The talk everywhere (besides the various scams which have become an established part of our lives) these days is about Cancun in Mexico. It is time again to talk climate. That's it - TALK is the catchword. No action.
The two-week negotiating session started yesterday. Is there hope? Not really, but at least there will be ideas, new suggestions, etc. Accepted or not!
After two weeks of deliberations that at times grew rancorous last year, Obama and leaders from Brazil, India, South Africa, and China hammered out an eleventh-hour deal that came to be known as the Copenhagen Accord. It was more a statement of intent than an actual plan, and it left quite a few countries unsatisfied.
But the Copenhagen Accord at least solidified some basic commitments. Countries agreed that they would aim to keep planetary warming to under 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees F), and would each put forward domestic plans to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. In the months since then, 138 countries have either formally signed on to the accord or signaled that they would -- and combined they are responsible for more than 86 percent of global emissions.
Industrialized nations also committed to raising $10 billion each year for the next three years for so-called "fast-start" funding to help developing nations cut emissions and adapt to the changes already taking place. There was an additional agreement to establish a long-term fund of $100 billion per year by 2020 to meet those goals. Specifically, there will need to be progress on how countries will formalize the commitments they made last year, and how to keep track of what each country is actually doing when it comes to cutting emissions.
We better hurry up. Going by a fresh report from British scientists, if the Earth's temperature rises by 7 degrees Fahrenheit the rest of this century -- and some researchers think that could happen as soon as 2060 -- up to a billion people would have to be relocated. And another 3 billion could end up without access to water supplies.
Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Friday, November 26, 2010
Tighten belts to fill more!
In the developing world, reducing greenhouse gas emissions is often seen as being in conflict with alleviating poverty. A clean energy development initiative in rural Nicaragua, however, demonstrates that there are cost effective steps developing nations can take to reduce carbon emissions and at the same time help the rural poor reduce their energy expenses, according to researchers from the University of California, Berkeley.
The villages of Orinoco and Marshall Point are off the nation's electric grid and obtain their power from diesel generators. Until last year, however, the homes had no electricity meters; homeowners were billed according to the appliances they owned. This encouraged indiscriminate energy use, with lights, televisions and radios remaining on, even when not being used.
After the government installed meters, however, energy use dropped by 28 percent, and many people's electric bills also dropped.
Villagers were offered two efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) in exchange for two incandescent bulbs. This program reduced household energy use by an additional 17 percent, on average.
The net result was less diesel burned, even allowing for the fact that the community's reduced energy needs allowed the local energy supplier to run its generators two extra hours each day, providing longer service to customers. In the month after the conservation campaign, electricity bills dropped in 37 percent of the households in Orinoco.
Microgrids like the one in Nicaragua, often powered by diesel generators, are found by the thousands around the world, particularly in India and China. They're dirty, have high emissions, high energy costs and questionable reliability, so targeting these microgrids has the potential for improving access to energy services for those communities while at the same time, for the money invested, getting greater reductions in carbon emissions than you might get investing in similar measures where the cost of energy is cheaper, such as in the cities.
There are two arguments to this kind of scenario. Should we remove the subsidies for the poor to discourage wastage? Or is there better way to monitor the same?
The villages of Orinoco and Marshall Point are off the nation's electric grid and obtain their power from diesel generators. Until last year, however, the homes had no electricity meters; homeowners were billed according to the appliances they owned. This encouraged indiscriminate energy use, with lights, televisions and radios remaining on, even when not being used.
After the government installed meters, however, energy use dropped by 28 percent, and many people's electric bills also dropped.
Villagers were offered two efficient compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFL) in exchange for two incandescent bulbs. This program reduced household energy use by an additional 17 percent, on average.
The net result was less diesel burned, even allowing for the fact that the community's reduced energy needs allowed the local energy supplier to run its generators two extra hours each day, providing longer service to customers. In the month after the conservation campaign, electricity bills dropped in 37 percent of the households in Orinoco.
Microgrids like the one in Nicaragua, often powered by diesel generators, are found by the thousands around the world, particularly in India and China. They're dirty, have high emissions, high energy costs and questionable reliability, so targeting these microgrids has the potential for improving access to energy services for those communities while at the same time, for the money invested, getting greater reductions in carbon emissions than you might get investing in similar measures where the cost of energy is cheaper, such as in the cities.
There are two arguments to this kind of scenario. Should we remove the subsidies for the poor to discourage wastage? Or is there better way to monitor the same?
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Base bias
We all pay much heed to baseload power and the need to have some source catering to that need. But some people like David Mills believe baseload can be dispensed with. The eminent solar energy technology developer, has dreamed of creating a new model for an energy system that does away with the conventional design of massive baseload infrastructure. Using hourly data for energy use of the entire United States economy in 2006, Mills will demonstrate how it could have been powered almost exclusively by wind and solar.
The traditional paradigm of flatline baseload does not exist in Mills' scenario, but the replacement for baseload power is not another baseload, it’s a system of flexible and inflexible energy mechanisms based around wind and solar and other sources.
The first premise was that there was enough solar and wind that, in combination, could run the US economy. The second was that solar and wind would be connected with a new electricity transmission system, using high voltage direct current lines for the spine of the network, which will allow more flows and result in considerably reduced transmission losses.China is installing more HVDC lines than any other country in the world – looking to link coal plants with the Three Gorges dam and wind and solar from the north and west of the country!
Any opinions?
The traditional paradigm of flatline baseload does not exist in Mills' scenario, but the replacement for baseload power is not another baseload, it’s a system of flexible and inflexible energy mechanisms based around wind and solar and other sources.
The first premise was that there was enough solar and wind that, in combination, could run the US economy. The second was that solar and wind would be connected with a new electricity transmission system, using high voltage direct current lines for the spine of the network, which will allow more flows and result in considerably reduced transmission losses.China is installing more HVDC lines than any other country in the world – looking to link coal plants with the Three Gorges dam and wind and solar from the north and west of the country!
Any opinions?
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Right to access
Looking for efficient or power saving devices may be a prerogative for the world's haves, but for millions who do not have access to electricity, these are irrelevant. When basic healthcare is denied due to lack of power facilities, when schooling is a gruelling task by candle lights, discussions on smart meters and power losses seem meaningless.
So what can be done? Do you think it is time access to power is declared a basic human right? Can we urge governments to take on this job of providing basic minimal power to these areas still in the dark? Should that not be top on the priority of governments?
What do you think? How can this be done? Where government funds are the problem, should private public partnerships be the way forward?
So what can be done? Do you think it is time access to power is declared a basic human right? Can we urge governments to take on this job of providing basic minimal power to these areas still in the dark? Should that not be top on the priority of governments?
What do you think? How can this be done? Where government funds are the problem, should private public partnerships be the way forward?
Joint solar plants
If you live in a hot place, what better way than to tap solar energy? But things are not that easy. How amenable are the rooftops to place panels on them? How about trees which end up being cut to allow more sunfall?
beating this impasse is an innovative idea from a San Francisco company, CleanPath Ventures. The firm is promoting a solution to allow homeowners to keep their trees and go solar at the same time. CleanPath plans to expand its existing solar farm on the city’s outskirts and then sell “garden plots” to homeowners who would own the electricity generated by their patch of photovoltaic panels. Apartment dwellers and other residents whose homes are not suitable for rooftop solar arrays would also be able to own a piece of the power plant.
If you moved down the block, you’d take the electricity production with you just like if you make an investment in a community garden, wherever you live you’ll benefit from what’s grown in the garden.
Community solar power plants are seen as a way to expand the availability of renewable energy while taking advantage of the economies of scale that result from installing thousands of solar panels in a central location rather than scattered on thousands of individual homes.
Look at energy or waste or water, the future holds promise for community initiatives rather than solo initiatives.
beating this impasse is an innovative idea from a San Francisco company, CleanPath Ventures. The firm is promoting a solution to allow homeowners to keep their trees and go solar at the same time. CleanPath plans to expand its existing solar farm on the city’s outskirts and then sell “garden plots” to homeowners who would own the electricity generated by their patch of photovoltaic panels. Apartment dwellers and other residents whose homes are not suitable for rooftop solar arrays would also be able to own a piece of the power plant.
If you moved down the block, you’d take the electricity production with you just like if you make an investment in a community garden, wherever you live you’ll benefit from what’s grown in the garden.
Community solar power plants are seen as a way to expand the availability of renewable energy while taking advantage of the economies of scale that result from installing thousands of solar panels in a central location rather than scattered on thousands of individual homes.
Look at energy or waste or water, the future holds promise for community initiatives rather than solo initiatives.
Just not enough
As attention turns to next week's climate change meet at Cancun, Mexico, UN research shows that the pledges and promises made last year by 80 countries to reduce climate change emissions fall well short of what is needed to hold the global temperature rise to 2C and avoid the worst consequences of global warming.
The findings by 30 leading scientists suggest that if countries do everything they have promised, there will still be a 5bn tonne gap per year between their ambition and what the science says is needed. This gap, said the UN, is the equivalent of the emissions released by all the world's vehicles in a year.
Many countries have committed themselves to holding temperature rises to no more than 2C (3.6F) by 2080 but to achieve this global emissions must be reduced from 56bn tonnes annually today to 44bn tonnes by 2020.
If only the weakest pledges made last year in the Copenhagen accord are implemented, emissions could be lowered to 53bn tonnes a year by 2020, leaving a gap of 9bn tonnes. In the best case, says the report, emissions could drop to 49bn tonnes, reducing the gap to 5bn. But if nothing is done, then the emissions gap would rise to 12bn tonnes by 2020 – roughly what all the world's power stations emit.
The report will be a key document at the meet, for sure.
The findings by 30 leading scientists suggest that if countries do everything they have promised, there will still be a 5bn tonne gap per year between their ambition and what the science says is needed. This gap, said the UN, is the equivalent of the emissions released by all the world's vehicles in a year.
Many countries have committed themselves to holding temperature rises to no more than 2C (3.6F) by 2080 but to achieve this global emissions must be reduced from 56bn tonnes annually today to 44bn tonnes by 2020.
If only the weakest pledges made last year in the Copenhagen accord are implemented, emissions could be lowered to 53bn tonnes a year by 2020, leaving a gap of 9bn tonnes. In the best case, says the report, emissions could drop to 49bn tonnes, reducing the gap to 5bn. But if nothing is done, then the emissions gap would rise to 12bn tonnes by 2020 – roughly what all the world's power stations emit.
The report will be a key document at the meet, for sure.
Monday, November 22, 2010
The last frontier crumbling
Global carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions have continued to rise according to a new study led by the University of Exeter.
Eight ice shelves have fully or partially collapsed along the Antarctic Peninsula, and the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than virtually any place on Earth. The question now, is not whether Antarctica will begin to warm in earnest, but how rapidly.
The melting of Antarctica’s northernmost region — the Antarctic Peninsula — is already well underway, representing the first breach in an enormous citadel of cold that holds 90 percent of the world’s ice. No place on the fringes of Antarctica has warmed with the swiftness of the Antarctic Peninsula, which has seen winter temperatures rise by 11 deg F.
The most important link in the Antarctic food chain — ice-dependent Antarctic krill, on which just about every seabird or marine mammal in Antarctica feeds — also appears to be in decline. If global temperatures rise by 2 deg C, Adélie and emperor penguin colonies north of 70° South — comprising half of Antarctica’s 348,000 pairs of emperor penguins and three-quarters of the continent’s 2.5 million pairs of Adélies — are in jeopardy of marked decline or disappearance, largely because of severe decreases in pack-ice coverage and, particularly for emperors, ice thickness.
Eight ice shelves have fully or partially collapsed along the Antarctic Peninsula, and the northwestern Antarctic Peninsula has warmed faster than virtually any place on Earth. The question now, is not whether Antarctica will begin to warm in earnest, but how rapidly.
The melting of Antarctica’s northernmost region — the Antarctic Peninsula — is already well underway, representing the first breach in an enormous citadel of cold that holds 90 percent of the world’s ice. No place on the fringes of Antarctica has warmed with the swiftness of the Antarctic Peninsula, which has seen winter temperatures rise by 11 deg F.
The most important link in the Antarctic food chain — ice-dependent Antarctic krill, on which just about every seabird or marine mammal in Antarctica feeds — also appears to be in decline. If global temperatures rise by 2 deg C, Adélie and emperor penguin colonies north of 70° South — comprising half of Antarctica’s 348,000 pairs of emperor penguins and three-quarters of the continent’s 2.5 million pairs of Adélies — are in jeopardy of marked decline or disappearance, largely because of severe decreases in pack-ice coverage and, particularly for emperors, ice thickness.
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