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gold hydrogen

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Natural deposits are turning up all over the world – but how useful is it in our move away from fossil fuels?


This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
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Hydrogen will play a role in weaning us off fossil fuels. It can be used to power trains, planes and HGVs, as well as being a low-carbon alternative to coke in steelmaking and a way to warm our homes.

But where will we get it? The latest geological research suggests that cheap and plentiful supplies of naturally occurring hydrogen could be found right under our feet – although there’s a long way to go before we can say for sure how useful these stores of “gold” hydrogen will be.

The many ways to obtain hydrogen have an informal, colour-based naming scheme. At present, most of our supplies are “grey” hydrogen, which is made from natural gas. Grey hydrogen does nothing to reduce the climate impact of fossil fuels, because carbon dioxide is produced as a waste product and dumped into the atmosphere.

However, when this waste is captured and buried, what’s then known as “blue” hydrogen is a big improvement. It will allow rapid and relatively climate-friendly growth in hydrogen production in the short term.

In the future, we’ll use excess electricity from solar and wind farms to perform electrolysis – the electrical breaking up of water into the hydrogen and oxygen it’s made from. This “green” hydrogen is currently more expensive than blue hydrogen and is not yet widely exploited. But that is changing rapidly as governments around the world find ways to encourage it. There’s also “pink” hydrogen, made using nuclear energy.

Now a new hydrogen hue has appeared: gold (also sometimes known as white). Gold hydrogen is naturally occurring gas trapped in pockets under the ground – in much the same way as oil and natural gas. The question is: will any of these deposits (which are being found all over the world) be large enough to justify the cost of the drills, pipelines and so on that are needed to extract them?

Nature’s hydrogen

Geologists have long known that hydrogen is produced underground by the chemical reaction of iron-rich rocks with water, or when water breaks up by exposure to radioactive minerals.

But, because hydrogen molecules are small and light, they easily percolate through rock and escape into the atmosphere. Hydrogen also serves as a food source for many microorganisms. Consequently, natural underground deposits of the gas were assumed to be small and rare – and so, with the exception of some work done decades ago in the Soviet bloc, few attempts have been made to look for it. And if you don’t look, you don’t find.

Now, however, geologists are starting to look and large amounts of natural hydrogen are turning up all over the place. In October 2023, researchers at the French National Centre of Scientific Research discovered a particularly large reservoir of natural hydrogen in north-eastern France’s Lorraine coal basin. The reservoir may contain 250 million tonnes of naturally occurring hydrogen – enough to provide almost as much energy as the UK’s largest oil field (the Claire field, west of Shetland).

Smaller hydrogen reservoirs have been found in Spain and across Europe, as well as in Mali, Namibia, Brazil, the US and many other countries. So far there’s nothing in the UK, but geologists are starting to think about where to look.

Global distribution of suspected natural hydrogen deposits

A world map showing the distribution of natural hydrogen deposits.
Natural hydrogen deposits have been found in many parts of the world. David Waltham


Pros and cons

There’s much to learn before we’ll know if gold hydrogen could have a significant impact on the transition away from fossil fuels. Geologists need to understand better how and where hydrogen gas forms, how it migrates to the places it becomes trapped, and how long it stays there before leaking out or being consumed by microorganisms.

But there are clear benefits to exploiting this low-cost, low-impact energy source. The science and technology needed is similar to that already used by oil and gas firms so jobs, resources and knowledge could be redeployed.

That would help launch the “hydrogen economy” we need as part of a strategy to halt anthropogenic climate change. This will be true even if the deposits turn out to be very limited and, hence, merely a stopgap while we develop enough renewable electricity capacity to make green hydrogen viable.

There are downsides too. Exploiting natural hydrogen deposits could be used as an excuse to foot-drag on the need to cut greenhouse gas emissions immediately. We’ve seen this already with carbon capture and storage. Will gold hydrogen suffer the same fate of being unfairly pilloried because of over-hype by actors with a hidden agenda (namely some politicians and lobbyists)?

Another problem is that hydrogen exploration may accidentally lead to new discoveries of fossil fuel. For example, many of the known deposits of gold hydrogen also contain methane, which may need to be separated from the hydrogen and then reburied.

It’s also very hard to tell whether a possible subsurface “trap” contains oil, natural gas, hydrogen or just salt water. The ultimate test is to drill and see what’s there. But if a possible hydrogen field turns out to contain crude oil, how do we ensure it’s left in the ground?

The big question, though, is how seriously to take gold hydrogen. Will it turn out to be an over-hyped distraction of very limited utility? Or will it provide a pain-free path into a low-carbon future? The truth probably lies between these extremes, but only time (and further research) will tell us.

co2 drawdown

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Authors:

Volker Sick, Professor of Advanced Energy Research, Director of the Global CO2 Initiative, University of Michigan

Fred Mason, Gerry Stokes, Susan Fancy and Stephen McCord of the Global CO₂ Initiative contributed to this article.The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Producing concrete blocks with captured carbon has both economic and climate benefits.



Capturing carbon dioxide from the air or industries and recycling it can sound like a win-win climate solution. The greenhouse gas stays out of the atmosphere where it can warm the planet, and it avoids the use of more fossil fuels.

But not all carbon-capture projects offer the same economic and environmental benefits. In fact, some can actually worsen climate change.

I lead the Global CO₂ Initiative at the University of Michigan, where my colleagues and I study how to put captured carbon dioxide (CO₂) to use in ways that help protect the climate. To help figure out which projects will pay off and make these choices easier, we mapped out the pros and cons of the most common carbon sources and uses.


Replacing fossil fuels with captured carbon

Carbon plays a crucial role in many parts of our lives. Materials such as fertilizer, aviation fuel, textiles, detergents and much more depend on it. But years of research and the climate changes the world is already experiencing have made abundantly clear that humanity needs to urgently end the use of fossil fuels and remove the excess CO₂ from the atmosphere and oceans that have resulted from their use.

An illustration of a landscape shows how greenhouse gases and released, captured and stored in various ways, including oceans, land, forests and human activtiies.
Balancing the environmental carbon budget is complex, and active carbon management is necessary to stabilize the climate. University of Michigan, CC BY-ND


Some carbon materials can be replaced with carbon-free alternatives, such as using renewable energy to produce electricity. However, for other uses, such as aviation fuel or plastics, carbon will be harder to replace. For these, technologies are being developed to capture and recycle carbon.

Capturing excess CO₂ – from the oceans, atmosphere or industry – and using it for new purposes is called carbon capture, utilization and sequestration, or CCUS. Of all the options to handle captured CO₂, my colleagues and I favor using it to make products, but let’s examine all of them.


CCUS best and worst cases

With each method, the combination of the source of the CO₂ and its end use, or disposition, determines its environmental and economic consequences.

In the best cases, the process will leave less CO₂ in the environment than before. A strong example of this is using captured CO₂ to produce construction materials, such as concrete. It seals away the captured carbon and creates a product that has economic value.

A few methods are carbon-neutral, meaning they add no new CO₂ to the environment. For example, when using CO₂ captured from the air or oceans and turning it into fuel or food, the carbon returns to the atmosphere, but the use of captured carbon avoids the need for new carbon from fossil fuels.

Other combinations, however, are harmful because they increase the amount of excess CO₂ in the environment. One of the most common underground storage methods – enhanced oil recovery – is a prime example.

Underground carbon storage pros and cons

Projects for years have been capturing excess CO₂ and storing it underground in natural structures of porous rock, such as deep saline reservoirs, basalt or depleted oil or gas wells. This is called carbon capture and sequestration (CCS). If done right, geologic storage can durably remove large amounts of CO₂ from the atmosphere.

When the CO₂ is captured from air, water or biomass, this creates a carbon-negative process – less carbon is in the air afterward. However, if the CO₂ instead comes from new fossil fuel emissions, such as from a coal- or gas-fired power plant, carbon neutrality isn’t possible. No carbon-capture technology works at 100% efficiency, and some CO₂ will always escape into the air.

Capturing CO₂ is also expensive. If there is no product to sell, underground storage can become a costly service ultimately covered by taxes or fees, similar to paying for trash disposal.



One way to lower the cost is to sell the captured CO₂ for enhanced oil recovery – a common practice that pumps captured CO₂ into oil fields to push more oil out of the ground. While most of the CO₂ is expected to stay underground, the result is more fossil fuels that will eventually send more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, eliminating the environmental benefit.

Using captured carbon for food and fuel

Short-lived materials made from CO₂ include aviation fuels, food, drugs and working fluids used in machining metals. These items aren’t particularly durable and will soon decompose, releasing CO₂ again. But the sale of the products yields economic value, helping pay for the process.

This CO₂ can be captured from the air again and used to make a future generation of products, which would create a sustainable, essentially circular carbon economy. However, this only works if the CO₂ is captured from the air or oceans. If the CO₂ comes from fossil fuel sources instead, this is new CO₂ that will be added to the environment when the products decompose. So even if it is captured again, it will worsen climate change.

Storing carbon in materials, such as concrete

Some minerals and waste materials can convert CO₂ to limestone or other rock materials. The long-lived materials created this way can be very durable, with lifetimes of longer than 100 years

A good example is concrete. CO₂ can react with particles in concrete, causing it to mineralize into solid form. The result is a useful product that can be sold instead of being stored underground. Other durable products include aggregates used in road construction, carbon fiber used in automotive, aerospace and defense ]applications and some polymers.

Volker Sick, director of the Global CO₂ Initiative at the University of Michigan and author of this article, discusses why carbon capture and its use has been slow to gain attention.

These materials provide the best combination of environmental impact and economic benefit when they are made with CO₂ captured from the atmosphere rather than new fossil fuel emissions.


Choose your carbon projects wisely

CCUS can be a useful solution, and governments have started pouring billions of dollars into its development. It must be closely monitored to ensure that carbon-capture technologies will not delay fossil fuel phaseout. It is an all-hands-on-deck effort to take the best combinations of CO₂ sources and disposition to achieve rapid scaling at an affordable cost to society.

Because climate change is such a complex problem that is harming people throughout the world, as well as future generations, I believe it is imperative that actions are not only fast, but also well thought out and based in evidence.

Authors:

Fred Mason, Gerry Stokes, Susan Fancy and Stephen McCord of the Global CO₂ Initiative contributed to this article.The Conversation

Volker Sick, Professor of Advanced Energy Research, Director of the Global CO2 Initiative, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

blue carbon

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Authors: Kerrylee Rogers, Associate Professor, University of Wollongong; Jeffrey Kelleway, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Environmental Sciences, Macquarie University, and Neil Saintilan, Head, Department of Environmental Science, Macquarie University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.


Coastal wetlands don’t cover much global area but they punch well above their carbon weight by sequestering the most atmospheric carbon dioxide of all natural ecosystems.

Termed “blue carbon ecosystems” by virtue of their connection to the sea, the salty, oxygen-depleted soils in which wetlands grow are ideal for burying and storing organic carbon.

In our research, published in Nature, we found that carbon storage by coastal wetlands is linked to sea-level rise. Our findings suggest as sea levels rise, these wetlands can help mitigate climate change.

Sea-level rise benefits coastal wetlands

We looked at how changing sea levels over the past few millennia has affected coastal wetlands (mostly mangroves and saltmarshes). We found they adapt to rising sea levels by increasing the height of their soil layers, capturing mineral sediment and accumulating dense root material. Much of this is carbon-rich material, which means rising sea levels prompt the wetlands to store even more carbon.

We investigated how saltmarshes have responded to variations in “relative sea level” over the past few millennia. (Relative sea level is the position of the water’s edge in relation to the land rather than the total volume of water within the ocean, which is called the eustatic sea level.)

What does past sea-level rise tell us?

Global variation in the rate of sea-level rise over the past 6,000 years is largely related to the proximity of coastlines to ice sheets that extended over high northern latitudes during the last glacial period, some 26,000 years ago.

As ice sheets melted, northern continents slowly adjusted elevation in relation to the ocean due to flexure of the Earth’s mantle.

Karaaf Wetlands in Victoria, Australia. Boobook48/flickr, CC BY-NC-SA

For much of North America and Europe, this has resulted in a gradual rise in relative sea level over the past few thousand years. By contrast, the southern continents of Australia, South America and Africa were less affected by glacial ice sheets, and sea-level history on these coastlines more closely reflects ocean surface “eustatic” trends, which stabilised over this period.

Our analysis of carbon stored in more than 300 saltmarshes across six continents showed that coastlines subject to consistent relative sea-level rise over the past 6,000 years had, on average, two to four times more carbon in the upper 20cm of sediment, and five to nine times more carbon in the lower 50-100cm of sediment, compared with saltmarshes on coastlines where sea level was more stable over the same period.

In other words, on coastlines where sea level is rising, organic carbon is more efficiently buried as the wetland grows and carbon is stored safely below the surface.

Give wetlands more space

We propose that the difference in saltmarsh carbon storage in wetlands of the southern hemisphere and the North Atlantic is related to “accommodation space”: the space available for a wetland to store mineral and organic sediments.

Coastal wetlands live within the upper portion of the intertidal zone, roughly between mean sea level and the upper limit of high tide.

These tidal boundaries define where coastal wetlands can store mineral and organic material. As mineral and organic material accumulates within this zone it creates layers, raising the ground of the wetlands.

The coastal wetlands of Broome, Western Australia. Shutterstock

New accommodation space for storage of carbon is therefore created when the sea is rising, as has happened on many shorelines of the North Atlantic Ocean over the past 6,000 years.

To confirm this theory we analysed changes in carbon storage within a unique wetland that has experienced rapid relative sea-level rise over the past 30 years.

When underground mine supports were removed from a coal mine under Lake Macquarie in southeastern Australia in the 1980s, the shoreline subsided a metre in a matter of months, causing a relative rise in sea level.

Following this the rate of mineral accumulation doubled, and the rate of organic accumulation increased fourfold, with much of the organic material being carbon. The result suggests that sea-level rise over the coming decades might transform our relatively low-carbon southern hemisphere marshes into carbon sequestration hot-spots.

How to help coastal wetlands

The coastlines of Africa, Australia, China and South America, where stable sea levels over the past few millennia have constrained accommodation space, contain about half of the world’s saltmarshes.

Saltmarsh on the shores of Westernport Bay in Victoria. Author provided

A doubling of carbon sequestration in these wetlands, we’ve estimated, could remove an extra 5 million tonnes of CO₂ from the atmosphere per year. However, this potential benefit is compromised by the ongoing clearance and reclamation of these wetlands.

Preserving coastal wetlands is critical. Some coastal areas around the world have been cut off from tides to lessen floods, but restoring this connection will promote coastal wetlands – which also reduce the effects of floods – and carbon capture, as well as increase biodiversity and fisheries production.

In some cases, planning for future wetland expansion will mean restricting coastal developments, however these decisions will provide returns in terms of avoided nuisance flooding as the sea rises.

Finally, the increased carbon storage will help mitigate climate change. Wetlands store flood water, buffer the coast from storms, cycle nutrients through the ecosystem and provided vital sea and land habitat. They are precious, and worth protecting.

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of their colleagues, Janine Adams, Lisa Schile-Beers and Colin Woodroffe.

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We can’t just sit around and wait to see what will happen next. We need positive action.

I’ve read a lot of Climate Adaptation Plans and Strategies over the past the last few years, but He Toka Tū Moana Mō Maketū (Maketū Climate Change Adaptation Plan) is hand-down the best. It’s clearly laid out, outlines the community’s priorities, and can readily serve as a template to help every community around Aoteara develop their own Climate Adaptation Plans. Most important of all:

It’s iwi led, community driven, it’s a plan that’s been decided by those who live here. –  Elva Conroy, Kaitohotohu / Facilitator (Video; to listen Watch on Youtube)

Winner of the 2023 Supreme Planning Awards, the Maketū Climate Change Adaptation Plan was developed by Ngāti Pikiao Environmental Society, Te Rūnanga o Ngāti Whakaue ki Maketū , Whakaue Marae Trustees, and Conroy and Donald Consultants.

In the words of the Maketu Iwi Collective, ‘we will be resilient like the anchor stone Takaparore – strong and steadfast against the elements and tides of change and uncertainty. Regardless of what happens as a result of a changing environment, we will remain standing’. – New Zealand Planning Institute, April 2023.

Nitrogen fertliser, being added to bare earth, Canterbury, adding to climate change as it converts to nitrous oxide

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By: Anita Wreford, Lincoln University, New Zealand; John Tobias Saunders, Lincoln University, New Zealand, and Meike Guenther, Lincoln University, New Zealand

 Republished in full from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. See the original article: April 12, 2023


The recent report issued by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) underscores the urgency of emissions reductions. For Aotearoa New Zealand, where 50% of emissions come from agriculture in the form of methane and nitrous oxide, this means the primary sector must be part of the response.

New Zealand is indeed the first country to investigate introducing a price on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions.

The most recent pricing proposals would require farmers to pay a levy on their agricultural emissions. To begin with, only 5% of emissions would be priced, with proposals to reduce the 95% free allocation gradually over time.

Much of the existing modelling shows emissions could be cut by up to 10% by reducing the intensity of production, often through lowering animal numbers and fertiliser use. This doesn’t necessarily mean lower profitability. With good pasture management, farmers may be able to reduce stocking rates and increase profits.

But Aotearoa is already one of the most efficient producers of meat and dairy products globally. If we reduce emissions here, will that not simply lead to other, less efficient countries picking up the lost production, while our farmers pay the price?

This idea is known as “carbon leakage” and is often used as an argument against any domestic policy that could result in reduced agricultural production. The issue is important as New Zealand depends heavily on agricultural exports. In 2022, of all merchandise trade, 65% were agricultural commodities.

Understanding whether carbon leakage will occur or not is a complex task. Here, we look at what evidence we have and insights from agricultural trade modelling.

New Zealand modelling

It’s difficult to know exactly what might happen in agriculture, as emissions pricing on agricultural products has not yet been used elsewhere. There is no historical evidence to draw on.

International modelling studies present a mixed picture of the likelihood of leakage: an OECD study estimated 34% of agricultural emissions would be leaked, mostly to developing countries.

Recent modelling for New Zealand examines a series of scenarios of domestic pricing on its own as well as international pricing. The results show that for the current proposal where only 5% of emissions are priced to begin with, with a 1% increase each year, New Zealand’s production of meat and dairy products could decline by 2050.

The effect on dairy producers would be a loss of returns of under 1%, while meat producers would face a 6% decline. Some of the production would be taken up by other countries, but the overall volume would be lower than in the baseline situation, where no emissions pricing existed.

This graph shows the displacement of global dairy production in 2050, resulting from a levy on 5% of emissions from 2025, and increasing by 1% annually.
This graph shows the displacement of global dairy production in 2050, resulting from a levy on 5% of emissions from 2025, and increasing by 1% annually. Author provided, CC BY-ND

This shows leakage may occur, with reductions in production of New Zealand dairy products. But global meat and dairy production by 2050 would be considerably lower than without the policy, which would have a positive overall impact on the climate.

As the proportion of emissions that are priced increases, we expect the quantity of meat and dairy produced in New Zealand to decrease. This in turn could increase the volume of leakage. –

More sustainable future diets

It is important to remember that although there is a reduction in meat and dairy production, there is likely to be an increase in the production of other types of food which doesn’t contribute so much to climate change.

A recent study shows how food consumption alone could contribute an additional degree of warming above preindustrial temperatures by 2100. This demonstrates the importance of food choices in addressing climate change.

Many of New Zealand’s trading partners are exploring and beginning to implement their own agricultural emissions-reduction goals and targets. Internationally, there is an increasing focus on the role international trade rules can play in addressing climate change, including border carbon adjustment mechanisms and environmental standards for imports.

In a similar scenario as described above, but where New Zealand’s main competitors also take action, New Zealand may actually see a small increase in production by 2050, despite the domestic pricing policy.

The extent of leakage therefore really depends on how other countries tackle their own emissions. Economy-wide net zero emissions targets are in place for Australia, Chile, European Union countries, the US and the UK by 2050, and for China by 2060.

The opportunity for leakage would be significantly reduced through multilateral agreements or through regional or bilateral commitments within trade agreements.

New Zealand could decide to be a leader and demonstrate to the rest of the world a commitment to reducing emissions from our highest emitting sector. This may result in some leakage initially, but this would likely decline as other countries take similar action.

Or we can wait until other countries begin to take more serious action on agricultural emissions. But in the meantime, emissions reductions will increasingly be driven through finance and private-sector initiatives, for example through access to processing companies, which are progressively requiring emissions reductions throughout their value chains and through lending and finance, where banks are beginning to offer reduced interest rates for sustainable practices.The Conversation

fire

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By: Professor of Energy and Climate Change, University of Manchester. Republished in full from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. See the original article: March 25, 2023

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) synthesis report recently landed with an authoritative thump, giving voice to hundreds of scientists endeavouring to understand the unfolding calamity of global heating. What’s changed since the last one in 2014? Well, we’ve dumped an additional third of a trillion tonnes of CO₂ into the atmosphere, primarily from burning fossil fuels. While world leaders promised to cut global emissions, they have presided over a 5% rise.

The new report evokes a mild sense of urgency, calling on governments to mobilise finance to accelerate the uptake of green technology. But its conclusions are far removed from a direct interpretation of the IPCC’s own carbon budgets (the total amount of CO₂ scientists estimate can be put into the atmosphere for a given temperature rise).

The report claims that, to maintain a 50:50 chance of warming not exceeding 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, CO₂ emissions must be cut to “net-zero” by the “early 2050s”. Yet, updating the IPCC’s estimate of the 1.5°C carbon budget, from 2020 to 2023, and then drawing a straight line down from today’s total emissions to the point where all carbon emissions must cease, and without exceeding this budget, gives a zero CO₂ date of 2040.

Graph with lines
 A full description of the above chart is available here.
 
If emissions stay at their current levels, we will exhaust the 50% chance of 1.5°C in 9 years. If we begin to immediately cut emissions following the blue line, then to stay within the carbon budget for 50:50 chance of not exceeding 1.5°C we need zero global emissions by 2040. The vertical axis represents how much carbon is emitted each year – note the pandemic-related blip in 2020.
 

Given it will take a few years to organise the necessary political structures and technical deployment, the date for eliminating all CO₂ emissions to remain within 1.5°C of warming comes closer still, to around the mid-2030s. This is a strikingly different level of urgency to that evoked by the IPCC’s “early 2050s”. Similar smoke and mirrors lie behind the “early 2070s” timeline the IPCC conjures for limiting global heating to 2°C.

IPCC science embeds colonial attitudes

For over two decades, the IPCC’s work on cutting emissions (what experts call “mitigation”) has been dominated by a particular group of modellers who use huge computer models to simulate what may happen to emissions under different assumptions, primarily related to price and technology. I’ve raised concerns before about how this select cadre, almost entirely based in wealthy, high-emitting nations, has undermined the necessary scale of emission reductions.

In 2023, I can no longer tiptoe around the sensibilities of those overseeing this bias. In my view, they have been as damaging to the agenda of cutting emissions as Exxon was in misleading the public about climate science. The IPCC’s mitigation report in 2022 did include a chapter on “demand, services and social aspects” as a repository for alternative voices, but these were reduced to an inaudible whisper in the latest report’s influential summary for policymakers.

The specialist modelling groups (referred to as Integrated Assessment Modelling, or IAMs) have successfully crowded out competing voices, reducing the task of mitigation to price-induced shifts in technology – some of the most important of which, like so-called “negative emissions technologies”, are barely out of the laboratory.

The IPCC offers many “scenarios” of future low-carbon energy systems and how we might get there from here. But as the work of academic Tejal Kanitkar and others has made clear, not only do these scenarios prefer speculative technology tomorrow over deeply challenging policies today (effectively a greenwashed business-as-usual), they also systematically embed colonial attitudes towards “developing nations”.

With few if any exceptions, they maintain current levels of inequality between developed and developing nations, with several scenarios actually increasing the levels of inequality. Granted, many IAM modellers strive to work objectively, but they do so within deeply subjective boundaries established and preserved by those leading such groups.

Four people in formal attire converse on a stage behind a
March 2023’s synthesis report capped eight years of research. IISD/ENB/Anastasia Rodopoulou

 

What happened to equity?

If we step outside the rarefied realm of IAM scenarios that leading climate scientist Johan Rockström describes as “academic gymnastics that have nothing to do with reality”, it’s clear that not exceeding 1.5°C or 2°C will require fundamental changes to most facets of modern life.

Starting now, to not exceed 1.5°C of warming requires 11% year-on-year cuts in emissions, falling to nearer 5% for 2°C. However, these global average rates ignore the core concept of equity, central to all UN climate negotiations, which gives “developing country parties” a little longer to decarbonise.

Include equity and most “developed” nations need to reach zero CO₂ emissions between 2030 and 2035, with developing nations following suit up to a decade later. Any delay will shrink these timelines still further.

Most IAM models ignore and often even exacerbate the obscene inequality in energy use and emissions, both within nations and between individuals. As the International Energy Agency recently reported, the top 10% of emitters accounted for nearly half of global CO₂ emissions from energy use in 2021, compared with 0.2% for the bottom 10%. More disturbingly, the greenhouse gas emissions of the top 1% are 1.5 times those of the bottom half of the world’s population.

So where does this leave us? In wealthier nations, any hope of arresting global heating at 1.5 or 2°C demands a technical revolution on the scale of the post-war Marshall Plan. Rather than relying on technologies such as direct air capture of CO₂ to mature in the near future, countries like the UK must rapidly deploy tried-and-tested technologies.

Retrofit housing stock, shift from mass ownership of combustion-engine cars to expanded zero-carbon public transport, electrify industries, build new homes to Passivhaus standard, roll-out a zero-carbon energy supply and, crucially, phase out fossil fuel production.

Three decades of complacency has meant technology on its own cannot now cut emissions fast enough. A second, accompanying phase, must be the rapid reduction of energy and material consumption.

Given deep inequalities, this, and deploying zero-carbon infrastructure, is only possible by re-allocating society’s productive capacity away from enabling the private luxury of a few and austerity for everyone else, and towards wider public prosperity and private sufficiency.

For most people, tackling climate change will bring multiple benefits, from affordable housing to secure employment. But for those few of us who have disproportionately benefited from the status quo, it means a profound reduction in how much energy we use and stuff we accumulate.

The question now is, will we high-consuming few make (voluntarily or by force) the fundamental changes needed for decarbonisation in a timely and organised manner? Or will we fight to maintain our privileges and let the rapidly changing climate do it, chaotically and brutally, for us?

The differences in resources used to grow meat versus cellular agriculture

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Reposted from Coalition Footprint:

In a historic first for the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration has certified that Upside Foods chicken made from cell cultures is safe to eat.

Nearly two years after Singapore approved the Good Meat company’s cellular chicken for sale at select restaurants in the Asian foodtech hub, and Supermeat opened a restaurant in Israel serving cultured chicken on its menu, U.S. buyers will soon get the chance to taste a potential future of food for themselves.

California-based Upside Foods is the first company to receive a pre-market safety clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). While the pending facility for Upside Foods will need to meet U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and FDA requirements, the agency said it has “no further questions at this time” about the meat’s safety.

Issued on November 16, the approval could open the door for other cultured meat in the U.S. including the FootPrint Coalition-backed salmon biotechnology company WildType.

Cultured meat is made from cell samples taken from animals. It’s different from plant-based meat, like that of popular brands Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat and FPC brands MyForest Foods and Motif FoodWorks.

Using muscle samples, stem cells from animals, and fats animal tissue is “cultivated” from tiny samples into large portions of meat. In Upside’s case, the startup uses chicken’s primary cells of a fertilized egg to create “The fried chicken chicken’s dream about.

Different from plant-based, companies like Upside and Wild Type offer diners the option of real meat without the requirement of animal death or the meat industry’s environmental consequences and contributions to the climate crisis. The meats also have lower risk of contamination from bacteria because they’re not slaughtered. It is still animal meat, which means the target audience isn’t the vegetarians and vegans of the world, but their carnivorous counterparts.

The United Nations estimates the meat industry accounts for nearly a fifth of our total greenhouse gas emissions, making it one of the most polluting industries in the world, especially in the US, one of the planet’s most meat-consuming countries.

According to a study published at the University of Oxford, cultivated meat could reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 96% compared to conventionally produced meat.

Additionally, switching to cultured meat can cut our water consumption between 82 and 96%, depending on the animal. It can also reduce the quantity of land dedicated to the meat industry, which is the main driver of tropical deforestation and land degradation.

Keep reading:

Mass fish deaths due to Pacific Norrthwest marine heatwave

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What he said…

“Our wise and noble leaders have just concluded the 27th annual global climate conference known as COP27. They all seem jolly pleased with what they’d all decided to achieve including really very sincere commitment to work super-duper hard to put in place policy that would definitely address the idea of thinking about doing things that might contribute towards the possibility of reducing greenhouse gas emissions with the aim of maybe limiting global temperatures to only 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels. Then there were the 636 lobbyists—I mean delegates at COP27—representing the fossil fuel industry who reassured us all that increasing oil and gas exploration was actually an extremely important part of the transition toward achieving the 1.5 degrees Celsius target.”

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