Photo courtesy dirtybusinessthefilm.com

The following presentation may make you think twice about how you use or limit the use of electricity. For Jeff Goodall, author of Big Coal, the Dirty Secret Behind America’s Energy Future, he says: Clean coal is sort of like healthy cigarettes or limited nuclear war or fat free donuts. It’s one of the great oxymoron’s of our time.

“Next in the sales brochure, we are off back to the Northern Hemisphere to a balmy climate that until now has been largely overlooked by holiday makers, Siberia.”

“On offer here we have one or two new tourist attractions—thawing peat bogs!! This could be symbolized by thinking of the Olympic rings linking up and ever increasing in diameter. As the permafrost starts to melt the outside of the circles fall inward in an ever widening pool of melting peat. As the sides collapse in a positive feedback, puddles become ponds, which become lakes. A real sight, but not for any freestyle Olympic swimmer to tackle—better leave this for the extreme sports crowd. Covering an area of a million square miles and frozen for eleven thousand years, Siberia has, as is the situation with the Arctic, been storing carbon since the last ice age. The simple botanical lesson works like this. The moss and lichen surviving on the frozen permafrost over thousands of years have been slowly absorbing massive amounts of carbon from the atmosphere. Until now it’s been a little too chilly for the seasonal growth to fully decompose, so for the last eleven thousand years the ever thickening, year after year layers, are now around 25 meters thick. We have on offer again, assisted by the standard no-option heater, up to a quarter of all the carbon that has been taken up in the world vegetation and soils since the last ice age. Now as average temperatures rise at three times the global average these frozen Siberian peat bogs are melting into putrid puddles, then swamps, then lakes. Lacking in oxygen, they release methane. More than twenty times more powerful and faster acting as a greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, the critical level of atmospheric concentrations could be reached, exceeded, and on a run to massive climatic destabilization in a heartbeat.”

“From 2002 to 2005 reports stated, that while the West Siberian peat lands had remained stable, the big thaw was now on, warming faster than anywhere on the planet. With every year the spring melt has been starting earlier and earlier adding to the positive feedback. Increasing levels of rainfall are making the area far wetter and with spring coming sooner and the winter freeze coming later, many areas of Siberia and Alaska are retaining their warmth longer. As the peat on the bottom of the lakes is converting its methane cocktail, the gases bubble to the surface. Some of the southernmost lakes are remaining unfrozen during winter, lakes that had frozen each year for thousands of years. Where the winter snow does fall, it acts as a blanket to keep the lower levels warm, where the spring melt can add even more moisture. Add to that the fact that the dark lakes, as with the expanses of open ocean in the Arctic free of sea ice, absorb more warmth the cumulative effects of warming are amplified. These areas were now being referred to as an ‘ecological landslide that is probably irreversible.’”

“Where the pebble had fallen previously on hard ground, it now falls into a quicksand of fetid swamp. Lakes of melting permafrost can be seen to stretch for hundreds of kilometers with the clear and present danger that methane release is happening at an alarming rate already.” “As the zero-degree isotherm line moves ever further north (the point at which the land reached the melting point of ice, 0 degrees centigrade) year after year it is not a case of if, but one of inevitability. Not a case of, will the methane contribute to further planetary warming, but how much and when will the critical level be reached?”

“In northern Siberia lakes are releasing methane at a rate five times higher than previously estimated. Studies by Katey Walter, an International Polar Year postdoctoral fellow at the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska–Fairbanks, reported in Nature in 2006 that her team’s calculations increase the present estimates of methane emissions from northern wetlands by between 10 and 63 percent. She explains: ‘This newly recognized source of methane is so far not included in climate models.’ Estimates suggest the area has 500 gigatons (1,100 trillion pounds) of carbon, largely in the form of ancient dead plant material. Walter suggests: ‘Permafrost models predict significant thaw of permafrost during this century, which means that yedoma permafrost is like a time bomb waiting to go off—as it continues to thaw, tens of thousands of teragrams of methane can be released to the atmosphere enhancing climate change.’”

“Monitoring of methane releases is becoming an advanced area of research. London’s Royal Holloway College oversees a large international program led by Euan Nisbet to monitor emissions. Their studies suggest that releases from the West Siberian region are up to 100,000 tonnes per day, with a representative warming effect on the planet as a whole of greater than all of the emissions from the United States manmade attributable emissions. Nisbet suggests that ‘If the peat lands become wetter with warming and permafrost degradation, methane releases to the atmosphere will dramatically increase. Methane storage once released is estimated to be equivalent to all manmade emissions for the last 200 years.’

When?

“It has already started,” said the super salesman.

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In an article published June 18 in Science magazine, scientists reveal the growing atmospheric concentrations of man-made greenhouse gases are driving irreversible and dramatic changes to the way the ocean functions, with potentially dire impacts for hundreds of millions of people across the planet.

The findings of the report emerged from a synthesis of recent research on the world’s oceans, carried out by two of the world’s leading marine scientists, one from The University of Queensland in Australia, and one from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, in the USA.

Professor Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, lead author of the report and Director of The University of Queensland’s Global Change Institute, says the findings have enormous implications for mankind, particularly if the trend continues.

He said that the Earth’s ocean, which produces half of the oxygen we breathe and absorbs 30% of human-generated CO₂, is equivalent to its heart and lungs. “Quite plainly, the Earth cannot do without its ocean. This study, however, shows worrying signs of ill health.

“It’s as if the Earth has been smoking two packs of cigarettes a day!”

He went on to say, “We are entering a period in which the very ocean services upon which humanity depends are undergoing massive change and in some cases beginning to fail,” says Prof. Hoegh-Guldberg. “Further degradation will continue to create enormous challenges and costs for societies worldwide.”

He warned that we may soon see “sudden, unexpected changes that have serious ramifications for the overall well-being of humans,” including the capacity of the planet to support people. “This is further evidence that we are well on the way to the next great extinction event.”

The “fundamental and comprehensive” changes to marine life identified in the report include rapidly warming and acidifying oceans, changes in water circulation and expansion of dead zones within the ocean depths.

These are driving major changes in marine ecosystems: less abundant coral reefs, sea grasses and mangroves (important fish nurseries); fewer, smaller fish; a breakdown in food chains; changes in the distribution of marine life; and more frequent diseases and pests among marine organisms.

Report co-author, Dr John F. Bruno, an Associate Professor at The University of North Carolina, says greenhouse gas emissions are modifying many physical and geochemical aspects of the planet’s oceans, in ways “unprecedented in nearly a million years.” “This is causing fundamental and comprehensive changes to the way marine ecosystems function,” Dr Bruno said.

“We are becoming increasingly certain that the world’s marine ecosystems are approaching tipping points. These tipping points are where change accelerates and causes unrelated impacts on other systems, the results of which we really have no power or model to foresee.”

The authors conclude: “These challenges underscore the urgency with which world leaders must act to limit further growth of greenhouse gases and thereby reduce the risk of these events occurring. Ignoring the science is not an option.”

In their study, the researchers sought to address a gap in previous studies that have often overlooked the affects of climate change on marine ecosystems, due to the fact that they are complex and can be logistically difficult to study.

According to leading US marine scientist, the University of Maine’s School of Marine Services Professor Robert S. Steneck, the study provides a valuable indicator of the ecological risk posed by climate change, particularly to coastal regions.

“While past studies have largely focused on single global threats such as ‘global warming’, Hoegh-Guldberg and Bruno make a compelling case for the cumulative impacts of multiple planet-scale threats,” Prof. Steneck said.

Source Science Daily

“Assuming no new climate policies,” the EIA says, “worldwide increases in output per capita and relatively moderate population growth overwhelm projected improvements in energy intensity and carbon intensity.”

EIA’s predictions may not come true for two reasons. First, China, the country that emits the most greenhouse gases (GHG), pledged to reduce emissions by 40 to 45 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. Second, last week, companies from China and Finland signed 12 clean technology deals with a value of about $250 million. 

Chinese Vice Premier Li Keqiang said of the deals, “As China is experiencing rapid industrialization and urbanization, we have to build a resource-saving and environmentally friendly society as soon as possible.” He added, “Finland has advanced capability in clean tech innovation and application, so there’s great potential for cooperation between the two countries in this regard. I hope our companies will grasp the opportunity, strengthen development and application of clean tech and carry out more reciprocal cooperation.”

What about America?

What about the U.S., the second largest emitter of GHGs? Unfortunately, the outlook for climate change legislation to pass in Congress this year is not sunny with November elections coming up for Congress followed by the December break for Congress.

“There is little chance anything will happen this year,” said Tom Lewis, chief executive. “Healthcare legislation was passed because the president made a major push but no one is willing to take a major step prior to the mid-term elections,” Lewis said. “The Democrats are in line to lose a number of seats and I don’t see a passionate push between now and November 2 to get this over the finishing line,” he added.

President Obama said he hopes bill will pass this year because the oil spill highlights the need for energy reform, but he may have used up his political influence to pass healthcare reform legislation in March.

“Obama may have used all his political capital to get healthcare over the finishing line,” said Chelsea Maxwell, managing partner of the Clark Group and former senior climate advisor to Senator John Warner.

A recent article in the Guardian, a British newspaper, hit the proverbial nail on the head when it comes to the U.S. government and the oil industry. The article says that politicians have “allowed themselves to be seduced by the cheap petrol and tax provided by BP.” The article added that in the U.S. “big oil firms, like big banks are too big to bury.” There is one factor the article overlooks: the American people, who are disgusted by the disaster in the Gulf, and BP’s bungling of it.

Source Care2

The greatest coal rush the world has seen is being conducted as if climate change is not happening, and coal is king.

It wasn’t always this way. Coalmining has a long history in Australia, but coal wasn’t an important export until the last few decades. Before 1960, Queensland had no coal-export industry. Most of the coal mined was used to fuel state-owned power stations, or BHP’s Newcastle and Illawarra steel mills. As recently as 1981, Australia was but a minor medallist in the global coal trade – exporting less than half as much coal as the US. But just as climate change inconveniently peeked over the horizon, Australia started to bet big on coal. As recently released cabinet documents reinforce, the Fraser government, with strong support from the eastern states, decided to use cheap coal to attract energy intensive investment. State governments provided export infrastructure, low royalties and long-term sweetheart deals between state-owned power generators and industries such as aluminium smelting. The demise of BHP’s steel production in Newcastle, the rise of Asian demand and a UN climate convention that let fossil-fuel exporters off the hook by counting emissions where fuels are burned were just some of the many green lights given to coal exporters.

The coal push became a rush, and Australia quickly became headquarters for a global trade that bakes as it booms: our thermal coal pushes cheap and dirty electricity on many countries, and our coking coal and iron ore underpin an Asian boom in the use of blast furnaces, the most emission-intensive steel-making option. (In developed countries, most steel is produced in electric arc furnaces fed with either scrap metal or direct reduced iron, which can be made without coal.)

Yet, the coal industry remains a benign abstraction for most, not much more than a hum of economic and political waffle on the periphery of everyday life: “biggest export, thousands of jobs, economic backbone”, “‘clean coal’ on the way”. Many link coal to global warming, but conclude that coal exports are a necessary evil. Few appreciate the incomprehensible magnitude and pace of the current rush, or ponder its climate-changing consequences. Right now, around 120 mines across New South Wales and Queensland export more than 280 million tonnes of black coal annually (Victoria’s vast brown coal reserves have not been economically viable as an export proposition).

Coal used to be labour intensive: in 1908 it employed more than three-and-a-half times as many people (as a share of Australia’s population) as it does today. The process is now largely automated. Coal is extracted with the help of gargantuan dragline excavators, hauled by three-storey-high trucks to piles from which conveyor belts tip it into freight trains, which can be 100 carriages long and take three locomotives to shift. It then clatters and grinds its way to one of nine coal terminals dotted along the east coast of Australia, where ships queue to ferry loads of up to 200,000 tonnes to ports around the world. Along with all the diesel and electricity used to extract and transport coal, mines release large quantities of methane, a greenhouse gas 23 times more potent than CO2. But these emissions pale in comparison with those released when the coal is burned offshore. A single train might carry a load that will generate the annual emissions equivalent of 6000 cars, a ship the equivalent of more than 90,000 cars. With every tonne of coal generating 2.7 tonnes of CO2, our exports generate more than 750 million tonnes of CO2 annually – much more than the emissions occuring in Australia. The plan to double exports before 2020 puts us on track to overtake Saudi Arabia as the world’s largest carbon exporter in the next 15 years.

There’s really no physical limit on the rush. Australia’s recoverable coal reserves are estimated at 40 billion tonnes; there’s enough to increase exports for the rest of this century. Around 40 new export mines or expansions of existing ones are under way, thousands of kilometres of new railway track are being laid, and new coal terminals are being built (and existing ones expanded) to handle a doubling of exports. The scale of the expansion makes it easy to forget that the industry is the result of more than a century of deliberate and generous government subsidy. Most coalmines built in the first half of the twentieth century were government-owned. When coalmining, power generation and railways were virtual state-run monopolies, it made sense to co-locate rail and power infrastructure close to the mines. As coal has become an export commodity and domestic power has been opened up to competition, the coal industry was gifted an unassailable competitive advantage courtesy of the taxpayer.

Nothing captures the government’s role in developing Australia’s coal industry quite like the eulogies to Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen. As Bob Katter Jr put it, were you to remove the close relationship between Sir Joh and Sir Leslie Thiess from history, you would “erase the coal industry from the face of Queensland”. Having paved the way for Thiess (along with Mitsui and Peabody) to establish Queensland’s first big export mines, Bjelke-Petersen championed the expansion of the coal industry, assisting with substantial infrastructure and a five-cents-a-ton royalty rate that companies such as Utah and Mitsubishi found impossible to refuse. As a young MP, Katter had serious doubts about public investments that he saw as “irresponsible risk-taking”; now he says Joh was nation-building. However, there’s no mention of the jury finding that Sir Les bribed Sir Joh so he would win coal projects, and no mention of the 453 million tonnes of CO2 that Queensland’s coal exports now add to the atmosphere annually. Taking all this into consideration, Katter’s youthful caution looks inadvertently prescient: it was irresponsible risk-taking, and it will come back to bite us.

Only not just yet, as successive generations of politicians and bureaucrats have decided that doubling the stakes to stay at the table is the way to avoid paying coal liabilities. Just keep playing, and let the next generation cash in what’s left of the chips. Having spent billions subsidising coal exports into existence, governments won’t walk away. That would mean having to say “no” to friends and ex-colleagues: to Australia’s largest coal union (the CFMEU), which has regularly been federal Labor’s biggest external donor; to coal baron Clive Palmer whose Mineralogy Pty Ltd is the biggest external donor to Queensland’s Liberal National Party; and to former premiers, treasurers and ministers now paid by the coal industry. It would also mean saying “no” to senior politicians on both sides of politics who have recently made what locals call “fortunate purchases” of rural properties on which coalmining is anticipated. The media tips a 200% to 500% return on these properties, but only if the coal rush rolls on.

Governments are behaving as if the more hopeless their coal addiction, the less likely it is they will be asked to quit. Not a single Australian coal-fired power station has been closed to reduce emissions. Antique 1960s power stations are being dusted off, and a dozen new ones are in the planning stage. Much of the coal rush is only viable thanks to government subsidies to build, for example, ‘missing link’ railways. Queensland is currently spending more on coal-related infrastructure ($15.6 billion) than it has made from coal royalties over the past decade ($11.4 billion). For that $15.6 billion, the government, in partnership with the private sector, could replace more than one-third of Queensland’s existing coal-fired power stations with renewable energy generators. Instead, the “smart state” wants to spend it on doubling the amount of ‘world-class’ coal it exports. It also wants to salve Queensland’s budget by privatising coal-related port and rail assets, thereby hooking more private investors to the coal addiction.

In NSW the planning laws have been rewritten so that protections that would normally apply can be swept aside by ministerial fiat once a project is declared to be of state significance – which most coalmines are. Although 16 NSW rivers have been permanently damaged by careless mining – mainly as a result of subsidence caused by long-wall coalmines – the government is happy to consider coalmines underneath the water catchments of Sydney and the central coast. Calls for a kilometre-wide buffer around rivers and aquifers have been dismissed. Meanwhile, the Keneally government is getting back to the business of buying its own coalmines – even though the estimated value of the coal-fired power assets it is looking to privatise has reportedly fallen from $35 billion to $6 billion in just over a decade.

In Canberra, Kevin Rudd calls the coal industry “the backbone of regional Australia”. His resources minister, Martin Ferguson, regards new coal-fired power stations as inevitable and warns against holding back coal export growth. With the explicit aim of doubling exports, federal environmental approval and billions of dollars in subsidies are being given to expand port, rail and road infrastructure. And billions more are propping up pilot projects to help maintain the illusion that ‘carbon capture and storage’ might clean up Australia’s coal industry. On the other side of politics, where climate-change sceptics choose the leader, one of Tony Abbott’s first items of business was visiting a Hunter Valley coalmine to declare that this “great industry” should flourish – not merely survive.

When Shenhua funds a new rural health clinic in Gunnedah, when Rio Tinto’s Coal & Allied sponsors Newcastle’s NRL team, when BHP Billiton and Xstrata fund drought-relief concerts by the Sydney Symphony, coal stealthily locks in permanency. With each state-owned coal asset that is privatised, an implicit guarantee is given that the coal industry’s expansion will be unfettered. But it is not the governments addicted to coal that are the victims; most victims of the climate chaos being fuelled by Australian coal are yet to be born in places like Bangladesh and sub-Saharan Africa. The ordeal of the more immediate victims of the rush – Glenn Beutel and the thousands like him – is unknown to most Australians.

“Now just one last question if I can. I have looked over your plans for the future and see the strategy you have planned for global warming. Your other advisors, those of the Union of Concerned Scientists, the collective Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change amongst others, have mapped out the future with ‘best available science’ rising temperatures slowly degree by degree year by year. They may be right with the timing, only time will tell. They seem however to stop comfortingly at 2100. Just far enough into the future so that most of the decision makers here today, can get another few terms of office in and most of those born today, don’t feel immediately threatened, although anticipating an inconvenience to some extent, over the coming decades. My final question is, will you be stopping at 5.8 degrees warmer? Or will you be happy going a little higher, let’s say to 10 degrees or 15 or above? How much curry do you want in that vindaloo and how many of Mother Nature’s hot chilli peppers would you like to spice it up?” End excerpt.

Climate change could make half of the world uninhabitable for humans as a rise in temperature makes it too hot to survive, scientists have warned

Researchers from the University of New South Wales in Australia and Purdue University in the US said global warming will not stop after 2100, the point where most previous projections have ended.

In fact temperatures may rise by up to 12C (21.6F) within just three centuries making many countries into deserts.

The study, published in the prestigious journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said humans will not be able to adapt or survive in such conditions.

Professor Tony McMichael, one of the authors, said if the world continues to pump out greenhouse gases at the current rate it will cause catastrophic warming.

“Under realistic scenarios out to 2300, we may be faced with temperature increases of 12 degrees or even more,” he said. “If this happens, our current worries about sea level rise, occasional heatwaves and bushfires, biodiversity loss and agricultural difficulties will pale into insignificance beside a major threat – as much as half the currently inhabited globe may simply become too hot for people to live there.”

Professor Steven Sherwood, a fellow author, said there was no chance of the Earth reaching such temperatures this century.

But he said there was a good chance temperatures could rise by at least 7C (12.6F) by 2300, that would also make much of the world inhabitable.

“There’s something like a 50/50 chance of that over the long term,” he said.

Prof Sherwood said climate change research had been “short-sighted” not to probe the long-term consequences of the impact of greenhouse gases blamed for global warming.

“It needs to be looked at,” he said. “There’s not much we can do about climate change over the next two decades but there’s still a lot we can do about the longer term changes.”

::The world should shift to a low carbon economy not to stop climate change but to preserve ‘human dignity’, according to a report from a self-styled “eclectic” group of academics.

The UN process has failed, they argue, and a global approach concentrating on CO2 cuts will never work.

They urge instead the use of carbon tax revenue to develop technologies that can supply clean energy to everyone and provide ‘human dignity’.

Their so-called Hartwell Paper is criticised by others who say the UN process has curbed carbon emissions.

The paper is named after Hartwell House, the Buckinghamshire mansion, hotel and spa where the group of 14 academics from Europe, North America and Japan gathered in February to develop their ideas.

Source Telegraph UK

S. Tompkins from Charlotte, NC, asks “How does the global warming pollution from cars compare to other major sources such as a coal power plant?” and is answered by Clean Vehicles Senior Engineer Jim Kliesch.

Looking at the big picture, about a third of U.S. global warming pollution comes from moving vehicles: passenger cars and trucks, big rigs, airplanes, trains, waterborne shipping, etc. Passenger cars and trucks are the biggest slice of that pie just because of the sheer number of them we have on the road.

In broad terms, the environmental impact of a vehicle is affected by three things:

* the emissions from producing the vehicle

* the emissions from operating the vehicle

* the emissions associated with the vehicle’s fuel (see below)

Typically, the production of a vehicle accounts for only about 20 percent of its overall environmental impact, so for our purposes, I’m going to focus on emissions from the vehicle and fuel.

While your question is focused on global warming pollution, it’s important to note that there are key differences between smog-forming pollutants and global warming pollutants when it comes to cars. The amount of smog forming pollution your car produces depends on a device called a catalytic converter, which is essentially a washing machine that cleans your exhaust before it exits the tailpipe. There’s no corresponding device to clean global warming emissions, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), from your car.

So the global warming pollution from passenger cars and trucks is therefore largely related to how much fuel they burn. There are direct emissions, which come from combusting fuel in the engine, that create about 19 pounds of CO2 per gallon of gasoline burned. And there are “upstream” emissions, which come from the extraction, refining, and transport of the fuel from the well head to the gas station pump, that create another 5-6 pounds of CO2 per gallon. Before you even start your car, you’re already responsible for the emissions produced by transforming that fuel from crude oil to the gas in your tank.  So, when you add up the direct emissions with the upstream emissions, a gallon of gasoline is responsible for close to 25 pounds of CO2.

With this in mind, a passenger car or truck today is typically responsible for around 7.4 tons of CO2 a year. If you compare that to a typical, existing 600 megawatt coal plant, producing 5.2 million tons of CO2 pollution a year, then, in one year, that plant is producing as much global warming pollution as around 700,000 cars. (This assumes the plant does not use carbon capture and storage technology, which has yet to be demonstrated in the form of commercial-scale, fully integrated projects at coal-fired power plants.)

But be sure to note the reference to “in one year.” Often, when people talk about something that emits a lot of pollution, they’ll say “if we manage to stop it, it would be like taking X cars off the road,” and that’s all it says. There’s a big difference between taking those cars off the road completely and taking them off the road for one year. A new vehicle is driven about 15,000 miles per year and burns the corresponding amount of fuel. On the other hand, if you take a vehicle off the road entirely, 150,000 miles of travel – or more – would be avoided.

But what’s clear from all of this is that we are producing way too much global warming pollution in both the transportation and the energy sectors. At the end of the day, it’s going to take a diversified effort—including efficiency improvements, a shift to clean energy, and development of clean fuels and advanced vehicle technologies, among others—if we are to reach the kind of global warming emissions reductions that scientists say are needed to avoid the worst effects of climate change.

Jim Kliesch is an engineer with expertise in clean and efficient vehicle technologies. He holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Ohio University, and a master’s degree in environmental and energy policy from the University of Delaware.

Source Union of Concerned Scientists

China’s leaders are so concerned about rising energy use and declining energy efficiency that the cabinet held a special meeting this week to discuss the problem, according to a statement Thursday from the ministry of industry and information technology. Coal-fired electricity and oil sales each climbed 24 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier, on the heels of similar increases in the fourth quarter

Premier Wen Jiabao promised tougher policies to enforce energy conservation, including a ban on government approval of any new projects by companies that failed to eliminate inefficient capacity, the ministry said. Mr. Wen also said that China had to find a way to meet the target in its current five-year plan of a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency.

“We can never break our pledge, stagger our resolution or weaken our efforts, no matter how difficult it is,” Mr. Wen said. Western experts say it will be hard to meet the target, but that China’s leaders seem determined.

“No country of this size has seen energy demand grow this fast before in absolute terms, and those who are most concerned about this are the Chinese themselves,” said Jonathan Sinton, the China program manager at the International Energy Agency in Paris.

China has been the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases each year since 2006, leading the United States by an ever-widening margin. A failure by China to meet its own energy efficiency targets would be a big setback for international efforts to limit such emissions.

Such a failure would also be a potential diplomatic embarrassment for the Chinese government, which promised the world just before the Copenhagen climate summit meeting in December that it would improve energy efficiency.

The issue has major economic implications for China and for global energy markets. The nation’s ravenous appetite for fossil fuels is driven by China’s shifting economic base — away from light export industries like garment and shoe production and toward energy-intensive heavy industries like steel and cement manufacturing for cars and construction for the domestic market.

Almost all urban households in China now have a washing machine, a refrigerator and an air-conditioner, according to government statistics. Rural ownership of appliances is now soaring as well because of new government subsidies for their purchase since late 2008.

Car ownership is rising rapidly in the cities, while bicycle ownership is actually falling in rural areas as more families buy motorcycles and light trucks.

General Motors announced on Thursday that its sales in China rose 41 percent in April from a year earlier, virtually all of the vehicles made in China because of high import taxes.

Zhou Xi’an, a National Energy Administration official, said in a statement last month that fossil fuel consumption was likely to increase further in the second quarter of this year because of rising car ownership, diesel use in the increasingly mechanized agricultural sector and extra jet fuel consumption for travelers to the Shanghai Expo.

The shift in the composition of China’s economic output is overwhelming the effects of China’s rapid expansion of renewable energy and its existing energy conservation program, energy experts said.

The increase in oil and coal-fired electricity consumption in the first quarter was twice as fast as economic growth of about 12 percent for that period, a sign that rising energy consumption is not just the result of a rebounding economy but also of changes in the mix of industrial activity. The shift in activity is partly because of China’s economic stimulus program, which has resulted in a surge in public works construction that requires a lot of steel and cement.

Burning fossil fuels releases carbon dioxide, which many scientists describe as the biggest man-made contributor to global warming.

President Hu Jintao pledged in November that by 2020 the Chinese government would slow its growth in greenhouse gases by sharply improving energy efficiency. Mr. Wen went to the Copenhagen climate meeting three weeks later and opposed any international monitoring of China’s energy efficiency effort or binding limits on China’s overall energy consumption.

China’s current five-year plan, from 2006 to 2010, already sets an efficiency target that the country may now be less likely to meet.

The plan calls for the energy needed for each unit of economic output to decline by 20 percent in 2010 compared to 2005.

For a while, China seemed to be on track toward that goal. According to the ministry of industry and information technology, energy efficiency actually improved by more than 14 percent from 2005 to 2009.

But it deteriorated by 3.2 percent in the first quarter, the ministry said on Thursday.

Mr. Wen said that this deterioration would make it “particularly difficult” for China to meet the 20 percent target.

Without big policy changes, like raising fuel taxes, “they can’t possibly make it,” said Julie Beatty, principal energy economist at Wood Mackenzie, a big energy consulting firm based in Edinburgh, Scotland.

Mr. Hu promised last November that China would improve the energy efficiency of its economy by 40 to 45 percent by 2020. The ministry statement on Thursday did not mention whether Mr. Hu’s promise might still be achievable.

Complicating energy efficiency calculations is the fact that China’s National Bureau of Statistics has begun a comprehensive revision of all of the country’s energy statistics for the last 10 years, restating them with more of the details commonly available in other countries’ data. Western experts also expect the revision to show that China has been using even more energy and releasing even more greenhouse gases than previously thought.

Revising the data now runs the risk that other countries will distrust the results and demand greater international monitoring of any future pledges by China. If the National Bureau of Statistics revises up the 2005 data more than recent data, for example, then China might appear to have met its target at the end of this year for a 20 percent improvement in energy efficiency.

China’s recent embrace of renewable energy has done little so far to slow the rise in emissions from the burning of fossil fuels.

Wind energy effectively doubled in this year’s first quarter compared with a year earlier, as China has emerged as the world’s largest manufacturer and installer of wind turbines. But wind still accounts for just 2 percent of China’s electricity capacity — and only 1 percent of actual output, because the wind does not blow all the time.

Meanwhile, fuel-intensive heavy industry output rose 22 percent in the first quarter in China from a year earlier, while light industry increased 14 percent.

Rajendra K. Pachauri, the chairman of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a United Nations research unit, said in an e-mail message that he believed China was serious about addressing its emissions.

“There is a growing realization within Chinese society that major reductions in greenhouse gas emissions would be of overall benefit to China,” he wrote after learning of the latest Chinese energy statistics. “This is important not only for global reasons, because China is now responsible for the highest emissions of greenhouse gases, but also because its per capita emissions are increasing at a rapid rate.”

To some extent, China’s energy consumption now might actually help limit its global warming emissions in the future.

China, for example, used 200 million tons of cement in building rail lines last year, while the entire American economy only used 93 million tons, said David Fridley, a China energy specialist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Although production of that cement raised energy use and emissions of global warming gases, it also expanded a rail system that is among the most energy-efficient in the world.

China currently moves only 55 percent of its coal by rail, for example, which is down from 80 percent a decade ago, as many coal users have been forced by inadequate rail capacity to haul coal in trucks instead. The trucks burn 10 or more times as much fuel per mile to haul a ton of coal, Mr. Fridley said.

But now, with new high-speed passenger lines leaving more room on older lines to haul coal and other freight, the percentages could begin shifting away from energy-inefficient trucking, he said.

Source New York Times

Writing in the journal Nature, analysts at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impacts Research in Germany say a rise of at least 3C by 2100 is likely.

The team also says many countries, including EU members and China, have pledged slower carbon curbs than they have been achieving anyway.

They say a new global deal is needed if deeper cuts are to materialise.

“There’s a big mismatch between the ambitious goal, which is 2C… and the emissions reductions,” said Potsdam’s Malte Meinshausen.

“The pledged emissions reductions are in most cases very unambitious,” he told BBC News.

In their Nature article, the team uses stronger language, describing the pledges as “paltry”.

“The prospects for limiting global warming to 2C – or even to 1.5C, as more than 100 nations demand – are in dire peril,” they conclude.

Between now and 2020, global emissions are likely to rise by 10-20%, they calculate, and the chances of passing 3C by 2100 are greater than 50%.

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), this implies a range of serious impacts for the world, including

• significant falls in crop yields across most of the world
• damage to most coral reefs
• likely disruption to water supplies for hundreds of millions of people.

Chances of a 3C rise are higher than evens, the team calculates (simplified from Potsdam Institute’s Nature paper)

More than 120 countries have now associated themselves with the Copenhagen Accord, the political document stitched together on the summit’s final day by a small group of countries led by the US and the BASIC bloc of Brazil, China, India and South Africa.

The accord “recognises” the 2C target as indicated by science. It was also backed at last year’s G8 summit.

Many of those 120-odd have said what they are prepared to do to constrain their greenhouse gas emissions – either pledging cuts by 2020, in the case of industrialised countries, or promising to improve their “carbon intensity” in the case of developing nations.

Some of the pledges are little more than vague statements of intent. But all developed countries, and the developing world’s major emitters, have all given firm figures or ranges of figures.

The EU, for example, pledges to cut emissions by 20% from 1990 levels by 2020; China promises to improve carbon intensity by 40-45% by 2020 compared against 2005; and Australia vows an emission cut of 5-25% on 2000 levels by 2020.

The Potsdam team concludes that many of the detailed pledges are nowhere near as ambitious as their proponents would claim.

They calculate that the EU’s 20% pledge implies an annual cut of 0.45% between 2010 and 2020, whereas it is already achieving annual reductions larger than that.

The Potsdam team calculates that the EU’s emissions have fallen on average by 0.6% per year since 1980

During 2009, emissions from the bloc’s power sector alone fell by 11% owing to the recession

Consequently, the current 20% by 2020 pledge equates to 0.45% per year – less than the historical average

China’s 40% minimum pledge also amounts to nothing more than business as usual, they relate; and among developed countries, only pledges by Norway and Japan fall into the 25-40% by 2020 range that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) recommends as necessary to give a good chance of meeting the 2C target.

Hot air

Whereas many countries, rich and poor, have indicated they are willing to be more ambitious if there is a binding global deal, the Potsdam team notes that in the absence of a global deal, only the least ambitious end of their range can be counted upon.

Writing in the BBC’s Green Room this week, Bryony Worthington from the campaign group Sandbag argues that the EU can easily move to its alternative higher figure of 30% – and that it must, if it wants to stimulate others to cut deeper.

“Many countries are looking to Europe to show how it is possible to achieve growth without increasing emissions,” she said.

“Only when they see that this is possible will they be inclined to adopt absolute reduction targets of their own.”

An additional factor flagged up in the analysis is that many countries have accrued surplus emissions credits under the Kyoto Protocol.

Countries such as Russia and other former Eastern bloc nations comfortably exceeded their Kyoto targets owing to the collapse of Communist economies in the early 1990s.

Without a binding global agreement preventing the practice, these nations would be allowed to put these “banked” credits towards meeting any future targets – meaning they would have to reduce actual emissions less than they promised.

These “hot air” credits could also be traded between nations.

Stern words

This is not the first analysis of the Copenhagen Accord pledges, but it is one of the starkest.

Lord Stern’s team at the Grantham Research Institute for Climate Change and the Environment in London has also run the figures; and although their conclusions on the numbers are similar, they do not see things in quite such a pessimistic light.

“You cannot characterise an emissions path for a country or the world by focusing solely on the level in 2020 or any other particular date,” said the institute’s principal research fellow Alex Bowen.

“It is the whole path that matters, and if more action is taken now to reduce emissions, less action will be required later, and vice versa.”

The Potsdam team acknowledges that if emissions do rise as they project, it would still be possible to have a reasonable chance of meeting 2C if very strict carbon curbs were applied thereafter, bringing emissions down by 5% per year or so.

“In an ideal world, if you pull off every possible emission reduction from the year 2021 onwards, you can still get to get to 2C if you’re lucky,” said Dr Meinshausen.

“But it is like racing towards the cliff and hoping you stop just before it.”

They argue that positive analyses may “lull decision-makers into a false sense of security”.

The UN climate process continues through this year, with many countries saying they still want to reach a binding global agreement by December.

But stark divisions remain between various blocs over emission cuts, finance, technology transfer and other issues; and it is far from certain that all important countries want anything more binding than the current set of voluntary national commitments.

Source BBC News

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