Yesterday Tony Hayward announced that he is stepping down and Bob Dudley will be the new CEO from October. It's a perfect moment to reinvent BP and invest in renewables and "Beyond Petroleum", the initiative started by Lord Browne.

Bob Dudley has some background experience in solar and wind, so the appointment could be promising.  

Even though the Gulf of Mexico leak has stopped (more or less), BP's woes have only started. The estimate of costs is about £20bn and the company is already planning to sell assets worth about that amount in the next year to prop up its balance sheet. With record losses, suspended dividends and uncertainty about its future, there's the additional Damocles sword of a huge appetite for litigation in the sourthern states, where many industries have suffered immense losses. BP can face lawsuits for loss of earnings from people from all walks of life, and until legislators draw a line and cap its liabilities, there will be huge uncertainty about the future of the company and the market is unlikely to react positively to that.

It's unfortunate that BP has been the punchbag of American politicians in the eve of the primaries in November, and Tony Hayward the "ass-to-kick" of choice of president Obama.

A company under such pressure is going to find it much more difficult to turn to the more challenging industry of renewable energy, and is more likely to stay firmly focused on oil and gas, its more profitable area of operation. Now it plans to exploit Canada's tar sands, a massively damaging operation from the environmental point of view, as this operation will result in approximately 3 times the amount of GHG per barrel of oil extracted than by conventional means. It should be deterred from pursuing this and other forms of risky exploitation.

BP briefly flirted with Beyond Petroleum with Lord Browne, but it has only invested £2.6bn in renewables since 2005, and Tony Hayward's reign was characterised by a return to oil, so the company has been firmly anchored in its traditional remit more than ever. BP's own forecast of expenditure in renewables is a mere £5bn by 2015, which is less than 25% of what the Gulf of Mexico spill will cost.

The figures are quite discouraging, but there is room for fundamental change. A turn to renewables will be a good PR coup for BP in the United States and it is likely to help it to cap its oil spill liabilities. BP can take the initiative to spend a further £10bn in renewables by 2015 in exchange of a deal with American legislators to massively reduce the oil spill bill and cap its liabilities vis-a-vis civil lawsuits and the like. The environment would benefit, and it would be a good solution for the company and for the US.

Mikel Susperregi

 

mikel@carbonica.org

The office of the Mayor launched this week the strategy for climate change adaptation. It is an online consultation initiative - you can give your ideas and have your say: www.london.gov.uk/climatechange

 

To watch the launch video clip click below

 

 

Copenhagen ended without an agreement but a lot of progress has been made, so we shouldn't be too discouraged.

For the first time ever, specific proposals have been discussed to fund REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) and there's widespread support from many countries to put a price on the preservation and rehabilitation of the rainforests, and to allocate funds to do so.

The "accord" presented (a five-page draft document presented by the UNFCC without specific signatories and certainly not ratified) contains a statement of funding REDD with up to $30 billion during the period prior to the expiry of Kyoto (i.e. 2010-2012) and setting up a "Copenhagen Green Climate Fund" that will put together up to $100 billion per year by 2020 to "address" the needs of developing countries.

This so-called accord is remarkably unspecific, but the explicit inclusion of REDD in all this is very good news.

The devil is in the detail and all of it is missing. It's not clear where this money is going to come from and how it's going to be spent, when and if put together, and in particular the REDD scheme needs a detailed protocol of verification and disclosure so that it achieves the right objective. We are not there yet.

This accord was put together in haste pressumably in the early hours of Friday morning and tweaked by world leaders during the day, and by all accounts it's a very sloppy document, containing meaningless statements such as the intention of keeping global warming under 2C (I am afraid we don't have such supernatural powers or control over the laws of physics). The Appendix contains a table of emission reduction targets for 2020 and it is tellingly blank. A statement of intentions that emission reductions would be worked out sooner rather than later during 2010 would have reassured the markets.

The first predictable reaction to this uncertainty has been a nose-dive in the price of carbon. The long term damage is that carbon markets are left to their own without any clear sense of direction.

Copenhagen has shown that the UN can always be counted on to mount a circus, and a very slow moving one. Perhaps this demonstrates that  serious climate change agreement can only happen outside of this framework.  After all, world leaders haven't taken this meeting seriously, only showing up in the last minute and trying to dash off a poorly structured document just to save face.

Actually one can say that we don't need the nearly 200 countries that took part in Copenhagen to agree on a consistent and strong climate change treaty. We just need to put together the top 10 emitters around a table and agree on specific emission cuts and the logistics -and  costs- of how to achieve them. The agreement will be global, but to be blunt, we don't particularly need to know the opinion of countries whose emissions are negligible - the emissions game has relatively few players. And more to the point, we certainly do not need the oil/gas rich countries to sit around the table determined to derail the talks, as has happened in Copenhagen.

The challenge in all this is to get the US to extricate itself from the financial interests of the oil industry. It is difficult. We already know that we will never persuade the likes of Saudi Arabia or Russia to support global decarbonisation and turn the taps off. Decarbonisation will only happen by addressing energy policy consistently and creating capacity for low-carbon energy, effectively reducing demand for fossil fuels as much as possible (the supply side is not something we can aspire to change).

Mikel Susperregi

With a few weeks to go to Copenhagen, participants are preparing the ground to accept a declaration of intent rather than a landmark agreement on climate change mitigation.  

A big meeting such as the one scheduled for December at Copenhagen is bound to produce few surprises.

For the last weeks and months, the environment ministers of the main GHG emitters have been holding talks, negotiating positions and recriminating one another, so at this stage everyone knows where they stand and what they are likely to expect.  We know that rich countries have little hope of meeting ambitious emission cuts without a complete rethinking of their energy policy, i.e. abandoning oil, gas and coal immediately and embracing nuclear energy with the urgency and determination of a military operation. There seems to be little sign of that.

We can't expect either promises of huge cash injections to developing countries to walk away from cheap coal and decarbonise their economies and avoid deforestation, particularly as most first world emitters are sinking faster than the Titanic under mountains of debt.

So the planets are aligned for everyone to look at each other, moan about all that and conclude that it can't be done.

The simple message will be diluted in the complexities of the background noise. There will be thousands of attendants representing hundreds of countries, including lobbyists, NGOs, activists, civil servants. All but the most high-profile key players will have very little visibility, although the majority of the participants will be there simply to be in the thick of it.  Politicians will be there to try to cut the best piece of the cake to suit their interests, or walk if they can't, NGOs to scream away their various messages, but the entire cacophony will be distilled in the simple conclusion that we are sleepwalking into disaster if we do not fundamentally change and reorganise our infrastructures, and particularly our energy production worldwide.

It is clear that something has to be done.

Kyoto expires in 2012 and a new treaty needs to be agreed to continue from that date. It now looks likelier than ever that 2010 will be a busy year for the main emitters to forge the agreement that won't happen next month.

 

Brunella

 

brunella@carbonica.org

 

The debacle over the sit-in at the Vestas wind turbine factory in Newport highglights the tug of war that renewables companies are facing with local communities in the UK and Europe.  

The "not in my backyard" mentality is pricing these companies out of the market.

Vestas decided to shut the plant earlier this month and issued a statement saying "The local planning process for the construction of new onshore wind power plants in the United Kingdom remains an obstacle to the development of a more favourable market for onshore wind power". "Since offshore wind power is still on a project basis, a large and stable market for onshore wind power is vital to secure a stable production flow."

I think that says it all.

Whilst obviously we all sympathise with those who lose their jobs, we have to accept that renewable companies need incentives to grow from a market at its infancy and they need all forms of help not hindrance. Vestas's workers would have a better chance of securing their jobs if instead of occupying the factory in question they demonstrated against the local authority and did a sit in at the Council's offices, demanding that dimwits in charge of planning applications up and down the country stop holding the renewables industry to ransom.

In order to move forward the commitment to renewables, the UK government needs to find a formula to override local authorities and allow wind power companies like Vestas to expand their operation without any hurdles.

Carbon capture experiments are meeting the same type of opposition in Europe. In an excellent article that we've cited today ("Public wary of carbon capture"), Joshua Chaffin in the FT describes how people in the  Netherlands are opposing a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) experiment with the fear that the CO2 stored underground could be a serious health hazard (if not fatal) if it's suddenly released into the air. Oil companies have been injecting CO2 in the seabed for decades and no one has paid any attention but now it becomes an issue when people feel CCS coal stations may be too close for comfort.

As it is, CSS experiments are running late and over budget, and no one seriously expects that they can deliver emission cuts for less than £20 per tonne. This is a crazy figure. One can plant so many trees for that amount and effectively capture via Nature's way many more tonnes of CO2 for the same amount of money, at the same time restoring forests and lifting communities out of poverty. With the opposition of local communities, unless governments take a tougher stance, there will be no chance to deliver any commercially realistic form of CSS on time.

 

Brunella

 

 

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The UN has given green light to two new generations of carbon offsets that will bring carbon reductions to a mass market in developing nations.

The panel that oversees the running of the UN's Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) approved in principle last week a substantial project that will deploy over 30 million compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs) in Mexico.

Details of the project can be found in www.unfccc.int.

The project is designed by energy efficiency project developer Cool nrg International and the CFLs will be distributed in phases over the next 2-3 years with the purpose of generating up to 7.5m offsets under the Kyoto's CDM scheme called Certified Emission Reductions (CER).

Each offset will account for the equivalent of one tonne of CO2 equivalent of greenhouse gas emissions.

CDM has been criticized for the high administration costs of rubberstamping the UN's approval. Trying to put together smaller projects that bring emissions reductions to significant numbers of people, such as energy efficient lighting schemes, is very expensive.

Under what is known as a programmatic CDM, developers deploy projects in unlimited numbers (in theory) providing each uses the same approved standards or methodologies from the outset. Therefore fees and redtape are kept to a minimum.

On the other hand, the UN also recently approved the the first agricultural methodology, or biological approach, for CDM projects. The UN’s announcement coincides with the USDA’s analysis report that shows the economic benefits to agriculture from the US cap-and-trade legislation.

The agricultural methodology, which will be used to design projects that eliminate the use of synthetic nitrogen on legumes like soybeans and cowpeas, was developed by Amson Technology LC, a greenhouse-gas-reduction and sustainability consulting firm, Becker Underwood Inc., a leading developer of bio-agronomic and specialty products and Perspectives GmbH, a Point Carbon company, a high-quality greenhouse gas reduction market solutions provider.

Carbonica very much supports these initiatives. We believe that they are very beneficial to developing nations, and they are pivotal in our global strategy to cut GHG emissions.

Brunella  

 

brunella@carbonica.org

 

 

All comments are welcome, will be immediately displayed and this forum is not moderated. Your feedback is appreciated.

The UK government announced this week the first ever carbon budget to cut emissions by 34% from 1990 levels by 2020. Electricity generated from renewables will go up from 9% to 31%.

Electricity generation is the biggest factor in our carbon footprint and it is essential to generate clean electricity in order to decarbonise the economy.

The disappointing element in the carbon budget is that the share of electricity generated by nuclear power comes down from 13% (at present) to 8% (forecast for 2020). From 2020 onwards it is expected that the share will go up with new nuclear plants being built which are now at a planning/drawing board stage.

Britain is rich in resources for wind and tidal energy generation. These are expensive to implement and notoriously unreliable and are unlikely to meet the UK's escalating demands in the next decades, as more household power demand is switched from gas to electricity and combustion motor vehicles gradually phased out in favour of EVs. In view of this, it is essential that all efforts are made to generate electricity in the cleanest possible way.

CSS is an exciting possibility and it's encouraging that developed countries are investing heavily on research to implement this technology (yet untried and untested on a commercial basis). When and if CSS is a reality, it will be the environmentalist's holy grail because we do have coal by the truckload to see to our energy needs for the next century, and so do China and India, who would greatly benefit from retrofitting their coal-fired stations.

However our surest bet at the moment in order to supply reliable and zero carbon electricty at a scale that we can comfortably predict we will meet all future demand is  nuclear power. Our capacity to generate electricity with nuclear energy must be dealt with urgently and the process of planning and building of nuclear stations should be accelerated as a matter of urgency. It is absurb to sit on our hands for over a decade until 2020 while our nuclear capacity is steadily eroded.

A dramatic increase of nuclear capacity can single-handedly deliver a 57% reduction of emissions by 2020, thus comfortably offsetting other emissions such as aviation.

Brunella

brunella@carbonica.org

 

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James Lovelock, the father of the Gaia theory, has just published a new book "The Vanishing Face of Gaia" available from the Carbonica bookstore for just £11.99 (compared to £20 at shops).

In a brilliant article "Nuclear lies are keeping you afraid" published on The Sunday Times (15 Feb 09) he tells us that far from being dangerous, only nuclear power can solve the food and energy crises ahead.

I couldn't agree more.

The developed world has shied away from nuclear energy because it has played to our worst fears. During the Cold War, we all feared a nuclear attack and life in the aftermath of a nuclear war in a contaminated and radioactive planet. It was a chilling and very real possibility. The Chernobyl accident reinforced our apprehension and the green movement successfully campaigned to turn governments away from nuclear research and energy policy has since been predominantly fossil fuel based for this reason.

At the time it seemed like nuclear energy was the new Prometheus' fire and it wasn't wise for us to play with it.

Obviously with hindsight it's now clear that by turning away from nuclear energy we have played a more dangerous game. Coal does not have the stigma of plutonium, but it is not any less deadly - it has single-handedly landed us where we are now, with the planet's future threatened with runaway global warming and total destruction due to excessive CO₂ emissions.

Even today it still difficult to show open support for nuclear energy. It can land you an immediate fatwa from even relatively moderate greens.

In the Sunday Times article Lovelock tries to make a point about the fact that polonium-210 was used by Russians in the murder of former spy Alexander Litvinenko in 2006 in London. He jokes (I think - or half-jokes? surely he can't be serious..) that the Russians chose this rather expensive, complicated and deliberately cruel manner of killing for maximum PR impact, in order to re-ignite our fears about nuclear energy, radioactivity, etc. The idea being that Russia's worst fear is that if we'd take on nuclear energy with gusto then they'd have no one to sell their gas and oil to.

That is obviously true, but I think Lovelock is being colourful by connecting this with the Litvinenko murder. The FSB (and earlier the KGB) has a long tradition of using poisons against their targets - radioactive or not. It's all in rather poor taste, but there's a very valid point buried there regarding the vital trade interests of the gas and oil producing countries.

It is very true that it is in the UK's best interest to regain energy self-sufficiency. And this can only be achieved (in the shortest timescale) with nuclear energy. It would achieve the double objective of providing reliable and cheap energy in sufficiently large amounts (as any back-of-the-envelope calculation can predict the demand will sky-rocket as we increasingly turn to electricity to reduce carbon emissions - one significant element will be the predominance of electric cars in future), and the second objective of meeting our emission reduction target of 80% by 2050.

In fact the UK should go further and lobby the rest of the world (and in particular the largest polluters) to turn away from coal and into nuclear energy in the shortest time possible.

Wind and solar power are interesting alternatives and they should be developed in parallel with a nuclear programme. However nuclear energy should be the predominant ingredient of our energy policy. Nothing else is realistic to meet the demand that we can anticipate, and to do so in a sustainable way.

 

Brunella Bell

brunella@carbonica.org

 

 

"The Vanishing Face of Gaia" is published on February 26 by Allen Lane (Penguin) and can be ordered following the link above.

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It is very disappointing that the expansion of Heathrow airport was approved last night at the House of Commons.

Under the plan, Heathrow will double the number of flights (by over 350 a day) and singlehandedly boost the UK's aviation emissions by 40%, contrary to the Climate Change Bill. So, how can Britain pretend to set an example and tell the rest of the world to reduce emissions?  

Given that under the Climate Change Bill overall emissions in all sectors must drop 80% (with respect to 1990 levels) by 2050, other aviation sectors will have to reduce their emissions by nearly 90% to offset Heathrow's growth. This obviously won't happen, in fact the contrary: we expect other airports will also grow and build additional runways. Therefore other transport sectors will have to compensate for this enormous increase, and it is not clear which. It is already very ambitious to aim for a 80% emissions cut. It is not realistic to achieve it allowing aviation to grow from the current levels unless we expect to have nearly full decarbonisation in our road and rail transport. But where are the plans for this?

The government's plans imply that the aircraft using the new runway will be greener within 10 years. This is almost comical. These aircraft do not exist and they are not even at the inception stage. No single large manufacturer of commercial aircraft has plans to carry out significant alterations of engine design to cut emissions dramatically. So where are these fabulous aircraft?

I am sure that they will come about in due course, but not as quickly as Heathrow's third runway, and the government should be transparent about this. It is not acceptable to approve the expansion of the airport with the condition that it is for use by greener aircraft, and then once the project is completed tell the public that regrettably it cannot be used by greener aircraft because they don't exist. We know this now, so the additional runway should not go ahead under this false pretence because we all know that it will be used by today's polluting and noisy 747's and the like.

Today we have selected an interesting item of news regarding electric airplanes ("Will Electric Planes Take Off?", 29 Jan 09). This is going to be a growth sector that is attracting some very clever investors, who in my opinion, can see where our future is. But you can see from the article that the state of the art with truly green aircraft is still at its infancy. These aircraft are very small and light and we might still be generations away from achieving the technological feat of flying commercial aircraft with electricity. Perhaps this will never be possible, unless nuclear energy is used, in which case it would be extremely expensive and not viable for commercial use.

Realistically we might be able to achieve light small commercial aircraft for short-haul routes. Perhaps hybrid models will come about for long-haul. Watch this space, as I feel this is the little corner for the truly visionary. Electric aircraft are an amazing challenge and it could be this century's big achievement.

Back to the present. The present of Rolls Royce engines, jet propulsion and air travel with dirty old fossil fuels. And that's where we are and that's where we will be in 10 years' time when Heathrow's third runway opens. And that means that the House of Commons has OK-ed Heathrow's carbon footprint to become positively astronomical.

Apart from the natural objection that this is going to cost the UK taxpayer £9bn for the benefit of a private company such as BAA, of course. I am a bit in the dark about distribution of stakeholding. Is the £9bn a grant to Spanish Ferrovial to increase their assets and recover a near monopoly position after the MCC has ordered them to sell two of the London airports to break their [badly-managed] monopoly?

 

Brunella Bell

press@carbonica.org

 

 

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George Monbiot writes in yesterday's Guardian ("The planet is now so vandalised that only total energy renewal can save us", 25/11/08) saying that to prevent runaway climate change we need a total decarbonisation of our economy. 

 This is correct. Emission cuts on their own will not deliver the mitigation of climate change that we need.

"Mitigation" is a widely brandished term to talk about how to combat climate change. We talk of a "mitigation model" to prevent our planet from warming, and usually this involves CO₂ emission cuts, in the hope that we lessen the damage we are causing to the environment. This is not the same as reversing it.

We can take the analogy of an obese person who is getting fatter and fatter every day because they eat 20 hamburgers a day. Telling them to cut their intake and eat 10 burgers a day instead, will help them decrease the rate at which they are putting on weight, but it will not be a recipe for slimming. If they are more drastic and cut their intake to just a few a day, that will bring them closer to a stable situation, but to reverse this and start slimming requires other ingredients in their life, such as physical exercise.

Our atmosphere has a concentration of greenhouse gases of 430 ppm in CO₂ equivalent, which is tremendously high, and very close to the threshold of 450 ppm that is widely accepted to be a point where climate change can begin to take a very dramatic turn. It is time to start slimming. Eating fewer burgers or cutting down our emissions will not do the job. Any threshold of CO₂ emissions, however low, is a form of environmental vandalism and adds to the already existing problem.

The high concentration of greenhouse gases is already retaining an excess of heat in our planet and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future (see our article on global warming).

Even if the UK's Climate Change Bill delivers the target of 80% emission cuts by 2050 and the world joins in with the successor of Kyoto (to be decided in Copenhagen next year) delivering the same level of cuts as the UK (which is very unlikely and over-optimistic), then all we will be able to say is that we have vandalised the environment much less than we would otherwise have done, but the problem of global warming in 2050 will still be much worse than it is now in any event, because during 4 decades of emission cuts there will be emissions nonetheless.

The crux of the matter is that to reverse the problem we must have negative net emissions. This means that our target must be to go beyond zero emissions, beyond decarbonisation and being simply carbon neutral, we must look into capturing carbon from the atmosphere on quite a gargantuan scale.

The world has lost most of its forests in the last century. Redressing the balance involves a reforestation process on a vast and fast scale, in order to dramatically increase the Earth's ability to capture carbon from the atmosphere. The UN's working group on Climate Change has suggested financial compensations to tropical countries who halt deforestation and illegal logging. This is encouraging but not strong enough. Deforestation must stop immediately and we ought to be putting all our financial resources on a very ambitious and long-term reforestation effort.

 

This week marks a historic breakthrough in climate change legislation, with the passing of the Climate Change Bill in the House of Commons. It is great news that the UK is now committed to a drastic reduction of 80% of greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. The bill is expected to become law before the end of the year, and it will be legally binding for future administrations to achieve this target.

The target of 80% is much more ambitious than the 60% that was discussed in previous versions of the Bill. The new Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Milliband, has shown vision and boldness by adopting recommendations from climate change scientists (such as Lord Turner's Climate Change Committee).

Britain now needs to engage with its European partners to achieve similar targets across the EU. This Bill must be an example for other countries to follow, otherwise its purpose will be futile. Climate change is blind to countries and boundaries, it is a global issue and as such we must engage with all countries to participate in achieving the same goals. Ultimately the UN must be the right forum to tackle this global issue. A partnership where one saves for a rainy day and the other is gambling it all away is doomed to failure.

The successor of the Kyoto protocol ought to be the roadmap for greenhouse emission cuts. However, it is likely to disappoint and soon become obsolete because in all likelihood it will not be bold enough. The climate is now right for national governments to break new ground, show vision and leadership and set an example to others by passing ambitious legislation.

Emission cuts are only part of the picture. They are an integral part of the mitigation model to combat climate change. Whilst we must work towards a low-carbon economy, global warming can only stop if the excess concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is removed. Even in the hypothetical case that our greenhouse gas emissions were miraculously slashed to zero today and our  societies were able to function with a zero carbon footprint, our planet will still continue to steadily warm up due to the excess concentration of CO2 (see our article http://www.carbonica.org/carbon-footprint/global-warming.aspx). But we are not even anywhere near this (a completely enviable situation compared to where we arenow), and we think that emission cuts, however dramatic, will do the job. They will not.

Carbon capture is the second vital ingredient of any mitigation model. Emission cuts and carbon capture must go hand in hand and legislation needs to reflect this if its goal is to achieve a sustainable future.