Environment Forum

Stern, in center of climate pessimism, hopeful about U.S.

Nicholas Stern, the British economist who warned five years ago that global warming could cost the world’s GDP as much as 20 percent a year by 2050, hasn’t given up on the United States  taking action on climate even though he’s down on Washington for not passing a bill that would do just that.

“If you look around the world, of all places to sit and wonder where (climate policy is) going, this is probably the most pessimistic place — this city,” he told a small gathering of reporters at the World Bank’s headquarters in Washington, D.C. late this week.

But all one has to do is travel out of the U.S. capital to see enormous potential for taking action, he said. Stern is optimistic about U.S. companies in Silicon Valley and Boston and other places developing low-carbon technologies such as batteries for electric cars, or new biofuels that aren’t made out of food crops.

“There are so many technological ideas on the table that you don’t need all of them to work, just some,” he said.

 He also takes heart in state level mandates for renewable energy and the reelection of Jerry Brown, the pro-solar governor of California, who wants to set the bar even higher for renewable energy.

Be that as it may, Stern is even more deeply concerned about the risks of climate change.

He thinks he underestimated the risk in the Stern Review issued five years ago. But now he doesn’t describe the risks in terms of percentage points of lost GDP. He believes hundreds of millions of people could be forced to migrate in coming decades because of global warming, resulting in conflicts, or even wars.

from Commodity Corner:

Getting down to business at U.N. climate talks a hard task

A U.N. concession to delegates at this week's climate talks in Bonn to take off jackets and ties due to recent high temperatures may be going to some participants' heads.

Breaking the back of negotiations for a new climate pact after the Kyoto Protocol expires in 2012 is proving hard work even though the talks' chair hopes to have a new negotiating text on the table by the end of the week.

Developing nations are still blaming the rich for global warming and the issue of who will contribute most to climate financing is still a matter for debate.

A year-end meeting in Cancun looms closer and the pressure is on to get the job done. Yet, the acronyms being bandied around -- LULUCF, CDM, AAU, AWG-KP, AWG-LCA, REDD, to name a few -- are enough to make your head swim.

Even a Chinese negotiator on Tuesday admitted he did not understand a complicated forestry and land use presentation the previous day by the European Union.

Talks kicked off on Monday with a three-hour session during which countries spent an inordinate amount of time thanking the chair and congratulating the new U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres on her post.

Delegates didn't manage to finish the day's business by the evening and had to continue into Tuesday, despite calls from the chair of the talks to keep to a very tight schedule.

from The Great Debate:

For real results on climate, look beyond Copenhagen

-- Aron Cramer is the president and CEO of BSR, a global business network and consultancy focused on sustainability. He is also coauthor of the forthcoming book Sustainable Excellence (Rodale 2010). The views expressed are his own.  --

(Updated on December 17th to correct figure in McKinsey study in paragraph 7.)

As world leaders seem uncertain about whether a binding treaty is even possible at Copenhagen, it’s important to remember what was already clear: Twelve days in Copenhagen were never going to solve climate change anyway.

No doubt, these negotiations, now extending into 2010, are crucial. The sooner we can seal a global deal to reduce emissions, the sooner we can avoid catastrophic climate change. But as important as the treaty negotiations in Copenhagen’s Bella Centre are, even a successful outcome will be for naught if boardroom decisions and factory processes aren’t reoriented toward a low-carbon future.

To steer the world in that direction, business must change how it operates, with a shift of historic proportions. Otherwise—like the Kyoto Protocol of 1997—a new international climate agreement won’t achieve its goals.

Making this change requires business to focus on innovation, efficiency, mobilization, and collaboration—and that work must start now.

At every turning in point in history, from the advent of the railroad to the internet revolution, innovation has redefined our economy. Solving climate requires exactly the same thing. Everything about a climate-friendly economy—from the basic products we use to the places we shop to how we commute—will look different.

Thank you, EPA: U.S. solar companies

Many businesses chafed on Monday at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s declaration that greenhouse gas emissions endanger human health.

But executives at the two largest U.S. solar power companies took a shine to the statement, which clears the way for federal regulation and came as a global climate summit opened in Copenhagen.  Now they’ll keep their eyes on Congress to act on future legislation.

First Solar’s chairman and former chief executive Mike Ahearn called the EPA’s move “an affirmation of the administration’s commitment to addressing climate change.”

“We look forward to a comprehensive legislative proposal next year that will provide a policy structure that combines putting a price on carbon emissions with rapid deployment of sustainable, non-emitting energy sources,” Ahearn said in an email.

SunPower‘s chief executive Tom Werner also applauded the move — with a nudge towards Congress.

“Today’s EPA announcement encourages Congress and governments worldwide to develop a schedule for addressing climate change by significantly lowering carbon emissions. SunPower is looking forward to helping ensure that, in the U.S., federal carbon legislation reduces carbon emissions by increasing the use of clean, renewable solar power,” Werner said in a statement.

(Photos: Chief Executive Officer of SunPower Corp Tom Werner speaks during the Reuters Global Energy Summit in New York. Photo credit: Brendan McDermid / Reuters)

Forest carbon schemes – new hope for the Amazon?

By Stuart Grudgings

In the tiny settlement of Boa Frente on the banks of a tributary to the Amazon river, bright blue butterflies flitting through trees and the constant squawks of parrots add to the feeling of a paradise on earth. The poverty endured by most of its residents quickly shatters that illusion, but environmentalists hope this village and 35 others in Brazil’s Juma reserve could be a model for saving the world’s greatest forest from destruction. This feature about the Juma REDD project, which stands for Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation, gives a fuller account of the issue. REDD projects, in which reserves in developing nations with forest like Brazil and Indonesia receive funds from rich nations looking to offset carbon emissions, have emerged as one of the few areas in which a strong deal is possible in the divisive United Nations climate talks in Copenhagen this month. My trip to Juma, which lies about an hour’s flight from Manaus city in Brazil’s vast Amazonas state, gave me an idea of how much is at stake as the seven-seater plane glided over a carpet of unspoiled forest that stretched to the horizon on every side. I also found that opinion is starkly divided over how to go about REDD schemes and whether Juma, whose backers include Coca Cola and hotel chain Marriott, is a desirable model. For the 320 families in the reserve, the benefits are already becoming clear. As well as a $30 monthly stipend for all families, Boa Frente has gained a smart new school with Internet access that stands in sharp contrast to the simple huts that residents live in.  If the REDD scheme takes off according to plan they could stand to gain $7 million a year by 2020 from carbon credit sales. That would go some way towards fulfilling a long-held truism of Amazon protection — that people will only stop cutting down trees when it becomes more valuable to keep them standing. Yet some environmentalists I spoke to back in Manaus were surprisingly critical of the project. One worried that such projects would create dependency among the families and do little to address what he saw as the main causes of their poverty — a lack of markets for forest products. Another head of an environmental group who has worked with river communities for decades said that Juma community leaders were being manipulated by the project and were losing their freedom. While REDD certainly represents new hope for preserving the Amazon and other tropical forests, there is a largely unheard debate over how they should best serve the interests of the forest dwellers who will have to live with them.

Travel agent scraps “medieval pardons” for emissions

A travel agent is ditching an offer allowing holidaymakers to pay extra if they feel guilty about the greenhouse gases created by their flights, saying it’s like selling “medieval pardons”.

responsibletravel.com said it was dropping carbon offsets from its website, bucking an industry trend of recent years.

Ever more airlines and travel groups offer customers the option of paying a bit more to plant trees in Africa, for instance, or to help build a wind farm in India to soak up greenhouse gases equal to those emitted by their vacations.

“We believe that the travel industry’s priority must be to reduce carbon emissions, rather than to offset,” said Justin Francis, managing director of the British-based firm.

“Carbon offsets distract tourists from the need to reduce their emissions. They create a ‘medieval pardon’ for us to carry on behaving in the same way (or worse),” he said.

The company said: “In 2002 we were the first travel agent to offer carbon offsetting, in 2009 we believe we are one of the first to stop offering offsets to customers.”

The firm said it agreed with environmental group Friends of the Earth that offsets were a “dangerous distraction”.  “Ultimately we need to reduce our carbon emissions. We can do this by flying less – travelling by train or taking holidays closer to home for example, and by making carbon reductions in other areas of our lifestyles too, alongside travel,” it said.

Beyond hybrid green technology – tribrids, quadbrids next?

This portable electric recharging device could be a lifesaver if you break you leg on a windswept mountaintop in the middle of the night and find that your mobile phone battery is dead when you try to call for help.

Of course that’s vanishingly unlikely (and not part of the official sales pitch) but the K3 is an interesting example of “tribrid” technology - using three sources of power. You can plug it into the mains electricity, it has tiny solar panels and a micro wind turbine … Going on sale in June for $99.95, it can charge cell phones, iPods or other electronic devices.

“The K3 allows anyone to charge their devices at any time, anywhere in the world,” said Tod Wagenhals, president of makers Kinesis Industries in Arizona.

Hybrid technologies – for instance cars using both gasoline and another power such as an electric motor – have taken off in recent years as part of efforts to cut greenhouse gas emissions.

So maybe tribrid cars are the next generation? You can bolt solar panels to the roof, for instance.

Add a small windmill or two and you have a “quadbrid” (or perhaps it might be called a ”tetra-brid”?) – see this link for an picture of a converted quadbrid Ford Escort.

So will tribrid or quadbrid technology catch on? Or is it just a complicated gimmick?

A scheme by any other name…

It was a discussion that would have made George Bernard Shaw smile. The British Nobel Prize-winning writer said America and England were separated by their common language.

Such was evident recently during a panel discussion at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills. The panel focused on the effort to limit carbon dioxide emissions by trading carbon credits, commonly called a cap-and-trade scheme, and creating such a system in the United States.

That’s the rub, said Elizabeth Kanna, a marketing professional who said that “scheme” is an awful choice because, for most Americans, it means something sinister.

“Most Americans don’t understand carbon. It’s a confusing subject,” said Kanna. “You can’t convince Americans it’s a good idea by calling it a cap-and-trade ‘scheme’. I know ‘scheme’s’ a bad word. In other countries ‘scheme’ is not a bad word but you cannot create a global market using a word like ‘scheme’ that doesn’t work everywhere.”

To the British, scheme means a plan of action. Scheme is also used often for programs at the United Nations, where its meaning is neutral. But to Americans, it implies a plan of action in an underhanded way.

In fact, both definitions are correct. U.S. dictionary Merriam-Webster defines scheme as “a plan or program of action; especially: a crafty or secret one.” However, it also gives another definition: “a systematic or organized configuration.” The Oxford English Dictionary gives similar definitions, including “a secret or underhanded plan” and “a systematic plan”

“We have to come up with a better word,” said Kanna, who lives in Sacramento, California. “Here’s a story to illustrate my point. In January, I was in New York. In the cabs now, they have the news on flat screen.  On the bottom of the screen, it said, ‘Madoff Ponzi Scheme.’ It was a new assessment of the money lost. Scheme. At the same time, the cab driver has on the news and they said ‘The cap-and-trade scheme was going forward in Washington.’ ”

State-by-state rules best for US carbon from cars?

President Barack Obama set in motion a process on Monday that may eventually allow California and other states to set tougher greenhouse gas pollution and efficiency standards on cars than those mandated by the federal government. 

 Obama’s move sends a signal to the world that the United States is beginning to join the rest of the developed countries to act on emissions blamed for warming the planet.

But some say allowing the states to take control of car emissions could lead to complications within the auto industry by forcing them make two sets of cars.  Consumers in California and as many as 18 other states would have to buy one set of cars built according to a set of guidelines and regulations and the other states would have another set of cars that are built differently.

Certainly U.S. car companies have fallen behind in making clean cars that consumers want and the federal government should push them to get on track. But are two sets of rules what the ailing car industry needs right now? 

Bill Bumpers, the director of the climate change practice at the law firm Baker Botts in Washington, D.C. doesn’t think so. “These are requirements that would be better off implemented on a national scale,” said Bumpers, who does not represent car companies.  He wonders if state-by-state regulations would add expenses for them to comply with the rules.

Many environmentalists have pushed for state-by-state regulation on emissions for exactly the reason that it could pressure companies to lobby for a federal solution rather than go through the headache of complying with a patchwork of regulations throughout the land.

How much electricity do you use in a year?

It was a disarmingly simple question but, embarrassingly, I didn’t have a clue when first asked that 18 months ago. Even though I’d have to describe myself as a genuine tightwad when it comes to expenditures, I simply had no idea, strangely enough, about how much money my four-person household was spending on electricity — nor how much carbon dioxide was being produced.

Now, after a year of carefully tracking the daily use of electricity, I’ve discovered a bit about when and where power is being used and, in theory, saved — without much pain. It seemed like a no-brainer and it honestly was not hard to cut our consumption by 1,000 kilowatt hours in 2008 to 5,000 kWh — saving about 200 euros and 500 kg of CO2 in the process. There were only minor sacrifices: rigidly turning off “standby” switches and unused lights, pulling plugs on little-used appliances, putting in energy-efficient lightbulbs, using the washing machine sparingly and the dryer only rarely, and replacing an inefficient dishwasher with a low-energy model.

In the past year, we used as little as 4 kWh on some days (in the summer) and as much as 30 on others (in the winter) — although most days were in the 10-to-17 range. Annoyingly, the house “wasted” about 3 kWh per day when we were away on holiday — largely due to the refrigerator, which I’ll be emptying and turning off next time. The 2008 total of 5,000 kWh (which amounted to an electricity bill of about 1,000 euros) isn’t bad for four people (one rule of thumb I’ve seen is 1,500 kWh per person/year) but I’m convinced that usage could be even less (the benchmark of 1,000 kWh per person/year is considered “thrifty”).

So the goal at home for 2009 is to cut electricity consumption by another 1,000 kWh (saving another 200 euros and 500 kg of CO2) to 4,000 kWh. Having a photovoltaic system on the roof (it produced 3,800 kWh that went into the grid) has helped wake me up to the mathematics and economics of power consumption and the goal of producing 100 percent of the electricity we need is now tantalisingly within reach. (The utility has to pay me 49 cents per kWh for the solar power I “export” into their grid while I have to pay 20 cents per kWh for the electricity I “import”.)

My wife was not exactly thrilled at first at my turning-the-lights-off crusade, which she saw as an unhealthy obsession rather than a good habit. But I was eventually able to win her to the cause. It didn’t hurt to promise her the “windfall” profits from the power savings. Saving another 1,000 kWh in 2009 won’t be as easy, I fear. A new A++ fridge (refrigerators are the real power guzzlers in most households) is at the planning stage and perhaps a new energy-saving washing machine, too. They aren’t cheap but they should pay for themselves through energy savings in the long run — and save a lot of CO2 in the process. Closely tracking the amount of gas for heating and diesel fuel used for the car in 2008 proved to be insightful as well: we cut both by roughly a third in 2008 by simply turning down the thermostat and driving less.

The electricity-saving habit (or obsession) might not be the magic solution to climate change. It also might not be as glamorous as high-tech solutions. Having seen myself how much electricity (and CO2) can be saved with relatively minimal disruption, it’s opened my eyes to how large the savings could be on a more global scale.