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Tag: co2

Australia’s bushfires have pumped out half a year’s CO2 emissions.

Posted on by dishanth
Australia’s bushfires have pumped out half a year’s CO2 emissions.
  • Australian CO2 emissions have surged by 250 million tonnes as a result of bushfires in New South Wales and Queensland.
  • Vegetation vital for absorbing CO2 is being destroyed by the blazes.
  • Experts say climate change is increasing the frequency and severity of the fires.

The east coast of Australia is burning. And as bushfires rip through everything in their path, they are generating CO2 emissions that pose a long-term threat to the world.

NASA data, supplied to Guardian Australia, shows that since August fires in New South Wales and Queensland have increased Australia’s annual emissions by 250 million tonnes – that’s half the country’s total emissions in 2018.

Australia is in the grip of a severe heatwave, with forecasters predicting the country’s highest-ever temperature of 50.7°C could soon be exceeded.

 

Temperatures around Australia.
Image: Australian Government Bureau of Meteorology

 

So far, the fires have killed six people, destroyed hundreds of homes, and consumed 2.7 million hectares of countryside, wiping out plant life that is vital for absorbing future CO2 emissions. The cost of the damage has already reached $100 million.

 

Air quality

More than 2,000 firefighters have been tackling the bushfires but fire chiefs say a prolonged drought has made the task much harder.

 

Bushfire at Mount Tomah, New South Wales in December 2019.
Image: Reuters

 

Sydney has recorded air quality 22 worse than standard levels as bushfire smoke has created a smog that has caused respiratory problems for residents. Actor Sam Neill reported smelling the fires at 39,000 feet while his flight was still hundreds of miles from Sydney.

 

 

Bushfires are common in this region of Australia during the summer and autumn, but this year the blazes have arrived early and with unexpected ferocity. The country’s Bureau of Meteorology says climate change is influencing the frequency and severity of dangerous fires.

 

Smog caused by bushfires in the Blue Mountains envelops Sydney.
Image: REUTERS/Stephen Coates

 

The extreme weather has prompted renewed calls for climate action by the Australian government. In response to the crisis, New South Wales is reported to be planning new climate targets, reducing emissions by 35% by 2030, compared to a national target of a 26% cut.

 

Tackling climate change

Australia was ranked 43rd out of 115 nations in the World Economic Forum’s 2019 Energy Transition Index because of its heavy dependence on coal for electricity generation.

However, there are ambitious plans to harness the country’s abundant sunshine to generate renewable energy for export. Plans have been announced to build a huge solar farm, covering 15,000 hectares in the Northern Territory, to supply power to Singapore.

 

Burnt-out cars left behind by the Australian bushfires.
Image: Reuters/Darren Pateman

 

In the Pilbara region of Western Australia an even larger green energy project is under way. The Asian Renewable Energy Hub plans to use wind combined with solar to generate up to 15 gigawatts of electricity at what backers say will be the world’s biggest wind/solar hybrid site.

By greening its industries and becoming a major exporter of renewable energy, Australia would be able to reduce its carbon emissions which, including its coal, oil and gas exports, now account for 5% of the global total.

 

 

Written by

Douglas Broom, Senior Writer, Formative Content

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Successful carbon removal depends on these 3 conditions.

Posted on by dishanth
Successful carbon removal depends on these 3 conditions.

There is now more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than at any time in the past 400,000 years, with carbon dioxide levels exceeding an unprecedented 400 parts per million.

The pace of carbon emissions has become such a problem that even if we can meet the carbon reduction targets set out in the 2016 Paris Agreement, global temperatures will likely rise above 1.5˚C by 2030 – which will increase the risks and impacts of droughts, floods, extreme heat, and poverty for hundreds of millions of people.

Fortunately, growing international pressure over the past decade has led to the development of solutions for tackling our carbon emissions problem. One category of these solutions is known as negative emission technologies (NETs), which focus on removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

These carbon-removal solutions may be critical in our fight against climate change, but they need to meet certain conditions to effectively curb carbon emissions.

 

Ensuring long-term capture and storage of carbon removed

Professor Howard J. Herzog, Senior Research Engineer at the MIT Energy Initiative and leading expert on carbon capture and storage, says: “the best way to keep carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere is not putting it there in the first place”. There is truth in this when you consider how difficult it is recapturing and storing carbon dioxide for the long term, when it has already been emitted.

Nature provides the simplest carbon removal solution – planting more trees. This is an effective solution depending on how well the land is managed to protect from deforestation and natural disasters. If not protected, trees may only store carbon for hundreds of years, compared to the thousands of years needed to slow climate change.

Alternatively, technologists have found ways to burn biomass containing naturally recaptured carbon dioxide and use the energy released to pump the carbon dioxide underground for long-term storage. Known technically as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), this technology is promising but requires suitable rock formations such as basalt and forsterite to react with the carbon dioxide to avoid leakage.

Carbon Upcycling Technologies, an innovative startup founded by Apoorv Sinha, is combining carbon dioxide with fine particles such as fly ash, graphite, talc and olivine to produce solid nanoparticles that can be used for a range of material solutions. In 2017, Carbon Upcycling Technologies used its nanoparticles to create a corrosion-resistant coating, locking carbon away and generating revenues in the process.

 

Reducing carbon removal costs and meeting carbon storage capacities

The cost and storage capacity limits of removing carbon differ depending on the solution. Planting trees is arguably the cheapest and most natural way to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, but its storage capacity is limited by the available land and impacted by deforestation.

Similarly to how solar power requires sunshine, carbon removal solutions also require certain conditions to work effectively. If certain conditions are not met, the full carbon capture capacity of these technologies cannot be realized.

A 2017 Michigan study optimistically suggests that carbon removal solutions have the potential to mitigate 37 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year, where annual emissions are roughly 38 gigatons of carbon dioxide per year. However, even if this were the case, reaching this storage potential would require a portfolio of solutions with carbon capture costs lower than traditional storage or emissions. Technological solutions are making progress – but investment and time are still required to reduce carbon removal costs and to scale-up the adoption of these solutions.

A Swiss-company, Climeworks, has constructed a plant which extracts carbon dioxide directly from the air using a filter and chemical process, storing carbon dioxide as a concentrate. Technologies like these are known as Direct Air Carbon Capture and Storage (DACCS). Despite the novelty of this idea, Climeworks’ plant in Italy can only capture up to 150 tons of carbon dioxide per year from the atmosphere, equivalent to taking just 32 cars off the road. Combined with high capital and carbon removal costs, solutions like these alone are not sufficient.

 

Reducing the market and technology risks of carbon removal solutions

Most carbon removal solutions are still in development, and it may take years for them to commercialize. The pathway to commercialization requires large investments into research and development without guarantees of financial return. This may not fit the risk profiles of many traditional investors or funders, limiting the available funds for the development of new solutions.

Cyclotron Road, an early-stage funder and incubator, provides grant and investment capital to innovative hard-tech social enterprises. Robert Ethier, a former investment director for Cyclotron Road, says this capital is “to help them reduce market and technology risk [and] accelerate them to commercialization [by] leveraging programmes and partners”.

At an early stage, risk-tolerant patient capital, invested into the right social entrepreneurs and provided with the right business and industry support, is critical to speed up the development of carbon removal solutions. This means that funders with higher risk tolerance – such as incubators, accelerators, philanthropists, international agencies, governments, academic institutions and angel investors – have a critical role to play a in providing the capital needed to commercialize carbon removal technologies.

 

So what?

There is a growing portfolio of carbon removal technologies, including those gifted by nature. Although in different stages of development, carbon removal solutions have the potential to serve as a necessary defense against pending climate catastrophe, but cannot serve as an insurance policy for the carbon dioxide we are emitting, and will emit.

Carbon removal technologies must be combined with other solutions and global efforts to reduce global carbon emissions. However, knowing that there are nascent solutions available should motivate the development, cost-reduction and scaling-up of these solutions. The future of the world depends on it.

 

 

Written by

Neil Yeoh, Global Shaper, New York II Hub

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.

Climate change: Greenhouse gas concentrations again break records!

Posted on by dishanth
Climate change: Greenhouse gas concentrations again break records!

Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases once again reached new highs in 2018.

The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) says the increase in CO2 was just above the average rise recorded over the last decade.

Levels of other warming gases, such as methane and nitrous oxide, have also surged by above average amounts.

Since 1990 there’s been an increase of 43% in the warming effect on the climate of long lived greenhouse gases.

The WMO report looks at concentrations of warming gases in the atmosphere rather than just emissions.

The difference between the two is that emissions refer to the amount of gases that go up into the atmosphere from the use of fossil fuels, such as burning coal for electricity and from deforestation.

Concentrations are what’s left in the air after a complex series of interactions between the atmosphere, the oceans, the forests and the land. About a quarter of all carbon emissions are absorbed by the seas, and a similar amount by land and trees.

Using data from monitoring stations in the Arctic and all over the world, researchers say that in 2018 concentrations of CO2 reached 407.8 parts per million (ppm), up from 405.5ppm a year previously.

This increase was above the average for the last 10 years and is 147% of the “pre-industrial” level in 1750.

The WMO also records concentrations of other warming gases, including methane and nitrous oxide. About 40% of the methane emitted into the air comes from natural sources, such as wetlands, with 60% from human activities, including cattle farming, rice cultivation and landfill dumps.

Methane is now at 259% of the pre-industrial level and the increase seen over the past year was higher than both the previous annual rate and the average over the past 10 years.

Nitrous oxide is emitted from natural and human sources, including from the oceans and from fertiliser-use in farming. According to the WMO, it is now at 123% of the levels that existed in 1750.

Last year’s increase in concentrations of the gas, which can also harm the ozone layer, was bigger than the previous 12 months and higher than the average of the past decade.

What concerns scientists is the overall warming impact of all these increasing concentrations. Known as total radiative forcing, this effect has increased by 43% since 1990, and is not showing any indication of stopping.

 

deforestationImage copyright:GETTY IMAGES

 

“There is no sign of a slowdown, let alone a decline, in greenhouse gases concentration in the atmosphere despite all the commitments under the Paris agreement on climate change,” said WMO Secretary-General Petteri Taalas.

“We need to translate the commitments into action and increase the level of ambition for the sake of the future welfare of mankind,” he added.

“It is worth recalling that the last time the Earth experienced a comparable concentration of CO2 was three to five million years ago. Back then, the temperature was 2-3C warmer, sea level was 10-20m higher than now,” said Mr Taalas.

The UN Environment Programme will report shortly on the gap between what actions countries are taking to cut carbon and what needs to be done to keep under the temperature targets agreed in the Paris climate pact.

Preliminary findings from this study, published during the UN Secretary General’s special climate summit last September, indicated that emissions continued to rise during 2018.

Both reports will help inform delegates from almost 200 countries who will meet in Madrid next week for COP25, the annual round of international climate talks.

Follow Matt on Twitter @mattmcgrathbbc.

 

Air monitoringImage copyright: GETTY IMAGES
Air monitoring stations like this one in Switzerland

 

 

By Matt McGrath

Environment correspondent