Category: The environment

Atmosphere, biosphere, lithosphere, hydrosphere, etc – everything about life and the state of this planet

Today’s poor versus everyone tomorrow

In Now or Never: Why We Need to Act Now to Achieve a Sustainable Future, Tim Flannery raises the question of intergenerational ethics and poverty reduction. He does so with reference to the 90,000 megawatts (MW) of coal-fired electricity generation capacity India is planning to install by 2012 (compared with 478,000 MW installed in China between 2004 and 2010). Flannery writes:

It is futile to tell Indians that they should defer development of power plants until cleaner technologies are available, so that we can spare unborn generations climate change. Why, Indians ask, should they penalize people living today for future, uncertain gains, and do this to help solve a problem that is not of their creation?

I do think there are good answers to those questions. For everyone to refuse to act is to create a suicide pact. Further, what we now know about greenhouse gases obligates us to take action in a way that ignorant previous generations didn’t have applied to them.

Also, if we continue on the world’s present course of unbridled emissions, it will not be abstract future generations that see the first massive consequences. Children born today may live to see the great icesheets of Greenland and Antarctica disintegrating in their lifetimes, alongside enormous other changes that are more challenging to predict.

All that said, Henry Shue makes an excellent point about sustenance versus luxury emissions. Even in an emergency, you sell the jewelry before the blankets. As such, the heavy discretionary emissions of rich places like Canada (things like foreign trips, huge inefficient houses and cars, etc) would be cut before Indian development, in any kind of fair world.

Given the choice between a fairer world that produces disaster, however, and a less fair world that gets the job done, the latter still seems preferable.

Electricity sources in Canadian provinces

As discussed before, one reason why it is so challenging politically to put a price on carbon is because there is large regional disparity in how energy is produced.

This chart – taken from part three of Canada’s latest National Inventory Report to the UNFCCC – shows how each province generates its electricity:

Clearly, it is easier for some provinces to make use of low-carbon options like hydroelectricity than it is for others. Also, much of that hydro capacity was built before policy-makers were seriously concerned about climate change.

That being said, the science is now very clear and the period in which people can justifiably claim ignorance about the climatic consequences of their actions is over. Places that made their energy choices before humanity was aware of all the implications of climate change can make a legitimate case for some adjustment time. That said, the defence of ignorance no longer holds and the clock on that adjustment time is ticking.

A pan-European electricity grid

Last month, The Economist made a convincing case that a pan-European electricity grid could help Europe move to a future more compatible with a stable climate:

This offshore grid is the germ of a big dream: a Europe-wide system of electricity highways. If it makes sense in the North Sea, it makes even more for wind and solar power from Spain and, one day, solar energy from the Sahara desert. And as well as Norwegian reservoirs, why not store power in existing Alpine valleys? This would reduce the need for more power stations to balance the spikes and troughs of renewables. Moreover if producers could trade energy over the grid in a single market, the benefits could be bigger still. European officials reckon energy savings of some 20-25% would be possible.

Such ideas have nostalgic appeal because the European Union was born from a move to pool energy sources in 1951 in the European Coal and Steel Community. These days the EU can be the community of wind and sun, not to mention gas and nuclear power. The trouble is that such dreams are not cheap. The European Commission this week said that €1 trillion ($1.4 trillion) of investment would be needed in the next decade. Most should come from the industry, but a chunk must also come from already tight public budgets.

They are wrong, however, to claim that rising natural gas consumption is not a major problem. Burning gas may be a better way to get a kilowatt-hour of electricity than burning coal, but both are unacceptable in a world where carbon dioxide concentrations are already dangerously high.

Europe’s improved grid should be connecting energy demand centres to diverse and disparate sources of renewable wind, solar, geothermal, and tidal energy – not perpetuating dependence on fossil fuels.

Energy flow from a gas pump

Here’s a statistic that does a good job of demonstrating just how energy-rich fossil fuels are:

An ordinary gas station gasoline pump transfers about 16 megawatts (MW) of chemical energy while operating. That’s about ten times the power output of the Grouse Mountain wind turbine. For any particular span of time, a nuclear reactor puts out about as much energy as 63 gas pumps.

Also, as mentioned before, a barrel of oil contains energy equivalent to the energy output of an adult human working 12.5 years worth of 40 hour weeks.

Ethics and CAPP advertising

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP) have a new advertising campaign for the oil sands that is all about personal credibility: the ads feature the faces, names, and signatures of oil company employees who argue that the environmental impact of the oil sands is manageable and shrinking.

Since CAPP made the ads personal in the first place, it seems appropriate to do the same and ask about the ethics of appearing in these ads.

Air pollution from shipping

This article from The Guardian makes an astonishing claim: Health risks of shipping pollution have been ‘underestimated’.

The article says that a single one of the giant container ships that transport much of the world’s freight emits as much air pollution at 50 million cars:

Cars driving 15,000km a year emit approximately 101 grammes of sulphur oxide gases (or SOx) in that time. The world’s largest ships’ diesel engines which typically operate for about 280 days a year generate roughly 5,200 tonnes of SOx.

The article refers to an American study that found that the world’s 90,000 cargo ships collectively cause 60,000 deaths per year in the United States, through air pollution. It also estimated the associated health care costs at $330 billion per year.

Reducing air pollution is one of the significant co-benefits that can accompany the replacement of fossil fuels with sustainable, zero-carbon sources of energy. At the same time, ships powered using fossil fuels could be made to emit fewer toxic chemicals by toughening the emission and fuel quality standards imposed on them.

A relentless rise

According to data published in Nature Geoscience, global carbon dioxide emissions fell because of the recession in 2009, though by less than initially expected. Now, they are increasing once again.

The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is now at 387.18 parts per million, about 34% above where it was before the Industrial Revolution. For the concentration to stop rising – and the climate to stabilize – net global greenhouse gas emissions must fall to zero.

Rail electrification and power transmission

Over on The Oil Drum there is an interesting article up on rail electrification in the United States, as a way to reduce the risks associated with climate change and the possibility of peak oil.

There are some appealing synergies that could be associated with electrified rail: in particular, the possibility of combining electric rail infrastructure with electrical transmission infrastructure. That could allow renewable projects in remote areas to be linked to the grid, as well as help with inter-regional load balancing. The more different kinds of renewable power you can combine, the easier it is to deal with intermittency. The same is true for using renewable energy sources from across a broader geographic area.

Ottawa solar power workshops

Ottawa may not be the most efficient place in the world to install solar panels, but locals trying to get off the grid may want to attend one of the solar energy information sessions recently mentioned on Apt613.

This is your chance to personally benefit from the feed-in tariffs in the Ontario Green Energy Act. That said, unless your house is already very efficiently insulated, making those improvements will probably do more for the climate per dollar invested than putting some solar panels up.