THE minister of environment and forestry, Jairam Ramesh has circulated a discussion note on climate change which is a significant departure from India’s basic positions on this issue and aligning it with that advocated by the US.
A careful reading of his discussion note makes clear that this is not “some flexibility in India’s stance” as he has argued in his press statement on this issue within India’s national consensus but an about turn. If the Indian government takes this position, it will not only be a complete betrayal of the people of this country but indeed of the entire developing world.
The argument that India should be with the G20 and not G77 has nothing to do with climate change negotiations – India emits only 1.2 tons carbon dioxide per capita as against the figures of the US 21 and 10 tons for the EU.
India is not on the same side as the club of the rich and any attempts to side with the rich countries will not signify any independent position but a capitulation to their continuing grab of the global carbon space. Even if India cuts all its emissions in the future, it will make no difference – its emissions are less than 5 per cent of total global emissions with 17 per cent of the world's population. Contrast this with the US - 22 per cent of all global emissions with about 4 per cent of the world's population.
Right To Development At Stake
The past record of the rich countries has shown that without concerted global pressure, they will refuse to take binding cuts and continue to endanger the globe. Yes, the emerging countries have some role in the solution to the global climate crisis even though they have not created the problem. But breaking the unity of the developing countries before Copenhagen will rank with India's about-turn accepting that Intellectual Property be introduced into the GATT negotiations of 1989.
The consequence has been the imposition of TRIPS and the iniquitous WTO order with its enormous adverse impact on the global poor. The climate change negotiations is not just about the environment but about India and the developing countries right to development. This is what is at stake here.
Let us look at what Jairam Ramesh suggests. His major points are that India should take a per capita plus approach and give up per capita convergence principle. It is important here to understand the difference between the continued emission of countries – the flow of emissions -- and the historically accumulated emissions of countries or the existing stock of emissions.
As CO2 decays very slowly, it is the stock of emissions emitted by the rich industrialised countries that today constitutes the major problem of the developing countries for their development. If we want to limit the rise of temperature to 2 degrees C with a 50 per cent probability, then out of the total 640 Gigatonnes (GtC) of the carbon budget available from 1800 till 2050, already 330 GtC been emitted and the rest 310 GtC will also be spent within the next 20-25 years at the current rate of emissions.
Out of this, the Annex 1 countries (or the rich industrialised countries) have already grabbed more than 77 per cent of the current stock of greenhouse gases, with a share of population that is less than 15 per cent of the world. The rest, including India and China have more than 85 per cent of the global population and have contributed only 23 per cent to the existing stock of GHG gases.
If we accept a per capita plus and not a even a per capita convergence approach, it means not only forgetting that the rich countries have already hogged most of the carbon budget, but also allowing them to grab the major part of what is left as well: allowing them a much higher carbon space from the future share of the developing countries.
If we want to take a more conservative figure, reducing the risk of a 2 deg C change to be within 75 per cent probability, our carbon budget for the future is only 190 GtC instead of 310 GtC taken above and we will run out of this very quickly indeed. The issue of future carbon space would become even more critical then.
Kowtowing To The US
What is the implication of asking everybody to reduce and not taking a per capita convergence approach? It simply means that while the rich countries continue on a high carbon path to meet their luxury consumption, we will have to immediately go in for a low carbon emitting path to meet even our subsistence needs. If they do not vacate some carbon space by drastically reducing their emissions, every developing country will have to pay a very heavy price to save the globe.
Just to put some numbers. A coal based plant can be put up for Rs 5 crore per MW and will produce electricity with a 80 per cent plant load factor. Using a low carbon - - solar route - the capital cost will be around Rs 20-25 crore per MW. But that is not all. Since the PLF is about 25 per cent for solar plants, we will have to install about 3-4 times as much – the capital cost for producing the same amount of electricity is about 12-15 times that using the coal route or a high carbon route! So choosing a low carbon per capita plus approach that allows the rich countries to continue with higher emissions will impose huge costs on the developing countries. That is why the fight for every bit of carbon space in the global negotiations.
Though the minister has now clarified that India’s per capita plus approach should be achieved through domestic legislation, arguing for accepting the Australian proposal of putting such domestic undertakings in a schedule is nothing but bringing binding obligations on both the developed and the developing countries. It is moving away from the Annexe 1 and Non-Annex 1 countries distinction and would effectively dilute the Kyoto and Bali consensus.
It is obvious that this is a move to placate the US, the only hold out amongst the rich countries from Kyoto. We cannot abandon positions agreed after decades of global negotiations merely to please the US. The argument in this context given in Jairam Ramesh’s discussions note that India should sign a climate change agreement with the US during the prime minister’s November visit and before Copenhagen will be a completely wrong message to the global community. The world will see this for what it is – India’s shift from a leader of the non-aligned movement and the G77 to a subordinate ally of the US.
Based on per capita entitlements, the rich countries owe the developing countries a huge carbon debt. This is not just a notional figure, but the actual additional burden that they will have to shoulder because of a lack of carbon space and the rich countries already hogging most of it. The demand that the rich countries make financial and technology transfers to developing countries is only a small reparation for this huge carbon debt. Unfortunately, Jairam’s discussion note’s argument for a more “nuanced position” on this may only end up by allowing the rich countries to renege on this debt.
We have no quarrel with the minister’s argument that India should work out a comprehensive climate mitigation plan and enact domestic legislation for this. The minister's advocacy of domestic action without linking it to the global negotiations would have some merit if all his suggestions were not in line with what the rich countries have been demanding from India – cut your emissions and take binding commitments.
The one domestic initiative that India can and should take does not figure in his list. This is enacting domestic legislation that any technology, which helps climate change mitigation can be compulsorily licensed similar to the provision for life saving drugs. This would make India (and the developing countries) transition to a low carbon path easier and would remove the double burden that the developing countries are being asked to pay. On one hand, we have to adopt high cost technologies for reducing emissions, on the other we have to pay monopoly prices to global MNC's to buy such technologies.
A Departure From The National Consensus
The problem with India's climate change negotiations is on par with its other negotiations – keep people in the dark and make major moves without transparency. Major decisions have been taken which already constitute a departure from the national consensus.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Heiligendamm had agreed that India's per capita emissions will never be more than that of the industrialised countries. This means that we will adjust our future flows only to their future flows and without any reference to their already very large stock in the atmosphere.
In Aquila, again, India in the G20 discussions agreed that it will remove all fossil fuel subsidies. Kerosene subsidy, the issue in question, is for a section of the population that produces hardly any emission. All this have been done without any national discussion. The minister's letter therefore should not be seen in isolation but as a part of a continuing strategy that India is following in its foreign policy – a steady drift towards the US.
The US has offered no concessions as yet in the global negotiations. They are arguing that the world must tear up all its previous agreements and simply accept what the US wants to do. In this scheme, there is no global compact called Kyoto, no common but differentiated responsibility and no historical emissions.
They have the lions' share of current stock of emissions and must continue to retain this share as the world cuts down future global emissions. Bringing the US into global negotiations on these terms would be nothing but an abject surrender to the US.
The minister's note also implies that since climate change will affect India more, we should take unilateral action. The experience of Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty shows that one sided agreements generate no pressure on the rich and the powerful. Unless the world stands up and says that the US and the club of the rich cut their emissions drastically, the world cannot be saved.
Unilateral action by India with its low level of emissions without linking it to binding emission cuts for developed countries would in no way solve the problem. Even a Nick Stern has talked of India and developing countries putting conditionalities on the developed world and forcing them to change their ways. A Jeffry Sachs talks about the need to lift all Intellectual Property Rights for climate mitigation technologies. It is indeed strange Indian ministers and officials speak in a completely different voice.
India’s climate policy must be founded on the development needs of the majority of its population and the needs of India’s future development. The minister's proposals in their current form are only a thinly veiled proposal to barter India’s energy and developmental future for a seat at the high table curtsy the US. This we must reject.
Prabir Purkayastha
Showing posts with label CO2 Emissions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CO2 Emissions. Show all posts
Monday, October 26, 2009
Monday, July 20, 2009
Global Warming: G8 Puts Cart Before The Horse
The G8 Summit at L’Aquila in Italy on July 8, 2009 was also the first annual G8 Summit since Barack Obama became US president after a campaign in which all presidential candidates promised to reverse the Bush-era US isolation on climate change and refusal to adopt a national policy of meaningful cuts in emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs).
This was followed by a meeting on July 9 with the G5 major emerging economies China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa and then a meeting with African leaders the next day focusing on Africa.
This so-called Heiligendamm Process, named after the venue of the G8 Summit in Germany in 2007, will apparently henceforth be called the Heiligendamm-L’Aquila Process. Why it misses the Japanese venue of Toyako where the G8 Summit was held in 2008 along similar lines, or whether names of every subsequent summit venue will keep being added on will remain one of those mysteries of international summitry.
In any case, the global economic meltdown and climate change dominated the first two days, the G8 discussing these issues first among themselves and on the second day with the G5, underlining the prevailing international hierarchy.
This shift in the national mood and in the balance of power within the US Congress, was also reflected in the recent passing of a US Climate Bill by a wafer thin margin by the House of Representatives putting forward, for the first time, national goals for GHG emissions reductions by the US which however fell far short of what would be required to stave off the looming climate crisis. There is also doubt whether the Bill will pass in the Senate and what form any joint Bill will take.
Against this background, and with the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen in December 2009 just around the corner, when a new post-2012 global agreement on climate is to be finalised, this Summit was expected to make substantial progress.
From the complete stalemate of a few months ago at meetings at Poznan and Bonn, some forward movement can be said to have been made at L’Aquila due partly to the new US position bolstered by passage of the Climate Bill.
However, again surely due to the US position on these issues, the L’Aquila Declaration targets for advanced countries still remain far below the requirement and fundamental issues of equity, funding and technology transfer are still to be properly addressed let alone resolved.
To top it all, the main points of the Declaration were pious and rather vague intentions regarding outcomes, not the robust mechanisms and milestones by which to achieve them.
Notional Goal
Much comment has been attracted by the statement in the Declaration of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, (i.e. G8 plus G5 countries) representing over 75 per cent of global GDP and GHG emissions, that these countries “recognise the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees C.”
True, this is the first time that advanced industrialised nations have collectively recognised that a temperature rise of 2 degrees C constitutes an important and dangerous threshold. But there are two major problems with enunciating this as the goal.
First, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long been warning that, given present levels of accumulated GHGs in the atmosphere due to failures in meeting Kyoto Protocol targets and given current and potential trajectories of GHG emissions by major economies, 2 degrees C rise in temperatures with grave consequences are almost inevitable in the medium term, i.e. in two to three decades, unless drastic measures are taken in the short to medium terms.
Second, while setting a goal of a maximum 2 degrees C rise may be laudable, this is merely an aspirational target, and will remain just a statement of good intentions unless it is spelled out how this objective is proposed to be achieved in terms of short and medium-term emission reduction measures. Minus the latter, this is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse without which the destination cannot be reached. As the old saying goes, the road to damnation is paved with good intentions!
On emission reduction targets, the MEF Declaration is curiously silent, even though the G8 industrialised countries meeting the day before set themselves some targets. But the G8 plus G5 together only state that they will “work between now and Copenhagen… to identify a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050.”
The fact that this Declaration contains no emissions reduction targets is a pointer to the gulf that still separates the developed and the developing nations. The latter were clearly not too impressed with the goals set by the G8 the previous day, and the G8 in turn were pushing the G5 to make their own emission reductions commitments. And yet, some new formulations in both the G8 and MEF Declarations should be noted for their positive as well as negative connotations.
G8 Still Holding Back
The G8 Declaration at L’Aquila called for reducing global emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 and, towards this end, also announced a “goal of developed countries reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in aggregate by 80 per cent or more by 2050 compared to 1990 or more recent years” (emphasis added).
IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report released in 2007 had called for stabilising atmospheric GHG concentrations at around 450 ppmv (parts per million by volume) and had stated that this would require global GHG emissions to start declining by 2015 and be less than 50 per cent of today’s levels by 2050, which would in turn require developed country emissions to reduce by 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by 95 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.
While the G8 target for global emissions in 2050 broadly corresponds to IPCC recommendations (qualifying clauses being discussed later), all other targets are far lower, with considerable significance for outcomes. The G8 targets, both global and for developed countries, are long-term ones, that is for 2050, with no medium-term targets for 2020 or 2030.
It is well known that if medium-term targets such as IPCC’s above are not achieved, GHG concentrations and temperature rise would have gone beyond the reach of the longer-term goals for 2050. In other words, the long-term goals mean little unless the medium term targets are achieved. The EU has been pushing hard for stringent emissions cuts by 2020, but again bowed before US pressure at the G8.
Why the US should have resisted shorter-term targets per se is unclear since the recently passed US Climate Bill too commits the US to interim targets. One possible explanation is that the US is still not ready to commit itself to a global Treaty and for its performance to be judged in an international forum.
The G8 obfuscation on the baseline year for these proposed emissions reductions has now become standard practice of the US and of all groupings in which the US is involved such as the G8, regardless of the stand of the EU or individual European countries like UK, Germany or France which favour strong interim targets against a 1990 baseline.
All IPCC recommendations too are for reductions below 1990 levels, which is the baseline set under the Kyoto Protocol. How much difference this can make can be understood from the fact that the US Climate Bill’s targets of 17 per cent reduction by 2020, 42 per cent by 2030 and 83 per cent by 2050, all relative to 2005, are equivalent to only 3 per cent, 33 per cent and 75 per cent reduction by 2020, 2030 and 2050 respectively below 1990 levels. (Incidentally, all these targets as passed by the House are for more reductions than proposed by president Obama at 15, 40 and 80 per cent respectively!) All this makes the desired outcome of restricting temperature rise to 2 degrees C that much less possible.
How toothless the G8 targets are was made abundantly clear by Canada immediately after the Summit. Canada, with one of the worst emissions records among developed countries, which has an already low target of reducing emissions 60-70 per cent below 2006 levels by 2050, pooh-poohed the G8 targets as merely “aspirational” and said that Canada saw no need to change its policy accordingly.
Developing Countries
The MEF Declaration issued jointly by the G8 and G5 countries allows the G8 obfuscation on medium-term targets and baseline years, notwithstanding the several additional clauses that are supposed to indicate the different thinking of the G5 and, by inference, other developing nations.
Thus, while endorsing the aspirational goal of limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees C and the mismatched long-term goal of the developed countries to reduce emissions by 2050, the MEF Declaration makes no mention of the important medium-term targets but only vaguely speaks of developed countries undertaking “robust aggregate and individual reductions in the midterm.”
The statement that the MEF countries would “work together before Copenhagen to achieve a strong result in this regard” inspires little confidence given the enormous leeway already conceded to the developed countries and the unwillingness to push them hard on the major issues.
Notably missing in the Declaration are any references to the responsibility of developed countries for historical emissions and therefore the necessity of these countries, following the “polluter pays” principle, making compensatory financial contributions enabling developing countries to adapt to climate changes and to adopt actions for mitigating GHG emissions.
Rather, the Declaration speaks in delightfully vague terms about such financial assistance and simply endorses a proposal by Mexico to set up a “Green Fund” without making clear the source of these funds. In fact, the Declaration merely says that “financing to address climate change will derive from multiple sources, including both public and private funds and carbon markets”, again avoiding the issue of the primary responsibility of developed countries in this regard.
Two formulations in the MEF Declaration are worthy of note. For the first time, the G5 has accepted that they “will promptly undertake actions whose projected effects on emissions represent a meaningful deviation from business as usual in the midterm” and that “the peaking of global and national emissions should take place as soon as possible,” implying that a capping of emissions from leading developing countries is now on the cards.
Regular readers will recall that these columns have been among the very few progressive and developing country voices, especially in India, that have advocated this position. However, we have argued that such a G5 position should be put forward conditional upon the developed countries committing themselves to deep emissions cuts along the lines recommended by the IPCC as well as to financial assistance and technology transfer to developing countries.
Given the absence of these latter in the L’Aquila G8 and MEF Declarations, the agreement of the G5 to slowing down rate of increase, then peaking and finally reduction of emissions may be seen as somewhat of a give-away.
A potentially significant new direction contained in the MEF Declaration, if sincerely meant, implemented and followed up, is that the G8 and G5 countries would “dramatically increase and coordinate public sector investments in research, development, and demonstration of these (transformational low-carbon, climate-friendly technologies technologies) with a view to doubling such investments by 2015.”
Emphasis till now, especially from the G8, has been on private sector R&D as well as on measures to protect the intellectual property rights (IPR) in this regard, which have been widely seen as working against the development and equitable spread of technologies leading to a low-carbon developmental trajectory.
In fact, even the L’Aquila G8 Declaration speaks of the “critical role of an efficient system of intellectual property rights (IPR) to foster innovation” and the development and diffusion of new technologies “particularly through the engagement and leveraging of critical private sector investment.” Who is bluffing, one wonders?
With all this waffling, the usual posturing by the developed countries and the yielding of ground by the EU on the one hand and by the G5 on the other, it is perhaps difficult to see where the global climate parleys will lead before, at and after Copenhagen. But reading the tea-leaves, some movement however small seems discernible from the total standstill of a year or two ago. Can serious negotiations begin now?
Raghu
This was followed by a meeting on July 9 with the G5 major emerging economies China, India, Brazil, Mexico and South Africa and then a meeting with African leaders the next day focusing on Africa.
This so-called Heiligendamm Process, named after the venue of the G8 Summit in Germany in 2007, will apparently henceforth be called the Heiligendamm-L’Aquila Process. Why it misses the Japanese venue of Toyako where the G8 Summit was held in 2008 along similar lines, or whether names of every subsequent summit venue will keep being added on will remain one of those mysteries of international summitry.
In any case, the global economic meltdown and climate change dominated the first two days, the G8 discussing these issues first among themselves and on the second day with the G5, underlining the prevailing international hierarchy.
This shift in the national mood and in the balance of power within the US Congress, was also reflected in the recent passing of a US Climate Bill by a wafer thin margin by the House of Representatives putting forward, for the first time, national goals for GHG emissions reductions by the US which however fell far short of what would be required to stave off the looming climate crisis. There is also doubt whether the Bill will pass in the Senate and what form any joint Bill will take.
Against this background, and with the 15th Conference of Parties (COP 15) to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Copenhagen in December 2009 just around the corner, when a new post-2012 global agreement on climate is to be finalised, this Summit was expected to make substantial progress.
From the complete stalemate of a few months ago at meetings at Poznan and Bonn, some forward movement can be said to have been made at L’Aquila due partly to the new US position bolstered by passage of the Climate Bill.
However, again surely due to the US position on these issues, the L’Aquila Declaration targets for advanced countries still remain far below the requirement and fundamental issues of equity, funding and technology transfer are still to be properly addressed let alone resolved.
To top it all, the main points of the Declaration were pious and rather vague intentions regarding outcomes, not the robust mechanisms and milestones by which to achieve them.
Notional Goal
Much comment has been attracted by the statement in the Declaration of the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate, (i.e. G8 plus G5 countries) representing over 75 per cent of global GDP and GHG emissions, that these countries “recognise the scientific view that the increase in global average temperature above pre-industrial levels ought not to exceed 2 degrees C.”
True, this is the first time that advanced industrialised nations have collectively recognised that a temperature rise of 2 degrees C constitutes an important and dangerous threshold. But there are two major problems with enunciating this as the goal.
First, the Inter-governmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has long been warning that, given present levels of accumulated GHGs in the atmosphere due to failures in meeting Kyoto Protocol targets and given current and potential trajectories of GHG emissions by major economies, 2 degrees C rise in temperatures with grave consequences are almost inevitable in the medium term, i.e. in two to three decades, unless drastic measures are taken in the short to medium terms.
Second, while setting a goal of a maximum 2 degrees C rise may be laudable, this is merely an aspirational target, and will remain just a statement of good intentions unless it is spelled out how this objective is proposed to be achieved in terms of short and medium-term emission reduction measures. Minus the latter, this is a classic case of putting the cart before the horse without which the destination cannot be reached. As the old saying goes, the road to damnation is paved with good intentions!
On emission reduction targets, the MEF Declaration is curiously silent, even though the G8 industrialised countries meeting the day before set themselves some targets. But the G8 plus G5 together only state that they will “work between now and Copenhagen… to identify a global goal for substantially reducing global emissions by 2050.”
The fact that this Declaration contains no emissions reduction targets is a pointer to the gulf that still separates the developed and the developing nations. The latter were clearly not too impressed with the goals set by the G8 the previous day, and the G8 in turn were pushing the G5 to make their own emission reductions commitments. And yet, some new formulations in both the G8 and MEF Declarations should be noted for their positive as well as negative connotations.
G8 Still Holding Back
The G8 Declaration at L’Aquila called for reducing global emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 and, towards this end, also announced a “goal of developed countries reducing emissions of greenhouse gases in aggregate by 80 per cent or more by 2050 compared to 1990 or more recent years” (emphasis added).
IPCC’s 4th Assessment Report released in 2007 had called for stabilising atmospheric GHG concentrations at around 450 ppmv (parts per million by volume) and had stated that this would require global GHG emissions to start declining by 2015 and be less than 50 per cent of today’s levels by 2050, which would in turn require developed country emissions to reduce by 40 per cent below 1990 levels by 2020 and by 95 per cent below 1990 levels by 2050.
While the G8 target for global emissions in 2050 broadly corresponds to IPCC recommendations (qualifying clauses being discussed later), all other targets are far lower, with considerable significance for outcomes. The G8 targets, both global and for developed countries, are long-term ones, that is for 2050, with no medium-term targets for 2020 or 2030.
It is well known that if medium-term targets such as IPCC’s above are not achieved, GHG concentrations and temperature rise would have gone beyond the reach of the longer-term goals for 2050. In other words, the long-term goals mean little unless the medium term targets are achieved. The EU has been pushing hard for stringent emissions cuts by 2020, but again bowed before US pressure at the G8.
Why the US should have resisted shorter-term targets per se is unclear since the recently passed US Climate Bill too commits the US to interim targets. One possible explanation is that the US is still not ready to commit itself to a global Treaty and for its performance to be judged in an international forum.
The G8 obfuscation on the baseline year for these proposed emissions reductions has now become standard practice of the US and of all groupings in which the US is involved such as the G8, regardless of the stand of the EU or individual European countries like UK, Germany or France which favour strong interim targets against a 1990 baseline.
All IPCC recommendations too are for reductions below 1990 levels, which is the baseline set under the Kyoto Protocol. How much difference this can make can be understood from the fact that the US Climate Bill’s targets of 17 per cent reduction by 2020, 42 per cent by 2030 and 83 per cent by 2050, all relative to 2005, are equivalent to only 3 per cent, 33 per cent and 75 per cent reduction by 2020, 2030 and 2050 respectively below 1990 levels. (Incidentally, all these targets as passed by the House are for more reductions than proposed by president Obama at 15, 40 and 80 per cent respectively!) All this makes the desired outcome of restricting temperature rise to 2 degrees C that much less possible.
How toothless the G8 targets are was made abundantly clear by Canada immediately after the Summit. Canada, with one of the worst emissions records among developed countries, which has an already low target of reducing emissions 60-70 per cent below 2006 levels by 2050, pooh-poohed the G8 targets as merely “aspirational” and said that Canada saw no need to change its policy accordingly.
Developing Countries
The MEF Declaration issued jointly by the G8 and G5 countries allows the G8 obfuscation on medium-term targets and baseline years, notwithstanding the several additional clauses that are supposed to indicate the different thinking of the G5 and, by inference, other developing nations.
Thus, while endorsing the aspirational goal of limiting temperature rise to 2 degrees C and the mismatched long-term goal of the developed countries to reduce emissions by 2050, the MEF Declaration makes no mention of the important medium-term targets but only vaguely speaks of developed countries undertaking “robust aggregate and individual reductions in the midterm.”
The statement that the MEF countries would “work together before Copenhagen to achieve a strong result in this regard” inspires little confidence given the enormous leeway already conceded to the developed countries and the unwillingness to push them hard on the major issues.
Notably missing in the Declaration are any references to the responsibility of developed countries for historical emissions and therefore the necessity of these countries, following the “polluter pays” principle, making compensatory financial contributions enabling developing countries to adapt to climate changes and to adopt actions for mitigating GHG emissions.
Rather, the Declaration speaks in delightfully vague terms about such financial assistance and simply endorses a proposal by Mexico to set up a “Green Fund” without making clear the source of these funds. In fact, the Declaration merely says that “financing to address climate change will derive from multiple sources, including both public and private funds and carbon markets”, again avoiding the issue of the primary responsibility of developed countries in this regard.
Two formulations in the MEF Declaration are worthy of note. For the first time, the G5 has accepted that they “will promptly undertake actions whose projected effects on emissions represent a meaningful deviation from business as usual in the midterm” and that “the peaking of global and national emissions should take place as soon as possible,” implying that a capping of emissions from leading developing countries is now on the cards.
Regular readers will recall that these columns have been among the very few progressive and developing country voices, especially in India, that have advocated this position. However, we have argued that such a G5 position should be put forward conditional upon the developed countries committing themselves to deep emissions cuts along the lines recommended by the IPCC as well as to financial assistance and technology transfer to developing countries.
Given the absence of these latter in the L’Aquila G8 and MEF Declarations, the agreement of the G5 to slowing down rate of increase, then peaking and finally reduction of emissions may be seen as somewhat of a give-away.
A potentially significant new direction contained in the MEF Declaration, if sincerely meant, implemented and followed up, is that the G8 and G5 countries would “dramatically increase and coordinate public sector investments in research, development, and demonstration of these (transformational low-carbon, climate-friendly technologies technologies) with a view to doubling such investments by 2015.”
Emphasis till now, especially from the G8, has been on private sector R&D as well as on measures to protect the intellectual property rights (IPR) in this regard, which have been widely seen as working against the development and equitable spread of technologies leading to a low-carbon developmental trajectory.
In fact, even the L’Aquila G8 Declaration speaks of the “critical role of an efficient system of intellectual property rights (IPR) to foster innovation” and the development and diffusion of new technologies “particularly through the engagement and leveraging of critical private sector investment.” Who is bluffing, one wonders?
With all this waffling, the usual posturing by the developed countries and the yielding of ground by the EU on the one hand and by the G5 on the other, it is perhaps difficult to see where the global climate parleys will lead before, at and after Copenhagen. But reading the tea-leaves, some movement however small seems discernible from the total standstill of a year or two ago. Can serious negotiations begin now?
Raghu
Friday, July 17, 2009
Global Warming: Trapping Carbon Dioxide Or Switching To Nuclear Power Not Enough To Solve Problem
While politicians talk of investing heavily in so-called ‘clean coal’ technologies, building a new generation of fossil fuel power plants, sequestering carbon dioxide and trapping the greenhouse gas deep underground as at the recent G8 Summit at L'Aquila in Italy, two Swedish scientists argue that this will have little effect on global warming.
They argue that attempting to tackle climate change by trapping carbon dioxide or switching to nuclear power will not solve the problem of global warming, according to energy calculations published in the July issue of the International Journal of Global Warming.
Environmental engineers and renewable energy experts Bo Nordell and Bruno Gervet of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden have calculated total energy emissions from the late 19th century to the present day, and say that using the increase in average global air temperature as a measure of global warming does not account for observed climate change. We must also take into account the total energy contained in the ground, ice sheets and oceans in order to accurately model climate change.
They have worked out that using the increase in average global air temperature as a measure of global warming is an inadequate measure of climate change. They suggest that scientists must also take into account the total energy of the ground, ice masses and the seas if they are to model climate change accurately.
According to Nordell and Gervet’s calculations, heat energy accumulated in the atmosphere corresponds to only 6.6% of global warming. The rest is stored in the ground (31.5%), melting ice (33.4%) and sea water (28.5%). They point out that net heat emissions between the industrial revolution circa 1880 and the modern era at 2000 correspond to almost three quarters of the accumulated heat, i.e., global warming, during that period. The missing heat is due to the greenhouse effect, natural variations in climate and/or an underestimation of net heat emissions, the researchers say.
Their calculations suggest that most measures to combat global warming - such as the widely reported remarks of former US vice president and author of the much acclaimed book 'An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It', Al Gore - of reducing our reliance on burning fossil fuels and switching to renewables like wind power and solar energy, will ultimately help in preventing catastrophic climate change in the long term.
But the same calculations also show that trapping carbon dioxide, so-called carbon dioxide sequestration, and storing it deep underground or on the sea floor will have very little effect on global warming.
“Since net heat emissions accounts for most of the global warming there is no or little reason for carbon dioxide sequestration,” Nordell explains, “The increasing carbon dioxide emissions merely show how most net heat is produced.”
The “missing” heat, 26%, is due to the greenhouse effect, natural variations in climate and/or an underestimation of net heat emissions, the researchers say. These calculations are actually rather conservative, the researchers say, and the missing heat may be much less.
The total energy argument also deals a heavy blow to the case for nuclear power. Nuclear fission may not produce carbon dioxide in the same way and at the same level as burning fossil fuels, but according to Nordell it does produce heat emissions equivalent to three times the energy of the electricity it generates and so contributes to global warming significantly, Nordell adds.
However, Nordell’s focus on ‘thermal pollution’ has been subject to some intense criticism in recent years. Its detractors say that the approach contradicts decades of previous research, and even violates basic physical principles. For example, citing the Stefan-Boltzmann law that governs thermal radiation by idealised ‘black bodies’, atmospheric physicists Jörg Gumbel and Henning Rodhe claim that thermal pollution is a hundred times smaller than anthropogenic climate forcing due to greenhouse gases.
Nordell is having none of this, and insists that the net outgoing heat radiated by the planet since 1880 is greater than the geothermal heat flow, which until then had been the major heat source. This, he says, points to heat from the global use of non-renewable energy sources as being the major cause of global warming.
This argument will no doubt continue, and whoever is proved to be right, if anyone, the scholarly row is driving some very useful research on heat emissions in industrialised societies and their effect on the environment. We should expect to see revisions in the figures as models are improved and more data are collected.
(Courtesy: Francis Sedgemore)
They argue that attempting to tackle climate change by trapping carbon dioxide or switching to nuclear power will not solve the problem of global warming, according to energy calculations published in the July issue of the International Journal of Global Warming.
Environmental engineers and renewable energy experts Bo Nordell and Bruno Gervet of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Luleå University of Technology in Sweden have calculated total energy emissions from the late 19th century to the present day, and say that using the increase in average global air temperature as a measure of global warming does not account for observed climate change. We must also take into account the total energy contained in the ground, ice sheets and oceans in order to accurately model climate change.
They have worked out that using the increase in average global air temperature as a measure of global warming is an inadequate measure of climate change. They suggest that scientists must also take into account the total energy of the ground, ice masses and the seas if they are to model climate change accurately.
According to Nordell and Gervet’s calculations, heat energy accumulated in the atmosphere corresponds to only 6.6% of global warming. The rest is stored in the ground (31.5%), melting ice (33.4%) and sea water (28.5%). They point out that net heat emissions between the industrial revolution circa 1880 and the modern era at 2000 correspond to almost three quarters of the accumulated heat, i.e., global warming, during that period. The missing heat is due to the greenhouse effect, natural variations in climate and/or an underestimation of net heat emissions, the researchers say.
Their calculations suggest that most measures to combat global warming - such as the widely reported remarks of former US vice president and author of the much acclaimed book 'An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It', Al Gore - of reducing our reliance on burning fossil fuels and switching to renewables like wind power and solar energy, will ultimately help in preventing catastrophic climate change in the long term.
But the same calculations also show that trapping carbon dioxide, so-called carbon dioxide sequestration, and storing it deep underground or on the sea floor will have very little effect on global warming.
“Since net heat emissions accounts for most of the global warming there is no or little reason for carbon dioxide sequestration,” Nordell explains, “The increasing carbon dioxide emissions merely show how most net heat is produced.”
The “missing” heat, 26%, is due to the greenhouse effect, natural variations in climate and/or an underestimation of net heat emissions, the researchers say. These calculations are actually rather conservative, the researchers say, and the missing heat may be much less.
The total energy argument also deals a heavy blow to the case for nuclear power. Nuclear fission may not produce carbon dioxide in the same way and at the same level as burning fossil fuels, but according to Nordell it does produce heat emissions equivalent to three times the energy of the electricity it generates and so contributes to global warming significantly, Nordell adds.
However, Nordell’s focus on ‘thermal pollution’ has been subject to some intense criticism in recent years. Its detractors say that the approach contradicts decades of previous research, and even violates basic physical principles. For example, citing the Stefan-Boltzmann law that governs thermal radiation by idealised ‘black bodies’, atmospheric physicists Jörg Gumbel and Henning Rodhe claim that thermal pollution is a hundred times smaller than anthropogenic climate forcing due to greenhouse gases.
Nordell is having none of this, and insists that the net outgoing heat radiated by the planet since 1880 is greater than the geothermal heat flow, which until then had been the major heat source. This, he says, points to heat from the global use of non-renewable energy sources as being the major cause of global warming.
This argument will no doubt continue, and whoever is proved to be right, if anyone, the scholarly row is driving some very useful research on heat emissions in industrialised societies and their effect on the environment. We should expect to see revisions in the figures as models are improved and more data are collected.
(Courtesy: Francis Sedgemore)
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