A new report that provides a long-term view of the evolution of the world’s power markets suggests that by 2027 building new wind and solar will become cheaper than running existing coal and gas generators in many parts of the world. Between 2016 and 2040, Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s New Energy Outlook projects that $7.8 trillion will be invested in renewables globally.
“One conclusion that may surprise is that our forecast shows no golden age for gas, except in North America,” said report co-author Elana Giannakopoulou. “As a global generation source, gas will be overtaken by renewables in 2027. It will be 2037 before renewables overtake coal.”
The energy sector, which accounts for two-thirds of greenhouse gas emissions, will not change quickly enough to meet the Paris Agreement’s target for limiting global temperatures to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius below pre-industrial levels. According to the report, to meet this target, leaders must invest $13.1 trillion—$5.3 trillion more than the $7.8 trillion expected to be invested in renewables by 2040. This will presumably require further changes in technology and policy to increase the uptake of new low carbon investment to meet that target.
What happens with fossil fuel emissions, it says, will largely depend on choices made by the Asia-Pacific region that’s forecast to see major growth in wind, solar and coal.
By 2040, the study suggests energy storage market will be valued at $250 billion or more as battery costs are projected to fall and storage deployment rises. Utility-scale batteries are projected to become widespread in little more than a decade.
Greenland Ice Melt Points to Warming Feedback Loop
As news emerged that Arctic sea ice extent hit a record low in May, a study published in Nature Communications provided evidence that links melting ice in Greenland to so-called Arctic amplification or faster warming of the Arctic than the rest of the Northern Hemisphere as sea ice disappears. The study revealed that changing temperatures at the poles driven by global warming have the potential to affect the jet stream, causing it to bend further north than usual.
“If loss of sea ice is driving changes in the jet stream, the jet stream is changing Greenland, and this, in turn, has an impact on the Arctic system as well as the climate,” said lead author Marco Tedesco, a research professor at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory. “It’s a system, it is strongly interconnected and we have to approach it as such.”
During July 2015, according to the study, a “cutoff high”—a relatively immobile region of high pressure—allowed sunny conditions to be sustained for many days over northwest Greenland, producing record melting there. The study suggests that the high was linked with a record-breaking northward departure of the mid-latitude jet stream, which is thought to result from the jet stream’s slowing due to a reduction in the temperature difference between polar latitudes and more temperate regions.
According to study co-author Edward Hanna, an earth scientist at the University of Sheffield in the United Kingdom, these cut-off highs are becoming more prevalent in the Arctic, and they may be here to stay because of climate change.
Record Temps Continue in May
Analysis by NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies showed that Earth experienced its hottest May on record—1.67 degrees Fahrenheit above the 1951–1980 average. The data, according to the Daily Mail, showed 370 straight months of warm or warmer-than-average temperatures worldwide.
David Carlson, director of the U.N.’s World Climate Research Program, expressed concern about the records: “We are in uncharted territory. Exceptionally high temperatures. Ice melt rates in March and May that we don’t normally see until July. Once-in-a-generation rainfall events. The super El Nino is only partly to blame. Abnormal is the new normal.”
Analysis from the Japan Meteorological Agency showed May to be only the second warmest on record.
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 Great Barrier Reef, which last year narrowly avoided being put on the World Heritage endangered list, is experiencing its worst bleaching in recorded history. According to the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, overall mortality of the reef is 22 percent, but along Lizard Island, off far north Queensland, it’s 93 percent. Coral bleaching is also occurring along the Maldives, Thailand, and Christmas Island.
By year’s end, what the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) has designated the third global coral bleaching in less than two decades, and the longest and most severe so far, will have killed 12,000 square kilometers of reefs and affected more than a third of the world’s corals.
Satellite data produced for The Guardian by Mark Eakin, head of NOAA’s Coral Reef Watch, reveals the increasingly widespread impact of ocean temperature increases on the Great Barrier Reef, where bleaching is predicted to become an annual event by 2020.
“While there was a considerable amount of variability—from El Niños and other things—there was an obvious upward trend in the data,” Eakin said. “So you’re looking at the background warming, which is having a major effect on the corals.”
Although coral bleaching is thought to result largely from abnormally high sea temperatures that kill marine algae crucial for coral health, a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications and based on a three-year experiment on a coral reef in the Florida Keys nuances that understanding. Its authors say that widespread coral deaths observed in recent decades are being caused by a combination of multiple local stressors that become lethal in the presence of higher temperatures.
“This makes it clear there’s no single force that’s causing such widespread coral deaths,” said study co-author Rebecca Vega Thurber of Oregon State University. “Loss of fish that help remove algae, or the addition of excess nutrients like those in fertilizers, can cause algal growth on reefs. This changes the normal microbiota of corals to become more pathogenic, and all of these problems reach critical levels as ocean temperatures warm.”
United States and India Announce Climate and Energy Agreements
On Tuesday, following a meeting with President Obama partly focused on climate change and energy, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said his country, the world’s third-largest greenhouse gases producer, would ratify the Paris Agreement this year. The action is considered a key step in cementing the deal, which goes into effect 30 days after 55 nations representing 55 percent of all greenhouse gas emissions ratify it. To date, countries representing approximately 50 percent of global emissions have announced that they will submit legal documentation of their compliance with the deal, under which more than 190 nations agreed to keep global warming to within 2 degrees Celsius of pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit warming to 1.5 Celsius.
“Both leaders feel as if the collaboration between the two leaders was an important element of actually getting Paris successfully negotiated last December,” said Brian Deese, President Obama’s top climate change advisor. “They will both clearly endorse the importance of promoting full implementation of the Paris agreement.”
President Obama indicated that the speed with which the agreement could be brought into force would depend in part on securing “the climate financing that’s necessary for India to be able to embark on a bold vision for solar energy and clean energy” laid out by Modi.
Among the other climate and energy agreements the countries announced was a joint effort to adopt, this year, an amendment to the Montreal Protocol on the use of hydrofluorocarbons (subscription). That amendment would increase financial support to the protocol’s multilateral fund and contain an “aggressive phasedown schedule” for the potent greenhouse gas.
According to a White House fact sheet, other joint efforts include a $40 million program to provide capital for solar projects and a $20 million clean energy finance initiative.
India also agreed to a low greenhouse gas emissions development strategy.
Ontario Unveils Climate Plan with Carbon Market Funding
Yesterday, Ontario announced its climate change action plan for reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050 and explained how that plan will work with its recently adopted carbon market, which it plans to link with that of California and Quebec in 2018.
According to the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change, the action plan helps define how market proceeds will be spent. “By law, proceeds must be invested in projects and programs that help reduce greenhouse gas pollution,” said the ministry.
Most of the action plan’s C$8.3 billion in planned spending on combatting climate change will come from the annual C$1.9 billion that the government expects to raise by auctioning greenhouse gas emissions credits.
Canada’s four most populous provinces—representing 86 percent of Canadians—have, or are introducing carbon pricing, either through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade program aimed at emissions reductions.
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.
Yellowstone National Park, Venice, Jordan’s Wadi Rum, and Easter Island’s Rapa Nui National Park are some of the 31 natural and cultural World Heritage sites in 29 countries that are threatened by climate change according to a new report released by UNESCO, the United Nations Environment Program and the Union of Concerned Scientists. Melting glaciers, rising seas, increasing wildfires and harsher droughts could severely diminish the value of protected sites, making them unsuitable for a World Heritage designation, the report says. Climate change could eventually cause some of the sites to lose their status.
Also at risk, according to the report, is local economic development in the areas near world heritage sites. Specifically, the tourism sector is vulnerable to loss and damage to assets and attractions as well as to increasing insurance costs and safety concerns.
“The fastest growing risk to World Heritage, and one of the most under-reported by the countries that are parties to the World Heritage convention, is from climate change,” said Adam Markham, deputy director of the Climate and Energy Program at the Union of Concerned Scientists. He pointed out that climate change brings not only direct impacts but “acts as a ‘risk multiplier,’” compounding local stresses such as urbanization, agricultural expansion and pollution.
In the Galapagos Islands, threats to wildlife from tourism, invasive species and illegal fishing are exacerbated by rising seas and warming and more acidic oceans. At Stonehenge, warmer winters will likely increase numbers of burrowing animals that could undermine archaeological deposits and destabilize stonework.
“Globally, we need to better understand, monitor and address climate change threats to World Heritage sites,” said Mechtild Rössler, director of UNESCO’s World Heritage Centre. “As the report’s findings underscore, achieving the Paris Agreement’s goal of limiting global temperature rise to a level well below 2 degrees Celsius is vitally important to protecting our World Heritage for current and future generations.”
Ocean Current Affecting Temperatures in Antarctica
A new study in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests that ocean currents are slowing the warming effects on Antarctica as Arctic ice melts on the other side of the world. Warm waters in Gulf Stream cool as they flow into the North Atlantic, then sink for centuries before surfacing off the coast of Antarctica.
“With rising carbon dioxide you would expect more warming at both poles, but we only see it at one of the poles, so something else must be going on,” said Kyle Armour, lead author and University of Washington assistant professor. “We show that it’s for really simple reasons, and the ocean currents are the hero here.”
Old, deep water that’s coming up to the surface all around Antarctica—water that hasn’t come into contact with the atmosphere or experienced climate change in hundreds of years—is behind the drastic differences in the continent’s water temperature.
Using drifting floats—known as the Argo array—and climate models, the study authors tracked heat. They found that nearly 68 percent of the heat taken up by the southernmost parts of the Southern Ocean was carried north.
A separate study in the journal Remote Sensing of the Environment also attributes ocean currents, in part, to increasing Antarctica temperatures and sea ice growth. It suggests that the Southern Ocean Circumpolar current prevents warmer water from reaching the continent and that icy winds help the formation of sea ice persist.
Record Renewable Investment by Developing Countries in 2015
For the first time, emerging economies spent more on renewable energy than developed economies, according to the Renewables Global Status report prepared by the Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century (REN21). In 2015, developing countries invested $156 billion in renewables—a 19 percent increase from the previous year.
“What is truly remarkable about these results is that they were achieved at a time when fossil fuel prices were at historic lows, and renewables remained at a significant disadvantage in terms of government subsidies,” said Christine Lins, REN21’s executive secretary.
By the end of 2015, countries around the world had installed a record annual total of 147 gigawatts of renewable generating capacity—enough to meet 23.7 percent of global electricity demand. China was the leader in renewables investment, followed by the United States, Japan, the United Kingdom and India.
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.