maladaptation

21 01 2024

Sonny adaptation, carbon budget, emissions trading scheme, maladaptation, mitigation

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.

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.

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.

01 10 2023

Sonny adaptation, agriculture, biodiversity, carbon budget, disruptive technology, emissions trading scheme, impacts, indigenous, justice, maladaptation, mitigation, nature based solutions, Opportunities, policy, politics, transition

25 09 2023

Manager carbon budget, emissions trading scheme, forestry, indigenous, justice, land use, law, maladaptation, mitigation, risk

From The Guardian: read the full article by Nina Lakhani

“The Guardian and researchers from Corporate Accountability, a non-profit, transnational corporate watchdog, analysed the top 50 emission offset projects, those that have sold the most carbon credits in the global market.

“According to our criteria and classification system:

A total of 39 of the top 50 emission offset projects, or 78% of them, were categorised as likely junk or worthless due to one or more fundamental failing that undermines its promised emission cuts.
Eight others (16%) look problematic, with evidence suggesting they may have at least one fundamental failing and are potentially junk, according to the classification system applied.
The efficacy of the remaining three projects (6%) could not be determined definitively as there was insufficient public, independent information to adequately assess the quality of the credits and/or accuracy of their claimed climate benefits.

“Overall, $1.16bn (£937m) of carbon credits have been traded so far from the projects classified by the investigation as likely junk or worthless; a further $400m of credits bought and sold were potentially junk.” – keep reading

Infographic: How are carbon offsets supposed to work?

Carbon Brief have also released a detailed analysis and mapping, including carbon credits claims made by New Zealand companies:

Carbon Brief’s infographic: carbon offset claims

27 03 2023

Manager adaptation, carbon budget, causes, effects, emissions trading scheme, flood, fossil fuels, impacts, justice, law, legal, maladaptation, mitigation, News, policy, politics, risk, sea levels agricultural emissions, carbon budget

By: Kevin Anderson 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 — 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?

Sea levels the last time CO2 in the atmosphere as at 400ppm. We are currently at 415ppm.

20 11 2022

Manager effects, impacts, justice, legal, maladaptation, policy, sea levels banks, economy, finance, flooding, insurance, sea levels

The latest State of the Cryosphere pulls no punches, so it’s worth reproducing the Forward here. Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank is vastly underestimating the residential mortgage exposure to flooding risks:

“We asked banks to identify the value of their mortgage exposures that would be affected by permanent sea level rises of 20 centimetres, 50 centimetres and 1 metre in the most severe case. This range of sea level rise is consistent with climate change modelling out from 2040 to 2100.”

A sea level rise of just 1 metre (the banks’ ‘most severe case’) by 2100 is entirely inconsistent with real world events now unfolding. COP27 was an abysmal failure. Emissions are increasing instead of decreasing. Greenland is decanting into the ocean, along with most of our mountain glaciers, and even parts of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, which was assumed to be stable for thousands of years, are showing signs of destablising (Video 2), while…

‘Sections of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet may collapse even without further emissions, causing more than 4 meters of additional sea-level rise…’ – State of the Cryosphere 2022 (p8)

State of the Cryosphere Forward
Pam Pearson Director, ICCI

Far too much human suffering occurred in 2022 due to rapid loss of ice in the cryosphere, Earth’s snow and ice regions, from human-caused global warming.

Most occurred in places far from ice and snow: coastal sea-level rise from ice sheet loss; water shortages well downstream from shrinking glaciers and snowpack; floods, avalanches, wildfires and extreme weather events.

All were caused in whole or in part by loss of the cryosphere’s stabilizing influence on the global climate system. Our global ice stores are receding at rates unthinkable just a decade ago, whether held in ice sheets, land glaciers, permafrost or sea ice.

This State of the Cryosphere Report 2022: Growing Losses, Global Impacts especially raises up the IPCC Sixth Assessment conclusion that complete loss of Arctic sea ice in summer is now inevitable, even with the very lowest emissions pathways that peak temperatures at 1.6°C. This finding is a terminal diagnosis for that ecosystem and its essential role reflecting sunlight as the “Earth’s refrigerator,” something sea ice scientists have been warning for decades would come with continued high emissions. No one seems to have listened.

But the impending loss of Arctic summer sea ice it is not the only sign of growing cryosphere collapse. This year also saw March rains on East Antarctica, with temperatures 40°C above normal; a spike in Greenland surface melt for the first time ever in September; loss of over 5% of glacier ice in the Alps over a single summer; and the first documented rise in methane release due to global warming from a permafrost monitoring site. It also saw greater shell damage in parts of the Arctic Ocean, a clear sign of acidification; and an apparent crash in snow crab populations likely tied to warming waters.

Research published this year also shows growing convergence between ice sheet models and what paleo-climatologists (those who study Earth history going back millions of years) have warned for decades: that ice loss and irreversible sea-level rise may be occurring faster, and at lower temperatures than previously forecast: even from the massive East Antarctic Ice Sheet, with temperatures above 1.8°C. Nearly all these impacts are irreversible on human timescales. It might take only decades to melt a glacier, but centuries to thousands of years of lower temperatures to grow it back.

The message from the global cryosphere in 2022 is that we are already well into the risk zone for irreversible damage from continued loss of the planet’s global ice stores. Nevertheless, the 2022 UNFCCC Synthesis Report on reported pledges (NDCs) showed not the 45% decrease in emissions needed by 2030 to keep 1.5°C within reach, but a 10% increase by 2030.

Our planet’s melting ice pays no attention to climate pledges and NDCs. It responds only to the level of CO2 and warming in the atmosphere. In 2022, the year-on-year increase of about 2.5 ppm continued unabated, as it has for the past two decades. Until this CO2 rise slows, halts and begins to decrease, the ice will continue to respond as it always has: to the only number that really matters.

13 11 2022

Manager agriculture, biodiversity, carbon budget, flood, forestry, impacts, land use, maladaptation, nature based solutions biodiversity, forestry, land use

This is such a compelling press release that it’s worth reprinting in full, here:

“The Environmental Defence Society and Pure Advantage have joined forces to draft a submission on the review of the National Environmental Standards for Plantation Forestry (the Standards). The submission seeks significant tightening of the rules governing exotic forest management in Aotearoa New Zealand.

“Our submission starts with the premise that forest practices here are out of step with the rest of the developed world. There are inadequate controls over sediment, slash and soil stability and the sector needs to lift its environmental performance across all of its activities,” said EDS COO Shay Schlaepfer.

“With that in the mind, the scope of the current review, which is focused on permanent exotic carbon forests, is too narrow and we are calling on Government to undertake a fundamental reset of the regulations.“Our submission points to the following key problems with the present Standards:

It fails to effectively address adverse environmental outcomes associated with plantation forestry activities

It is unjustifiably and unlawfully permissive for such high risk activities, particularly with regard to afforestation on highly erodible land and clear fell harvesting

It fails to adequately recognise and encourage the wider and longer-term intergenerational climate resilience, biodiversity, social, cultural, and economic opportunities associated with indigenous forests

It is insufficiently aligned with national objectives and direction in relation to freshwater, coastal, and indigenous biodiversity protection and long-term carbon sequestration.

“Put in simple terms, the current Standards are failing to address significant adverse environmental effects associated with where trees are planted, whattrees are planted, and how forests are managed and harvested. These effects need to be managed for both new so-called permanent carbon forests and plantation forests.

“We contend that the presumption in the current Standards that forestry activities are “permitted” is unworkable, inappropriate, and ineffective at securing environmental protection.

“We are releasing our draft submission to give some guidance to others wishing to see improvements in the way exotic forests are managed. The intention is to file the final submission on the closing date which is 18 November,” said Ms Schlaepfer.

“The draft submission is available here and feedback can be sent to [email protected]

29 09 2022

Manager carbon budget, emissions trading scheme, forestry, maladaptation, nature based solutions, pine, risk biodiversity, emissions trading scheme, flood, forestry, pine

Top image: PureAdvantage

Reposted from Pure Advantage:

There is a new risk to you – the taxpayer – from the government’s recent decision to back off from excluding exotic species like pine from the permanent forest category of the emissions trading scheme.

From 1 January 2023 forest owners can lock up pine plantations, as ‘permanent forests’. In return, while the trees are growing, owners will be able to earn credits which they can sell to polluting industries to offset emissions. When the trees stop growing those revenue streams finish. This means pine plantations will increasingly be planted with no intent to harvest. A new exotic carbon farming industry will rapidly spread across the land–an industry we can think of as carbon mining.

Just like its traditional format, carbon mining is an extractive industry. Once there is no resource left–in this case, when the pine trees stop growing–the mine is of no value and becomes a liability.

In addition to the long-term costs of managing a plantation in its ‘permanent’ state, any deforestation requires the owners to buy emission units. There is a very real risk of a ticking time bomb with the price of emissions units increasing significantly over time.

Pinus radiata is an introduced species, unlike native forests with diversity and climate resilience. With increasing impacts from climate change, pine plantations present heightened risks.

They burn well, creating risks for neighbours and releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere. The recent wildfires in the Landes forest, the largest planted forest in western Europe, saw thousands of hectares burnt and thousands of people evacuated.

These are monocultures, at a time when a biodiversity crisis and collapsing ecosystems are posing risks to human survival. In NZ, they are also monoclones, with a lack of genetic diversity that makes them very vulnerable to climate change. In many parts of the world, pests and diseases are wiping out huge areas of pine plantations.

Pinus radiata is also a relatively short-lived species, especially in New Zealand due to intensive genetic modification. Compared with native forests, pine plantations sequester carbon for a relatively brief period. As the trees age and die, the risks of fire and disease increase, along with the risks that the plantations will be abandoned.

Promises may be made that instead, pine plantations will be converted to native forests. This is a very difficult and high risk process, however. Take for example Maungataniwha pine plantation.

It can take at least a decade to clear logged land of wilding pines and to get it to the point where it can be described as fully regenerated – supposing you are lucky enough to have native seeds in the soil already. It’s costing the Forest Lifeforce Restoration Trust around $70,000 per year, plus a lot of volunteer hours.

If land owners are not inclined or able to meet their obligations, these sorts of projects will be extremely challenging. Government and communities will pick up the costs of remediation.

Millions more would be needed to pay for the purchase of emission units to offset the felled pine, and it is hard to see where this money would come from.

As designed, the ETS is encouraging the misallocation of capital towards carbon mining, with the potential for damaging long-term socio-economic and biodiversity outcomes.

Ultimately, taxpayers and society will be left with the bill. The environment will suffer, biodiversity will be negatively impacted, resilience to climate change will be reduced and you, me, our children will be picking up the bill.