Money doesn't grow on trees, but gold does.

A month ago, a research team in Australia found that a species of eucalyptus trees can detect gold reserves up to 30m underground and transport miniscule amounts to its leaves. Since 30% of world's gold reserves are said to lie within this region, the gold miners are just about to get busy.

 

 Goldfields-Esperance region's gold trees

Check out the full article.

Carbon Tax vs. Cap-and-Trade

So I decided to educate myself on the basics of carbon taxation, only to come across a popular argument of the costs and benefits of the two main market-based ‘polluter pays principle’ options to regulate GHG emissions: carbon tax and cap-and-trade. 

Figure 1. Self-explanatory? (Source)

What are they?

Cap-and-trade is a scheme popular among the politicians. The government sets an overall maximum emissions limit – a cap (HowStuffWorks), consisting of allowances to distribute among oil, coal, and natural gas producers and importers. Initially, the government allocates the allowances to companies without cost (Avi-Yonah, 2009), while in later stages, auctioning takes place. A fossil fuel company that runs out of allowances has two options: to reduce their carbon emissions or to buy (trade) other companies’ spare credits. On the flipside, a company with ‘surplus’ allowance can either sell it or bank it for future use (HowStuffWorks).  

Figure 2. 'Cap' & 'Trade'

Source: FirstCarbonSolutions

Carbon taxation is a bit more straightforward - a tax is imposed at X pounds/tonne of carbon content on the main sources of carbon dioxide emissions. The tax rate is based on the ‘social cost of carbon emission’. Companies with carbon sequestration programs also receive tax credits.

Now let’s examine the costs and benefits of each: 

• Cap-and-trade makes politicians more popular, while taxing causes political resistance. 
• There are many questions to answer in a CaT scheme: Where should we set the baseline emissions cap? How do we distribute the allowances? Free or auction? How much should each industry receive?
• CaT: Governments also have a safety valve to distribute extra allowance when prices soar, which essentially means raising the cap, which essentially defeats its purpose. For example, the mandatory EU European Trading Scheme (ETS), which covers 12,000 factories in twenty-five countries, experienced a price collapse in 2006 when too many allowances were distributed.
• CaT only generates one-off revenue (which goes to funding alternative energy research) from auction allowances, while tax produces a continuous flow.
• In the early stages, CaT is cheaper for companies due to initial free allowances. Taxation, on the other hand, incurs an immediate cost (Avi-Yonah, 2009).
• CaT schemes involve a complex, time-consuming system, while carbon taxation can be implemented immediately. In CaT, the government has to act like a bank, setting up accounts, trading units, enforcing trading penalties etc. They need to employ more people to operate this complex system, leading to a drain in funds. Wittneben calls the EU ETS out for ‘corruption’ and ‘deceit of the public’ – the scheme has been successful in transferring money from taxpayers and consumers to government, but has been unsuccessful in reducing emissions.
• Taxation holds cost certainty (price = amount of tax, which wouldn’t change without national policy change), enabling businesses to plan ahead, while CaT prices fluctuate to supply/demand. There is also no upper limit to emission reduction, while a cap on emissions = a cap on emission reduction (Wittneben, 2009). 

This January, California established its own CaT, which will expire in 2020. It is the US’ first sub-national carbon market and the world’s second biggest, following EU ETS (Guardian).

Currently, Australia PM Tony Abbott wants to repeal the carbon tax (at $22.23/C tonne). In its place, he will set up ‘an emission reduction fund and market-based incentives for businesses’ (Reuters).  

As Wittneben puts it, the bottom line is ‘we want a system that lowers emissions at the lowest cost to society and provides environmental integrity’. Since the Kyoto Protocol, COP19 and other past climate conferences proved not too aggressive or effective, I believe we should cut past the long bureaucracy and policy ambiguity and implement a simple carbon tax. One proposed CaT bill was over three hundred pages long, while a carbon tax bill was seventeen (Ecosystem). You choose.

References:

Taschini, Luca, Simon Dietz,and Naomi Hicks. "Carbon tax v cap-and-trade: which is better?" The Guardian [London] 28 Jan 2013.

         

Yueyang, Maggie Lu."Australia's new PM brings carbon tax repeal bill, aspromised." Reuters [Sydney] 12 Nov 2013.

        

Dowdey, Sarah. "How CarbonTrading Works."HowStuffWorks.

Goldstein, Allie."Cap-and-Trade Is Not A Tax, California Court Says." EcosystemMarketplace, 18 Nov 2013.

Avi-Yonah, Reuven S., and DavidM. Uhlmann. "Combating Global Climate Change: Why a Carbon Tax is a BetterResponse to Global Warming than Cap and Trade." Social ScienceResearch Network. Stanford Environmental Law Journal, 29 Jan 2009.

Wittneben, Bettina B.F.. "Exxon is right: Let us re-examine our choice for a cap-and-trade system over a carbon tax." Energy Policy. Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, 20 Jan 2009. (Access through university database)

London Tube Heat to Warm Islington

Especially during summers, temperatures in the London tube soars pass 30C. Why not put this hot hot heat to good use? As part of the Mayor of London's harnessing secondary heat initiative, excess heat from a Northern Line station will be piped to 500 homes, providing cheaper energy and saving 500 tons of carbon dioxide emissions/year. 

Source: Wired.co.uk

The project aims to make use of the city's "waste heat arising as a byproduct of industrial and commercial activities" and "the heat that exists naturally within the environment (air, ground, water)".

Here is the link to the full article.

Super Tycoon Monster: Will the COPs strike back?

Super Typhoon Haiyun made landfall in the Philippines on November 7, four days before the official opening of the 19^th United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, better known as COP19, in Warsaw.

Many agree that Haiyun is the strongest recorded cyclone to make landfall, with maximum wind speeds of up to 195mph, exceeding the top limit of Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson scale. More than 4,000 have been confirmed dead, and nine million lives have been affected.

 Locals await relief supplies 

Source: AP

A typhoon’s destruction depends on its actual size, degree of low barometric pressure and high sustained winds, and the strength of the storm surge.

This catastrophe serves as a wake-up call, its intensity directly linked to climate change:

Warmer Seas = Bigger Storms: tropical storms feed on heat energy acquired from the sea surface. If the sea-surface temperature (SST) is below 28°C, a typhoon is unlikely to occur.

The SST anomaly is getting bigger due to global warming. A study by MIT professor Kerry Emanuel links SST with hurricane Power Dissipation Index (PDI), which shows overall energy in hurricane/typhoon activity.

Results show a positive correlation in SST and PDI: Northern Pacific cyclone power dissipation has increased by 75% in the past thirty years.

As oceans become warmer, these storms’ heat supply is not limited to the surface: shallow-deep water is also warming. SST anomalies off the eastern coast of Philippines was not unusually high – 0.5 to 1°C above the standard. However, Typhoon Haiyun gathered its energy source from shallow-deep water: 

Despite the increase in storm intensity, their frequency has not increased. This might be because once a hurricane forms at one spot, it leaves behind cold, stripped-of-heat surface water, which makes it harder for the next hurricane to form.

The damage of Haiyun was also caused by the twenty-meter storm surge. As seas become warmer, they expand, causing a sea-level rise and a relatively higher storm surge.

The disaster casts a direct spotlight on world leaders in Warsaw to enforce aggressive goals to combat climate change. Philippine Climate Change Commissioner Naderev Sano pledges that he will not eat at the convention until ‘a meaningful outcome is in sight’.

References:

Laden, Greg. "Why WasTyphoon Haiyan/Yolanda So Powerful, and is this a trend?" ScienceBlogs,11 Nov 2013.

Phillips, Ari. "WhatTyphoon Haiyan Means For Climate Change — And The UN’s Ongoing ClimateTalks."ClimateProgress, 12 Nov 2013. Web.

Emanuel, Kerry."Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30years." Letters. Nature, 04 Aug 2005.

China's 'Airpocalypse'

Yesterday, I asked whether rapid sustainable economic growth is possible for developing countries.
 

Figure 1. Thick smog causes schools to close.

Today, I came across this article by NY Times' Thomas Friedman, describing the cost of China's rapid growth, noticeably the thick smog disrupting life in Harbin.

Corporate Response to Climate Change

So lately, I’ve been interested in how businesses incorporate climate change policies into their operations. That’s how I came across this slightly outdated paper ‘How Warm Is the Corporate Response to Climate Change? Evidence from Pakistan and the UK’:

Let’s start by stating the obvious – industries have begun to prepare for a carbon-limited scenario. But how did it all begin? Prior to 1996, the industries collectively formed the Global Climate Coalition (GCC) in order to dispute against climate change and demand further evidence of warming. In that year, BP left GCC and affirmed the need for precautionary action, and Shell followed suit, setting the trend. 

This study analyzes responses from companies in the nine most energy-intensive and high-GHG emissions industries in Pakistan (a developing country) and UK (an industrialized country). The factors that influence ‘green’ performance include regulatory pressure, societal demand, economic conditions, alternative technologies etc. Pakistan’s GHG per capita is 1/7^th of that of UK, and it’s GDP per capita is 1/13^th of that of UK.  

I won’t dwell on the criteria or methods the study employed (you can read more here), but they essentially categorized each company as either ‘indifferent’, ‘beginner’, ‘emerging’ or ‘active’ players in climate change mitigation.

As a result, more than 75% of Pakistani companies were either ‘indifferent’, with no climate change strategy or environmental regulations, or ‘beginner’, in their early stages of environmental management. On the other hand, only 30% of UK companies (mostly small) fit into this category. However, let’s keep in mind that the data is from 2007. 40% of UK companies was ‘emerging’, and 30% was active (compared to Pakistan’s 15 and 5%, respectively).

Three main stakeholders are perceived as having a high influence on strategy: the owners, company management and regulatory agencies. The ‘indifferent’ companies reflect minimal influence from these three:

In the UK, many policy instruments exist to regulate emissions, such as the Climate Change Levy and Emission Trading Scheme. In Pakistan, however, there is no specific legislation, and environmental policies have minimal impact due to political instability, lack of government awareness, underpaid environmental agency staff etc.

High costs and lack of financial resources are barriers in both countries, especially in Pakistan: investors bear a high risk due to high inflation rates and lack of sufficient infrastructure and expertise. An absence of regulations also leads to resource waste: in the sugar industry, lack of regulations on buy-back excess power impeded installation of co-generation plants, leading to resource waste. The country must also improve its import policies, minimizing used and inefficient machinery that only reduces short-term cost.

On the other hand, companies in industrialized countries feel they are hindered by the uncertainty of climate change policies. Higher perceived risks lead to stricter criteria when it comes to upgrading infrastructure, and uncertainty in price of carbon emission trading leads to its slow market growth.

Overall, international efforts should continue to support a paradigm shift towards renewable energy. In the light of western economic models, people often question whether environmental consideration will hinder economic growth in developed countries. I think both can go hand in hand, if these countries carve out their own strategies for development. Glass a bit more than half full? We shall see.

Reference:

Jeswani, Harish Kumar,Walter Wehrmeyer, and Yacob Mulugetta. "How Warm Is the Corporate Responseto Climate Change? Evidence from Pakistan and the UK." BusinessStrategy & the Environment. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., 06 Mar 2006.Web. 10 Nov 2013.

SciShow Dude

This show's pretty interesting. Here's a relevant example: 

'Skip the Steak'

To save the world, we reuse, recycle, take the stairs, switch off the lights. Anyone thought of skipping the steak? Last year, the UNEP Global Environmental Alert Service (GEAS) published a report on ‘Growing greenhouse gas emissions due to meat production’:

In modern societies, industrial-style animal agriculture accounts for 10-35% of global GHG emissions. A typical image conjured is that of Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFO), where hundreds of thousands of animals are bred in ‘factories’.

Figure 1. Number 45

Source: http://goldilocksfindsmanhattan.com/

Meat Production Problems:

• One of the top three contributors to environmental problems, including deforestation, desertification, and freshwater overuse.
• Animal feed is mainly soya and maize imported from South American countries, which uses intensive fertilizers, leading to land-use problems.
• Cow manure is roughly 3x that of humans: improper disposal leads to runoff and leaching, possibly leading to groundwater contamination.
• Responsible for two-thirds of anthropogenic ammonia emissions, which leads to acid rain and ecosystem acidification.

Most importantly, meat production plays a big role in climate change: enteric (digestive process of livestock) fermentation emits CH₄ (Global-warming potential 25 compared to CO₂’s GWP 1), and excreted nitrogen and N fertilizers release N₂O (GWP 296). Deforestation and grassland conversion into agricultural land causes soil to decompose C-rich humus, releasing CO₂ and N₂O into the atmosphere.

In beef production, 16 kg CO₂/ kg beef is emitted compared to 2.5 kg CO₂ for pork and 0.8 for wheat. Beef is the least efficient way to produce protein, even less than vegetables with a low protein content, such as carrots and green beans. In GHG terms, consuming 1 kg of beef is equivalent to running a car for 160 km.

USA leads the world in beef consumption with 322g/person/day, which is roughly equal to THREE hamburgers. However, Asia holds the fastest growth in meat consumption due to increasing income and population growth.

 Figure 2. Meat supply in kg/capita/year

Source: UNEP

The planet needs sustainable food systems. Carbon sequestration will help mitigate GHG releases, but it holds high implementation costs. Industrial farmers must aim to improve feedstock efficiency, diets, and manure management.

Environmentalists are urging people to reduce red-meat consumption or switch to plant-origin protein substitutes. Switching to more ‘environmental-friendly’ meats such as pork and poultry will also reduce GHG emissions.

Figure 3. Production emissions of different products

Source: Environmental Working Group

Here’s a £200,000 test-tube burger grown from stem cells. Careful! It’s not as juicy.

References:

"Growing greenhouse gas emissions due to meat production." UNEP Global Environmental Alert Service. UNEP. 

This blog post owes its name to Time's Global Warming Survival Guide.