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As part of the Paris Agreement—a global treaty that aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius—China pledged to peak its carbon dioxide emissions by 2030. A new study in the journal Nature Geoscience suggests China’s emissions peaked in 2013 and have declined in each year from 2014 to 2016.
“The decline of Chinese emissions is structural and is likely to be sustained if the growing industrial and energy system transitions continue,” said Dabo Guan, a University of East Anglia climate change economics professor and lead author. “China has increasingly assumed a leadership role in climate-change mitigation.”
The study suggests that slowing economic growth and a decline in the share of coal used for energy has aided in the rapid decrease in China’s rising emissions. These changes in industrial activities and coal use, along with efficiency increases, have roots in the changing structure of China’s economy and in long-term government policies, in particular, creation of China’s nationwide emissions trading scheme.
The policy context and initial program design of that scheme is reviewed by my colleague, Billy Pizer, a faculty fellow at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions, in an article in the journal AEA Papers and Proceedings. It highlights important concerns, discusses possible modifications, and suggests topics for further research.
FERC Rejects PJM Capacity Market Proposals
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), in a 3–2 decision, rejected two proposals filed by PJM as well as a proposal filed by a group of generators operating in PJM’s footprint about how the wholesale electric capacity market should handle state subsidies for power generation. FERC did, however, find that the PJM’s existing capacity market rules are unjust and unreasonable and outlined a framework for a new rule.
PJM, which oversees the grid in parts of the Mid-Atlantic and Midwest, operates a capacity market that allows utilities and other electricity suppliers to procure power to meet predicted demand three years into the future in order to ensure grid reliability. The grid operator and some power producers have argued that subsidized generators are entering into PJM’s capacity market at prices below their actual generation costs, lowering overall market prices and potentially forcing some competitors to shutter their operations.
The order rejects both of PJM’s proposals because FERC found that “they have not been shown to be just and reasonable, and not unduly discriminatory or preferential.” But FERC was “unable to determine, based on the record of either proceeding, the just and reasonable rate to replace the rate in PJM’s Tariff.”
FERC then proposed a framework for a replacement rule—resource offers that are deemed subsidized would be subject to an expanded Minimum Offer Price Rule (MOPR) with few or no exceptions, so as not to artificially lower capacity prices. On the other hand, PJM would have to expand the ability for utilities to purchase less from PJM’s capacity market so they wouldn’t be forced to buy capacity to comply with state policies and then procure a duplicate amount of capacity from PJM’s market.
In PJM’s April filing to FERC, PJM asked FERC to decide between two proposals to deal with the issue of how to address potential pricing impacts of state energy programs in its capacity market and to identify which aspects of the proposals need to be revised. Generators subsequently filed a complaint at FERC, alleging that the PJM capacity rules violate the Federal Power Act and proposing their own solution. But in FERC’s order, filed late on June 29, FERC rejected PJM’s two-part capacity repricing scheme and revisions to the MOPR that aimed to bump up capacity offers into the market from new and existing resources receiving state assistance, subject to certain proposed exemptions. It also rejected the generators’ proposal for a MOPR for a “limited set of existing resources.”
PJM, its stakeholders, and other commenters now have to answer FERC’s questions about how to flesh out FERC’s proposed replacement rule framework. Initial comments are due within 60 days and reply comments are due within 90 days of the publication date of the FERC order in the Federal Register.
Study Zeroes in on Hard-to-Decarbonize Sources
About a quarter of global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels and industrial sources come from hard-to-cut sources, according to a study published in the journal Science.
The authors focused on long-distance shipping and transportation, on cement and steel production, and on provision of a reliable electricity supply, that is, the need, given the variable nature of renewables, for climate-neutral ways to increase output when needed. The demand for these services and products is projected to increase over this century, the study said, allowing absolute emissions from them to grow to equal the current level of global emissions.
“If we want to get to a net zero energy system this century, we really need to be scaling up alternatives now,” said lead author Steven J. Davis of the University of California.
What are those alternatives? Some analyzed by the study are the synthesis of energy-dense hydrogen or ammonia-based fuels for aviation and shipping, new furnace technologies for concrete and steel manufacture, and tools to capture and store hydrocarbon emissions. But deploying these technologies will be costly, say the authors, who also point to another obstacle: the inertia of existing systems and policies.
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
If California uses electric vehicles (EVs) as mobile power storage, it could eliminate the need to build costly stationary grid storage for energy from renewable sources, according to a new study by the researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in the journal Environmental Research Letters. The researchers suggest that the California Energy Storage Mandate (AB 2514)—which requires procurement of 1.3 gigawatts of energy storage by 2020—can be accomplished through the state’s Zero Emission Vehicle Program as long as controlled charging (one-way power flow) is also widely deployed.
“The capital investment for stationary storage can instead be redirected to further accelerate the deployment of clean vehicles and vehicle-grid integration, and could even be used to pay EV owners when their vehicles are grid-connected with controlled charging,” write the authors. “In this manner, not only are clean vehicles an enabler for a clean electricity grid at substantially lower capital investment, but the avoided costs of supporting renewables with stationary storage can be used to further accelerate the deployment of clean vehicles.”
The research shows that electric vehicles could help California grid operators adapt to the state’s rapid adoption of solar power, which is contributing to a problem known as the “duck curve”—a deep decrease in demand during midday hours, followed by a steep increase just as solar power fades away. The idea is that electric vehicles could help mitigate daytime overproduction and evening energy surges by charging into the grid at predetermined times and destinations throughout the day, when and where demand is low.
The researchers also looked at scenarios in which electric vehicles not only have controlled charging but also send back some of their energy into the grid through “vehicle-to-grid.” They estimated an offset of as much as $15.4 billion in stationary storage investment if just 30 percent of workplace chargers and 60 percent of home chargers allowed EVs to provide power to the grid.
Trump Repeals Rule to Cut Down on Transportation Emissions
The Federal Highway Administration on Wednesday published a notice in the Federal Register repealing a rule promulgated by the Obama administration that would have required states receiving federal dollars to account for and report greenhouse gas emissions created by cars traveling on their roads.
The rule, which temporarily went into effect last fall, required that state transportation departments and metropolitan planning organizations calculate how much and how many cars traveled their roads in order to establish greenhouse gas emissions targets, calculate their progress toward them, and report that progress to the Federal Highway Administration.
“While the GHG [greenhouse gas emissions] measure did not require States to reduce CO2 emissions, a State could feel pressured to change its mix of projects to reduce CO2 emissions,” the Federal Highway Administration wrote.
Study Examines Economic Benefits of Limiting Warming
Limiting global temperature rise to the Paris Agreement’s 2 degrees Celsius warming goal could save the world economy trillions of dollars, according to a new study in the journal Nature. The study, the first to examine how global economic output would be affected under different amounts of warming, concludes that meeting the 1.5 Celsius Paris Agreement goal—the more ambitious of the agreement’s two warming goals—would avoid $30 trillion in damages from heat waves, droughts and floods—a figure far greater than the cost of cutting emissions.
The study suggests that the global economy could generate an additional $20 trillion in gross domestic product compared to one in which temperatures rise by 2 degrees Celsius.
“By the end of the century the world would be about three percent wealthier,” said lead author Marshall Burke of Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences, referencing the 1.5 degrees Celsius target relative to 2 degrees Celsius.
The study analyzed how gross domestic product over the last 50 years correlated with temperature changes and combined those findings with climate model projections of future temperatures to calculate how overall economic output may change under different warming scenarios.
“It is clear from our analysis that achieving the more ambitious Paris goal is highly likely to benefit most countries—and the global economy overall—by avoiding more severe economic damages,” said Noah Diffenbaugh of Stanford University.
Those countries benefiting from a warming limit of 1.5 degrees Celsius represent 90 percent of global population and include almost all the world’s poorest countries as well as the three biggest economies: the United States, China and Japan.
A study published in Nature Climate Change in March put the cost of meeting the 1.5 degrees Celsius goal at three times that of holding temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius. The costs of the more stringent goal hit heavily in the near term, when deep cuts in transportation and buildings sector emissions would be required. The study did not, however, weigh those upfront costs against the greater economic costs associated with a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius.
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.
Seventeen states and the District of Columbia filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) rollback of Obama-era vehicle emissions and fuel economy standards last month. In the lawsuit, those states and a few state offices write that the EPA “acted arbitrarily and capriciously” in overturning the previous administration’s decision.
“This is about health, it’s about life and death,” said California Gov. Jerry Brown. “I’m going to fight it with everything I can.” The EPA had no comment on pending litigation.
The corporate average fuel economy, or CAFE standards, were set to roughly double from 2010 levels to about 50 miles per gallon. In early April, the EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt announced plans to draft new standards for 2022–2025 with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. At that time Pruitt said that “Obama’s EPA … made assumptions about the standards that didn’t comport with reality, and set the standards too high.”
Obama-era rules for 2022 to 2025 sought to bring average fuel economy to 54.5 mpg, or 36 mpg in the real world.
The EPA and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration are now in the final stages of drafting and could release new rules as soon as June. The Washington Post reports that the new rules could freeze fuel-efficiency standards for automobiles starting in 2021 and challenge California’s ability to set its own fuel-efficiency rules. Presently, California is authorized under the Clean Air Act to set its own fuel standards.
Paris Agreement Revisited in Bonn
“Urgency, ambition, opportunity” are the three words that must define 2018 said Executive Secretary of U.N. Climate Change Patricia Espinosa on Monday in Bonn, Germany, at the opening of the latest round of talks to advance the goals of the Paris Agreement, which seeks to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“By the end of 2018 we have the opportunity to accomplish three important goals,” Espinosa said. “Those are: building on the pre-2020 agenda, which charts the efforts of nations up to the official beginning of the Paris deal; “unleash[ing] the potential” of the Paris deal by completing the operating manual; and building more ambition into countries national pledges.”
The 2015 Paris Agreement, which comes into effect in 2020, left a number of critical rules and procedures to address before the U.N. climate conference in Katowice, Poland, in December. The Bonn talks, which conclude May 10, are aimed not only at creating a “rule book” but also at getting governments to increase the ambition of their current national plans for greenhouse gas emissions cuts.
According to the latest UN Environment Programme emissions gap report, released November 2017, current commitments would allow warming to increase to dangerous levels above 3 degrees Celsius. That conclusion prompted Fiji—the current holder of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change presidency—to initiate at Bonn a sidelines process it calls the Talanoa Dialogue, referencing a Fijian tradition of storytelling to build empathy and collective decision making.
The process involves national negotiators meeting with academics, campaigners and lobbyists to exchange ideas. From more than 400 submissions for the discussions, some themes have emerged, among them, whether countries should aim to achieve the more ambitious of the Paris Agreements’ temperature goals—no more than 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming—as small island states have urged and whether the governments of richer nations will substantially increase their financial support to poorer countries for climate change adaptation.
One of the issues at stake this week and for the rest of 2018 is how countries will be asked to demonstrate that they’ve delivered on their emissions reduction commitments. The Paris Agreement gives some poorer countries accounting and reporting flexibility in light of their comparatively weak capacity to track and inventory their emissions and actions. But which countries receive that flexibility, how it’s implemented and for how long remain undecided.
PJM to Look at Fuel Security
The PJM Interconnection, which operates the electric grid for a 13-state region, says it will conduct a study to understand “fuel-supply risks in an environment trending towards greater reliance on natural gas.”
“We do not feel we have a vulnerability today, but will take a look at the system to see if we could have fuel security issues in the future,” said Andy Ott, president and CEO of PJM Interconnection. “We expect our analysis will result in a concrete set of criteria to value fuel security.”
PJM will conduct a three-phase analysis over the course of several months to determine whether it can withstand a cyberattack on a natural gas delivery system or a prolonged cold snap.
The issue is part of the “resiliency” question presently before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). Regional grid operators filed comments in March on efforts to enhance the resilience of the bulk power system in a proceeding initiated by FERC after it rejected a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking by U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Rick Perry to subsidize coal and nuclear power plants. The comments by the nation’s federally overseen regional transmission organizations and independent system operators came in response to two dozen questions FERC asked about resilience. At the heart of many comments was a question about how FERC defines resilience.
Two of my colleagues at Duke University’s Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions made a similar query in a thought piece published in Utility Dive. Whether resilience is “a stand-alone concept or just a component of the well-recognized concept of reliability,” they said it is a “foundational question”—one that spells the difference between new market and regulatory responses or tweaks to existing reliability mechanisms.
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 International Energy Agency’s (IEA) first Global Energy and CO2 Status Report, released last week, had two major findings: preliminary estimates for 2017 suggest that global energy demand rose 2.1 percent—more than twice the previous year’s rate—and carbon dioxide emissions rose 1.4 percent, the first time they’ve increased in three years. Although emissions increased in most countries, they decreased in the United States and several other countries largely due to renewable energy deployments.
“The significant growth in global energy-related in 2017 tells us that current efforts to combat climate change are far from sufficient,” said IEA Executive Director Fatih Birol, who identified “a dramatic slowdown in the rate of improvement in global energy efficiency” as one of the causes.
That improvement in energy efficiency slowed from a rate of 2.3 percent a year over the last three years to 1.7 percent last year. Meanwhile, some 70 percent of 2017’s increased energy demand was met by fossil fuels. Emissions decreases in the United States, the U.K., Japan, and Mexico were insufficient to cancel out the increases in China and India.
According to the report, global energy-related carbon dioxide emissions reached a historical high of 32.5 gigatons in 2017, and current efforts to curb them are insufficient to meet Paris Agreement targets to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
“Global emissions need to peak soon and decline steeply to 2020; this decline will now need to be even greater given the increase in emissions in 2017,” the report says.
Some of the report’s other findings:
- Oil demand grew by 1.6 percent, more than twice the average annual rate over the past decade, driven by the transport sector and rising petrochemical demand.
- Natural gas consumption grew 3 percent, the most of all fossil fuels, driven by China and the building and industry sectors.
- Coal demand rose 1 percent, reversing declines over the previous two years, driven by an increase in coal-fired electricity generation, mostly in Asia.
- Renewables had the highest growth rate of any fuel, meeting a quarter of world energy demand growth.
- Electricity generation increased by 3.1 percent, much faster than overall energy demand, with India and China accounting for most of the growth.
- Fossil fuels accounted for 81 percent of total energy demand, continuing a three-decades-long trend.
Decision on Tailpipe Emissions Standards Expected
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is up against an April 1 deadline to determine whether to loosen vehicle tailpipe emissions standards for the years 2022 to 2025, leave them unchanged, or increase them. Reports in the Wall Street Journal and other media outlets suggest the decision is likely to indicate that future vehicle emissions standards should be eased.
The rules, negotiated with the vehicle industry in 2011, presently require automakers to nearly double the average fuel economy of new cars and trucks to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025.
“The draft determination has been sent to OMB [Office of Management and Budget] and is undergoing interagency review,” said Liz Bowman, an EPA spokeswoman. “A final determination will be signed by April 1, 2018, consistent with the original timeline.”
Unclear is how a decision to ease standards might affect California, which can set its own fuel standards and is authorized to do so under the Clean Air Act. The state has suggested it may withdraw from the nationwide program if the EPA eases regulations.
“California is not the arbiter of these issues,” said Scott Pruitt, EPA administrator, in an interview with Bloomberg. The state “shouldn’t and can’t dictate to the rest of the country what these levels are going to be.”
“We have not seen the document in question, and California had no input into its content,” said California Air Resources Board spokesman Stanley Young. “We feel strongly that weakening the program will waste fuel, increase emissions and cost consumers more money. It’s not in the interest of the public or the industry.”
EPA Holds Final Clean Power Plan Hearing
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) wrapped up public hearings concerning its repeal of the Clean Power Plan—an Obama-era regulation that sets state-by-state carbon emissions reduction targets for power plants—in Wyoming on Tuesday. All public comments on the proposed repeal of the Clean Power Plan are due April 26.
Dialogue in Tuesday’s hearing followed the trend of the EPA’s three other public hearings, with some arguing that the Clean Power Plan is needed to combat climate change and others questioning its effectiveness in achieving climate goals. One point of contention is how the costs and benefits of the rule were calculated. Opponents say the benefits were inflated and the costs were minimized. Supporters say the rule actually undercounts the additional benefits of reducing hazardous air pollutants.
The EPA was expected do away with the signature climate regulation, which the Supreme Court stayed in early 2016 and which would require the U.S. electricity sector to cut its carbon dioxide emissions by up to 32 percent from 2005 levels by 2030. But the Trump administration might consider a replacement at the urging of power companies fearful that a repeal could trigger courtroom challenges that would lead to years of regulatory uncertainty.
Any replacement rule may be affected by the EPA’s plans to propose measures to limit which studies the EPA can use in pollution rules—measures that could potentially reduce calculation of the health benefits that come along with controlling carbon dioxide emissions.
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.
A study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change suggests that more than a quarter of Earth’s land will become significantly drier even if the world manages to limit warming to the Paris Agreement goal of less than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. Limiting the temperature rise to the agreement’s more ambitious goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius could significantly reduce the amount of land affected.
“Our research predicts that aridification would emerge over about 20–30 percent of the world’s land surface by the time the global mean temperature change reaches 2 degrees C [Celsius],” said Manoj Joshi, study co-author from the University of East Anglia in the United Kingdom. “But two-thirds of the affected regions could avoid significant aridification if warming is limited to 1.5 degrees C.”
According to the study, the regions that would most benefit from keeping warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius are parts of South East Asia, Southern Europe, Southern Africa, Central America and Southern Australia.
The study authors used projections from 27 global climate models to identify the areas of the world where aridity will substantially change when compared to current year-to-year variations. With a temperature increase of 2 degrees Celsius, they found that between 24 percent and 32 percent of the Earth’s total land surface will become drier. At an increase of 1.5 degrees Celsius, only between eight percent and 10 percent of that surface becomes drier.
Aridification could dramatically increase the threat of widespread drought and wildfires. It is also a threat to agriculture, water quality and biodiversity, noted Chang-Eui Park, the study’s lead author from China’s Southern University for Sustainability and Technology.
Park likened the emergence of aridification to “a shift to continuous moderate drought conditions, on top of which future year-to-year variability can cause more severe drought. For instance, in such a scenario 15 percent of semi-arid regions would actually experience conditions similar to ‘arid’ climates today.”
Trump Administration Repeals Proposed Rules for Hydraulic Fracturing on Government Land
One day after a three-judge panel of the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals declined to reconsider it’s decision to overrule a lower court’s rejection of a proposed Obama-era rule regulating hydraulic fracturing on federal and Indian lands, the U.S. Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) rescinded the rule. Under the proposed rule, companies would have had to disclose the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, whereby pressurized water is pumped underground to break open hydrocarbon deposits to increase well productivity.
The rule had been scheduled to go into effect in 2015, but it was never implemented due to court challenges by energy industry groups and several oil- and natural gas-producing states, which argued the rule was over-reaching and duplicative of state requirements, as well as by environmentalists, who pointed to a need to regulate potential risks to groundwater.
“This final rule is needed to prevent the unnecessarily burdensome and unjustified administrative requirements and compliance costs of the 2015 rule from encumbering oil and gas development on Federal and Indian lands,” BLM wrote in the 26-page final rule.
The move took effect immediately on December 29, skipping the 30-day waiting period often incorporated into rollbacks.
Vogtle Nuclear Project Gets Green Light
Georgia’s Public Service Commission has voted unanimously to allow construction of two nuclear reactors at Plant Vogtle to continue. Plagued by delays and escalating costs, the Vogtle reactors represent the only large-scale nuclear construction underway in the United States since abandonment of two reactors this summer by South Carolina Electric & Gas and Santee Cooper. This week, Dominion Power bought SCANA and assumed these failed South Carolina nuclear project costs.
“The decision to complete Vogtle 3 & 4 is important for Georgia’s energy future and the United States,” said Paul Bowers, chairman, president and CEO of Georgia Power, in a statement. “The Georgia Public Service Commission has shown leadership in making this complex and difficult decision and recognized that the Vogtle expansion is key to ensuring that our state has affordable and reliable energy today that will support economic growth now and for generations to come.”
Co-owned by Georgia Power, Oglethorpe Power, MEAG Power and Dalton Utilities, the reactors are presently scheduled to come online in 2021 (unit 3) and 2022 (unit 4).
The commission attached conditions to its approval of the Vogtle completion, including a lower return on equity for Georgia Power; more money returned to ratepayers; and the possibility of re-examining the project if Congress doesn’t extend a production tax credit for nuclear power past a 2021 expiration date.
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.
Absent efforts well beyond those described in the Paris Agreement—to limit warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels and to pursue efforts to limit that increase to 1.5 degrees Celsius—climate change could pose a deadly threat to most humans by century’s end. This finding was suggested by an international group of climate science and policy experts in a pair of recently published studies.
To avoid the worst consequences of climate change, a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) said the world would have to take aggressive measures to curtail the use of fossil fuels and emissions of short-lived climate pollutants such as methane. In addition, we would also have to extract carbon dioxide from the air and sequester it before it can be emitted.
According to the findings, which were originally published by the University of California’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography, there is a 5 percent chance of catastrophic change within roughly three decades, and a smaller chance that it would extinguish human life. It proposed two new classifications for climate change: “catastrophic,” meaning that adaptation would be difficult for most people, and “unknown,” or “existential,” meaning that adaptation would be impossible.
“There is a low probability that the change will be catastrophic,” said the study’s lead author, Veerabhadran Ramanathan, a professor of climate and atmospheric sciences at Scripps. “But you would not get on an airplane if you thought there was a 5 percent chance that it was going to crash.”
The researchers defined their proposed risk categories on the basis of guidelines established by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and previous independent studies. Even a global temperature increase limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Farenheit)—the Paris Agreement’s aspirational goal—is categorized as “dangerous.” An increase greater than 3 degrees Celsius (5.4 degrees Farenheit) could be “catastrophic,” and an increase greater than 5 degrees Celsius (9 degrees Farenheit) could lead to “unknown” but potentially existential threats. For humans, catastrophic impacts include widespread famine and the exposure of more than 7 billion people to heat-related mortalities.
Policy and science experts, including Ramanathan, relied on the PNAS findings to compile a report on potential warming containment efforts. That report pointed to the need for greater weight on subnational government action and a sharp uptake in mature clean energy technologies—such as wind, solar, biogas, and geothermal—coupled with aggressive electrification of transportation and building energy use.
A separate analysis published in the journal Nature Geoscience says the Paris Agreement’s 1.5 Celsius aspirational goal may be more feasible than many think. It makes a fresh estimate of the necessary carbon budget, including updating measurements of the emissions and warming that have already occurred, and shows that the global carbon emissions budget that meets that goal is equivalent to 20 years of current global annual emissions. But other researchers have raised questions about the analysis—which, if correct, would have very large implications for climate policymaking. Aside from concerns about the new study’s methods and assumptions, broader questions about the definition of the carbon budget and how it should be calculated are now swirling.
Senators, Local Level Decision Makers Focus on Climate Action
After some speculation following comments by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, the White House, on Monday, reaffirmed its commitment to withdraw from the Paris Agreement.
“There has been no change in the United States’ position on the Paris agreement,” White House Deputy Press Secretary Lindsay Walters told CNN. “As the President has made abundantly clear, the United States is withdrawing unless we can re-enter on terms that are more favorable to our country.”
Despite the White House’s stance on the global climate accord, others are taking steps to acknowledge and, in some cases, take specific action on the issue. Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham on Tuesday told guests attending a climate change conference convened at Yale University by former Secretary of State John Kerry that he supports a carbon tax to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
“I’m a Republican. I believe that the greenhouse effect is real, that CO2 emissions generated by man is creating our greenhouse gas effect that traps heat, and the planet is warming,” said Graham. “A price on carbon—that’s the way to go in my view.”
Sen. Graham’s reinvocation of these concepts means that there may be some ability to have conversations again about the bipartisan solution to climate change (subscription).
State and local leaders associated with the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group—a network of megacities dedicated to addressing climate change—remain focused on faster climate action. As part of a Climate Week convening, several mayors discussed how that action falls on them now that the United States is pulling out of the Paris Agreement.
“As mayors, our responsibilities also became even clearer. It’s not enough to reach our ‘80 by 50’ goal,” said New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, referencing New York City’s earlier commitment to cut greenhouse gases by 80 percent by midcentury, “or to go along with the fantastic goal of keeping warming to two degrees Celsius. If the U.S. government is backing away, we had to step forward.”
On Wednesday, 91 U.S. cities and Denmark unveiled a climate plan that aims to enhance cooperation among companies, governments, regions and cities in an effort to promote green growth. The initiative is dubbed Partnering for Green Growth and the Global Goals 2030. Also, North Carolina joined 14 other states in the U.S. Climate Alliance—a bipartisan group of states committed to reducing their share of greenhouse gas emissions in line with the goals that countries agreed upon as part of the Paris Agreement.
“In the absence of leadership from Washington, North Carolina is proud to join the U.S. Climate Alliance, and we remain committed to reducing pollution and protecting our environment,” said North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper. “So much of North Carolina’s economy relies on protecting our treasured natural resources, and I’m committed to maintaining the quality of their air we breathe for generations to come.”
Report: Energy Outlook to 2040
World energy consumption will increase 28 percent by 2040, the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects in its latest International Energy Outlook 2017. Areas in China and Asia will consume the most energy—representing as much as 60 percent of increased demand.
The report indicates that fossil fuels will continue to dominate the world energy mix, making up 77 percent of energy use in 2040, while renewables, despite growing faster than any other fuel source during the coming years, will represent just 17 percent of world energy consumption by 2040. Demand for coal will remain relatively flat with consumption projected to decline from 27 to 25 percent between 2015 and 2040.
Global natural gas consumption is seen increasing by 1.4 percent per year over the forecast period.
“Abundant natural gas resources and rising production—including supplies of tight gas, shale gas, and coalbed methane—contribute to the strong competitive position of natural gas,” the report indicates.
Nuclear power is expected to grow the fastest behind renewables, with consumption increasing about 1.5 percent per year.
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.