. Cap-and-trade was again the policy instrument of choice in order to keep costs down and achieve the rapid reductions at minimum economic pain. (The rule was later invalidated by the courts, and is now being reformulated.)

To reject this legacy and embrace the failed 1970s policies of one-size-fits-all regulatory mandates would signify unilateral surrender of principled support for markets. If some conservatives oppose energy or climate policies because of disagreement about the threat of climate change or the costs of those policies, so be it. But in the process of debating risks and costs, there should be no tarnishing of market-based policy instruments. Such a scorched-earth approach will come back to haunt when future environmental policies will not be able to use the power of the marketplace to reduce business costs.

Virtually all economists agree on a market-based approach to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. Some favor carbon taxes combined with revenue-neutral cuts in distortionary taxes, whereas others support cap-and-trade mechanisms — or “cap-and-dividend,’’ with revenues from auctioned allowances refunded directly to citizens.

Conventional approaches advanced as “painless alternatives’’ — a plethora of standards, special-interest technology subsidies, and tax breaks — won’t do the job, and will be unnecessarily expensive. While we are struggling to revitalize the economy, we simply cannot afford to turn our backs on markets and impose unnecessary costs on businesses and consumers.

A price on carbon is the least costly way to provide meaningful incentives for technology innovation and diffusion, reduce emissions from fossil fuels, and drive energy efficiency. In the long run, it can reduce our use of oil and drive our transportation system toward alternative energy sources.

Market-based approaches to environmental protection – including cap-and-trade – should be lauded, not condemned, by political leaders, no matter what their party affiliation. Demonizing cap-and-trade in the short term will turn out to be a mistake with serious long-term consequences for the economy, for business, and for consumers.

– Schmalensee and Stavins

Data released today slices up the 8.3 million tonne carbon footprint of local authorities’ buildings and transport – equivalent to 1.6 per cent of the UK’s CO2 emissions in 2008 – in England into local council chunks.

The numbers, collated by the Department of Energy and Climate Change, show a wide disparity in the carbon footprints of the different councils. At one end of the spectrum are large, bustling metropolises with large populations, such as worst offender Birmingham with 177,360 tonnes of emissions for 2008 to 2009; and at the opposite end, the tiny Isles of Scilly, where schoolchildren get to school by boat and the year-round population amounts to just over 2,000.

Another prism to look at the data through would be the wealth of the respective councils. But at the moment I can only get hold of data of assets for regions from the Office of National Statistics. But it would be interesting, if the data became available, to see if richer councils spend more in carbon terms than their poorer relations – in the same way that data suggests richer householders have a bigger footprint than poorer ones.

If this was the case, would this be because they spend more in public services or on their own creature comforts, like the civil servants at DECC last summer who reverted to air conditioning after an attempt to live without it.

On DECC’s part, there seems to be a reluctance to mine the data for comparisons. A spokesperson for DECC says: “There are no trends yet, as it’s the first year. It will help them assess their carbon emissions and decide what energy efficiency measures to take over time, but it’s not for us to delve into the data and do their work for them.”

This is a shame, as DECC could exploit friendly competition to get local authorities to make their carbon footprints lighter.

One compensation is that climate change secretary Chris Huhneyesterday removed the legal barrier from local authorities wishing to sell energy they generate back to the grid, so they can raise funds to pay for services.

This is a good thing, and releasing the data on carbon emissions will lead some activists to take their councils to task. Where I live, in Haringey, the council’s carbon foot print is 39,553 tonnes, which is higher than the average Greater London borough, which works out as 34,788 tonnes. Just looking at a map of London boroughs, it is obvious that Haringey is not one of the largest boroughs. With 225,500 people, this is less than average per London borough, which is about 235,000.

We’ve calculated the emissions per person in each borough, and included the full dataset from Decc for you to download - which also includes other emissions besies CO2.

In addition to all its other impacts, the Iraq war has caused huge amount of carbon pollution.

A huge cloud of smoke rises up from a blaze on Iraq’s key oil export pipeline to Turkey.

 Photograph: Maxim Marmur/AFP/Getty

The carbon footprint of war:
690 million tonnes CO2e: a ‘limited’ nuclear exchange
250–600 million tonnes CO2e: the Iraq war since 2003

The direct human costs of wars are so great that it might seem flippant to think about their environmental impacts. But modern armed forces are rapacious consumers of energy and kick out vast quantities of carbon – emissions that may contribute towards human harm well beyond the battlefield.

All carbon footprints are virtually impossible to pin down accurately, and this is especially the case for something as complex and chaotic as war. Indeed, the best that can be done in this case is to give some very crude numbers to provide a sense of scale.

Perhaps the only academic estimate of the carbon footprint of an atomic war concluded that even a ‘small nuclear exchange’ of just fifty 15-kilotonne warheads would cause 690 million tonnes of CO2 emissions through the burning of cities – more than the current annual emissions of the UK.

But a war doesn’t need to be nuclear to have a large carbon footprint. At the time of writing the financial cost of the US military operation in Iraq since 2003 has been estimated at $1.3 trillion, with a further $600 billion anticipated for the lifetime healthcare costs of injured troops. Extrapolating from the carbon intensity of the health and defence industries in the UK, it’s possible to have a rough stab at converting this expenditure into carbon. This approach suggests that the US military operation in Iraq may have clocked up around 160–500 million tonnes of CO2e, plus a further 80 million tonnes for the healthcare of troops.

Add on a few per cent to both numbers to include the coalition forces and, say, another 1% for the footprint of the much more poorly resourced insurgency, and we might be looking at 250–600 million tonnes – roughly equivalent to everyone in the UK flying to Hong Kong and back between one and three times. And that’s excluding the direct emissions from explosions.

The war-and-carbon discussion starts to get distinctly uncomfortable (and methodologically just about impossible) at the point where we start factoring in the indirect emissions impact caused by the human and economic impacts of the war. In the nuclear example, the report in question estimates 17 million deaths – equivalent to around one-quarter of the UK population. Looked at in the starkest and simplest possible terms, if each of these people had a typical UK footprint, then the carbon saving of their ceasing to exist might make up for the direct emissions from the war in just a few years. In other words, mass annihilation turns out to be an effective way of curbing emissions – though of course it also defeats the object.

Shanghai will get some help in its efforts to make its factories more energy efficient, according to an announcement by the World Resources Institute (WRI).

WRI said it will launch a new initiative that could help the city reduce its carbon emissions by 60,000 tons a year. The initiative would also assist China in its efforts to reduce its energy intensity under its newly announced five-year plan.

According to WRI, the initiative aims to aggregate 30 to 40 energy efficiency projects into one portfolio to reduce capital costs for companies and the transaction costs of energy services companies (ESCO) that can help install and sometimes finance energy efficient equipment. The energy efficiency projects are across 23 state-owned, foreign-owned and private Chinese companies that represent over $2 billion in annual revenue.

“Despite the short payback period, industrial facilities in Shanghai face a number of challenges when trying to secure internal capital for energy efficiency projects,” said Alexander Perera, co-director of Business Engagement on Climate and Technology at WRI. “There’s a lot of competition for capital dollars, and investments in reducing energy costs are often last in line. Industrial consumption in China represents two-thirds of the country’s energy use, so making industrial facilities more efficient will be critical in helping China meet its energy intensity targets.”

The approach follows previous initiatives by WRI. It has also helped reduce the purchasing cost of wind power and solar photovoltaic (PV) projects for companies in the San Francisco Bay area.

By aggregating roof mounted solar PV projects across 20 facilities into one portfolio, installation costs could be cut between eight and ten percent, according to WRI. Developers face lower transaction, installation and maintenance costs with a portfolio approach, which allows them to pass the savings to customers.

The project is part of the public-private-funded U.S.-China Partnership for Climate Action (PCA) program.

China has recently discussed the possibility of launching a national carbon market by as early as 2014, and the country is believed to be well on its way to becoming the leader in installed wind energy capacity. The St. Regis Hotel in Shanghai recently partnered with IBM to reduce energy costs by 40 percent.

Clean Development Mechanism carbon offset scheme faces fresh criticism over dubious emission reduction projects

The UK government could save more than £100 million over the next three years if it reduced the number of unnecessary flights it takes.

According to a new WWF-UK report, Excess Baggage: The case for reducing government flying,  90 per cent of government flights in the last three years were taken within the UK to destinations such as Belfast and Edinburgh.

The top non-UK short haul routes were to Brussels, Geneva, Luxembourg and Strasbourg – all of which are reachable or replaceable by train, ferry, or videoconferencing.

The report found that if government departments followed their own best practice, they could cut 600,000 flights, reduce CO2 emissions by more than 59,000 tonnes and save well over £100 million of taxpayers’ money over the next three years.

WWF, the conservation organisation is calling on the coalition to end the spending of thousands of pounds on unnecessary flights to help it reach its commitment of reducing central government carbon emissions by 10 percent over the next 12 months.

Nearly half climate body’s flights are domestic, report finds

Of the 22 government departments contacted by WWF, less than half have reduced the number of flights taken between 2007 to the end of 2009. According to the report, the best performing departments are the Department for Education and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The Department of Energy and Climate Change spent £715,115 on 1,378 flights last year, with 676 of those taken domestically.

The worst performers include HM Revenues & Customs and the Department of Health. Flying in both departments increased over the three year period.

“Businesses have done everything in their power to cut out wasteful spending on unnecessary flights during the recession,” said David Norman, WWF-UK’s Director of Campaigns.

“Yet WWF’s report shows that very few government departments have made similar efforts to reduce their flying, throwing away potential savings of well over £100million of taxpayers’ money.

“It’s shocking that nine out of ten flights by government officials are to destinations within the UK. There’s a huge opportunity here to cut costs and carbon emissions – as shown by the star performers Defra and the Department for Education, which have reduced flight costs by 39% over three years.

“It’s time for the rest of government to catch up, and they should start by cutting out at least one flight in every ten over the coming year.”

The new Government needs to quickly improve efforts to reduce unnecessary flying. Not all departments were able to provide data in response to WWF’s FOI requests indicating that there is an urgent need for government departments to improve the way they record flight data and introduce clear travel policy standards as well as setting flight reductions.

WWF believe these flight reduction targets could be included in the new Sustainable Development in Government (SDiG) framework which is replacing Sustainable Operations on the Government Estate (SOGE) targets when they expire in the next year.

WWF wants to see Government departments sign up to cutting one in five flights within five years, replacing these flights with lower carbon alternatives such as rail or videoconferencing.

We therefore welcome news that the Scottish Government will be joining WWF’s One in Five Challenge, which will help them reduce their flights by 20 per cent by 2015