PROGRESS REPORT ON THE PARIS CLIMATE
AGREEMENT PART 18
2023 JANUARY ISSUE
By Andrew Sia
From the Desk of the Publisher
Every year around this time the United Nations would hold the Paris Climate Conference – COP27 to discuss about the progress of the work of the member nations in reducing their carbon emissions.
This year with many countries suffered from the natural calamities such as heat waves, droughts, typhoons and hurricanes, and flooding. During this climate summit, question about “loss and damage”, a matter that the developed countries should provide for the poorer countries have entered into deadlock.
We reported about coal, it is the single biggest source of CO2 emissions and also the single biggest source of electricity generation worldwide. The world has to work on this and replace coal with renewable energy and this is the top of the agenda.
We discussed about the Russian’s war in Ukraine is holding Europe as hostage for their supply of oil and natural gas. In the short term, this is not going to improve and it is a hurdle for the free world to go for renewable energy as well.
There are many areas that we have to take note and the report will help us to organize our planning for the going forward.
Introduction
In the arena of environmentalism, the most important concept is “sustainability”. It is the process that will require future generations to observe in order to sustain.
The world, with the consensus from the Group of Seven nations—the U.S., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the U.K.—that the only way to curb the global warming is to reduce the carbon emissions from fossil fuels. The emerging mega-emitters, China and India, are playing the key roles, with the U.S. coming closely as the third, has tried to promote the clean energy that coincide with climate initiative.
The Democratic party led by the current U.S. President Biden started an aggressive and unduly program which would risk a backlash that can set back the course set for environmental sustainability for the generations to come. The Biden’s administration ought to reckon the goals as set and beware if they can be achievable or not. First of all, it was announced that the 100% clean electricity should be in place by 2035, and net-zero emissions by 2050. This aggressive timeline is at odd with the realities that we can’t deny: economic, geostrategic and political. Each of them is already a hurdle and when the three come together, they are going to undermine the Democratic Party’s climate agenda.
We will tackle the three hurdles one by one as the following:
Economically – According to the Energy Information Administration, global demand for energy will rise 50% by 2050, and fossil fuels will still account for 75% for the supply. A recent McKinsey & Co. report shows that to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 would require nearly $6 trillion in new spending every year for the next 30 years. This is roughly one-third of all tax receipts by every government in the world which is already impossible in particular for the poor countries. This is unsustainable.
Geostrategically – Both Russia and China consider the western climate commitments as an opportunity to increase their power and global influence. We have witnessed this time Europe’s reliance on Russian natural gas has brought them a catastrophic situation. Meanwhile, China is hiding as a developing country while trying to dominate the world market for renewables for the supply of wind turbines, solar panels, lithium batteries, leveraging with state-subsidies to compete in the world market to have a leading edge. At the same time, it is still burning cheap fossil fuels to build up its economy to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy. This is unstainable.
Politically – Without the full support from the Group of Seven, although they are the world’s leading democracies, the accountability to their publics is important. The voters in these countries will veto the climate policies that may ramp up the energy costs, hinder the economic growth and even shutdown the power supply. At the moment, poll shows only 1% of the U.S. registered voters rank climate change as first in their concerns. There is the growing populist in France, Germany and Italy, showing their discontent, and these governments risk being ousted in the name of fossil-driven energy security. This is unsustainable.
The World Today – On one hand, the scientists are pulling the alarms for the need of moving away from fossil fuels that are contributing the catastrophic climate change, but Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused the world to move to increase oil and gas production to encounter the threat the Russian posted.
Report on the U.S. Situation
U.S. has delivered a clear message during the recent United Nations General Assembly in September that it is going to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and zero by 2050. Previously this was known as a fairy tale but it is becoming more believable now.
We have seen public and private investments in research and development have fueled the growth of clean technologies, and as the result have drove down the costs and attracting industry.
Since 2010, cost of solar energy has decreased by 85%, wind onshore energy by 59%, and offshore energy by 71%. Cost of the lithium-ion battery by 89%.
Already over 120,000 wind turbines and close to a billion solar panels will provide clean energy to American homes and businesses in 2030.
Mexico’s Attitude Towards Energy Independence
Mexican president, López Obrador, recently inaugurated a new oil refinery in his home state. This is to balance the control of the energy sector and allow the state to dominate the market. It is to assure Mexican energy sovereign and return the country back to its glory days when oil industry was creating thousands of jobs and helped to bolster the economy.
It has undermined the renewable players out of the Mexican market. Mexico will fail its pledge to the world to reduce its carbon emissions and will also jeopardize billions of dollars in renewable investment.
According to the government’s numbers, about 80% of its energy is coming from fossil fuels and 20% are from the renewables and nuclear power plants. It plans to spend $1.6 billion to build a giant solar plant in northern Mexico as well as to refurbish more than a dozen state-owned hydroelectric plants.
In Mexico, it is not an energy issue, but more of a political issue, sovereignty over energy production holds a very important place. It complained about the corruption under the privatized energy sector.
As of June this year, there are more than 50 wind and solar projects by private and foreign companies are waiting for permits to proceed. Some applications have been waiting since 2019. In total they represent 7,000 megawatts of renewable energy, enough to power the city of Los Angeles.
There are 14 privately owned wind and solar plants that have been completed but waiting for going forward.
The government has given preference to energy from coal, gas and oil operate by state-own operation over privately-owned renewable plants.
The current president is not going to meet its goal under the 2015 Paris Agreement to produce 35% of its power from renewable sources by 2024. The country is not open for foreign energy investment, and for those who have invested are under a lot of tension with the government.
There will be a new presidential election in 2024 and it is hoping that the next administration can be more friendly to the renewable energy.
Carbon Capture & Storage (CCS) Technology
Currently there are twelve commercial CCS project in operation in 2021. It is used to capture carbon dioxide emissions from industrial resources and pump them for deep underground storage. It is seen as a solution to the emissions problem for a range of industries such as electricity-generating plants powered by fossil fuels to industrial facilities for cement, steel, iron, chemicals and fertilizer.
The recent Inflation Reduction Act is meant for cutting the use of fossil fuels and expanding the use of renewable energy, electric vehicles, heat pumps and more. The financial aid to be used here is more proactive as the money goes to subsidize the CCS is more passive.
It is an outdated technology and only the coal industry would support it. It might have been effective when the cost of renewable energy was high, but this was fifteen years ago. This technology should have to be abolished in order that its resources can be more cleverly used.
Carbon Tax – To Be Or Not To Be
It was already in the 1970s, economists were talking about the cost to the society of each ton of carbon emissions to offset its impact on us. Carbon tax was initiated that would discourage the use of fossil fuels and help to move more towards sustainable form of energy.
But we have found out this time when the Inflation Reduction Act was signed by President Biden with its $392 billion in climate-related subsidies, the initiative is built on tax credits, loans and grants, instead of imposing the carbon tax. The administration could have found that taxing carbon would be hard to sell to the public.
A lot of initiatives have been followed and one of those is a $7,500 tax credit for sales of a new electric vehicle. This is followed by the state governments, like in California, a ban of the sale of any new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035.
Experts who are working on various climate changes initiatives and pointing out that damages related to topography like soil quality, tree coverage and the related natural environment. We can move the focus on our city planning and take for example the New York City Council had enacted Local Law 97 in 2019 as part of a pioneering legislative package to curb greenhouse emissions from big buildings 40% below 2005 level by 2030, and 80% by 2050.
What is the best to do will always create inequality, whether it is a political or a social one, we will always have the debates from both sides.
African States
Compare with the developed countries, African countries are barely there as we have labeled them as developing country and in fact many of them are under developing and even very under developing countries. Up until now they have consumed a very small fraction of energy and emitted very insignificant carbon dioxide. They have been pushed to use to use renewable solar energy which is off-grid for lighting villages and for cooking. They have no possibility to connect them to the grid due to the infrastructure. There are no manufacturing activities that have created jobs for a growing population. They said that by 2050, the world’s population will reach 10 billion and Africa’s population will almost double to 2.5 billion. The median age for them is 18 years old.
Kenya – It started forty years ago, when they found steam gushed out of the earth’s crust in a place outside Nairobi. It turned out to be a geothermal reserve that began to be captured through pipes. Today, this volcanic energy supply half the need of Kenya’s electricity.
Renewable energy can be referred to hydropower, wind and solar power, as well as geothermal, which accounts for 75% of Kenya’s electricity generation according to the Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority.
Nigeria – It is the most populous country in the African continent. It has the potential of increasing its oil production for export, production quota of 1.799 million barrels per day was allocated to Nigeria by OPEC. It was recorded at 1.183 million barrels of its crude oil production for July. It was only 65% on target.
With 600 million people in Africa who are lack of electricity, one-sixth of them live in Nigeria. And it produces 0.7 ton of carbon per capita in according to the World Bank. In view of its growing population and the plan to industrialize, by 2050 it will need 15 times more energy than what it is consuming now.
We read that to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050 would require nearly $6 trillion in new spending every year for the next 30 years. This is roughly one-third of all tax receipts by every government in the world which is so mind-blogging and I am sure that this is going to enrich all those big corporations who would hire this lobbyists to get a slice of that lucrative action. This can only divide the countries up between those haves and those don’t haves.
Using of Coal in Germany in this Coming Winter
In Germany, Russia was used to supply more than half of Germany’s gas import, which is a major source of fuel for heating. After the Russia’s invasion in Ukraine triggered a chain reaction of European sanctions and with the Russian countermeasures, the gas was shutoff.
Already in June, Germany realized that they would have to reopen some of the coal plants that its Green party fought so hard to get the government to exit coal in eight years’ time. A drought this summer further delayed coal transportation on rivers, and cargo trains carrying coal and other fuels were given the priority.
The situation in Germany had gained support from its people. Earlier on in its 2019 poll, 73% of the population supported ending the use of coal, now the poll in this summer showing 56% have agreed to bring the coal plant back on and only 36% against.
This resulted the German government decided to reopen the coal mine in Lützerath, located in the western Germany, for the much-needed coal mined under the village. Two years ago this tiny farming village gained the support from the die-hard environmental activists who camped in the fields to stop the expansion of a nearby open-pit lignite, a soft brown type of coal, and also the most dirty, that threatened to swallow the village and its farms.
Since the beginning of the crisis raised by Russia, Germany has seen a nearly 5% rise in coal-generated electricity, but currently it is nearly a third of all electricity in Germany.
But the activists had hope to draw a line in Lützerath, for a town with only 90 inhabitants, which would perhaps be razed for the coal beneath them. It was been known that since World War II, some 300 German villages have been wiped out for the coal underneath them. Also the need of Lützerath’s lignite is unnecessary as Germany can use more “hard” coal in this winter. And also it is less polluted.
Sport Singapore Taking Lead to Establish Permanent Shoe Waste Collection Ecosystem
On June 22, 2021, the leading materials science company Dow (NYSE: Dow) and Singapore National Sports Agency (SportSG), jointly announced the establishment of a permanent shoe waste collection ecosystem. It aims to recycle 170,000 pairs of used sports shoes per annum. This collaboration also involves partners like B.T. Sports, Alba WH, Decathlon and Standard Chartered Bank.
It named the project as: “Others see an old shoes. We see the future.”
This ecosystem would recycle the rubberized and elastomeric show waste into infrastructure materials for sports facilities such as jogging tracks, playgrounds and fitness corners. The project collects used sports shoes, football boots, but without the metal studs, from the general public for recycling. The rubberized soles and midsoles would ground into rubber granules that are used as a material to build sports infrastructure, partially replacing the hazardous recycled rubber tires. The use of a water-based and solvent-free binder technology would bind the granules together.
The result is more environmentally friendly and safer sports infrastructure for users.
It was reported that in Singapore alone, an estimate 22 million pairs of shoes are sold annually.
How Much Do We Know About Methane?
Methane is a potent greenhouse gas with a warming impact 80 times greater than carbon dioxide. It is a primary ingredient in natural gas but also produced by other human activities such as landfills, rice paddies and cattle ranges. Our 1.1 degrees Celsius temperature increase since pre-industrial period, about a third can be attributed to methane.
The atmospheric methane had its highest growth since it was recorded in 2020 with the most modern instruments. The record in 2021 was broken but without any good reason.
Methane derived from fossil resources has more of the carbon isotopes than atmospheric methane and those produced by microbial sources, such as wetlands, cattle and landfills contains less. The recent increase in methane is not coming primarily from fossil fuels, but from other sources.
For years scientists have focused more on carbon emissions as atmospheric methane appeared to have leveled. Now researchers are using isotopic measurements and satellite data to determine the origins of surge in methane, they found that it is coming from microbial sources. Wetlands and cattle appeared to be the main reason and the most intense growth seemed to have come from the tropics. A global increase in cattle-raising and in landfills have caused the microbial emissions. The scientists have concluded that 85% of the rise in atmospheric methane since 2007 was due to microbial sources, out of which, half of that was from the tropics.
Also when the wetlands get more wet from rain, it leads to more emissions because the microbes that produce methane have more organic matter to feed. Climate change leads to more intense rainfall in East Africa for instance, and creates more methane.
Also other natural sources of methane, such as the melting of the permafrost in the Arctic, are linked to climate, have made it inevitable.
Scientists around the world are collecting samples of air taken from a chain of 50 monitoring stations in flasks for study in the laboratory. Measuring the carbon-13 isotope, but also the hydrogen isotope deuterium, better known as heavy hydrogen, help to build a library of different evidences for generating methane.
The Arctic has given hints of what future emissions might look like. We know that in Alaska there is an increase of 40% lake areas since 1980s. These lakes are formed by the melting of permafrost and they are known as thermokarst lakes. The microbes that produce methane thrive on all the newly thawed organic materials at the bottom of the lakes. They emit methane ten times higher than a normal lake. They are known as the hotspots.
Currently, the methane emissions from the thermokarst lakes are slower than the wetlands in the tropics. But they are also on the alert.
It is known that half of the methane emissions come from human sources and half from the natural sources. There is hardly anything that the governments can do with the natural sources, but from the human sources there are ways to enforce and to reduce the emissions.
In the COP26, more than 100 countries signed up to the Global Methane Pledge launched during the summit. It pledged the countries to cut methane emissions 30% by the end of this decade. A group effort to reduce methane emissions using the existing technologies could reduce the anthropogenic emissions 45% by 2030.
From the fossil fuel, it accounts for about one-third of anthropogenic emissions in general. Special venting installed in coal mines; early detection of gas leaks; reducing methane venting during oil and gas production can cut methane emissions by more than 40 million tons a year already.
Unfortunately, the world’s two largest methane emitters, China and Russia, declined to sign the COP26 pledge.
We learned that the Earth warming is already starting to release more methane, that means to say that global warming triggers more warming and this is a vicious cycle. But this self-perpetuating moment can continue in decades, but once it reaches the tipping point, then it will be impossible to reverse and our Earth will be doomed.
Hypothetical solutions have been studied, such as creating “chemical sinks” in the atmosphere, using “methane-eating bacteria” in dairy farms to filter methane. But all these would need governmental funding. Our level of primary knowledge is still very low and it is a new area that we have to look thoroughly into.
Written Before the COP27
It was in 2015 when leaders representing almost every country on Earth met in Paris to codify the Paris Agreement, a plan to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius about pre-industrial levels. A critical component known as the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), was put in place to reduce emissions on a country-to-country basis. But during that time at the signing of the NDCs, countries’ commitments were not ambitious enough to reduce emissions to the agreed level. Instead, countries promised that their NDCs would become more ambitious over time, and the Paris Agreement allowed revisions to NDCs to be submitted every five years.
Now, more than seven years have passed, a new report from the World Resources Institutes shows that while 80% of the countries have submitted a revised, and more ambitious NDC, but the plan is still not ambitious enough to meet the goals and limit climate warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. If the revised NDCs is fulfilled, it will cut emission by a further 7% compared to the national commitments made in the 2015 Paris Agreement. And in order to keep the 1.5 degrees goal, emissions would need to fall 43% by 2030, and this is compared to 2019 baseline. In another word, the NDCs would need to be six times more ambitious and must accelerate rapidly to meet the goal. This current emissions reduction pattern still place the world on track to a catastrophic 3 degrees Celsius of warming from pre-industrial levels.
It was found that only 51 countries addressed fossil fuel derived energy in their NDCs, and only a small portion plan for a reduction in emissions from fossil fuel energy.
The most recent NDCs submission in 2021 would reduce an additional 5.5 gigatons compare with 2015’s commitments, and this is leaving the gap of 28-gigaton gap in emission reduction which is necessary to see a 1.5 degrees Celsius warming scenario.
One thing that is important to lower the emissions is climate finance. The report from World Resources Institute (WRI) estimates that the climate finance will need to be three to six times greater than the current levels, and this is only to keep warming below 2 degrees Celsius. At the coming COP27 in November, this will become the hot topic as the finance will need to increase by five to ten times the current amount to meet the global need. The estimated climate finance would amount to $4.3 trillion in according to the WRI report.
It is already mentioned that in the forthcoming COP27, more ambitious targets and plans must be created, scales and implemented in order to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement.
COP27
Sharm El-Sheikh, a resort in Egypt is hosting the world’s biggest summit of climate change and the official opening was held on Sunday, November 6, 2022 with thousands of delegates from around the globe to deal with a wide range of pressing environmental issues following a year of natural calamities such as heat waves, droughts, typhoons and hurricanes, and flooding.
Not only that, the world is trampled by pandemic, which has entered into its third years, and war in Ukraine as invaded by Russia in its nine months. All these have created a challenging situation to the world.
We have heard so many times that the Earth’s temperature must be kept well below 2 degrees Celsius, and preferable under 1.5 degrees compared with the Industrial Revolution in 1800s. Many of us have grown numb to this plea, although the goal in 2015 Paris Climate Agreement was to observe the reduce of the temperature was agreed. In total there are 197 parties who signed the agreement.
The world is currently about 1.2 degrees Celsius hotter than it was in pre-industrial period. With the continuation of carbon emissions, there is no way that we can avoid a temperature rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius. We have already seen climate-related disasters been increasing this year, and countries that have been affected are the European countries, Pakistan, China, and lately Florida from the U.S.
Over the years during the climate summit the question about “loss and damage” would come up repeatedly. But the rich countries are reluctant to accept financial responsibility for climate change caused by industrial activity and offer compensation to poorer countries.
A very valid claim from the low-lying Pacific island states who are extremely vulnerable to the rise of sea level. They are stepping up their demand.
The twelve-day summit was supposed to end of Friday, November 18, but it was extended into the weekend as negotiators remained in deadlock with key issues. The “loss and damage” funding raised by the EU for the poorer nations suffering the effects of climate change was still waiting the developed countries to shoulder.
The cuttings in emissions are still in question and for countries like China, the most polluted country, and Saudi Arabia, the oil producing country, are resisting to take the increase effort on cutting emissions as well as the proposal on “loss and damage” funding for those most vulnerable countries.
U.S, has not shown their support to EU’s proposal although it is also one of the largest carbon emitters.
We share the historical largest carbon emitters, namely, China, the U.S., and India for your reference. If the targets for reducing the carbon emissions can be achieved collectively, the effort no matter how hard the other countries have tried, these targets won’t be able to achieve.
It is already known that at least 1.1 degree Celsius have already been risen since the pre-industrial era.
China, the world’s biggest emitter agreed that it would reach the CO2 emissions peak before 2030 and achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.
The U.S. the second-largest emitter failed to update in the past 12 months and its latest submission was in April 2021. It has set its target to cut its greenhouse emissions by 52 to 52% below 2005 level by 2030. The U.S. passed its $369 billion climate and tax legislation under the Biden administration that will help to achieve its goal by stimulating green energy development.
India set its target in August which stated its intention to reduce emissions by 45% by 2030 compared with its 2005 level.
We have to take note that in 2015 when the Paris Climate Agreement was signed, emissions from human activities were nearly 47 billion metric tons of the greenhouse gases. But by 2020, the level reached an estimated 52 billion metric tons.
It was in the last days that the COP27 made a pledge to decelerate the use of the coal power and turn the investment in renewable energy. But the expansion of China’s coal power plants continue to counterweight on global efforts. Up until 2022, global carbon emissions are on track to rise 1% to reach 37.5 billion tons in 2022, with the biggest increases coming from India and the U.S. But the rise in coal after gas supplies were cut during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the International Energy Agency warns a risk of energy crisis could cause the countries to look for coal-fired power plants and already the financial institutes underwrite the proposals.
Coal is the single biggest source of CO2 emissions and single biggest source of electricity generation worldwide. The world has 9,000 coal power plants and their range from an average of 40 years in the U.S, to less than 15years in developing economies in Asia. The current national climate pledges would need to have about one-third of the coal-fired plants to be discharged from service between 2021 and 2030, and 75% of it to be replaced by solar and wind generation.
Last & Not The Least About Methane
We came across this and thought that we should include this in this issue’s report.
