Feed aggregator

Non-binding vote for 55% cut in CO2 emissions will require closure of remaining five plants and ensure country meets its Paris climate commitments

The Dutch parliament has voted for a 55% cut in CO2 emissions by 2030, which would require the closure of all the country’s coal-fired power plants.

The unexpected vote on Thursday night by 77 to 72 would bring the Netherlands clearly into line with the Paris climate agreement, with some of the most ambitious climate policies in Europe.

Continue reading...

Expansion of fossil fuel extraction amounts to ‘climate denial’, says thinktank Oil Change International, but observers argue some additional oil and gas could be safe. Climate Home reports

The world’s working coal mines and oil and gas fields contain enough carbon to push the world beyond the threshold for catastrophic climate change, according to a report released on Thursday.

If all the existing fuel were to be burned, projects currently operating or under construction could be expected to release 942Gt CO2, said the report by US-based thinktank Oil Change International (OCI).

Continue reading...

The week’s top environment news stories and green events. If you are not already receiving this roundup, sign up here to get the briefing delivered to your inbox

Continue reading...

Norway’s recent decision to destroy 70% of its tiny endangered population of wolves shocked conservationists worldwide and saw 35,000 sign a local petition. But in a region dominated by sheep farming support for the cull runs deep

Conservation groups worldwide were astonished to hear of the recent, unprecedented decision to destroy 70% of the Norway’s tiny and endangered population of 68 wolves, the biggest cull for almost a century.

But not everyone in Norway is behind the plan. The wildlife protection group Predator Alliance Norway, for example, has campaign posters that talk of wolves as essential for nature, and a tourist attraction for Norway.

Continue reading...

There are currently over 60 major hydroelectric dam projects in the Amazon. The third largest project is the Belo Monte on the Xingu River, Brazil, which has already displaced 20,000 indigenous and riverine people. Aaron Vincent Elkaim documents the story of the Munduruku tribe, who are fighting against the industrialisation of this region

Continue reading...

Researchers on north-west coast of Alaska startled to discover Caspian terns an incredible 1,000 miles further north than species had been previously recorded

Eyebrows would be raised if American crocodiles, found on the southern tip of Florida, decided to relocate to New York’s Fifth Avenue or Moroccan camels suddenly joined the tourist throng outside Buckingham Palace in London. Yet this is the scale of species shift that appears to be under way in Alaska.

In July, researchers in Cape Krusenstern national monument on the north-west coast of Alaska were startled to discover a nest containing Caspian terns on the gravelly beach of a lagoon. The birds were an incredible 1,000 miles further north than the species had been previously recorded.

Continue reading...

Making the accord legally binding is not enough to guarantee the world keeps warming within agreed limits. That will take much more - not least ending our reliance on fossil fuels

In a rare show of international unity, more than 30 countries this week declared their plans to translate into national laws the Paris agreement on climate change.

As a result, by the end of this year, or soon after, the accord should come into effect and become binding under international law.

Continue reading...

Sean Dooley is an author, the Editor of Australian Birdlife Magazine, a bird-watcher and a keen tweeter.

Flu carried by migratory birds poses a risk to penguins living in Antarctica, scientists warn.

Marshwood Vale, Dorset Workers grab their prey in flight, and dismember it, discarding all but the meaty thorax before returning to the nest

On the way upstairs, I hear a deep, droning buzz, loud as a distant engine. Then the sound of crashing as something collides weightily with the lampshade. Sudden silence. Where has it gone? Ah, there she is, resting on the wall by the bed, banded abdomen poised and pulsing, brown legs spread, one antenna delicately patting the wallpaper. Vespa crabro vexator, the European hornet subspecies found south of a line running from the Severn to the Wash.

Unlike bees and wasps, hornets fly both day and night, preying on moths and insects. They are attracted to light and, if we leave the bedroom window open on warm autumn evenings, they tumble inside. We have to turn off the exterior sensor-activated security light completely, otherwise it will be on all night as they dive-bomb the bulb, their bright bodies illuminated gold like sparks from a bonfire.

Continue reading...

Consumer advocates stunned by energy rule-maker that vetoes a proposal that could encourage local generation and storage, and save more than a billion dollar. They accuse the rule-maker of being stubborn and out of touch, and not for the first time.

A report in the Financial Times claims that Apple is negotiating a possible purchase of McLaren Technology Group.

Survey finds households wasting up to $1,100 of food each year with problem worst in capital cities

Australians waste $10bn of food annually with “excitable” Generation Y consumers the worst offenders, according to a new report.

The RaboDirect Financial Health Barometer 2016 Food and Farming Report found that households wasted up to $1,100 worth of food each year, or 14% of their weekly groceries, with one in four Gen Y consumers saying they threw out up to 20% of their weekly groceries.

Continue reading...

The failure of a gas generator in Western Australia affected more people for a longer period than an outage in South Australia last year. So where were the Murdoch headlines?

The preliminary results are in for a national citizen science project looking into which bird species are visiting backyard bird feeders.

Australia’s offshore petroleum industry regulator is set to rule next week whether to grant oil giant BP’s application to drill in the Great Australian Bight.

But BP’s environmental plan, released last week, suggests that the company’s proposed plan for dealing with a blowout displays less urgency than would be expected in some other parts of the world.

If a blowout does occur, BP proposes to cap it with a piece of equipment known as a capping stack. These devices did not exist at the time of BP’s Gulf of Mexico blowout in 2010, when a capping strategy had to be developed on the run, which is why it took 87 days to cap that well.

Since then, capping stacks have been designed, constructed and located strategically around the world. For its proposed operations in the Bight, BP would have access to a capping stack in Singapore. It would take up to 35 days to bring this stack to the Bight and cap the well.

The company has rejected the suggestion that a capping stack be located locally. It claims that the time needed to transport the device from Singapore to the Bight is not a critical issue. In its earlier environmental plan, released last October, BP said that capping a blowout would require significant preparatory work, by which time the Singapore capping stack would have arrived.

Yet the idea of spending more than a month to plug a flowing well hardly seems compatible with avoiding major environmental damage. According to BP’s own estimate, oil from a spill in the Bight could reach the shore in as little as nine days.

A recent exercise in the Gulf of Mexico shows that a blowout could be capped in 15 days, using a locally available capping stack. In this respect, BP’s estimate of the time it would take to cap a blowout is a long way short of industry best practice.

Whether or not travel time from Singapore is the critical issue, it is worth noting that there are five different capping stacks available for use in the Gulf of Mexico and three for use in UK waters. The expectation is that these stacks could be on site within 24-48 hours.

Note also that new rules imposed by the US regulator for drilling in the Arctic require that a capping stack be located within 24 hours' travel time of the drill site. If the Arctic justifies this level of protection, why not the Bight?

Drilling a relief well

Should the capping strategy fail for any reason, BP has a backup plan for stopping the flow. This is to drill a relief well to intersect the blowout well below the sea floor and “kill” it by pumping it full of heavy fluid or cement.

The question this raises is: where would BP find a spare drilling rig to carry out this operation? After the Montara blowout off Western Australia in 2009, a suitable drilling rig was located near Singapore. But this rig would have been no use in the deep water of the Bight.

Oil companies operating in Australian waters have a memorandum of understanding among themselves to provide a suitable drilling rig in an emergency. Yet it remains unclear how easy it would be for another company to release a rig quickly for this purpose. As such, BP has assumed that it will take up to 149 days to acquire an appropriate rig, drill a relief well and plug the blowout.

The new Arctic regulations require that a relief rig be available nearby, to guarantee that a relief well can be drilled before winter sea ice moves in. The situation in the Bight is not as constrained by the seasons, but even so, 149 days seems an unacceptably long time to plug a well.

The Gulf of Mexico blowout was stopped in 87 days, during which time it inflicted damage worth at least A$40 billion. Who knows what the toll would have been if it had lasted almost twice as long?

Protecting the shore

Finally, BP has various strategies for reducing the amount of oil reaching the shoreline in the event of a spill. These include using dispersant chemicals, both subsea, at the point of release, and on the sea surface. The company puts particular emphasis on subsea dispersal, but recognises that this strategy would also be subject to delay.

It estimates that subsea dispersal would begin within 10 days “where that is possible”. This can never be a fully effective way to prevent coastal pollution, because BP’s modelling suggests oil would begin arriving on the coast in less time than this.

BP has also noted that traditional methods of containment and recovery of oil using booms and skimmers “are not expected to provide significant benefit” in the open ocean.

What seems more likely in the event of a spill is that the company will find itself fighting a last-ditch battle against the oil as it approaches sensitive parts of the shoreline, and where this fails it will implement shoreline and oiled wildlife clean-up.

It is difficult to forecast any other scenario, given the time frames described in BP’s own documents. Its published response plan gives no guarantee that an oil spill in the Bight would not reach the shoreline and damage the environment.

Experience elsewhere in the world suggests that these timelines can be tightened. The question for the regulator is whether BP has reduced the risk to a level that is “as low as reasonably practicable”.

It is by no means obvious that the answer is yes.

Andrew Hopkins is the author of Disastrous Decisions: The Human and Organisational Causes of the Gulf of Mexico Blowout.

Andrew Hopkins does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

Many businesses are committing to sourcing all of their energy from renewable sources. Wind farm image from www.shutterstock.com

The Paris climate agreement is getting closer to coming into force. This week 31 countries ratified the deal, including Brazil (the world’s 12th-largest greenhouse gas emitter), the United Arab Emirates and Bangladesh.

To become official, the deal requires 55 nations representing at least 55% of global emissions to ratify it. The current tally sits at 60 nations and 47.76% of emissions. Others are expected to ratify in coming months.

But outside of national action, businesses are shaping up to be leaders on climate. Alongside the UN General Assembly this week, representatives from national governments and businesses met in New York for the first post-Paris Climate Week.

Among an elite line-up of corporate heavyweights, including Bank of America, Philips, Apple and Siemens, all have made carbon-neutral commitments by 2020 or 2030. This means they will offset emissions that they can’t reduce.

There has been a convergence of political, technological and environmental understanding: a low-carbon economy is no longer a trade-off or threat. It’s an opportunity. And it is happening now.

New commitments

Identifying the urgent need for energy transition, 81 multinational companies have signed on to RE100, committing to 100% renewable electricity across their global operations.

Launched at Climate Week 2014 by The Climate Group and CDP, this initiative includes companies representing a wide range of sectors. Among them are Amalgamated Bank, Ikea, General Motors, Swiss Re, Goldman Sachs, BMW Group, Google, Aviva, P&G, Walmart, Nestle, Microsoft, SAP, Adobe, Bloomberg, H&M, Hewlett Packard, Novo Nordisk, ING, Unilever and Apple.

In addition to achieving 97% renewable electricity across its global operations, Apple is also working actively with its suppliers to increase renewable uptake. Apple is bringing necessary expertise and capability to help a number of its suppliers reach 100% renewable electricity for its products by 2018.

A new and complementary initiative, EP100, attracts companies that commit to a 100% increase in their energy productivity. This mirrors a global campaign calling for governments to double energy productivity. Led by The Climate Group and the Global Alliance for Energy Productivity, EP100 includes signatories such as Mahindra & Mahindra, Danfoss and Johnson Controls.

In its hospitality operations, Mahindra has already achieved a 46% improvement in its energy productivity. Its vice president of sustainability, Anirban Ghosh, is confident the firm will achieve 100% energy productivity improvements.

Danfoss is a global engineering company in heating, cooling and electric controls. According to John Galyen, president of its North American business, improving energy efficiency and energy productivity makes good business sense, both in cost savings and revenue growth.

These corporate voices are global, and their actions will flow through their global activities and supply chains. Australian corporations can be expected to follow these global trends.

Investors are also becoming leaders, increasing efforts to improve disclosure of climate-related risks. Leading disclosure groups met in New York with pension funds and asset managers to contribute to a climate disclosure task force of the Financial Stability Board.

This board, run by governors of national reserve banks and finance ministers, is working to develop a way for companies to disclose their exposure to risks associated with climate change.

The role of government

Public and private sectors have equally important leadership roles. The relationship must be symbiotic. In the same way that business leadership gives governments confidence to introduce ambitious policies, governments can also provide businesses with confidence through demonstrating leadership.

There is a resounding call for governments to provide greater certainty. Clear carbon and financial signals are needed to support major investments in the energy sector.

There have been some heartening moves in this respect. The United States, Canada and Mexico agreed recently to source half of their electricity from low-carbon sources by 2025, and to cut methane emissions from the oil and gas sector by almost half over the same period.

At the sub-national level, local, state and provincial governments are making decisive moves towards the end goal of net zero emissions. Alberta in Canada is home to 11% of the world’s oil reserves, but plans to peak emissions in the next five years while the economy continues to grow.

In Australia, Victoria, the ACT and South Australia have all committed to net zero emissions by 2050, with the latter supporting Adelaide to become the world’s first carbon-neutral city.

The next display of international leadership will be measured in November at the next UN climate summit in Marrakech, Morrocco. While previous meetings leading up to Paris were platforms for negotiation, the next will play a key role in implementing the deal. As we all know, actions speak louder than words.

Wei Sue does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond the academic appointment above.

The body tasked with managing trade in endangered species will oppose efforts to increase global protection for elephants, saying it could spark a new trade in ivory.

Tropical dry forests are among the most threatened habitats on the planet, yet remain overlooked by scientists and conservationists, warn researchers.

New research claims psychological traits could help explain why climate science deniers often make contradictory arguments

Sometimes, climate science deniers will tell you that we can’t predict global temperatures in the future. Sometimes, they’ll say we’re heading for an ice age.

Occasionally, contrarians will say that no single weather event can prove human-caused global warming. But then they’ll point to somewhere that’s cold, claiming this disproves climate change.

Continue reading...