The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The White House and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) released a new peer-reviewed report saying inaction on climate change is a dire threat to human health and the economy. It specifically estimates the physical monetary paybacks across 20 sectors of the United States by year 2100 if world leaders successfully limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Among its findings: agricultural losses could be reduced by as much as $11 billion, there could be as many as 57,000 fewer deaths from poor air quality and as much as $110 billion in lost labor hours could be avoided. If nothing is done by 2100, the United States will see thousands of additional deaths annually related to extreme temperatures and poor air quality.
“The results are quite startling and very clear,” said Environmental Protection Agency administrator Gina McCarthy. “Left unchecked, climate change affects our health, infrastructure and the outdoors we love. But more importantly the report shows that global action on climate change will save lives.”
The Washington Post notes one major concern with the study—citing a recent International Energy Agency analysis—though several major new international commitments could move the world in the right direction, the planet is almost certainly not going to hit its 2 degree target.
The report follows the release of Pope Francis’ encyclical—acknowledging that climate change is largely caused by humans—sparking bipartisan reaction. A review of surveys by the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication and George Mason University found the majority of Catholic Republicans agreed that global warming is happening.
EPA Clean Power Plan Under Fire
A White House official this week said the final version of the EPA’s Clean Power Plan would retain its ambitious 30 percent cut in emissions (subscription). Slated to be finalized in August, the rule would limit emissions from existing power plants under the Clean Air Act by giving states flexibility in how they can meet interim state-level emissions rate goals (2020–2030) and a final 2030 emissions rate limit.
Bills to scale back its intended benefits were the subject of House hearings this week. One in particular, the Ratepayer Protection Act—which Obama threatened to veto—was passed with a 247-180 vote by House Republicans Wednesday. It would pause implementation of the rule until all legal challenges have been settled. It also would allow states to opt out if the rule leads to rate increases. Manufacturers on Wednesday urged lawmakers to pass the bill. A letter from the National Association of Manufacturers noted that the “rule has the potential to substantially increase the costs of electricity for manufacturers and could threaten the reliability of the electric grid in many parts of the country.” But a report from Public Citizen suggests the Clean Power Plan will actually be beneficial to consumers and the economy generally.
2015 on Pace to Be Warmest Year on Record
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and the Japanese Meteorological Agency last week reported that the first five months of this year are the hottest since recordkeeping began in 1880, putting 2015 on track to top 2014 as the warmest year on record.
In May, the combined land and ocean surface temperature was 1.57 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average, 0.14 degrees above the previous record set in May 2014.
According to NOAA, record warm sea-surface temperatures in the northeast and equatorial Pacific Ocean as well as areas of the western North Atlantic Ocean and Barents Sea north of Scandinavia contributed to the anomalous heat so far in 2015.
“The oceans have been what’s really been driving the warmth that we’ve seen in the last year and a half to two years,” said Deke Arndt, head of climate monitoring at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Education. “We’ve seen really large warmth in all of the major ocean basins. So, if there’s anything unusual or weird, I guess, about what we’re seeing, it’s the fact that the entire global ocean is participating in this really extreme warmth that we’ve seen in the last couple years.”
The current El Niño event could help keep temperatures at record or near-record levels for the remainder of the year, but climate scientists are cautious about saying whether 2015 will definitely be a record breaker for heat.
“We expect that we are going to get more warm years, and just as with 2014, records will be broken increasingly in the future. But perhaps not every year,” said Gavin Schmidt, who leads NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies.
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
Pope Francis’s highly anticipated encyclical on the environment, which may play a key role in the United Nations climate change conference in Paris later this year, was released today. Among its key focuses: climate change is real, it is getting worse and humans are a major cause.
“Each year sees the disappearance of thousands of plants and animal species which we will never know, which our children will never see, because they have been lost forever,” the Pope wrote. “Climate change is a global problem with grave implications: environmental, social, economic, political and for the distribution of goods. It represents one of the principal challenges facing humanity in our day.”
The encyclical called for sweeping changes in politics, economics and lifestyles to confront the issue—including moving away from fossil fuel use.
“The foreign debt of poor countries has become a way of controlling them, yet this is not the case where ecological debt is concerned,” he wrote. “In different ways, developing countries, where the most important reserves of the biosphere are found, continue to fuel the development of richer countries at the cost of their own present and future. The developed countries ought to help pay this debt by significantly limiting their consumption of non-renewable energy and by assisting poorer countries to support policies and programmes of sustainable development.”
A leaked draft of the encyclical published Monday in an Italian magazine sparked bipartisan reaction. Democrats greeted it as a vindication of the science of climate change and of their party’s policy proposals to address it (subscription). Some prominent Republicans—such as GOP presidential hopeful Jeb Bush—argued that a religious leader has no place in crafting policy. Former South Carolina Rep. Bob Inglis said the encyclical will force skeptics and critics of environmental regulations in the GOP to do some “soul searching.”
“There’s a lot of Republicans who may have in the past been critical of fellow Catholics who they call ‘cafeteria Catholics’ who don’t follow the church’s teachings—say, on abortion,” said Inglis. “But now, are they going to become ‘cafeteria Catholics’ themselves and not follow the church’s teachings on climate change?”
Carbon Tax Bill Aims to Trade a “Bad” for a “Good”
Senators Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Brian Schatz of Hawaii last week introduced the American Opportunity Carbon Fee Act, a bill that would impose a $45 per metric ton fee on carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels—a figure reflecting the federal government’s estimate of the so-called social cost of carbon, a measure of damage attributable to climate change. The location of the announcement, the American Enterprise Institute, was “meant to convey an offer of partnership” with conservatives on what the two Democratic senators hope is a “rebooted debate on climate change that focuses on legislation over science,” ClimateWire reported (subscription).
The bill’s gradually rising tax (2 percent per year) and credits for carbon sequestration are aimed at reducing emissions 80 percent below 2005 levels. According to a summary of the legislation, the bill would cut emissions by at least 40 percent by 2025. That amount represents a far greater reduction than the 26 to 28 percent that the United States has pledged to achieve through regulatory changes over the same period and would amount to a cut deeper than that proposed by other countries in the run up to discussions surrounding a climate deal in Paris later this year.
Whitehouse and Schatz argued that lack of a carbon tax is a $700 billion annual subsidy to the fossil fuel industry.
“A carbon fee can repair that market failure by incorporating unpriced damage into the costs of fossil fuels,” Whitehouse said. “Then the free market—not industry, not government—can drive the best energy mix is for the country, with everyone competing on level ground.”
Fossil fuel consumption in British Columbia is down since the Canadian province implemented a carbon tax. New analysis of that tax’s performance by the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the University of Ottawa’s Institute of the Environment and Sustainable Prosperity describes the tax as straight out of the economist’s playbook.
Co-author and Nicholas Institute Environmental Economics Program Director Brian Murray describes the tax as a “textbook” prescription because of its wide coverage and revenue neutrality, meaning that revenues from the tax go back to British Columbia households and businesses.
“Economists often favor revenue-neutral carbon taxation because it has the potential to enhance economic growth by lowering distortions from the current tax system,” said Murray. “Given these characteristics, the British Columbia carbon tax may provide the purest example of the economist’s carbon tax prescription in practice.”
Similar to revenues from the British Columbia carbon tax, fees from the proposed carbon tax would be recycled back to businesses and individuals. The projected $2 trillion over the course of the first decade would be invested in “American competitiveness” through tax credits, corporate tax cuts, and funding for states, which Whitehouse and Schatz say would help low-income and rural communities transition to new industries.
White House Raises $4 Billion to Fight Climate Change
President Barack Obama hopes to spark clean energy innovation with $4 billion in private sector investments and executive actions, officials announced at the White House’s Clean Energy Investment Summit Tuesday. The funding is in response to a call for increased private sector research into low-carbon energy technology. It doubles the funding goal announced in February, when the Obama administration launched its Clean Energy Investment Initiative.
The Clean Energy Impact Investment Center will operate under the Energy Department to speed other financing for clean energy. The idea, Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz noted, is to “make the department’s resources … more readily available to the public.”
He added: “The United States and other countries are providing substantial financial support to the development and commercialization of clean energy technologies but, if were to achieve climate goals, it is imperative that we find ways to incentivize the global capital markets to invest in clean energy. The U.S. government is addressing the need for new financing through a variety of programs that support clean energy technology through the research and development, demonstration and deployment stages.”
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
Legal challenges to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) proposed Clean Power Plan, which would limit carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants under the Clean Air Act, came too early, according to a panel of federal judges.
“Petitioners are champing at the bit to challenge EPA’s anticipated rule restricting carbon dioxide emissions from existing power plants,” wrote Circuit Judge Brett Kavanaugh in the court opinion from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. “But EPA has not yet issued a final rule. It has issued only a proposed rule. Petitioners nonetheless ask the court to jump into the fray now. They want us to do something that they candidly acknowledge we have never done before: review the legality of a proposed rule. But a proposed rule is just a proposal. In justiciable cases, this court has authority to review the legality of final agency rules.”
The lawsuit from a group of states and Ohio-based Murray Energy Corp, claimed that the EPA exceeded its authority when it proposed the rule last year. Even though the rule isn’t slated to be final until August, the plaintiffs indicated they were facing steep costs to prepare for it.
The proposed rule sets state-specific emissions targets—interim state-level emissions rate goals (2020–2030) and a final 2030 emissions rate limit—in order to cut heat-trapping emissions from existing power plants 30 percent from 2005 levels by 2030.
“We are obviously disappointed with the court’s ruling today, but we still think we have a compelling case that the rule is unlawful,” said West Virginia Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, who led the states’ challenge to the pending rule. “As the court recognized, the rule will be final very soon, and we look forward to continuing to press the issue.”
G7 Summit Leaders Agree to Phase out Fossil Fuels; Deal in Bonn
G7 Countries—Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United States and the United Kingdom—have reached a non-binding agreement to cut carbon dioxide emissions of 40–70 percent of 2010 levels by mid-century. This agreement backs earlier recommendations by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
“We commit to rationalize and phase out over the medium term inefficient fossil fuel subsidies that encourage wasteful consumption,” G7 officials said in a statement. “As we do that, we recognize the importance of providing those in need with essential energy services, including through the use of targeted cash transfers and other appropriate mechanisms. This reform will not apply to our support for clean energy, renewables and technologies that dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions.”
The agreement also calls for G7 countries to help poorer countries develop with clean technologies and address risks from weather disasters as well as to intensify their support for vulnerable countries’ efforts to manage climate change. It is intended, in part, to build momentum ahead of the United Nations climate talks later this year in Paris, at which delegates hope to reach a global climate deal.
In Bonn, Germany, where delegates from nearly 200 countries have been working to pare down draft text for that deal, a partial agreement has been reached to slow deforestation and protect regions holding vast carbon stores. The agreement—covering aspects of the scheme called Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+)—resolves outstanding technical issues on the use of REDD+ and provides standardized rules for developing REDD finance. Other, larger policy details such as how finance will flow to those countries that keep forests intact will need to be resolved in Paris (subscription).
Global Warming Pause Refuted by NOAA Study
A new study from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) published in Science refutes a global warming “hiatus” reported in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report.
“Adding in the last two years of global surface temperature data and other improvements in the quality of the observed record provide evidence that contradict the notion of a hiatus in recent global warming trends,” said Thomas R. Karl, director of NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, in a press release. “Our new analysis suggests that the apparent hiatus may have been largely the result of limitations in past datasets, and that the rate of warming over the first 15 years of this century has, in fact, been as fast or faster than that seen over the last half of the 20th century.”
In the Science study, authors replotted average annual surface temperatures since 1880, accounting for anomalies in temperature readings from ocean ships and buoys. The latter are given greater weight in the dataset because the number of buoys deployed in the world’s seas is far higher today than decades ago and because the accuracy of readings from them has increased over time.
“The fact that such small changes to the analysis make the difference between a hiatus or not merely underlines how fragile a concept it was in the first place,” said Gavin Schmidt, a climate scientist and director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, of the study (subscription).
A separate study published Monday in Nature Climate Change faulted IPCC scientists’ communication at the press conference announcing publication of Fifth Assessment Report, noting that to make anthropogenic global warming (AGW) more meaningful to the public the speakers emphasized the record warmth the world had experienced in the past decade yet dismissed the relevance of decadal time scales when journalists enquired about the similarly short pause in global temperature increase. The speakers thereby created uncertainty about what counts as scientific evidence for AGW.
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions at Duke University
The next round of international climate negotiations began Monday in Bonn, Germany, and runs through June 11. The main task for the delegates from nearly 200 countries: pare down draft text for a final global climate deal to be negotiated at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year. The 89-page working draft contains differing options and viewpoints. Some countries, reports Deutsche Welle, want to set intermediate goals and others—including Russia, Canada, the United States, and the European Union—have pledged formal emissions cuts.
“No matter how you cut it, the hard work will be done in Paris,” a senior developing country delegate told Bloomberg BNA. “We will reduce the options in Bonn, but the final language will only come in Paris.
Multiple reports question whether the world is on track to meet the goal of keeping warming below 2 degrees Celsius. One, by the International Energy Agency (IEA), examines clean energy progress—noting shortcomings.
“Indeed, despite positive signs in many areas, for the first time since the IEA started monitoring clean energy progress, not one of the technology fields tracked is meeting its objectives,” the report said. “The future that we are heading towards will be far more difficult unless we can take action now to radically change the global energy system.”
Others say failure is not an option and note that new mechanisms for future rounds of pledges, perhaps in 2025 and 2030, can hit the mark.
“You don’t run a marathon with one step,” said Christiana Figueres, the United Nation’s top climate change official.
Report Emphasizes Importance of Existing Policies, Clean Power Plan to Meet U.S. Climate Commitment
In preparation for the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this year, the Obama administration pledged to reduce U.S. emissions 26–28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025. According to a new paper by the World Resources Institute (WRI), few policy changes will be required for the United States to meet or exceed that commitment. First among the paper’s 10 recommendations: strengthening the Clean Power Plan, which is projected to be finalized in August.
“While our analysis shows that the Clean Power Plan does not need to be strengthened in order to reduce economy-wide emissions by 26 percent below 2005 levels in 2025 (as long as ambitious action is taken across other emission sources),” write the authors, “doing so would enable the United States to more easily achieve the upper range of its 2025 target and achieve deeper reductions beyond the 2025–30 time frame.”
The Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions contributed modeling underlying some of the report’s findings. It used a version of the Energy Information Administration’s well-known National Energy Modeling System (DUKE-NEMS), which is maintained by the Nicholas Institute, to model two pathways for longer-term abatement opportunities through new legislation.
“DUKE-NEMS complements WRI’s model by capturing supply-demand interactive effects,” said Nicholas Institute Senior Policy Associate Etan Gumerman. “We used it to explicitly model economic impacts. It helped us establish the level of emissions reductions that are economically achievable using targeted policies, while highlighting the greater emissions reductions that could come from potential climate legislation.”
Other measures recommended by the WRI report are expanding residential and commercial energy efficiency programs, increasing cuts in emissions of the refrigerant hydroflourocarbon, making industrial emissions standards and fuel economy standards more stringent, establishing emissions standards for new airplanes, increasing carbon sequestration in forests, and cutting methane emissions from coal mines, landfills, and agriculture.
Court Sides with EPA on Ozone Ruling
A federal court is siding with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on enforcement of limits on smog-forming pollution, rejecting challenges from states, industry and environmental groups claiming that the EPA was too strict or too lenient in determining areas that satisfied federal ozone restrictions. The National Ambient Air Quality Standards for ground-level ozone set the allowable level at 75 parts per billion in 2008. In 2014, the EPA had proposed even stricter emissions limits on ozone of 65 to 70 parts per billion.
“Virtually every petitioner argues that, for one reason or another, the EPA acted arbitrarily and capriciously in making its final [National Ambient Air Quality Standards] designations,” the opinion states. “But because the EPA complied with the Constitution, reasonably interpreted the Act’s critical terms and wholly satisfied—indeed in most instances, surpassed—its obligation to engage in reasoned decision-making, we deny the consolidated petitions for review in their entirety.”
Ground level ozone—the main ingredient in smog—forms when chemicals in fossil fuel emissions react with sunlight and air.
The Climate Post offers a rundown of the week in climate and energy news. It is produced each Thursday by Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions.
