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Articles by Eberhard Rhein

Copenhagen Endgame

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 22/10/09

In two months, just before Christmas, three years of cumbersome climate negotiations will have come to an end. Nobody expects a turning point, reversing the inexorable accumulation of green house gases in the atmosphere. Barring miracles, there is no hope for green house gas emissions to stabilise, let alone to decline in the coming 20 years.

In view of preventing Copenhagen from turning into a debacle environment ministers must not content themselves with fixing emission reduction targets for 2020, 2030 etc. for different groups of countries. Targets that are not accompanied by concrete actions plans and strict international monitoring are ineffective as the sad experience with the Kyoto Protocol has demonstrated (e.g. Canada!)

Read also: Climate Change Lecture Series: Setting The Right Economic Incentives

Before the end of 2010, governments must submit their action programmes to a UN climate panel, which must approve them and permanently monitor their implementation. To that end, the panel will need to dispose of sanction powers.

The following actions should normally figure high on the list of priorities:

• Stepping up investments in renewable and nuclear energy;

• Phasing out subsidies on fossil energies and taxing them at progressively rising rates;

• Phasing out coal-fired power plants and replacing them by a combination of wind, solar, biomass and nuclear power plants;

• Fixing very strict thermal insulation standards for new and existing buildings;

• Fixing progressively stricter emission standards for automobiles;

• Phasing out incandescent lamps;

• Enacting programmes for the conservation of tropical forests.

Governments should remain free to fix priorities according to their preferences, provided their action programme leads to the targeted results.

The end game should leave aside adaptation measures, including their potential financing by a global fund for assisting poor countries against the potential damage from worsening climate conditions. Adaptation measures are ineffective to cope with rising temperatures, droughts or floods. They are a waste of scarce resources. OECD countries would do better to offer generous financial support to climate action programmes in developing countries, e.g. accelerating the introduction of renewable energies and energy efficient technologies.

Read also: Climate Change Lecture Series: An Assessment of Alternative Technologies

It will be impossible to settle all outstanding issues in Copenhagen. The international community will have to defer some issues for resolution in the course of 2010. Among these should figure the treatment of air transport and shipping, the preservation of tropical forests and, possibly, the financing of actions in favour of developing countries.

It is essential that the final Copenhagen text reflects the profound concern of all the parties about the future of the planet and a firm consensus to tackle climate change in a cooperative spirit.

Humanity expects credible political commitments rather than formal legal ones. In view of underlining their personal commitment heads of government rather than foreign or environment ministers should appose their signature to the final document, in a solemn ceremony to be celebrated in the course of 2010, ideally in New York or Washington.

Brussels, 20.10.09 Eberhard Rhein

Copenhagen, copenhagen climate conference, Copenhagen conference, English
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The Copenhagen Climate Puzzle Is Taking Shape

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 20/10/09

The following has been submitted to Blogactiv by Eberhard Rhein.

After the meeting of the 17 major emitter countries in London October 18-19 it becomes possible to venture prognostics on the results of the Copenhagen Climate Conference due to start in 50 days.

  • The parties will not sign a comprehensive new climate treaty, as many had hoped for.
  • Developed countries will take individual, non-binding commitments for a 15-20 reduction of their C02 emissions until 2020, with the USA and Canada falling short of expectations.
  • The EU will therefore not raise its reduction target to 30 percent, as it had announced in case of comparable commitments by other developed countries.
  • Emerging countries will only promise to make best efforts to assure that the increase of their emissions will be slower than their economic growth. Developing countries will not even make such promises.
  • There will be no global reduction target for 2050. But developed countries will remain committed to an 80 percent reduction of their emissions by that date.
  • The parties will not agree on how to cope with rising emissions from air and maritime transport.
  • Nor will they agree on measures for preserving tropical forests.
  • The agreement will not provide for a mandatory transfer of technologies that might help emerging countries to accelerate the introduction of alternative energies.
  • Developed countries will agree to fund measures for climate mitigation and adaptation in developing countries, but at a much lower scale than the $ 100 billion annually having been discussed so far and not through a new UN managed Climate Fund.

This prognostic does not augur well for the future of the planet. Humanity has lost one decade in coming to terms with the risks of climate change, owing to US conservative resistance and Chinese economic exuberance.

Read also: Climate Change Lecture Series: International Efforts To Cope With Climate Change 1980-2008

It must make sure not to lose another one! Therefore it has to step up concrete measures in the coming 10 years for eliminating energy waste, raising energy efficiency and encouraging solar, wind, biomass and nuclear energy.

To that end, humanity needs a dynamic “international pusher”, able to monitor major emitter countries defining and implementing national climate agendas. It is not clear who could play that role. For OECD countries the IEA might assume it. For developing countries IRENA might be a more appropriate body, provided it has the leadership and the resources required.

Europe has to be the vanguard. This will be in its economic interest: alternative energies and methods to boost energy efficiency will create the jobs, which will disappear in traditional industries, and boost exports.

Read also: Climate Change Lecture Series: The Way To Copenhagen And Beyond

Combating climate change must be the single most important policy area for the incoming Commission. To that end, it needs to shift more human and financial resources to climate policy and put its best Commissioner in charge.

China, USA etc. have to follow suit.  Without their active involvement it will be impossible the salvage the global climate. The EU therefore has to substantially raise the level of cooperation with both of them.

Brussels, 20.10.09  Eberhard Rhein

English, Uncategorized
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UN Climate Diplomacy is in Shambles

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 12/06/09

The announcement, June 10, by the Japanese Prime minister to reduce Japan’s  C02 emissions by a mere 8 percent until 2020 over the 1990 baseline has been the final straw to the preparatory  climate meeting in Bonn.

One day later, Yvo de Boer, the UN Climate Chief, felt obliged to admit that it would be physically impossible to reach a comprehensive climate agreement until December in Copenhagen.

This puts an end to the hopes that humanity will be able to reduce its green house gas emissions sufficiently to prevent a suicidal degradation of the earth’s climate in the course of the century. The EU promise to go for a 30 percent reduction until 2020 if other developed countries were to follow suit, turns into a mirage. Not a single developed country has declared a willingness to come close to the EU reduction target of 20 percent.

The Japanese announcement lays also open the complete failure of the UN climate Secretariat to ensure compliance with “legally binding” climate targets. Indeed, in 1997, Japan had committed to reduce its green house gas emissions by 7 percent as early as 2010. But instead of reducing of its emissions it has allowed these to keep rising, which explains its reluctance to commit higher targets.

The UN is largely to blame for the situation in which the international community finds itself. It has wasted two years without focusing on obtaining credible policy commitments from the main emitter countries and allowed the discussion to indulge in financing adaptation measures and setting up new international financial mechanisms.

The present negotiation format is incapable of containing global climate change. It is therefore overdue and urgent to replace it by more effective machinery for producing results.

·        There is no point inviting all 182 contracting parties to additional UN meetings before the 15 major emitter countries have not come to a consensus on their reduction targets until 2020 and on the practical steps to get there, including strict monitoring of compliance.

·        It is necessary to define an annual pathway and extend it until 2030, as the US legislation provides for.

·        It will also be necessary to agree to what extent reduction targets can be implemented beyond national territory (off-set, CDM).

·        The main emitter countries must take a clear commitment on how to save tropical forests.

·        They must address aviation and shipping.

·        It is imperative to address the ways and means by which to obtain the reduction of C02 emissions. Emerging countries have to engage in a serious debate on the measures they are prepared to take.

·        Such discussions will only be productive if they take place in a framework of confidence and intimacy. The Heads of government of the G 20 should therefore instruct their chief climate advisers to prepare a policy brief that sets out convergences and divergences among them. This should happen without any delay. On that basis, ministers in charge of climate policy should get together in early September to try bridging the differences, leaving it to G20 heads of government to finalise an agreed plan of action before the end of the year.

Assuming such an outcome, the UN machinery might step in again to place such a political deal into the appropriate international framework to be signed and ratified in time for   entering into force by January 1, 2013.

The EU Heads of government should deliberate on these issues at their June 18 meeting.  

 

Brussels, 11. 06.06                   Eberhard Rhein

 

English, Uncategorized
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Climate Change Lecture Series: The Way To Copenhagen And Beyond

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 21/04/09

 

(This is the final chapter in Eberhard Rhein’s Malta Lecture on Climate Change).

To tackle climate change effectively, the international community has to act jointly. No individual country has enough clout to reduce global emissions if the rest of the world keeps increasing them. That is what we have seen since 1997 under Kyoto.

Governments consider action against climate change as a burden, because it implies higher energy prices. They equate cheap energy with rapid economic development and consider high energy prices as an obstacle to economic development. But this is not true. High energy prices are no obstacle to prosperity.

The price of energy has ceased to be a major cost factor for manufacturing industries, let alone for services which make up two thirds of national incomes. It does therefore no longer determine international competitiveness: Germany is the leading industrial exporter among developed countries, though its electricity rates are among the highest on earth.

High electricity rates, excise taxes on gasoline, fuel efficiency standards for light vehicles, tough insulation standards for buildings, phasing out of incandescent lights etc. may lead to higher energy prices, but they need not negatively affect the international competivity of an economy. Still, business continues claiming that energy is a major cost factor with an important bearing on their international competitiveness.

There are only few industrial sectors where the cost of energy and electricity does matter: Aluminium, steel, heavy chemicals, nitrogen fertiliser, cement, cellulose, petroleum products are among them.

As long as governments believe that they have to provide their economy with cheap energy, even at the price of subsidising it, it will be next to impossible for non-fossil energies to rapidly take over, as their costs are likely to remain higher for the next 20 years.

In the interest of curbing climate change, humanity therefore needs to learn that high prices of fossil energy are necessary for stimulating higher energy efficiency and the progressive replacement of fossil by alternative sources of energy. Policy makers therefore have to grasp that it is possible to engage in active climate policy without incurring economic losses. The debate has to focus on the opportunities of tackling climate change.

Unfortunately heads of government, legislators and government officials attend climate negotiations with the intention of making a minimum of “concessions”. This is also the predicament of the Copenhagen Climate Conference and the main reason why a poor outcome is much more likely than an effective one.

We have to see the Copenhagen climate conference in a long-term perspective. Before 2100, humanity must have cut its green house emissions to zero: By the end of century, humanity must have replaced fossil energy by alternatives, essentially renewables energies, possible still some nuclear power, maybe  a beginning fusion power, if that were ever to become operational.

In case of failure, temperatures will have risen well beyond the 2 centigrade increase over 1850 that humanity must not exceed without risking unprecedented calamities. 90 years for a complete transformation of our energy supply is not a long period.

Copenhagen should be an important step towards that end. It should focus on policy measures to be taken by major emitter countries in order to reduce green house gas emissions or in the case of emerging countries to dramatically slow down their growth rates.

Abstract reduction targets, as laid down in the Kyoto Protocol, should be no more than indicative. The essence of the negotiations should be focused on concrete measures to be taken in the next 10, 20 and 30 years.

A ban on fossil energy subsidies, energy efficiency standards for automobiles, buildings, electric appliances and lighting, a progressive phasing out of fossil-fired power plants should be on the menu of every country. Countries with major energy-intensive industries and well functioning administrative machinery might also include cap and trade systems.

Each country should commit to define 10 year climate strategy, assisted by those with experience. Each country must be accountable to the international community for taking appropriate measures corresponding to its emission level. Programs must transparent and subject to formal and informal peer scrutiny.

 

The Copenhagen Conference 

It is unlikely that the Copenhagen Conference will follow the above prescriptions.

Due to the particularities of the UN framework in which the negotiations proceed, the international community has got lost in adjustment measures and international mechanisms for finance and technology transfer.

It has taken almost two years to agree on an agenda, a negotiation format and chairs.

 

  • Negotiations will formally take place in two working groups, one on further commitments concerning mitigation, preservation of forests and climate adaptation measures for the parties of the Kyoto Protocol, the other on cooperative action concerning finance and technology for all parties.
  • There will be four negotiating rounds each lasting up to 8 weeks.
  • There will be a chair and co-chair for each working group. In the Kyoto Protocol WG Harold Dovland (Norway) will chair until March, for the rest of the year the G 77 and China will propose a Chair. In the second working group Michael Cutajar, one of the most experienced international climate diplomats, will chair throughout the year.
  • In June 2009, the 184 odd parties will start negotiating a draft text containing language for the “common vision”, the objectives for mitigation, the package for adaptation measures, including an international adaptation fund, and the package for financial and technological cooperation.

20 years after the signature of the Kyoto Protocol, the international community should have the courage to start from a fresh approach. But the Kyoto Protocol is convenient for all parties:  the group of 77 does not need to take any action, and the OECD countries can hide behind the refusal of the emerging countries to take bigger commitments.

In terms of “substance” and negotiating focus the G 77 insists on putting in place an international fund for financing investments in climate-friendly technologies. The OECD countries are willing to accept these demands, if emerging countries start taking action against climate change, too.

Considering the present state of play it looks next to impossible to achieve meaningful results before the end of the year. The interest of many parties to get a free ride might once again outweigh their common responsibility for the stability of the earth’s climate in 2100 and beyond.

This will only change if the USA and the EU engage in a resolute diplomatic offensive to convince other key emitter countries of the need for joining the international effort. China will be crucial. This campaign has begun, thanks to the initiative taken by president Obama to invite the 16 major emitter countries to a two-da meeting in Washington April 27-28th.  

These are the essential priorities for a meaningful outcome of the Copenhagen climate conference.

 

All major emitter countries must come on board

Less than 20 major  emitter countries (USA, EU and Japan, Korea, Canada and Australia, China, Russia, India, Mexico, Brazil, Indonesia, GCC, Iran and South Africa) account for about 80 percent of global green house emissions.

The Copenhagen negotiations will therefore only be successful if these agree to substantially cut their emissions.

According to IEA projections more than 80 percent of the increase in global energy demand 2006-30 will come from non-OECD countries. Emerging countries will become the driving force behind climate change, while the emissions from developed countries have started stabilising, though at unacceptably high levels.

From a global perspective, it is therefore necessary to direct the focus on emerging countries and help them generate economic growth with a much lower fossil energy input than the rich countries have done during the 20th century. If China, India etc. decided to cover their rising power demand by wind, nuclear and solar inputs, and in parallel to apply CCS technology for coal-fired power plants in the next 2-3 decades, they would make an immensely positive contribution to the global climate.

 

Reduction targets must be globally meaningful

By 2050, humanity needs to have halved its C02 emissions compared to 1990 emission levels. That is, according to present scientific consensus, necessary to prevent the concentration of C02 in the atmosphere reaching dangerously high levels for the climate.

This long-term target should determine the objectives for 2020.

There is agreement among scientists on the need to achieve an emission peak around 2020 and start a trend reversal. It would be suicidal if humanity continued with the frenetic rise of emissions since 2000, estimated at 3 percent p.a.

To reach that, developed countries need to make the greatest effort, but emerging countries will also to have contribute to the global targets. Their share in global emissions, rapidly rising towards 50 percent, makes such a contribution a mathematical necessity.

 

The burden sharing must be fair

The higher  a country’s per capita emissions, the higher its  reduction target should be. From a perspective of global equity the average citizen on earth should emit no more than 1.5 tons of C02 in 2050 in view of halving global C02 emissions to 14 GT by 2050!

It is necessary to confront Western societies with the enormity of the challenge they have to confront. At Copenhagen first steps have to be made towards reduce the huge differences of per capita emissions between rich and poor countries (USA 20 tons, China 4 tons, sub-Sahara Africa <1 ton). Everything will hinge on the USA. 

 

Effective monitoring is indispensable for effectiveness  

Without proper monitoring of performances the system cannot function.

No government wants to be under control from an international authority.

Still, the international community will need a trustworthy authority for the supervision of the reductions and the rapid change-over to a global low-carbon economy.

All contracting parties of the “Copenhagen Agreement” should submit their climate action programmes to an international “Climate Agency” with the authority to publicly censure non-performing countries.

At some stage, it may become necessary to take non- performers to the UNSEC for violating international security. Climate change will, indeed, become a bigger security threat to humanity than nuclear proliferation.

 

Mobilise financing for the energy revolution

Enough funding will need to be forthcoming for the huge investments required in energy efficiency and alternative sources of energy

During the preparatory talks this issue has unduly dominated the scene. Emerging countries keep arguing they lack the financial and technological means for a successful and speedy transition towards a low -carbon economy.

According to IEA estimates, humanity will have to invest $ 1000 billion annually in higher energy efficiency and alternative sources of energy. This appears a huge amount. But in fact it is only six-fold what humanist has invested in 2007- and 2008. It should be easily possible to mobilise the required amounts, if governments give the right incentives and fossil energy prices continue rise.

Whatever the amount of funding required, the international community should not try to set up another international financial institution. The Word Bank has a long experience in financing energy projects. It has ample means for funding. It should suffice for the governors to instruct the Bank stop financing conventional coal-fired power plants. If humanity is convinced that global warming is about to become a scourge for humanity it has adapt the priorities of international financial institutions accordingly.

 

Conclusion

In conclusion, climate change will not go away. On the contrary, in the course of the century it is most likely to aggravate. Its main consequences – droughts, floods, storms, rising sea levels – will be felt by more and more people.

Governments will improve their understanding of climate change and become progressively more open to action, from which they have shied away during the last 20 years when the issue seemed less pressing.

But climate change does not yet hurt enough! The Copenhagen Climate Conference in December 2009 may therefore come a bit too early, and its results may not be what scientists ask the international community to do. We must live with this shortcoming, but be ready to intervene at any moment to adapt and strengthen the measures taken.

Climate policy will become a major concern for the international community in the course of the 21st century. All governments will have to take binding commitments to act; no major country should get away with a free ride. The international community will have to establish a more effective system of monitoring compliance.

This will change the way the international community functions. It will have to introduce sanctions for misbehaviour. When the sustainability of the planet is at stake, humanity will have to put in place more effective rules for global governance, starting with climate and military issues.

The 21st century will be the first century of truly global dimensions. This goes for trade, economies, finance, legal systems, and regulatory frameworks. But it also applies to everything related to the earth’s climate, the most precious common good humanity possesses. 

 

Eberhard Rhein 07.04.09

English, Uncategorized
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Climate Change Lecture Series: Setting The Right Economic Incentives

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 20/04/09

 

(This is the fifth of six chapters in Eberhard Rhein’s Malta lecture series.) 

 

The technologies for generating low or zero-carbon energy exist. But will they be applied? Not only marginally but at the global scale required to successfully mitigate climate change?

That depends essentially on the type of incentives governments offer.

Without much higher prices of fossil energy humanity will not invest enough in energy efficiency and renewable energies.

No single government or even groups of countries like OPEC are able or willing to raise fossil prices to the level required for phasing out oil, gas and coal. That price should be in the order of $ 150-200/barrel rather than $ 50-100.

We therefore have to search for alternative, indirect ways by which to reduce the cost/price differential between fossil and alternative energies.

 

Government instruments

Governments dispose of a limited arsenal of effective instruments. But they shy away from using them.

Here are the recipes of what they should do:

 

  • Abolish all subsidies on fossil energies.

In 2007, non-OECD countries have spent more than $ 300 billion on such subsidies. If they had spent this huge amount on energy efficiency or renewable energies global C02 emissions would be substantially lower.

  • Tax the consumption of fossil energies at much higher rates.

EU member states do impose very high excise taxes on gasoline (up to 70 percent of the consumer price), the equivalent of € 400 per ton of C02 (!), but the USA and most emerging countries hardly levy such taxes;

  • Subsidise research on modern energy technologies.

That is what several any OECD countries have done, also for giving a push to the development of modern energy technologies.

  • Subsidise the generation of renewable power

Some OECD countries have successfully done so, above all Germany and Spain through feed-in tariffs.

  • Impose ceilings on C02 emissions

This practice, called “cap and trade” is presently the most popular.    It creates a market for C02 emissions and allows governments to avoid high energy taxes.

  • Setting energy  efficiency standards

This method is a very effective curb on energy consumption and emissions. It is easy to monitor and should form an essential component of any national climate policy

 

Governments usually resort to a combination of measures.

 

Let us look at the EU climate package of December 2008.

Cap and trade constitute the core instruments for coping with one half of its C02 emissions originating in the power sector and energy-  intensive industries.

The EU has converted C02 emissions into a fictitious scarce good by imposing limits on how much energy-intensive companies can emit and reducing these annually  in line with its overall C02 reduction targets (minus 20 percent by 2020).Each of the more than 12 000 companies subject to the  system has to respect its annual emission entitlements. If it requires more it has to buy them in the EU-wide C02 market, and it can equally sell any surplus there.

 

Three factors determine C02 price:

 

  • The volume of emission rights attributed;
  • The world market prices for oil, gas and coal,
  • The world economic situation.

 

The lower the volume of emission rights the higher the price obtained in the auctions and the bigger the incentive for companies to invest in C02-free technologies, like nuclear or wind.

Low world market prices for fossil energy will lower the incentive for companies to invest in low-emissions technologies. Companies may  rather continue operating their coal-fired power plants.

Last not least, in boom times everybody will demand a lot of energy for transport, power generation and manufacturing. Business will therefore also be prepared to pay higher prices for emission certificates than in times of recession.

The EU emission market reflects these effects: a ton of C02 presently trades at only € 8, compared to € 30 in 2008. In the present situation, the stimulus to shift from fossil to non-fossil energies is low.

To tackle the other half of emissions the EU and member states resort to a series of measures at raising energy efficiency and inducing companies and citizens to  switch to renewable energies.

The three most important measures concern the fixing or tightening of energy efficiency standards for

 

  • Light vehicles,
  • Electric light
  • Thermal insulation of building

 

The EU will impose stricter fuel efficiency standard on light vehicles. As of 2015, the average new car must not emit more than 130 g C02 per km. By 2020, that standard will be lowered to 95 g/km.

This is the result of a protracted battle between automobile makers and EU governments. It is important to fix the industry for the next 10 years in view of setting the right signals. The industry should have no difficulties in meeting the 2020 standard. It has to so if it wants to keep up with the Asian automobile industry that is rapidly advancing towards more fuel-efficient electric vehicles

The EU has also decided to phase out the incandescent bulb before 2015. That is an equally important step, as light remains an important   contributor to C02 emissions even though its share goes down compared to electric appliances.

Finally, the EU has decided to tighten the thermal heating/cooling standards for buildings by extending them to all new and retrofitted buildings whatever their surfaces. In view of the weight that heating plays in EU energy consumption these are strategically the most relevant standards. But the key problem here is implementation. How to induce house owners and tenants to make the necessary investments?

 

How should one  assess the effectiveness of the EU climate package?

 

  • It sets a clear policy framework for 2020 that fixes business and consumers for the next decade.
  • It is comprehensive by tackling most sources of C02 emissions, except agriculture and aviation.
  • From a global perspective it is inadequate. The EU should have been more ambitious; but in view of the economic situation at the end of 2008 that was not possible. It is therefore necessary to keep the options open for a revision, in case other  countries go along.

The EU package contains a few lessons about the practicalities of climate policy in a global setting:

· Every country finds it hard to impose strict reductions on its citizens and therefore insists on action by all major emitter countries. That makes it so difficult to tackle climate change. It is a global phenomenon and requires global action, in an inextricable manner.

· Countries opting for cap and trade systems must put the emphasis on deep cuts. It is these that matter. The possibility to trade emission rights only facilitates the job. But cap and trade systems require competent government services for the setting and monitoring of volumes. It is doubtful whether countries like China and India can handle it effectively.

· It is important to give business a long-term perspective. If business has the certitude that in 2025  emissions have to be 30 percent lower companies will start preparing as of today. That is what we witness in Europe: Utilities would not invest so much in nuclear and wind without the obligation to cut their emissions by at least 20 percent until 2020. Similarly, automobile companies would not step up their research in alternative technologies, from diesel to hybrid and electric, without the EU imposing an emission standard of < 100 g/C02 per km by 2020.

· Governments will need to resort to a mix of instruments for achieving their emissions targets. Cap and trade, excise taxes and efficiency standards are the major ones, together with subsidies for R&D.

· For about half of the emissions it will not be possible to fix emission ceilings, because the emissions are the results of the action of billions of human beings, when they using energy for warming buildings, lighting rooms or driving cars.

To tackle these sources of emissions, governments should levy high excise taxations and  fix tough fuel efficiency standards.

 

Eberhard Rhein 07.04.09

English, Uncategorized
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Climate Change Lecture Series: An Assessment of Alternative Technologies

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 17/04/09

This is the fourth of six chapters in Eberhard Rhein’s Malta lecture series.

 

Preliminary Remarks

Humanity has the means to do without fossil energy. It will have to do so anyhow within the next 200 years or earlier because of the progressive depletion of fossil energy resources.

To do so will require a huge international effort improving/changing technologies and stepping up investments in more efficient and alternative energy technologies. The IEA estimates the annual investment necessary at $ 1 trillion until 2050, more than 10 times the volumes in 2007 and 2008. That will only be doable if national policy makers attribute the necessary priority to fighting climate change and set the appropriate instruments.

Let us look at the technological ways and means. In 2008, the IEA has published its Energy Technologies Report 2050, which assesses 17 main technologies that would help humanity reducing green house emissions by 50 percent below 1990 levels until 2050.                      

Half of the necessary reductions should be achieved by raising energy efficiency, the other half coming from the gradual transition towards alternative energy technologies that emit less or no green house gases.                                                                                                               

 

Energy saving by behavioural changes

This is the simplest and cheapest method of reducing green house gas emissions.

Here are a few examples of how consumers can save energy without major investments or revolutionary technologies.

  • Walking short distances,
  • Using energy-efficient cars, household equipment etc.
  • Using public transportation,
  • Setting temperatures lower in winter and higher in summer,
  • Switching all electric equipment when not used etc.
  • Improving the thermal insulation of buildings with simple means.
  • Avoid flying long distances.

This sort of  energy saving has been one of the factors driving down energy consumption in post-communist countries after 1990, as a consequence of more adequate pricing and new awareness, without major investments in energy efficiency. Essentially it took place because energy prices went up dramatically from their abysmally low, heavily subsidised levels during the Communist era.

There is still a significant potential globally for this type of easy energy saving, especially in countries like USA, Russia, Ukraine, Gulf States with low energy prices and even subsidies on fossil energy consumption.

But there are evident limits to how far humanity can advance this way. It is therefore necessary to explore more efficacious methods, which require advanced technological means, some of which existing and others still to be developed or improved.

 

Raising energy efficiency

Energy efficiency is very low in most applications due to losses from the source (oil drilling, gas hole or coal mine) to the final user, e.g. electric engines in a factory or combustion engines of a car. Some of these losses are incompressible due to physical laws; but many can be reduced or eliminated by improvements or repair of the transmission lines/pipes, generating equipment etc.

As a rule of thumb three quarter of the energy is lost on the way “from the well to the wheel”.

  • The most advanced European CHP (combined heat and power) coal-fired power plants cycle reach an energy efficiency of >80 percent, three times higher than outdated plants in China generating only electricity and not using the waste heat.
  • Modern buildings with perfect thermal insulation need  10 times less heating or cooling energy than buildings constructed 40 years ago before the first oil crisis, when the price of oil was $ 3/b.
  • Combining thermal insulation with active renewable         heating/cooling devices like thermal pumps, solar PV, solar heating           enables buildings to do without external energy, in optimal          locations.
  • Fuel efficiency of automobiles has been raised substantially in the last few years by design changes and new technologies (streamlining of bodies, weight, switch from gasoline to diesel, hybrid engines). It is possible to reduce the average gasoline consumption to 3-4 litre compared to 8 litres presently. To do so governments have to impose stricter mandatory efficiency standards.
  • Modern LED light bulbs consume only a fraction of the conventional incandescent bulb. Lighting is accounts for a huge volume of global C02 emissions:  the equivalent of 70 percent of those from the world’s light passenger vehicles.  It therefore makes a lot of sense to phase out inefficient lighting, as the EU has decided most recently.

The examples are infinite in all fields where energy is consumed. One only has to look at the most effective companies, industries or countries to find out.

Investing in higher energy efficiency is the cheapest and fastest method for reducing C02 emissions. It reduces the demand for energy without impairing the well-being of citizens.

It would be much cheaper to refit European and American stock of buildings energetically than to build  additional nuclear reactors, each of which costing more than € 3 billion.

For the coming 20 years, humanity should give priority to raising energy efficiency. This is of particular importance in the former communist countries and the oil producing countries.

But it takes incentives for business and citizens to develop and use technologies for raising energy efficiency. High fossil energy prices combined with  mandatory  standards constitute the speediest recipe for raising energy efficiency in the next two decades.

 

Applying and developing alternative energies

Whatever the potential for energy efficiency, humanity has no option but to develop technical alternatives, which one day, in less than 100 years should be able to supply humanity with enough energy for a decent life.

Most alternative technologies are still more expensive than conventional energy technologies. Thanks to large-scale production, e.g. wind turbines,   energy-efficient electric lighting, and the cost advantages of conventional energy technologies will progressively shrink and disappear.

But it will take a long time to reach full competitiveness.

Governments therefore have to encourage the process by subsidising research efforts and  making everybody pay the external costs of fossil energy. That is what forward looking governments in Europe, Japan and elsewhere have been doing during the last 30 years, by granting all sorts of subsidies. France has pursued the most determined policy by its resolute push towards nuclear power. So have Germany and Japan in the area of wind and solar PV.

 

Let us take a rapid overview.

 

Nuclear Energy

The first drive into the non-fossil energy age started with the civilian utilisation of nuclear energy, back in the 1950s. The USA and EU were leading the movement. Europe created EURATOM in 1958! The oil shock accelerated the trend towards more nuclear energy. France developed it into the mainstay of its power supply. The USA undertook similar efforts. These came to dramatic halt after the nuclear accident in Chernobyl 1986. For 20 years hardly any new nuclear reactors were built. It took the global oil crisis after 2006 for a renaissance of nuclear power.

After 50 years of investment in nuclear power accounts for no more than 16 percent of global electricity demand. In 2007 440 nuclear  power plants were in operation world-wide, with a total installed capacity of 370 GW and almost 100 another plants in the planning or construction phases.

The IEA estimates that nuclear power might supply up to 30 percent of electricity in 2050, some 6 percent of global energy demand. But this would be a maximum.

Nuclear power will not be the solution for humanity’s energy and climate problems. It is not the favourite option, but rather a solution of last resort, even if the nuclear lobby wants to convince us of its superb advantages. But it might make a significant contribution, as it is a mature technology which allows generating power at competitive prices with fossil sources. It should therefore no longer benefit from government subsidies.

 

But nuclear energy has its drawbacks:

  • Its fuel can be diverted to military purposes.
  • Fuel reserves are also limited. So the fuel needs to be reprocessed.
  • We have no satisfactory solution for the long-term storage of nuclear waste. Only two countries have chosen sites for long-term  waste storage, USA and Finland
  • Private insurance against the risks of accident  is next to impossible.
  • Popular  resistance remains strong.

 

Hydro Power

Hydro power is presently the most important source of renewable and energy. It will remain important, provided climate change does not radically reduce the water supply and power generation remains compatible with agricultural production. Additional capacities exist in Asia, Africa and Latin America. But it will become increasingly difficult to exploit these, due to environmental concerns, as we have seen in China (Three Gorges). Its share of global electricity generation will go down to 10-15 percent by 2050, as other sources for power generation will come into the picture

It is the most competitive of all sources of renewable energies, the only one that operates without state aids. It is a safe technology, without any of the problems that nuclear power poses. It is therefore the ideal source to invest in during the next two decades.

 

Wind Power

Wind power has been used as a source of mechanical energy for hundreds of years, even more than water (milling, shipping).

The modern wind power age started in the late 1970`s in response to the first oil crisis. The first engines had tiny capacities of less than 0.5 MW. Since then technology has made huge strides in terms of size (>5 MW), costs (<€ 0.1/kwh) and reliability.

The globally installed wind power capacity has grown annually by more than 20 percent during the last two decades. Today, wind ranges third after biomass and hydro among renewable energy sources.

Global installed capacity exceeds 100 GW. Wind has become the predominant technology used for new power plants in Europe and the USA in 2008, (>40 percent of new power capacities). Still, it supplies only 1 percent of global electricity demand!

This shows the extremely long time needed before a new technology replaces traditional ones.

The earth is well endowed with wind, though unevenly distributed. It is possible to place turbines off-shore, where wind is blowing with more force and higher regularity. But this poses new technological challenges. Off-shore wind generation is therefore still in an infant stage. Norway, UK, Germany are the leaders.

A lot of R&D is still necessary, especially on power storage, grid integration and resource assessment in difficult terrains

The more wind power is generated, at different locations, with improved smart inter-connections, the more reliable it will become as a source of electric power, up to the point where it may be also supplying the “base charge”, jointly with nuclear power.

Despite the brilliant outlook for wind energy, IEA does not expect wind power to supply more than 10 percent of global electricity supply in 2050, with a global capacity of 2000 GW, of which one third might be off-shore. Jointly with biomass, hydro and increasingly solar it would constitute one of the pillars of the future power supply.

 

Solar Power

Solar power is the ultimate renewable form of energy. Wind, waves, biomass are only specific forms of solar power.

The amount or solar energy, which hits the earth every hour, is equal to the annual energy demand of humanity. But because of the low intensity and intermittency of solar radiation it is difficult and costly to exploit on a large scale. The large-scale exploitation of solar energy remains the most ambitious technological challenge for humanity in the 21st century.

Presently solar energy provides less than 1 percent of the world’s commercial energy! By 2050 that percentage might rise to 6-11 percent according to IEA projections.

Its cost is expected to fall dramatically until 2050, to 4-5 US cents/kWh in sunny areas, comparable to present fossil power costs. By then the cost of fossil energy will have gone up dramatically, due to climate policy and increasing scarcity of fossil resources. It is therefore likely that the use of solar power will advance much faster than projected by IEA.

We distinguish two forms: thermal and photovoltaic (heat vs. light). Both have made great technological advances since the 1970s when large-scale research started.

 

The simplest forms of solar thermal power are plastic tubes, usually mounted on a roof,  used for the production of warm water in households, including heating. This technology  has conquered countries like Israel, Greece, and Cyprus more than 10 years ago. It is a cheap technology, which fits on every roof and should be mandatory in all houses south of the Alps. Their contribution to the global energy supply will remain marginal.

A more sophisticated thermal device traps solar heat in huge mirrors for generating temperatures of > 300°, from which to produce steam and electricity, not different from a classic power plant, except that the process does not emit any C02!

This technology, called concentrated solar power (CSP) is able to generate both heat and electricity. Solar thermal power plants with capacities of > 0.3 GW have been operating successfully for some 20 years in California, where plans for additional capacities of up to 2 GW exist.

In addition, power plants using this technology are being built in Algeria, Australia, China, India, Morocco and Spain.

The Sahara could easily generate all MED and European power requirements at acceptable costs (<€ 0.1/kwh), including huge volumes of desalinated water necessary to provide the cities around the MED.

The USA would need an area of less than 200 km2 (half of Germany ) to cover all its electricity demand.

For Europe, solar thermal power from Africa would constitute a perfect complement to wind energy. Solar power would be fed into the grid during daytime; any excess could be stored (by salt solutions or in water pumped into up-hill reservoirs) for overnight supply or inadequate wind supply.

To use these complementarities, Europe will have to invest heavily into a modern continental grid, capable of transporting electricity over long distances at low cost. The USA is about to advance Europe with its planned 5000 km intelligent grid, linking the West with the huge  potential for wind and solar energy and the energy-hungry East and Mid-West.

We are still at the very beginning of using Sahara solar power. Before using it at large scale, providing and receiving countries will have to lay the political and legal groundwork and build the necessary infrastructure. That will  take at least another 10 years. But it is bound to come well before 2050.

European utilities shy away from investing in North Africa, essentially for political reasons. They have no trust in the governments and the governments there lack the vision and technological grasp to join hands with their European neighbours to engage in huge investment programmes for solar concentrated electricity, which European utilities would import through high voltage direct transmission lines. 

According to the IEA, CSP installations might supply as much as 6 percent of global electricity demand in 2050.

 

Photovoltaic electricity is the ideal form for decentralised power generation.

Since the 1980s, it has conquered the market for off-grid electricity needs, from water pumps, to traffic lights, isolated buildings, satellites, defence installations and maritime devices.

Only when production costs declined and when PV systems in modern buildings were connected to the grid thanks to feed-in tariffs, did the technology become truly interesting.

Japan, Germany and the USA have been the front runner for PV. Japan and USA owe their role to their dominant position in chip and transistor manufacturing, which requires the same raw material, poly-form or crystalline silicium.

Despite the cost coming down from high levels, it has remained expensive until most recently.

But due to recent breakthroughs in technology – film PV – production costs have tumbled and make it possible to envisage large-scale generation of PV solar power generation. In 2008, 50 power plants with a total capacity of 1 GW have been built world-wide, 90 percent of which in Spain. This would have been unbelievable five years ago. It is result of technology leaps and attractive feed-in tariffs.

These developments explain the recent upward revision of estimates for the future.  

The EIA estimates that the total output of cells/ modules might rise to 10 GW annually after 2010.  Industry even forecast an annual output of 23 GW p.a. as of 2011. If these estimate are corroborated by facts, PV solar generation is about to beat all other forms of renewable energies from the next decade onwards.

This would be revolutionary for the future of solar PV as a source of generating electricity and the EIA would have to revise upwards its 2008 estimates for 2050, according to which PV might generate 6 percent of world electricity generation.

Solar PV and CSP have traditionally been considered as complementary. The first one is ideal for small-scale generation on house roofs, facades and small areas of land, close to the consumer.  CSP will remain a large –scale power source, in arid or desert zones with high and constant solar irradiation, with the advantage of also generating heat for industrial processes, desalination or storage of electricity.

But since 2008 this may no longer be true. The biggest PV power plans have for the first time reached a capacity of 60 MW.

 

Biomass

Biomass, essentially wood, has been used by man for thousands of years for cooking and heating, until it has been progressively replaced by coal from 1750 onwards.

Today we experience a renaissance of biomass in more sophisticated forms. We convert sugar, soybeans, cereals and vegetable oil into biogas and biofuel for heating and gasoline.

Brazil has started investing in biofuels three decades ago, and is today the most advanced country producing and using it, thanks to ideal conditions for vegetation and immense agricultural and forest areas. In Brazil, the extensive use of biofuels makes sense energetically and economically, but only if it abstains from converting tropical forest areas into land used for producing biomass, as it has done, as well as  Indonesia and Malaysia, quite extensively.

In the moderate climate zones – USA, Eu- this is much less evident. The energetic yield is lower, sometimes even negative, when agricultural crops are converted into biomass for gasoline. This goes for rape seed, but also for soybeans and maize, depending on the specific conditions of fertility, inputs of fertiliser, manufacturing processes, distances etc.

Moreover, this practice has raised legitimate objections: the large-scale diversion of fertile land for the production of energy plants has contributed to the steep rise of food prices we have seen in 2007-08.

When oil-gas prices rise beyond certain thresholds, say $100/b, farmers will find it irresistible to divert part of their crops to energy uses. We cannot ignore this interaction. But governments should renounce offering subsidies for dual food-energy  crops, as the USA has done.

Humanity has to return as much biomass as possible to the soil to prevent an increasing impoverishment of soils, loss of humus and desertification. It should be very cautious and fully respect the forest principle of sustainability to all forms of agriculture.

We witness the consequences of excessive use of biomass in certain developing countries, where people desperately cut off brushes for heating and allow animals to overgraze arid lands.

Research is therefore directed towards non-food plants grown on marginal land, natural waste, and one day algae from the seas. These so-called ligno-cellulose feed stocks will be the basis for the second generation biomass, which will become crucial for supplying shipping and air transport with the necessary fuels. The first essays of using biofuels as a substitute for kerosene have been successful. There is legitimate hope that by 2050 biofuels might become the major source of power in aviation.

The IEA is extremely upbeat about the future of biomass use. According its most optimistic scenario, biomass might supply close to a quarter to global energy demand in 2050! It would become the most important source of renewable energy! To reach that ambitious target, 15 billion tons of biomass would have to be harvested and processed annually, half from forest and crop residues, the other half from purpose-grown energy crops.

It would be used for the generation of gas, electricity and fuels for transport, including aviation. Roughly one quarter of the gasoline/diesel demand for transport might be supplied by biofuels in 2050, requiring up to 4 percent global arable land and pastures.

 

Geothermal Power

Geothermal power does not play a major role today. No more than 10 GW are presently installed world-wide, e.g. in Italy, Iceland. By 2050, the global capacity might rise to 200 GW. There is therefore not much we should expect from it for supplying humanity with clean power at the horizon of 2050.

There are other technologies on which research is being undertaken.

 

One is  ocean energy, using tidal and wave power. One 0.3 GW tidal power plant is in operation (Normandy), another one of comparable size is under construction in Korea. The UK is preparing a feasibility study for a very big one in Wales, which might have a capacity up to 8.6 GW, able to supply 9 percent of UK electricity demand and to operate for 100 years or more.

The global prospects for substantial increase of tidal power look dim, due to limited locations and environmental concerns.

Wave energy is still in an experimental stage, with tiny capacities of a few MW being planned off the British and Portuguese coasts.

 

Most recently, the exploitation of sea currents has started. A German consortium will build a 1 MW pilot plant ready to generate power as of 2014.

 

The boldest of all is, of course, nuclear fusion (of hydrogen deuterium atoms) for which major countries have formed a consortium (ITER) and set aside a big amount (>$ 10 billion) of funding. The first pilot reactor is being built in southern France. Under most optimistic assumptions it will not be possible to generate any fusion electricity before 2050; and the undertaking may well prove to be too complex (e.g. generating the heat of 100 million centigrade for creating the gas plasma necessary to merge hydrogen atoms).

Renewable and nuclear energy alone may not suffice making global energy supply C02 free before the end of the century.

Moreover, some countries with huge fossil fuel reserves like Canada (oil sands, the second biggest oil reserves on earth after Saudi-Arabia), Russia, China, USA, Australia (coal) may be reluctant to renounce exploiting what they consider as a major source of wealth.

 

That is why in the past 10 years a lot of research has been invested in the capture and storage of carbon (CCS). This is a complex technology applicable to power plants and energy intensive industries. It is costly to capture carbon dioxide, liquefy and transport it over long distances to underground or under-see cavities where it can be stored safely for centuries.

Two small pilot projects function, some 40 more are in the planning or preparatory stage. It will take certainly until 2020 and beyond before this technology will be ready for large-scale application. But there is quasi-certitude that it will be applied. But the scale of deployment will depend on the pace at which renewable energy sources will become fully competitive.

        

In conclusion

·        It will not be an easy march towards the post-fossil energy era. Humanity will have to focus much more on how to optimally organise the necessary transition.
·        Time is of the essence. It will not be possible to achieve deep cuts of C02 emissions in a few years without strong political push,
·        In the coming 20 years, the focus should be on enhancing energy efficiency and fully exploiting available renewable technologies like wind, hydro power and nuclear.
·        Beyond 2030, carbon capture and storage (CCS) will have to join, especially in China, India, Russia and the USA. As of today, new coal-fired power plants should no longer be built, unless equipped for later refitting to CCS technology.

 

Eberhard Rhein 07.04.09

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Climate Change Lecture Series: International Efforts To Cope With Climate Change 1980-2008

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 16/04/09

Blogactiv wants to help its readers to better understand the world. Climate change is one of the big challenges of this century and it is a complex issue. It is therefore appropriate to give an overview. Eberhard Rhein, who regularly writes on energy and climate, had lectured on the subject in Malta earlier this spring. He has revised his text for publication by blogactiv.eu and you will therefore be able to read the comprehensive text of his lectures in the coming weeks. This is the third of six chapters.

 

Precursor

It has taken the international community a long time to realise that climate change is taking place and that man is responsible for it. Even today a considerable number of even educated people refuse to admit the anthropogenic nature of climate change.

It is remarkable how long scientists have ignored to question the effects of rising C02 emissions from power generation and traffic during the last century.

At the beginning of the 20th century a hardly known Danish physicist had raised the issue of what would happen with the ever increasing amounts C02 emitted by industry, power etc. But nobody followed it up.

 

It took almost a century before the climate issue came to the forefront of the environmental debate.

 

In 1973, after the first oil shock, the Club of Rome published Denis Meadows:”The Limits of Growth”. For the first time, some one dared to ask how humanity could afford to expand economically without reaching any limits. After all, the planet is a closed system with strictly limited resources, which at some stage would be depleted. As an economist, Meadows did not include the atmosphere in his reflections.  He only reminded humanity that the known resources of gas, oil, and even coal would be depleted in a matter of decades or a few centuries. Nobody took him serious. Everyone referred to past experience when resources had always proved to be bigger than projected, due to more refined exploration technologies, recycling and more efficient use of scarce materials.

In the 1980s, the USA and Europe were confronted with the first trans-national environmental shock, acid rains from burning fossil fuels with a rich sulphur component. Some of these emissions were blown across the Atlantic, causing forest damage in Europe.

Sulphuric acid was rapidly identified as the main culprit, and the USA, also under pressure from Europe, agreed to take the necessary action to reduce sulphuric acid emissions from power plants, linked to coal and oil with high sulphur content.

To facilitate the phasing out, the USA invented a system of emission trading, which has been copied 20 years later for tackling the much more dangerous, though not visible green house gas emissions, under the Kyoto Protocol (1997).

But until this day, the  USA continues to fight against sulphur emissions. Utilities have obtained extremely long transition periods, as successive US governments have refrained from sharply cutting back the amounts of emission certificates.

The first real global climate threat occurred in the late 1980s, when scientists discovered the “ozone hole” in the South Atlantic, a dangerous depletion of the atmospheric ozone shield that protects life against an excess of UV radiation.

As early as 1973, a Californian chemist had developed the hypothesis that a chemical substance used for cooling purposes, chlorofluorcarbon (CFCs), might have destroy the ozone layer in the upper atmosphere. Naturally, the chemical industry disputed this hypothesis most vehemently, until the moment when in 1985 meteorologists were able to prove the existence of an ozone hole in the southern Atlantic.

That was enough to provoke a rapid reaction by the international community, with the USA taking the lead.

The international community quickly realised the need to stop emitting such gases and prohibit their manufacture and use. This was relatively easy: CFCs were produced by a small number of chemical companies in USA, Europe, India and China. It was therefore sufficient to get these countries around a table and negotiate an agreement phasing out CFCs, which happened through the Montreal Protocol on Substances that deplete the Ozone Layer, the first veritable climate agreement. It entered into force in 1989, just four years after the discovery of ozone hole! By 2006, practically all UN member states had ratified the agreement: everybody benefited from it, only very few had to take action, the cost of which was negligible.

It provides for the progressive phasing out of the consumption and production of CFCs. Up to 2006, the size of the ozone hole continued to grow, and it will take until 2050 until the ozone hole will have completely disappeared, provided China and India will strictly adhere to the rules for implementation. Thus even a tiny defect in the atmosphere generated by a banal chemical substance takes 60 years of commitment, strict monitoring and above all full implementation by the international community to be fully restored!

Though the stakes were tiny in terms of industrial employment, it was necessary to include two provisions into the Montreal Protocol, which have since become permanent features in climate diplomacy: differentiated phasing out, with the industrialised countries advancing and financial compensation for developing countries. The phasing out period foreseen for CFC`s  will last until 2030, almost half a century, far too long in view of the availability of alternative cooling gases. The financial compensation was modest ($ 2 billion for 1991-200).

The Montreal Protocol is considered by many as the most effective international agreement to date. That is only partially true.

 

The agreement has two major flaws:

 

- The major one is the admission of substitution gases – hydrofluorcarbons (HCFs) – which have an extremely negative climate impact- 10 000 more powerful than C02! – and therefore need to be phased out as a matter of urgency.
- The other one is the snake-like phasing out of CFC`s.

The machinery of the Montreal Protocol continues to operate and will continue to do so for another 20 years or even longer.

This shows the dangers of fiddling around with the earth and the atmosphere.

 

The start on climate policy after 1990

In 1988 WMO and UNEP have created IPCC, the indispensable scientific basis for all national and international climate policy. This was a milestone in international climate science and policy. Without its scientific evidence humanity would be nowhere today. During the past 20 years the panel, composed of world-renowned meteorologists and climatologists has become the undisputed scientific authority for all issues related to climate. It links all scientific climate centres so that any new research results will immediately be cross-checked with those available elsewhere.

It has formed three working groups on mitigation and climate change, climate impact, adaptation and vulnerability.

Almost in parallel, at the Rio de Janeiro UN Conference on Environment and Development 1992, the international community has negotiated the “UN Framework Convention on Climate Change” (UNCCC).  It is a short text containing principles for the protection of the atmosphere, but no specific commitments for action. No surprise that it has been ratified by all UN member states!

 

It had one major consequence for future climate policy:

The negotiation of an operational agreement aiming at limiting the emission of green house gases, which became the Kyoto Protocol (1997).

 

The era of climate policy, including the term, thus counts less than 20 years, an extremely short time span  for what historians will one day define as the most critical era in the history of mankind. Climate change is likely to mark the future course of human history more dramatically than any other event, even if   humanity decides to tackle it resolutely in the coming decades.

If humanity were to fail with tackling climate change in time, which is quite probable, humanity will be heading for disaster.

Legally, the Kyoto Protocol is an operational annex to the “UN Framework Convention on Climate Change”. Its negotiation was relatively rapid, less than five years, considering the novelty and complexity of the subject matter.

Its main objective is to stabilise the level of green house gas concentration in the atmosphere and thereby preserve sustainable climate conditions on the planet.

To that end, the protocol calls upon humanity to reduce green house gas emissions, above all C02, below 1990 levels, the year chosen as reference. For the first period of application ending 1908-2012, it limits the obligation to cut emissions to only 45 industrialised countries, which, in 1990 (!), accounted for about two thirds of global emissions.

It sets a very modest average reduction target of only 5 percent below 1990 levels to be reached by 2012 latest, differentiated according to parties.

The EU volunteered to reduce by 8 percent, the most ambitious commitment, considering its lead in energy efficiency and alternative energies, from nuclear to wind.

In essence, the Protocol follows the approach the international community had adopted for solving the ozone problem 10 years earlier: graduated commitments according to countriesˆ abilities, long transition periods, with two  novelties : the possibility of buying and selling “emission allowances” taken from the US acid rain provisions of the 1980s and allowing countries and companies to partly acquit their commitments also by investing abroad in measures of energy efficiency and renewable energy (not nuclear power), if that were equally effective than at home but cheaper.

Despite its good intentions the Kyoto Protocol has failed in reversing or at least stopping the inexorable rise of green house gas emissions. Since 1997, global emissions have risen faster than ever before.

- The USA did not ratify the text. This has fundamentally weakened its effectiveness. Until 2006 the USA was by far the biggest emitter. Without its participation, the burden sharing stopped functioning. Its absence served as a pretext for countries like Canada and Australia not to take any serious commitments (carbon leakage).

- Russia ratified only in 2005, eight years after signature. This enabled the protocol to enter into force, but it also allowed Russia not to take any commitments for reduction, though Russia is among 10 biggest emitter countries.

- The emissions of emerging countries, above all China, surged much more rapidly than negotiators had anticipated in the early 1990s. This was probably the single most important shortcoming of the agreement, but something for which negotiators should be pardoned: who could have foreseen China’s ultra-rapid ascent towards an economic and political giant in the mid-1990s!

- The absence of an effective monitoring procedure, providing for penalties in case of persistent non-compliance with the commitments taken was only the last straw.

- As a result of these factors the Protocol proved incapable of reducing green house gas emissions. Instead of keeping them stable, as projected, global C02 emissions surged by about 40 percent between 1990 and 2006, essentially due to big emitter countries like China, USA, India and Canada. But even those of Japan continued to rise by 15 percent. Due to the excessively fast global economic growth they are bound to rise further until 2012, with a slight dent in 2009-2010.

 

From 1990 onward, climate policy has been in the hands of the UN bureaucracy.

The UN “Framework Convention on Climate Change” (UNFCCC), negotiated in 1992 in the wake of the Rio Conference, constitutes the over-arching legal instrument for everything that has so far been achieved in international climate policy.

Since then, its Secretariat has had the main responsibility for steering international climate policy. Its achievements fall far short of what would have been  needed to effectively change the dangerous path towards a warmer planet on which humanity proceeds. But could it do more against the lukewarm attitude not to say outright open opposition from the international community?

Before going into the nitty-gritty of the Copenhagen negotiations we need to focus on the two essential issues for any successful climate policy, the availability of the appropriate technologies and policy instruments.

Concretely: How can a country reduce its green house gas emissions? Can it rely on alternative technologies for replacing fossil energy? If such technologies are available how can it induce business and consumers to shift to those technologies instead of using coal, oil or gas?

 

Eberhard Rhein 07.04.09

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Climate Change Lecture Series: The Nature of Climate Change

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 15/04/09

Blogactiv wants to help its readers to better understand the world. Climate change is one of the big challenges of this century and it is a complex issue. It is therefore appropriate to give an overview. Eberhard Rhein, who regularly writes on energy and climate, had lectured on the subject in Malta earlier this spring. He has revised his text for publication by blogactiv.eu and you will therefore be able to read the comprehensive text of his lectures in the coming weeks. This is the second of six chapters.

The word climate is derived from the Greek “klinein”, which means inclination. The 23.5 degree inclination of the earth’s axis in relation to its rotation is fundamental for the earth’s climate: The inclination of the axis is responsible for the varying solar irradiation at different parts of the globe, which in turn conditions the direction and intensity of winds (together with the earth’s rotation).

Without the inclination we would have no seasons, and agriculture would not possible in the most northern or southern parts of the planet.

Climate describes the permanent, recurring features of the weather, which is a short-term phenomenon. Different parts of the earth are marked by different types of climate (tropical, arid, moderate, climate zones).

Since the earth was created about 4.5 billion years ago, the earth’s climate has changed continuously. It has progressively cooled due to changes in the composition of the atmosphere and enabled life to start on the planet.

These changes took place at extremely low pace. Usually they were the consequence of changing rotation parameters of the earth or neighbouring planets, sometimes also of meteors striking the earth’s surface. Rotation parameters change in times scales of 20 000, 40 000 and even 100 000 years.

Such changes have led to variations of the average temperatures between 12 and 17 centigrade, reflecting the advance and retreat of polar ice.

The last such – natural – change lasted about 10 000 years, the so-called Ice Age, when glaciers covered large areas of the northern hemisphere. It ended 10 000 years ago.

From the end of the last Ice Age to 1850 the global climate has been stable, with warmer and colder years/decades, but no trend in one or the other direction. But we have registered one anomaly, the Small Ice Age, from 1550-1850, during which both temperatures and C02 concentration in the atmosphere were below present levels.

Since 1970 the earth’s climate is changing at a breath-taking speed, never before registered in the past 600 000 years.

This change is essentially due to rising concentrations of what are called green house gases, above all C02 and CH4, in the atmosphere.

This in turn is the result of steeply rising emissions of all green house  gases (+70 percent between 1970 and 2004), resulting from an extremely rapid development of human activity, above all the burning of fossil fuels, across the earth. There can therefore be no longer any doubt about the anthropogenic origin of the accelerating climate change. Humanity therefore has to stop it; it has the means to do so, provided it can muster the necessary political will and transform it into meaningful climate policy action. It is wrong to attribute climate change to the lack of energy alternatives or financials constraints. The main cause of continued climate change is the inability of focusing the necessary political efforts on the issue.

If humanity fails to substantially reduce green house gas emissions in the coming decades, living conditions for humanity and for most animal and plant species will profoundly deteriorate in the course of this and following century.

Climate change will generate higher air and water temperatures. Since 1900 average air temperature has risen by 0.7°, compared to a stable temperature of around 15° since the last Ice Age.  The warmest 10 years registered since 1900 occurred since 1990!

Rising temperatures provoke more instable weather conditions, more droughts, floods, more intensive hurricanes, progressive melting of Alpine and Himalaya glaciers (which may lose up to one third of their surface until 2030!). They will lead to more extinction of plant and animal species. They are likely to destroy what remains of tropical forests in Brazil, Congo, and Indonesia etc.

Deserts will expand substantially on all continents, and rising water scarcity may in due time make it impossible to sufficiently feed humanity projected to rise to- unbelievable – 9 billion human beings by the middle of the 21st century.

In due time, the rise of temperatures  is bound to lead to the progressive melting of the Greenland  inland ice, which will  raise sea levels by up to 7 meter and flood major coastal areas and city regions on earth.

No region on earth will escape the impact of climate change. But change will hit different parts of the planet with variable intensity. The plains of the Indian subcontinent and China will be among the most severely hit. So will be the countries around the MED, Australia and the southern USA, due to increasing droughts. The moderate zones in Asia, Europe, North and South America will be relatively spared.

Human knowledge about climate has increased vastly  in the course of last 40 years, thanks to better measuring through satellite pictures,  deep-ice boring, advance of climatology, climate – palaeontology and earth science.

In 1958, the first global measuring station of C02 emissions was installed on Hawaii. Today we dispose of a wide network of meteorological stations measuring emissions of various green houses gases. In addition, scientists have proceeded with extensive surveys of arctic ice.

Until the middle of the 18th climate change has been due to “natural” causes.

Human beings were unable to have any impact on nature and climate. Their numbers were small. By 1750 the population of the globe had hardly reached 1 billion people, roughly 10 percent of  what it is today.

Their energy consumption was insignificant, say 1 percent of the today’s average energy consumption of US citizens, and it consisted 100 percent of renewable sources, wood and animal dung for heating and cooking, drought animals and hydro power  for  transport and agriculture.

Several least developed countries, in Africa and South Asia, e.g. Chad or Ethiopia still depend almost exclusively on traditional energies, in particular  brush wood and solar heat. Their per capita emissions of C02 remain  negligible (100-200 kg p.a.), i.e. about   1 percent of EU or US   per capita emissions.

Their way of life makes them incapable of doing any harm to the climate.

 

The industrial revolution starting in the middle of the 18th century has been the turning point for the global climate. Man started to emit carbon dioxide by burning more forests than newly planted and using fossil energy, after the discovery of coal.

The deforestation of certain European regions in the 18th century led to the first environmental crisis, but also to modern forest methods based on the principle of sustainability.

Since then, human energy demand has grown exponentially, due to rapidly rising population and ever higher per capita energy needs.

In its irresistible thirst for energy, humanity tackled one new source of energy after the other:

1750   coal

1900   oil

1930   large-scale hydro

1960   uranium

1970   gas

1980   wind and solar

2005   oil sands

2020   waves

2050   nuclear fusion?

Fossil energies like lignite, coal, oil or natural gas, are nothing but stored biomass, generated by photo-synthesis during hundreds of millions of years. They contain carbon and hydrogen.  

Burning fossil energies releases C02. It is the C02 that creates problems. Part of it is stored by trees and other vegetation that “accumulate” them as biomass. Another part is stored in the Oceans where it helps “feeding” sea biomass like algae. Humanity presently emits some 30 billion tons annually, of which about half goes into the atmosphere, the other half being absorbed by biomass on earth and the sea. But both the sea and forests have a limited storage capacity. Recently scientists are getting scared about these “sinks” because of deforestation and rising acidity of the oceans.

Increasing C02 quantities therefore rise into the atmosphere where they stay some 100 years, changing the composition of the gaseous shield in the atmosphere in a dramatic way and  causing climate change on earth.

It is therefore important to understand the basic functioning of the atmosphere for the global climate.

The earth is surrounded by the atmosphere (composed of the troposphere up to 10 km, Mt. Everest!) and the stratosphere (10 – 40 km).

The atmosphere contains two major gases: Nitrogen 78 percent and oxygen 22 percent, plus Argon 1 percent.

Were the planet only surrounded by these three gases, the earth’s temperature would be around -18°, and the planet an icy desert, without any signs of life, like Mars.

We owe life to the existence of a few other gases, of which only marginal quantities are found in the atmosphere.  The most important among these are hydrogen in the form of steam/clouds, followed by carbon dioxide, ozone, nitrogen-oxide and methane.

 

These gases have two separate functions.

  • Ozone protects us against excessive and destructive UV irradiation.
  • The other four form a natural regulator of temperature. They shield us against excessive heat and cold by offering a natural “green house effect”. They operate like a glass house,  which allows sun light to enter and absorb most of its heat. These green house gases warm the earth surface by incredible +33°, enabling the average surface temperature to reach 15° and not -18°, as it would without the gas shield. Over time the influx and outflow of solar energy has been miraculously balanced to an inflow and outflow of solar radiation as to keep the earth’s temperature within a range of 12-17 degrees.

Since the beginning of industrialisation (1750) the concentration of green house gases has risen substantially: CO2 by 30 percent, methane by 150 percent and nitrogen – oxide by 17 percent. Their concentration keeps rising  as they stay in the atmosphere for many years/decades

(C02 for 100 years, methane for 12 years, NO2 114 years) and the volume of additional emissions keeps rising.

During the last 600 000 years, the C02 concentration has never reached the present high levels of close to 400 ppm. (0.04 percent)  It has varied between 200 and 300 ppm, with the lowest level of < 200 ppm during the last Ice Age 10 000 years ago. During that long time climatologists have observed a net correlation between levels of C02 concentration and temperatures.

It is the anthropogenic increase of green house gases that constitutes the core of the climate problem. The natural gas shield of the atmosphere is extremely sensitive; any change in its composition will be felt, with a certain delay, by higher temperatures on earth and in the atmosphere, with multiple consequences for the climate.

In 2000, the composition of the three main green house emissions was as follows (billion tons, UN Global Resources Institute)

         C02               24

         CH4                6

         N02                 3

         Total               33 (in C02 equivalents)

        

The origin of global C02 emissions by sectors was as follows: (percentages, in 2000)

         Power and heating           37

         Other energy industries     5

         Transport                         18

         Manufacturing                 17

         Residential Housing          8

         Agriculture, Trade,            6

        

This table does not take into account the C02 emissions due to deforestation, which are estimated at 20 percent of total!

Between 1950 and 2000 humanity emitted a total of 800 billion tons of C02, of which 300 billion from Europe, 200 billion from the USA, 77 billion from Russia, 70 billion from China and 36 billion from Japan. During the first decade of the 21st century the cumulative emissions have surged further due to the unprecedented economic growth until 2008.

If left unchecked, the C02 concentration of the atmosphere is expected to reach some 600 ppm or even more by the end of the century. This might lead to a rise of average temperature by 4-6° and have dramatic consequences for living conditions on earth.

Even if humanity stopped emitting greenhouse gases as of todayGgd   GdddfGGHGGGG of today, climate change would continue during the next decades because of inertia. Temperatures would not go back to their pre-industrial levels.

A fortiori, any additional emission, however small, will lead to more C02 concentration in the atmosphere and influence the temperatures etc. for many decades, including through secondary effects, e.g. releasing tundra  methane, destroying tropical forests and reducing the capacity of the oceans for storing additional C02 (sinks), which we normally tend to ignore.

 

The costs of climate change will be enormous. Sir Christopher Stern, the author of the “Stern Report” (2006), has estimated they might reach up to one fifth of the global product by the middle of the century, in a business as usual scenario. Expressed in very rough monetary terms, this may be equal to an annual cost in the order of $ 20 000 billion! Most costs will arise for adapting to climate change, including resettlement of hundreds of millions of migrants, profound adjustments of industrial structures, repair and rebuilding of existing infrastructure etc.

Compared to these incredibly high costs, the costs for keeping climate change within acceptable limits are tiny, some 1-2 percent of the global product today ($ 500 billion), no more than an insurance premium, and much less than humanity spends presently on “defence” (3 percent).

Measured in economic, human and environmental terms the damage will become incalculable, as climate change will become irreversible beyond a critical threshold that we may reach in a few decades, if we fail to turn back the movement.

It is therefore imperative to reduce the volume of green house gas emissions at the earliest possible level. The more humanity delays the necessary trend reversal, the more future generations – beyond the 21st century – will suffer from climate change. The objective should be to phase them out altogether well before the end of century. To reach this, emissions should their peak around 2020 and fall thereafter by at least 50 below 1990 levels until 2050.

Despite the overwhelming scientific evidence of the ongoing climate change and its severe consequences, the international system seems unable to react timely and effectively.

Seven basic obstacles stand in the way of rapid and effective action against climate change. It is important to understand these.

 

Slowness of the process:

Climate is a “common good” of humanity, which everybody takes for granted. We cannot feel its slow destruction.  Few people dare to establish a correlation between short-term deteriorations of weather conditions and long-term climate change. The first ones are visible but the reasons behind them are complex; a normal human being finds it difficult to understand them and does not care as long his house is not destroyed by a thunderstorm or extreme floods.

The change of climate is not visible world-wide or simultaneously.

Droughts in California, southern Australia, Argentina, the eastern MED are rarely put in a global context. Changes in temperatures of the oceans or their acidity are only visible to the few scientists who closely observe them. Only few political leaders have gone to Greenland or the Arctic Circle to realise what climate change means in reality.

More dangerously even, the younger generations have no memory of what the climate conditions had been 30-50 ago! They grow up in metropolitan areas with little direct touch to nature and no solid grasp of scientific phenomena!

 

Addiction: All of us have got addicted to fossil energy in all its forms – automobiles, aircraft, electric power, central heating – that we cannot imagine life without. So we prefer to go business as usual.

Vested interests: Utilities, automobile, aircraft companies etc have        invested huge amounts in the generation and use of fossil energy and continue to do so. They do not want to see the value of those investments depreciated by alternative energies. The big energy companies have been the most powerful opponents against a forward-looking climate and energy policy. This has been all too visible in the USA.

They simply cling to the product and technology they know best: fossil energies.

Cheapness: Market prices for fossil energy are lower than those of alternative energies, except hydro and, possibly, nuclear power, because they fail to take incorporate the “external costs” they cause to the environment and climate: “biggest failure of the market economy” (Sir Nicholas Stern).

Discounting the future: Human beings discount future pains and satisfactions. Climate change appears distant. Even in its worst consequences, it does not appear as a mortal threat. Citizens therefore fail to feel concerned about it, contrary to many more direct threats like unemployment, health risks or the security of their savings.

This is probably the single most important impediment against taking action on time. It makes it so difficult, even for wise politicians to take society with them.

Lack of commitment by the political class and the elites: They do not feel under pressure from their voters. Elections are not yet won on climate policy! When they will one day, it might be too late to do something effectively about it.

Need for global action: Whatever individual countries or even the EU may do to reduce emissions of green house gases, will fail to have the required impact on the global climate. Major emitter countries will have to act in concert. This further complicates matters, because industries pretend they will be hurt by climate policy measures, and loses international competitiveness (the so-called effect of “carbon leakage”).

 

That is why the short history of international efforts to cope with it is so full of disappointments and contains so little to rejoice at.

 

Eberhard Rhein 07.04.09

English
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Climate Change Lecture Series: Introduction

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 14/04/09

Blogactiv wants to help its readers to better understand the world. Climate change is one of the big challenges of this century and it is a complex issue. It is therefore appropriate to give an overview. Eberhard Rhein, who regularly writes on energy and climate, had lectured on the subject in Malta earlier this spring. He has revised his text for publication by blogactiv.eu and you will therefore be able to read the comprehensive text of his lectures in the coming weeks.

 

Climate Change constitutes the major challenge for humanity in the 21st century and beyond.

It will not go away. Unless humanity resolves to act rapidly and decisively, it is bound to radically deteriorate living conditions for the vast majority of human beings on the planet and lead to the  progressive annihilation of large swaths of human civilisation.

Climate change has started. It accelerates from year to year. Its effects have become distinctly visible, though the process is at its beginning. As time goes on, it will impossible for humanity to effectively control the process. We may be closer to that point than most people on earth believe. Humanity will be at the mercy of forces that will prove stronger than man-made technology.

The  melting of the glaciers in the Alps, Andeans and Himalaya, which is more and more likely to  happen in the next decades, and, of course, of the Greenland ice in the more distant future are likely to be such tipping points.

The approaching catastrophe is in stark contrast to the amount of attention that humanity has paid to the issue. Most human beings continue to live and act as if climate change did not exist. As much as two thirds of humanity  may be completely unaware of what is happening,  and one third is more or less ignoring it. Worse, policy makers are almost exclusively concerned about short term challenges.  

This is normal. Climate change has entered the dictionaries less than 20 years ago. The phenomenon has existed earlier, but it was too diffuse to be registered. Scientists have only started exploring it seriously from the 1990s onward. And it has taken another decade and visibility before it entered the public scene.

Climate change will affect living conditions everywhere on earth, mostly to the worse.

  • Droughts will become more frequent, especially in the Indian sub-continent, China, Australia and the Mediterranean region. Deserts will expand everywhere. This is bound to affect our capacity to adequately feed humanity. We are likely become more often confronted with famines, which we had hoped to eliminate.
  • Droughts may affect the tropical zones and lead to the progressive destruction of tropical forests, which have served as an essential C02 storage and helped to stabilise global climate for hundreds of thousands of years.
  • The sea level will rise as a consequence of melting glaciers and rising water temperatures. Climatologists project a rise of at least 50 cm by 2100. But a more rapid increase of global warming in recent years raises fears about an even higher rise. If that were to happen many coastal regions and major metropolitan areas across the earth will be submerged and expel hundreds of million people, 10 percent of the global population from their homes.
  • The Siberian and Canadian tundra will melt, causing  a massive release of methane. This is bound to further accelerate the speed of climate change.
  • The Oceans may cease to absorb additional volumes of C02. The first signs of this trend have been registered in south-polar waters. Like the destruction of tropical forests and the tundra this is bound to accelerate global warming because a higher share of emissions will have to be stored in the atmosphere.

Looking beyond the 21st century, the oceans may turn into dead seas with no traces of life.

  • Climate change will further reduce the number of species on earth because it will expose many plants and animals to unusual stress, force them to leave their traditional biotopes or deprive them of their food.
  • Last not least, climate change will create  more conflicts about land and water resources. It might well become the major source of conflicts in the course of the 21st century. Climate policy is therefore also security policy. If we fail on climate we shall fail on peace!

It is therefore indispensable for every citizen on earth to understand what is going on with our climate. Our children’s future depends on whether humanity will succeed in preventing the worst from happening.

We have already passed the stage of reverting to “normal” climate conditions as they have prevailed until the middle of the 20th century.  

We have resigned to living with global temperature that will be two centigrade above temperatures that have prevailed throughout human history. Humanity can do no more than limit the damage by mitigating an inevitable rise of temperatures of the air and the oceans.

The EU has put the limit of what is acceptable at 2° increase, to an average temperature on the planet of 17°, by the end of the century.

But scientists are afraid that it will no longer be possible to contain the rise of global temperatures within this margin. The last projection of a rise between 1-6° by 2100 may need to be reviewed in the light of the faster rate of green house gas emissions since the beginning of the century (+ 3.5 percent p.a., compared with 1 percent during the 1990s!).

It is imperative for future diplomats to have a thorough grasp about climate change and its impact on different parts of earth. They are bound to be exposed to it sooner rather than later in their careers.

International climate diplomacy is about to replace trade and economic diplomacy in importance. We might face rising numbers of trade disputes, due to climate-related issues like carbon leakage. Who is still in favour of negotiating future free trade agreements when the main concern may become reducing transport costs and minimising the movement of goods from one corner of the planet to the other!

No future diplomat can therefore afford to ignore climate change and policy.

The subject is of extreme complexity.

  • We have to learn how to think and act in very long-term time spans, something human beings never had to do. Human beings are psychologically disposed to prefer the presence to the future.    That   is why they are prepared to pay interest on a loan. The    farther we look into the future, the more uncertain we become on    what may happen. Human beings are therefore extremely         incredulous on what might happen in 2050! They are not even interested because most of them will long be dead. This makes it almost impossible, even for wise politicians, to impose the drastic        measures required!
  • We have to reach global solutions, no individual country being capable to sufficiently influence global climate by national policies. Not even China and USA!
  • We have to impose drastic changes on business and consumer behaviour.
  • We cannot  shy away from restraining personal freedom and the use of property.
  • We have to revolutionise existing energy systems, propagate and invent low-carbon technologies.
  • Last not least, we have to equitably share the burden resulting from mitigating climate among poor and rich countries and find ways and means for financing the huge investments to be made in alternative energies.

All this needs to be done within the next 40 years, with the basic rules to be agreed upon in 2009 and the new climate contract to enter into force by the end of 2012. It is a tall order that requires unprecedented political leadership by the major emitter countries of green house gases.

It is a subject in flux. Even scientific data are controversial. The more so the recipes for dealing with climate change. That does not facilitate the discussion.

We must avoid falling into the traps of extremists. Neither will climate change mean the end of the world, nor would it be responsible to ignore it and abstain from taking adequate action. The balance will be very, very difficult to establish.

We need as good a scientific basis as possible and focus our action on measures which will minimise the harm to our present well-being.  We should not be guided by lobbyists dramatising the negative impact of climate action on business and employment.

In order to make the subject intelligible I shall proceed in the following

Order

  •         Lay out the basic scientific data about climate change
  •         Review the efforts of international climate change policy during the last 20 years
  •         Examine the technical means to address the issue
  •         Examine the most effective economic means to address it
  •          the preparations for the Climate Conference in Copenhagen December 2009.
Eberhard Rhein 07.04.09

English
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A global strategy for fighting climate Change

Posted by Eberhard Rhein on 20/02/09

On January 28th 2009, the EU Commission has presented its proposals for the Copenhagen climate Conference, due to finalise a comprehensive international strategy for tackling humanity’s most pressing problem in the 21st century.

These are the main points:
• Developed countries reduce their green house gas by 30 percent below 1990 levels until 2020;
• Emerging countries slow their further increase of emissions below the trend line by 15-30 percent until 2020;
• International financial support will be made available for the investments in energy efficiency and renewable sources;
• A common carbon market among OECD and emerging countries should be the target for 2020;
• Aviation and shipping should be included in the international climate strategy;
• Deforestation should be halved by 2020 and stopped by 2030.
• All major emission countries should elaborate mitigation strategies under UN monitoring;
• All countries should elaborate adjustment strategies.

The Commission paper builds on the “blocks”, which had been debated during the last two years in the appropriate UN climate forums (Bali, Poznan etc.) and transforms these into a coherent global approach.
That is its principal merit. If the international community were able to agree on the Commission paper, humanity could feel reassured about the earth’s climate during the coming 50-100 years.

Unfortunately, the chances for arriving at a global consensus on that basis are extremely slim.

• The developed countries are unlikely to subscribe to the 30 percent reduction – below 1990 levels – within a decade. That would require super- human political efforts by all of them, including the EU. For the USA it would imply a reduction of 45 percent as¸ unlike the EU its emissions have kept growing by 25 percent since 1990.The same goes for countries like Canada and Australia.

• If the developed countries fail to reduce their emissions by 30 percent until 2020 and at least 80 percent by 2050, emerging countries are unlikely to refuse even minor commitments.

• The Commission dwells too much on financing mechanisms by which developed countries should support emerging countries` investment efforts in new energy technologies. It is true this has been a major issue in Poznan. But in fact, humanity has invested some $ 150 annually since 2006 without any international mechanism. Why is it necessary to create a new mechanism? The World Bank and the Regional Development Banks could easily finance $ 100-200 billion annually. Their governors simply have to give the necessary instructions, raise the additional capital and replenish the energy facility.

• The Commission overestimates the virtue of an international carbon market as an instrument for reducing GHGs. its effectiveness depends more on the CO2 price than on the size of the market. The present low C02 price of € 8/ton in the EU indicates that governments have imposed too generous caps. It is the caps that matter; the trading only facilitate.
It would, of course, be helpful to have OECD-wide carbon market. But the 2015 seems not very realistic. Nor is its extension to major emerging countries by 2020.

• Including aviation and shipping into the future international climate strategy is of vital importance considering the rising share in global emissions of these two sectors. But it is up to the EU and the USA to take the necessary initiatives within ICAO and IMO and overcome their entrenched opposition.

• Stopping deforestation, especially in developing countries is crucial for the success of any mitigation efforts, as its accounts for more than 20 percent of C02 emissions. But can humanity afford to wait until 2030 before stabilising the areas covered with forests? By that time illegal cutting and droughts may have wrought irreparable damage. It would be preferable to negotiate bilateral deals between the major forest countries and the major importers of wood.

• The Commission is absolutely right insisting on the need for all major emitting countries to draw up climate strategies, which need to be duly scrutinised and monitored. But these should focus on mitigating rather than on adjustment.

In conclusion, the Commission proposal contains a lot of wishful thinking. But it has the merit of being on the table and having been presented by the first group of countries that has adopted a coherent and hopefully effective climate strategy until 2020.

We should wish the Commission and the Presidency success in their ongoing efforts to convince the major emitter countries of the need for adopting effective measures at Copenhagen. This will at some stage have to involve meetings at the highest political level.

Business & Climate Change, Copenhagen conference, Energy Supply, English, EU Priorities and Opinion, EU Treaty & Institutions, European Commission
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Copenhagen Climate Conference rss

The UN Climate Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 will be aiming to reach agreement on measures to limit climate change. more.



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