Monthly Archives: January 2009

January 15, 2009 | 10:04 AM | By

National Cap-and-Trade Program Unveiled

California’s largest electric utility joined with a coalition of about 30 other companies and environmental groups today, in taking the wraps off a proposed national climate strategy. After two years of talks, the U.S. Climate Action Partnership, which includes PG&E, is ready to put its muscle behind it’s Blueprint for Legislative Action, just in time for Inauguration Day.

The program uses a trading program for carbon credits, much like the Western Climate Initiative, a collaboration of several western states and Canadian provinces. The goal is to roll back greenhouse gas emissions to:

> 97%‐102% of 2005 levels by 2012
> 80%‐86% of 2005 levels by 2020
> 58% of 2005 levels by 2030
> 20% of 2005 levels by 2050

While stated a little differently here, the targets reflect what has become the broadly accepted goal of cutting GHGs 80% by 2050.

A thorny question surrounding carbon trading programs is always whether pollution credits will be auctioned off or given away free to major emitters. According to the group’s “blueprint:”

“USCAP recommends that a significant portion of allowances should be initially distributed free to
capped entities and economic sectors particularly disadvantaged by the secondary price effects of a
cap and that free distribution of allowances be phased out over time.”

This would appear to conflict with the stated goals of the Western Climate Initiative, whose representatives have committed (at least verbally) to making companies pay for most credits up front. And yet the USCAP plan carries the endorsement of major environmental organizations, such as The Nature Conservancy and the NRDC, both of which are members.

As one corporate executive put it at the plan’s unveiling, “We simply think you have to give away a significant portion…and then phase them out over time.”

The USCAP plan also offers emitters the chance to buy approved carbon offsets and gives special allowances to companies that have already achieved verifiable reductions in GHG emissions–or plan to do so.

FILED UNDER: Government & Business, carbon trading, Economics, Emissions, GHG, greenhouse gas emissions, Policy, WCI
January 14, 2009 | 7:04 PM | By

Methane Sources and the “Dark Side” of Solar

plants.jpgPlants don’t produce methane after all, a new study out of the UK contends.  The results refute a 2006 report that suggested plants could account for almost half the world’s production of this potent greenhouse gas. But according to authors of the latest study, plants are more like little methane pipelines; they convey methane from the soil to the air, but they don’t actually produce it.

No one said that climate change was simple.

Neither are the solutions, apparently.  An article in the LA Times reports on the “dark side” of solar, outlining the toxic materials used in cells, the difficulty of recycling some components, and the fossil fuels burned in the production and transportation process of cells and panels.

And don’t let this weird weather confuse you either.  As the Thin Green Line reports, this week’s freezing temperatures in the Midwest don’t mean climate change isn’t happening.

FILED UNDER: Power, Air, Ecosystems, methane, solar, weather
January 12, 2009 | 1:20 PM | By

New Blueprint for California Water Use

img_3449.JPGCalifornia’s Dept. of Water Resources has issued a new gameplan for managing the state’s precarious water supply. DWR calls its draft California Water Plan “a new chapter in the way California must manage her water resources,” warning that “the system has lost its reslience.”

The agency appears to fully recognize the impact of climate change in assessing the challenges ahead. In its conclusion, the draft plan says:

“Population is growing while available water supplies are static and even decreasing. Climate change, as evidenced by changes in snowpack, river flows and sea levels, is profoundly impacting our water resources.”

Note that the report doesn’t say that climate change “may be” affecting water resources, it says that it is already. The plan also recognizes for the first time, that water and flood management need to be part of the same process, and that there has to be a coordinated, long-term strategy for investing in California’s water system:

“…funds from bond-to-bond are neither sufficient nor sustainable. California needs more stable and continuous sources of revenue to invest in statewide and regional integrated water management and the build resilience back into the state’s water and flood management systems, as well as into the watersheds, groundwater basins, and ecosystems that support them.”

The “public review draft” released today provides a good piece of perspective when it notes that while the current drought seems comparable to the 1977 dry spell, the state’s population is nearly 75% larger now.

The draft catalogs 27 potential strategies for managing the state’s water. Much of the report reiterates well established positions at DWR, such as the call for more (surface) water storage and a peripheral canal for the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta.

Photo: A nearly dry reservoir in the Santa Cruz Mountains.

FILED UNDER: Government & Business, Water, Policy, Water, water plan
January 9, 2009 | 8:40 AM | By

Primer: Climate Change in the San Francisco Bay Area

baynaturegraphic.jpgFor a fairly comprehensive overview of how climate change is affecting the San Francisco Bay Area, check out “Taking the Heat,” a new special supplement from Bay Nature magazine, written by former San Francisco Chronicle environmental reporter Glen Martin. The report focuses on the region’s landscape, watershed, and ocean ecosystems, and it highlights specific climate change research being done in the Bay Area.

David Loeb, Bay Nature’s publisher and editor of “Taking the Heat,” said that conservationists need to be considering climate change as they develop projects to restore habitats and save endangered species.

“The fact is, climate change is a wild card,” said Loeb. “It’s not just straight warming.  There is unpredictability.  As we go about restoring ecosystems, we need to take that unpredictability into account.”

Illustration from the supplement by David Fierstein.

FILED UNDER: Ecosystems
January 8, 2009 | 1:21 PM | By

Food Crisis a Likely Result of Global Warming

smallircefarm.jpgHere’s a new study for your “Boy, Are We In Trouble” file.   We’ve written a lot here about likely climate change effects like wildfires, rising seas, and water shortages, but one Pandora’s box we haven’t opened yet is the potential for a food crisis.  As it turns out, we may be in for a big one.

A Stanford study published in the January 9th issue of Science finds that rising temperatures are likely to have a major effect on crop yields in the the tropics and subtropics by 2100.  In some areas, the study predicts that primary food crops like maize and rice will be reduced by 20-to-40%.  Considering that half of the world’s population lives in these regions — three billion and rapidly growing — and that a large percentage are subsistence farmers, crop shortages could be devastating–and reverberate well beyond those regions, generating waves of “hunger refugees.”

Using 23 global climate models that contributed to the 2007 IPCC report, researchers from Stanford and the University of Washington determined that:

“There is a greater than 90% probability that by 2100 the lowest growing-season temperatures in the tropics and subtropics will be higher than any temperature recorded there to date.”

The researchers, Rosamond Naylor, director of Stanford University’s Program on Food Security and David Battisti, a University of Washington atmospheric sciences professor, looked at historic examples of food shortages caused by heat waves, such as France in 2003 and the Ukraine in 1972.

“I think that what startled me the most is that when we looked at our historic examples there were ways to address the problem within a given year,” said Naylor.  “People could always turn somewhere else to find food but in the future, there’s not going to be any place to turn unless we rethink our food supplies.”

The researchers say that the world must start planning adaptation strategies for what appears to be a likely scenario. And we might add that it’s not just the tropics at issue. If one of the nastier scenarios plays out for California’s snowpack and runoff, the resulting water crisis could also cripple food production right here, in one of the most productive and diverse agricultural regions in the world. In the grip of a three-year drought, the coming summer may give us a glimpse of things to come.

FILED UNDER: Agriculture, Stanford, subtropics, tropics
January 8, 2009 | 11:29 AM | By

Fuel Economy: One Last Stall in the Slow Lane

We’ll have to wait for the next administration to take action on fuel economy standards for cars and light trucks. The Bloomberg news service reports that the Bush Administration has decided not to raise the bar, citing the current ocean of red ink surrounding Detroit. Fleet economy standards in the U.S. have remained the same since the 1970s.

FILED UNDER: Government & Business, Power, Conservation, energy conservation, Policy
January 6, 2009 | 2:11 PM | By

Bay Area Greenhouse Gases on the Rise

trafficjam_sm.jpgThe Bay Area Air Quality Management District has issued a new inventory of greenhouse gas sources, updating a report issued last year, for “base year 2002.” (Yes, the 2006 report was for 2002–let me know if that’s not confusing enough).

If you thought the heavy hitters were those half-dozen or so big, smelly oil refineries strung out between Richmond and Antioch, guess again. If you’re going for your climate geek merit badge, you’ll know that here in California, at least, the transportation sector is the reigning CO2 champ.

According to the updated report, transportation accounts for about 40% of emissions. Non-farm industrial & commercial emissions (from stationary sources) weigh in at 34%. Amaze your friends! If you take that transportation sector and break it down further, it turns out that cars and light-duty trucks account for almost 64% of those mobile emissions.

Okay, so you know all that. But what jumps out of the report are the projections of emissions through 2029, which the Air District arrived at by blending current levels with projected population and economic growth. The trend is not only upward but steeply upward, from 104 million metric tons (CO2 equivalent) to 128 million by 2020 and 150 million by 2029, an increase of 44% in two decades.

But good gravy, how can that be? Isn’t California “leading the way” in greenhouse gas reductions? Well, yes and no. Henry Hilken, Director of Planning and Research for the district, explained that because most of the state’s aggressive mitigation programs are not yet in place, his number crunchers did not take them into account in their calculations. In other words AB-32, cap-and-trade, the so-called Pavley regulations on tailpipe emissions, the low-carbon fuel standard–none of it is actually happening yet. The projections represent a future based on “business-as-usual.”

That’s likely to change, however. State regulators have been virtually assured that they’ll get the required EPA waiver to put stricter tailpipe regulations in place, shortly after President-elect Obama takes office, to use just one example. For more on this issue, listen to Sasha Khokha’s feature from The California Report, earlier this week. On the other side of the ledger, full implementation of AB-32 remains in question, as the funding mechanism is not fully in place.

How much would the picture change with all those–or even some of those measures in place? Hilken says he hasn’t attempted those calculations. It’s also likely that a long, deep recession could put a kink in the emissions trend. So while you can argue that the numbers in the inventory are a weak predictor of things to come, they are a useful snapshot of where we are–and a sobering assessment of where we’ll end up without an aggressive climate policy.

The Air District report tracks two types of carbon dioxide (CO2), along with methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) and a handful of lesser-known gases. The non-CO2 emissions are converted mathematically to “CO2-equivalent” values.

FILED UNDER: Air, carbon inventory, Emissions, GHG, greenhouse gas