Carbon Price Involves Give & Take

Australian National University’s Dr Frank Jotzo thinks he’s found a way to beat the carbon price impasse, with a strategy respond’s to each of the conflicting interest groups’ key concerns while still producing a scheme that stacks up economically and environmentally. Essentially, it involves give and take, as well as recognition of the global impact of emissions, not just Australia’s alone. His scheme also includes provision to lift the target to a 25% reduction in emissions by 2020, in response to any increase in global ambition.

Sydney Morning Herald

Ross Gittens

A way to tackle carbon and keep everybody happy March 12, 2011

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As if we needed any reminding, the latest flare-up of politicking over putting a price on carbon shows just how difficult it will be to gain sufficient community agreement to take effective action against climate change.

With a government lacking the numbers in both houses, the Greens demanding a sackcloth-and-ashes scheme and an opposition determinedly putting short-term partisan advantage ahead of the national interest, how are we to reach agreement?

Well, Dr Frank Jotzo, of the centre for climate economics and policy at the Australian National University, thinks he’s found a way. In a forthcoming paper he proposes a strategy that would respond to each of the conflicting interest groups’ key concerns while still producing a scheme that stacks up economically and environmentally.

He starts by ignoring the political parties and identifying four key constituencies. First are environmentally concerned citizens and groups. These are deeply concerned about climate change and convinced of the need to reduce domestic emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. They’d like to see Australia making a constructive contribution to global action.

Second are the general citizens, who accept that more needs to be done about climate change, but are concerned about the possible effect on their cost of living, thus making them vulnerable to scare campaigns.

Third is the general business community, which is only weakly engaged in the public debate because it doesn’t see climate change as a core concern. But it accepts that something must be done and sees an effective government response as a sign of commitment to reform and good government.

Fourth are emissions-intensive industries, which now seem to have accepted some form of emissions reduction policy is inevitable, but are focused on minimising the financial impacts on major emitters. The success of their lobbying resulted in the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme granting them many free emission permits and much permit revenue.

While some of these businesses would be happy to see policy action delayed, more of them want to reduce the effect of uncertainty about policy on electricity generators’ decisions on new investments. The present hiatus creates a risk of disruption in electricity supply over coming years.

How could you come up with an arrangement that offered enough to each of those groups to achieve their support for action? Jotzo thinks the key to it is the leeway provided by a little-understood feature of the Rudd government’s scheme, or any other plausible scheme.

Australia is a relatively small open economy whose carbon reduction scheme would be part of a global collection of national schemes which, collectively, would significantly reduce global emissions. It’s the level of global emissions, not the efforts of any particular small country, which influences climate change.

Because the problem and the solution are global, the Kyoto Protocol and, no doubt, its eventual successor provide for the trading of emission permits between countries. This helps to minimise the economic cost of reducing emissions by allowing emissions to be reduced in those parts of the world where the cost of doing so is lowest.

If it’s more expensive for me to reduce my emissions than it is for you to reduce yours, let me meet my obligation by paying you to reduce yours on my behalf.

Under the Rudd government’s scheme it was always intended that Australian producers who needed permits to cover their emissions would be free to meet their obligations by purchasing emissions permits from overseas. This means the international price of emissions permits would set a ceiling for the market price of permits in our scheme.

It also means that, until the domestic price of permits reaches the international price, the domestic price and the rate at which it’s set to rise can be detached from the achievement of the target for Australia’s contribution to the reduction in global emissions.

Should the reduction in domestic emissions fall short of the target, the government can simply buy sufficient overseas permits to ensure the target is met. This decoupling allows us to phase in the carbon price – thus making it easier for firms and households to adjust to it – while still setting and achieving an ambitious target.

And this allows Jotzo to propose a strategy that ”has the potential to deliver a worthwhile long-run policy outcome while working within the major concerns and interests of the four interest groups”.

The strategy builds on last month’s agreement between the government and the Greens to set a government-determined carbon price from next July, with provision to shift to a trading-determined price over the medium to long term as international uncertainties are resolved.

The first step is to ensure that, wherever the initial carbon price is set, it should be increased over time so that the price in the medium term (from 2015 to 2020) is high enough to create confidence that Australia’s domestic emissions will begin to trend downwards within the next few years.

Remember, the expected future price of carbon is the major driver of present new investments in the assets – such as power plants, business machinery, transport infrastructure and vehicles, buildings and household appliances – that will shape future energy use and emissions.

The simplest way to achieve this is to legislate the path of the fixed price and then, once the switch is made to an emissions trading scheme, legislate the path of a minimum price below which the market price won’t be allowed to fall.

The second step is to set the initial price at a level low enough to give people confidence the short-run effects on the economy will be manageable and to give households and businesses time to adjust.

This would reassure general citizens and the two business constituencies, demonstrating that a carbon price won’t cause major economic disruption.

The third step is to ensure any assistance to emitters is tightly limited, determined by transparent rules, subject to sunset provisions and, above all, doesn’t reduce their incentive to cut their emissions.

In using the proceeds from the sale of permits, the highest priority should be compensating households – particularly low- to middle-income households – for the rise in their cost of living but, again, this must be done in a way that doesn’t reduce their incentive to cut emissions.

Finally, the scheme should include provision for the government to steepen the path of the carbon price, and lift the target to a 25 per cent reduction in emissions by 2020, in response to any increase in global ambition beyond what individual countries promised to achieve following the meeting in Copenhagen.

Ross Gittins is the economics editor

Source: www.smh.com.au

NASA: Rapid Ice Sheet Melting

The pace at which the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting is “accelerating rapidly” and raising the global sea level, according to findings of a study financed by NASA, suggesting that the ice sheets – more so than ice loss from Earth’s mountain glaciers and ice caps – have become “the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted”.

In the Age March 9, 2011 – 3:19PM

AFP

The pace at which the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets are melting is “accelerating rapidly” and raising the global sea level, according to findings of a study financed by NASA.

The findings suggest that the ice sheets – more so than ice loss from Earth’s mountain glaciers and ice caps – have become “the dominant contributor to global sea level rise, much sooner than model forecasts have predicted”.

This study, published on Tuesday, the longest to date examining changes to polar ice sheet mass, combined two decades of monthly satellite measurements with regional atmospheric climate model data to study changes in mass.

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“That ice sheets will dominate future sea level rise is not surprising – they hold a lot more ice mass than mountain glaciers,” said lead author Eric Rignot, jointly of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine.

“What is surprising is this increased contribution by the ice sheets is already happening,” he said.

Under the current trends, he said, sea level is likely to be “significantly higher” than levels projected by the United Nations climate change panel in 2007.

Isabella Velicogna, co-author of the study, told AFP that the ice sheets lose mass by melting or by breaking apart in blocks of ice, which float into the ocean.

“It’s related to the warming of the planet but that was not the point of the paper. We just observed the changes,” said Velicogna, a professor at UC Irvine. “It’s losing mass – much more than was expected many years ago.”

The study showed that in 2006, a year in which comparable results for loss from mountain glaciers and ice caps are available, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets lost enough mass to raise global sea level by an average of 1.3mm per year.

The year-on-year acceleration rate of loss on mountain glaciers and ice caps was three times smaller than that of the ice sheets, the study said.

“The authors conclude that, if current ice sheet melting rates continue for the next four decades, their cumulative loss could raise sea level by 15cm by 2050,” the report said.

“When this is added to the predicted sea level contribution of 8cm from glacial ice caps and 9cm from ocean thermal expansion, total sea level rise could reach 12.6 inches (32 centimetres),” it said.

The findings were published the March edition of Geophysical Research Letters.

Source: www.news.theage.com.au

By Wendy Koch, USA TODAY ( 8 March 2011)

American skepticism about whether the world’s weather is changing depends partly on wording. More believe in “climate change” than “global warming,” a new study by the University of Michigan shows.

Three of four people, or 74%, thought the problem was real when it was referred to as climate change, while 68% thought it was real when it was called global warming, according to questions posed by U-M psychologists on a RAND-conducted survey of 2,267 U.S. adults..

“Wording matters,” study co-author Jonathon Schuldt said in announcing the findings, which will be published in the upcoming issue of Public Opinion Quarterly. “While global warming focuses attention on temperature increases, climate change focuses attention on more general changes,” he said. “Thus, an unusually cold day may increase doubts about global warming more so than about climate change.”

The study found the differences were due almost entirely to participants who identified themselves as Republicans. While 60% of Republicans said they thought climate change was real, only 44% said they believed in the reality of global warming. In contrast, 86% of Democrats thought climate change was a serious problem, regardless of wording.

“It might be a ceiling effect, given their high level of belief,” co-author Sara Konrath, a U-M psychologist, speculated. “Or it could be that Democrats’ beliefs about global climate change might be more crystallized, and as a result, more protected from subtle manipulations.”

The good news, the study says, is that Americans may not be as polarized on the issue as previously thought. “When the issue is framed as global warming, the partisan divide is nearly 42 percentage points. But when the frame is climate change, the partisan divide drops to about 26 percentage points.” said the third author, Norbert Schwarz, who is also affiliated with the U-M Ross Business School and the Institute of Social Research.

As part of the study, the researchers also analyzed the use of the two terms by political think tank websites. They found that conservative groups tend to call the phenomenon global warming, while liberal ones call it climate change.

Source: www.content.usatoday.com

Greening Home Survey of  Ten Nations

The latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) comparison of the environmental behaviour of households puts Australia at or near the bottom on most questions asked. The Greening Household Behaviour survey covered 10,000 people across 10 countries – Australia, Canada, Czech Republic, France, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Almost 80% of Czech and Italian households have installed energy-efficient appliances in the past 10 years, compared to 30% in Korea and 40% in Sweden.

Peter Martin in Sydney Morning Herald (10 March 2011):

AUSTRALIANS are in love with cars, leave electric appliances on standby, don’t like drinking the tap water and can’t see that much point in saving the environment.

The latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development comparison of the environmental behaviour of households in 10 member nations puts Australia at or near the bottom on most questions asked.

Entitled Greening Household Behaviour, the survey excludes the US and Britain but includes countries similar to Australia such as Canada and France as well as less similar nations such as Mexico and South Korea.

When it comes to concern, Australians are among the most worried. Between 40 and 50 per cent of Australians are ”very concerned” about a range of issues from waste generation to air pollution to climate change. By contrast in the least concerned nations, the Netherlands and Norway, the ratings are between 20 and 30 per cent.

But Australians are relatively unprepared to believe we can do anything about it. Almost 5 per cent think there’s no point in taking action as an individual or a household, more than in any nation surveyed, and twice the 2.5 per cent in Canada and 2 per cent in Mexico.

In homes Australians use more water than anyone apart from Canadians. Australians buy homes paying the least amount of attention to energy costs, with only 20 per cent making such calculations compared to 30 per cent of Italians and 50 per cent of Czechs.

Australians are most likely to leave appliances on in standby mode and are among of the least likely to turn down the heat. But Australians are most likely to recognise an energy efficiency label, but are middle of the range when it comes to installing energy efficient products.

Australian recycling services are among the world’s best, but residents are the least likely of the nations surveyed to recycle household plastic, paper and glass and the second-least likely to recycle metal. When it comes to hazardous waste Australians are the least likely to dispose of batteries properly and the second-least likely to dispose of medicines properly.

The OECD finds that Australians are among the least satisfied with tap water of the 10 nations surveyed (only Mexico and South Korea think less of their water) but also are among the least ready to reach for the bottle. An extraordinary 88 per cent of Canadians drink bottled water compared to 30 per cent of Australians.

And Australians adore our cars, with 2.6 per family, beaten only by Italy, which has 2.7. Some 85 per cent of Australians use cars to get to shops, more than anyone else.

Source: www.smh.com.au

Source: www.oecd.org

Is Low Carbon Consumerism “Smart, Fun or Green Hedonism”?

British Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne has called on business leaders to revamp the way they promote green products in order to shift their messaging away from ethical considerations and towards the benefits low-carbon products and services can bring, as “the smart choice, the fun choice”, even urging them to deliver low-carbon products that encourage “green hedonism”. The new CBI report, which is based on a survey of nearly 2,000 people, reveals that energy efficiency and environmental impacts remain a relatively low priority when consumers are considering making a purchase, warning that despite growing concerns about climate change “we are seeing limited change in consumer purchasing behaviour”.

The Guardian (9 March 2011):

Energy and Climate Change Secretary Chris Huhne has today called on business leaders to revamp the way they promote green products in order to shift their messaging away from ethical considerations and towards the benefits low-carbon products and services can bring.

Speaking at the launch of a new CBI report that reveals widespread consumer indifference to many green and energy-efficient products, Huhne said the onus was on businesses to position low-carbon products as “the smart choice, the fun choice”, even urging them to deliver low-carbon products that encourage “green hedonism”.

The new CBI report, which is based on a survey of nearly 2,000 people, reveals that energy efficiency and environmental impacts remain a relatively low priority when consumers are considering making a purchase, warning that despite growing concerns about climate change “we are seeing limited change in consumer purchasing behaviour”.

Huhne said that both businesses and government needed to step up efforts to “make it easier for people to make green choices and ensure they are thinking green at the critical decision point”.

“We need to change the story so that rather than [green products being] a sacrifice we take to feel better about ourselves, it is clear the green choice is the smart choice… the fun choice,” he said.

His comments were echoed by CBI director-general John Cridland, who argued “business has yet to make a compelling enough case to our customers about the benefit of the low-carbon economy”.

“When people do their weekly shop, they don’t walk down the supermarket aisles looking for low-carbon products,” he observed. “They want to know how something is going to give them value for money.”

Huhne said the government was keen to work with businesses to make it easier for consumers to make green purchasing decisions, calling for the creation of a “simple, consistent, voluntary labeling scheme” modeled on the successful A-G labels for fridges that clearly display the energy costs associated with different products.

The CBI report, entitled Buying into it – making the consumer case for low carbon, revealed that while 83 per cent of people think businesses have a responsibility to provide energy-efficiency information, only 16 per cent trust manufacturers to provide accurate information and just nine per trust retailers to do the same.

Cridland admitted too many firms were guilty of using green labels to confuse customers, warning that companies “need to drop the spin and bowl straight” if they are to produce an effective standardised labeling scheme.

To accompany the launch of the report, the CBI today announced plans for a new joint business-government taskforce designed to promote policies and initiatives that will help build a mass market for green goods.

Cridland said that it would work on developing more consistent energy labeling for a wider range of green products, as well as investigating ways to improve green marketing and better promote upcoming government campaigns, such as the Green Deal and the smart meter rollout.

He also offered some thinly veiled criticism of the government’s Green Deal proposals, reiterating CBI concerns that the coalition has not put in place sufficient incentives to encourage people to take advantage of the energy-efficient loan scheme.

“When we present the Green Deal, we shouldn’t be talking about lofty ambitions and targets that we have to hit – we should be selling,” he said. “The people who will deliver the Green Deal – the people who will finance it, or who will be putting in the insulation, the double-glazing – they tell me they’re really up for the potential for this scheme, but they’re also worried we’re not exciting the public enough to get them to take it up.”

Despite reports that this month’s budget could include some form of stamp duty tax break for households that take advantage of the Green Deal, Huhne failed to provide further details on how the government will promote the scheme. But he reiterated the coalition’s commitment to its flagship energy-efficiency policy, arguing that it will represent the “biggest intervention in home energy since the birth of the national grid”.

Source: www.guardian.co.uk

Spur Green Growth with Lower Trade Barriers in Asia Pacific

The United States, taking the helm of the APEC forum, hopes to spur green growth in the Asia-Pacific region by knocking down trade barriers on environmental goods. Senior officials from the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum meet in Washington to kick off a year that will culminate in a November summit in Hawaii and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will address the forum on Wednesday to outline the US strategy. Muhamad Noor, executive director of APEC, said that the United States wanted to produce “deliverables.”
AFP March 9, 2011, 8:00 am

WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States, taking the helm of the APEC forum, hopes to spur green growth in the Asia-Pacific region by knocking down trade barriers on environmental goods, a senior official said Tuesday.

Senior officials from the 21-member Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum are meeting this week in Washington to kick off a year that will culminate in a November summit in Hawaii. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will address the forum on Wednesday to outline the US strategy.

Muhamad Noor, executive director of APEC, said that the United States wanted to produce “deliverables.” Last year’s summit in Yokohama, Japan, called for progress on a long-mooted idea of a trans-Pacific free trade zone.

Noor, a veteran Malaysian trade negotiator, said that President Barack Obama’s administration was putting a priority on green growth and on helping both sides of the Pacific to “transition to a clean energy future.”

“APEC will accelerate efforts to address barriers to trade in environmental goods and services,” Noor told reporters.

“It will also seek to remove barriers related to the importation of advanced technology demonstration products such as vehicles and remanufactured and recycled goods,” he said.

APEC includes China and the United States, which are by far the world’s two biggest emitters of carbon blamed for the planet’s steadily rising temperatures.

Noor said that APEC, sometimes criticized as a talking shop, did not intend to supplant the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change which is leading talks on an elusive successor to the Kyoto Protocol, but would seek to boost trade.

“If you are able to make this technology available to the developing nations, I think it will be a major contribution to the environment,” Noor said.

“APEC will continue to work in our traditional way, building consensus on this,” he said.

Most nations agree on the need for technology transfer, but the details have been controversial during climate negotiations.

Wealthy nations want assurances that developing economies will respect intellectual property rights. Many developing states, meanwhile, say climate assistance should not be a substitute for wealthy states curbing carbon emissions.

UN-led talks in December in Cancun, Mexico, made headway, with nations agreeing to set up a new fund under the World Bank to administer billions of dollars in climate assistance.

Source: www.au.news.yahoo.com

Coming to the Surface Near You: The Hottest Rock Band!

Did you know that Australia has the hottest known near-surface rocks outside of volcanic areas anywhere in the world? The team at Hot Dry Rocks knows, and it wants to spread the word. The Australian geothermal outfit announced it has signed a memorandum of understanding with three European companies to form EGS Global Group, an alliance aimed at building awareness and development of engineered geothermal systems (EGS), and to provide Australia with world-class opportunities for EGS energy developments. Climate Spectator has this and other clean energy stories.

Sophie Vorrath in Climate Spectator 10 March 2011

Did you know that Australia has the hottest known near-surface rocks outside of volcanic areas anywhere in the world? The team at Hot Dry Rocks knows, and it wants to spread the word. The Australian geothermal outfit announced yesterday it has signed a memorandum of understanding with three European companies to form EGS Global Group, an alliance aimed at building awareness and development of engineered geothermal systems (EGS), and to provide Australia with world-class opportunities for EGS energy developments.

Not only do EGS resources exist in vast quantities within 5 km of the earth’s surface, but according to HDR, decades of international research has established proven techniques for safely extracting the heat energy by pumping water through the earth’s hot rocks and back to the surface where the heat is used to drive turbines and generate electricity. “EGS has the potential to be the cleanest, most reliable, and one of the cheapest sources of renewable energy available,” says HDR’s technical director Graeme Beardsmore. “Now that we have a carbon price mechanism on the government’s agenda, providing more certainty for developers, investors and power consumers alike, this is the ideal time to increase efforts to promote EGS as the future energy alternative and the EGS Global Group allows us to take this lead.”

A spokesman for EGS Energy – leading UK geothermal player and one of the founding companies of the EGS Global Group; along with HDR, Germany-based BESTEC GmbH and GPC Instrumentation Process SARL of France – Guy Macpherson-Grant says a shared understanding between the four countries’ leading geothermal specialists will help develop the sector responsibly. “The respective business interests, experience and skill sets of the partner agencies fit well together, and by supporting one another to develop the sector, the EGS Global Group is paving the way for increased geothermal exploration and development,” he said.

Guardian angels

Obviously, the feeling out there in the cleantech world is that more help is required to really get the industry moving. Another announcement this week heralds the launch of The CleanTech Angels Network – a group whose purpose will be to link cleantech companies seeking funds with Angel investors seeking investments in the sector; a symbiotic process that is not, it seems, happening spontaneously. “Australia is lacking the drivers that are seen elsewhere in the world,” says John O’Brien, managing director of Australian CleanTech, the research and advisory firm behind the development of the Network. “The government stimulus is fragmented and small, the regulatory measures are providing only some assistance and the venture capital industry is under-funded.”

Meanwhile, says O’Brien, there is increasing demand from industry and the wider community for technology and business solutions that have environmental and economic benefits. And thought there are many solutions being developed, there’s a lack of accessible investment to bring them to market. “We are approached by many emerging cleantech companies that require between $100,000 and $300,000 to bring their ideas to market. Many of these are very promising concepts and ones that would also benefit from the expertise of an experienced angel investor,” says O’Brien. “It is very hard for many of these companies to even get passed first base with any investors that they are able to easily access.”

Indeed, such companies are already lining up for help. The Network’s inaugural list of technologies seeking developmental support includes: an integrated solar system that provides hot water, power, heating and air conditioning; a building construction system with a patented super-insulated, low labour, construction methodology that reduces home energy use by up to 80 per cent; a DVD material solution that claims to reduce the cost and carbon footprint of DVD production by 52 per cent; two wave energy technologies; an integrated food production system that profitably produces freshwater fish and organic vegetables; a solar module production facility that plans to produce panels especially adapted for the Australian market; and a micro-algae biofuels project that plans to build decentralised rural industries.

Big breakthrough, small technology

A new method for the production of catalysts used in the manufacture of super-strong, super-lightweight technologies known as nano-carbon products, has been developed by the US-based arm of Australia’s ASX- listed Eden Energy Limited. The company announced the breakthrough this week, saying it would make the production of the catalysts – an essential manufacturing step to producing such nano-carbon products as carbon nanotubes and nanofibers – 15X faster, as well as cheaper and more productive. “The new process works for a variety of catalyst compositions, reduces the quantity of chemicals needed, is easily scalable for higher production and eliminates the majority of the time and labor needed for previous catalyst production methods,” said Eden’s executive chairman Greg Solomon.

“For the production of nano-carbon with specific structure and physical properties, the composition and atomic-level crystalline structure of the elements in the catalyst is critical. In addition, the catalyst particle size and surface area can have significant effects on the total nano-carbon production yields and the stability of carbon growth on the catalyst,” Solomon said. “Hythane Company has reduced the particle size range from approximately 100 micron down to about 1 micron. …(and) the bulk densities of the catalyst powders have been reduced by a factor of about five, an indication of the micro-porous structure and much higher surface area created by the new method.”

Source: www.climatespectator.com.au

Microsoft Says Sustainability Can Comes Out of the Clouds

Cloud computing is all the rage. In its simplest terms, it means outsourcing your company’s information technology (IT) needs, from data and storage to software. All the servers and applications sit elsewhere in the Internet “cloud,” but more literally in a data centre. A recent study from Microsoft (with Accenture and WSP) called “Cloud Computing and Sustainability”  found that by outsourcing, companies can reduce the energy use and carbon footprint of computing by up to 90%

Andrew Winston

Founder, Winston Eco-Strategies; Author, ‘Green to Gold’ and ‘Green Recovery’

Posted: March 9, 2011 04:48 PM

Cloud computing is all the rage. In its simplest terms, it means outsourcing your company’s information technology (IT) needs, from data and storage to software. All the servers and applications sit elsewhere in the Internet “cloud,” but more literally in a data center or centers.

A recent study from Microsoft (with Accenture and WSP), “Cloud Computing and Sustainability“, compared the environmental footprint of running business software internally or with an outsourced provider (in this case, Microsoft). The study showed that, compared to running their own applications, by outsourcing companies can reduce the energy use and carbon footprint of computing by up to 90 percent!

This is very good news. IT is one of the fastest growing energy hogs, accounting for at least 2 percent of global energy use. In my last book, Green Recovery, I focused on IT as one of five operational areas where green initiatives help companies save money quickly (the others were facilities, distribution, telework, and waste).

In the book, I cited statistics from IBM showing that less than 4 percent of the energy going into a data center is used to process something.

While the IT world has gotten a lot more efficient lately, there’s still much room for improvement. And apparently moving your applications to the cloud can help immensely.

According to the Microsoft report (see page 6), cloud computing drives energy reductions in four related ways, which boil down to a few key leverage points:

• Reducing excess capacity
• Flattening peak loads
• Employing large-scale “virtualization” software
• Improving data center design.

Using the cloud addresses all three of the major energy-loss areas in the IBM chart: data center design tackles room and server cooling, while the other scale benefits mainly address the absurd waste, in percentage terms, from server underutilization (the far right bar).

Rob Bernard, Microsoft’s Chief Environmental Strategist, likens the cloud to mass transit: “A data center essentially gets computing applications to carpool or take the bus instead of sitting in their own individual servers… but unlike mass transit vs. private vehicles, there is no tradeoff for convenience and on-demand availability.”

So all of this is pretty logical. Scale is more efficient and allows for better resource planning. But I’d offer a few points worth thinking about, and one note of caution.

1. The centralization of computing power should look familiar. To get some perspective on the study, I spoke with Mark Monroe, the new Executive Director of Green Grid, an organization dedicated to making IT more energy and carbon efficient. He compares the cloud to the electric grid, citing Nicholas Carr’s book, The Big Switch, which Monroe says “compares utility computing development to the emergence of centralized electrical generation in the early 20th century.” Like electric plants, Monroe says, central computing “utilities” benefit from scale and high utilization.
2. In this case, outsourcing is another word for “servicizing,” or turning a product into a service offering. In theory, a service provider will strive to keep its costs down, thus using as little energy and resources as possible. Cloud computing fits this model well (and fits a general transition to helping customers use less). As Monroe says:

Cloud providers want to provide an hour of CPU time, a Gigabyte-month of storage, a CRM transaction, an email, or a web page for as little cost and as high a margin as possible. That just has to lead to higher efficiency than someone focused on delivering a feature internally.

1. Small companies get the biggest bang for their cloud bucks. The study’s most fascinating finding is that the larger IT users get less benefit out of working with Microsoft’s cloud. For organizations with more than 10,000 users, the reduction in GHG emissions is a healthy 30 percent. But that pales in comparison to the 90-percent reduction firms with just 100 users can attain.
2. Smart outsourcing, scale, and technology can help other parts of the business be more efficient also. For example, I talk in Green Recovery about the benefits of telecommuting and telepresence, and in distribution, larger carriers can ensure fuller, more efficient trucks, rail cars, and ships.
3. But, keep one thing in mind when outsourcing an energy-using function: the footprint is still yours. Technically, a company’s main footprint includes only its own facilities (in wonky terms, that’s “Scope 1 emissions”). But I believe that anyone doing contract work for you — which is not really the same as traditional suppliers — should count toward your footprint.

In short, finding providers and partners that can take some of your energy-using operations to scale, and manage them in a shared capacity, is good for your footprint and your bottom line.

This post first appeared at Harvard Business Online

Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Global Approach Needed to Save Vulnerable Archaeological Sites

Archaeological treasures that have been frozen for millennia are being destroyed because of climate change. Remains in some of the coldest places on earth are being exposed as warmer temperatures cause ice and hardened ground to thaw. Edinburgh University experts said the materials at risk included ancient tombs, artefacts and human remains, as they studied cases of damaged remains in three locations around the world, at permafrost in the Altai Mountains in central Asia, sea ice in Alaska and glaciers in the Rocky Mountains.

11 March 2011 BBC

Archaeological treasures that have been frozen for millennia are being destroyed because of climate change, according to Edinburgh researchers.

Remains in some of the coldest places on earth are being exposed as warmer temperatures cause ice and hardened ground to thaw.

Edinburgh University experts said the materials at risk included ancient tombs, artefacts and human remains.

They are often culturally significant, especially for indigenous populations.

Scientists at the university’s business school studied cases of damaged remains in three locations around the world, at permafrost in the Altai Mountains in central Asia, sea ice in Alaska and glaciers in the Rocky Mountains.

They found coastal erosion caused by retreating sea ice was damaging remains in an Inuit village in Alaska, including a Fourth-Century coastal cemetery.

Their study suggested melting glaciers in the Rocky Mountains posed a threat to Native American human remains and artefacts such as hunting tools, weapons and clothing.

Researchers also discovered that thawing temperatures represented a risk to burial mounds in the Altai Mountains of central Asia.

The site, containing the only frozen tombs in the world, is the resting place of Eurasian nomadic horsemen with links to modern-day Siberian nomads.

The graves contain treasures such as gold and ancient carpets.

In the central Asian Altai Mountains, about 700 tombs have been preserved for 2,500 years by ice lenses or permafrost.

They contain frozen mummies, wood, leather and textiles, which are very rarely preserved and can provide a unique insight into the culture of prehistoric societies in this region.

‘The Ice Maiden’ was discovered in the Altai Mountains in Siberia in 1993.

As a result of increasing ground and surface temperatures over the past century, these tombs and their deposits are now within only a few degrees of melting.

Scientists have called for a global organisation to be set up to maintain a record of vulnerable sites and co-ordinate efforts to conserve items that are at risk, particularly indigenous remains.

Dr Dave Reay, of Edinburgh University, said: “Warming climates are expected to lead to more melting ice, and we need to take action to safeguard ancient treasures.

“Long-term efforts are needed to locate archaeological remains that are at risk, and research how best to care for them.

“We must also consider the political and cultural implications of preserving important relics.”

Source: www.bbc.co.uk

Is this enough to scare the world away from nuclear for good?

Amid all the quotes about Japan’s unfolding nuclear crisis that have galvanised the world’s attention over the past few days, this one stood out: “The earthquake was terrifying, but this is worse,“ said one Japanese resident, told to evacuate his home near the crippled plant a Fukushima. “We want to go home, but we are scared.”

Nuclear proponents can bang on all they like about the science and the textbook safety of nuclear energy, and how well it compares with other technologies; and of the dangers of exploding oil refineries, collapsing coal mines, or bursting dams. As awful as these events might be, there is nothing quite so menacing as the danger that is not seen and is not understood. The nuclear industry stands unique in this regard.

One of nuclear’s biggest proponents in Australia, the energy minister Martin Ferguson, has been happy to allow the development of renewable technology to be stalled, all the while pretending to be doing otherwise. Perhaps now he, and the government he serves, will recognise the importance of investing – with the same vigour and mechanisms he would have envisaged for a nuclear energy industry – in a credible long-term alternative to coal and gas. Giles Parkinson in Climate Spectator has this to say. Read More

Giles Parkinson in Climate Spectator (15 March 2011)

Amid all the quotes about Japan’s unfolding nuclear crisis that have galvanised the world’s attention over the past few days, this one stood out: “The earthquake was terrifying, but this is worse,“ said one Japanese resident, told to evacuate his home near the crippled plant a Fukushima. “We want to go home, but we are scared.”

Nuclear proponents can bang on all they like about the science and the textbook safety of nuclear energy, and how well it compares with other technologies; and of the dangers of exploding oil refineries, collapsing coal mines, or bursting dams. As awful as these events might be, there is nothing quite so menacing as the danger that is not seen and is not understood. The nuclear industry stands unique in this regard.

It has been quite surreal to observe “experts” some 10,000km away from the scene insisting there is no public danger from the dramatic events unfolding at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plants, while the nuclear authorities on the spot ordered the immediate evacuation of more than 200,000 residents, began the distribution of iodine tablets – given to minimise the threat of thyroid cancer – and recommended those that remained within a 20km radius of the plant close their windows and cover their heads in wet towels.

The nuclear industry has recognised, since the incidents of Three Mile Island in 1979 and Chernobyl in 1986, that its prosperity depends on the indulgence of public opinion – unless, of course, you live in a country like China where that doesn’t matter so much. The passage of time, the emergence of a younger generation, the development of new technology, and the clamour for low emission energy sources to help curb greenhouse emissions held the promise of a new beginning. You would have thought that the industry – and its most ardent proponents – would have understood that the one essential ingredient to this surprising renaissance would be public trust.

Maybe not. In its obstinance, the nuclear industry can deliver as powerful an argument against itself as the most vociferous green opponent. The Japanese public have always been ambivalent about the industry, given their history with atomic reactions. Their faith has not been improved by revelations that executives from the Tokyo Electric Company falsified safety documents (from the very reactors that are now compromised), and its belated admission in 2007 that another nuclear plant had not been designed to withstand earthquakes of the magnitude that hit the region at the time.

Even the academics can’t make head nor tail of the events. One Japanese university expert replied to a query yesterday: “It’s all quite confusing. The Tokyo Electric Power Company has been holding a press conference almost every three hours since yesterday, but every time it seems to be an announcement that contradicts the last announcement they made.”

The one sure casualty of Fukushima is the fantasy that nuclear energy can somehow be stripped down to a cheap and easy model, that shorn of “unnecessary” regulation and safety measures, it could be as cheap as coal. Given the extraordinary circumstances that has seen the top blown off two reactor buildings and sea-water used to flood and effectively kill the overheating cores, this is delusional at best. This event will surely add to those extra layers of safety and costs.

As each layer of protection at the Fukushima nuclear plant was peeled back by the force of nature, bad planning, human error, or just plain bad luck, so too was the fantasy that the general public would agree to the installation of nuclear facilities – in Australia or any other developed nation, for that matter – without the maximum possible safety measures. That much was learned from Three Mile Island, which at this stage has more in common with Fukushima than Chernobyl.

The other key ingredient to a prosperous nuclear energy industry is the indulgence of the financial markets. Not a single buyer could be found for shares in Tokyo Electric Co for much of Monday, and when some could be found it translated into a slump of 24 per cent. Some industry experts suggest the cost of remediation at the Fukushima Daiichi plants could be horrendous, and may send the company broke. Only one light water reactor has ever been decommissioned – a small 60MWe facility at Shipping Port in the US – but it was not compromised by what appears to be at least a partial melt-down in two of its reactors. The company is in unknown territory in its efforts to control the immediate events at the reactor, and will continue to be when it seeks to clean it up.

Whatever the impact on the global nuclear industry – and judging by the comments of several western leaders over the last few days it seems stalled at best – it now seems clear that no nuclear energy industry will emerge in Australia, or at least not for another decade or two. That much was made clear by Prime Minister Julia Gillard last night, noting that the country had no need for it. Even without the safety concerns and the costs, there is no energy utility in the country that possesses the balance sheet to contemplate the scale of investment, let alone the risk that is attached to it. Incidentally, the Coalition policy on nuclear is not to have one (a policy) unless Labor does – a unique offering of bipartisanship

The US has been trying to rekindle its industry for 30 years, but no company has been able to obtain private finance without massive support from the US government through loan guarantees. It should be noted that the French nuclear network, often cited as the benchmark for the industry, was built entirely by finance at first provided, and then written off, by the French government. The low cost of French electricity to local consumers is not quite what it seems, and will be tested when the country needs to replace its fleet in coming decades.

Australia’s short term abatement requirements in the electricity industry will likely be delivered by the gas industry – as controversial and as costly as that might turn out to be. Thereafter, the future abatement prospects are likely to be delivered by renewable technologies – at least that is the assessment of the International Energy Agency, which predicted last year that large-scale solar could deliver as much as 40 per cent of its energy needs by 2050.

That remains to be seen. But if renewables – with the help of smart grids, high voltage networks, and a reduction in costs at scale – can deliver on such promises anywhere in the world, then it must be in Australia. Countless economists and experts point to Australia’s natural advantage, both in resources and technology – and Gillard reinforced those attributes on the ABC’s Q&A program on Monday night – but we don’t appear to be in any rush to find out.

One of nuclear’s biggest proponents in Australia, the energy minister Martin Ferguson, has been happy to allow the development of renewable technology to be stalled, all the while pretending to be doing otherwise. Perhaps now he, and the government he serves, will recognise the importance of investing – with the same vigour and mechanisms he would have envisaged for a nuclear energy industry – in a credible long-term alternative to coal and gas.

Source: www.climatespectator.com.au

A global climate agenda

A landmark of sorts. And a pat on the back. Self-inflicted of course!  As this issue marks the third birthday of abc carbon express. 138 issues in three years since we started on 1 March 2008. Some readers have been with us from the beginning but many more thousand added since. We know that we average 60,000 hits a month to our website – www.abccarbon.com – driven largely by our e-newsletter content.Our geographic – or climatic – spread of content and readership is global, albeit with a bias to the Asia Pacific. We started in Brisbane, Australia and now we operate from Singapore, but that doesn’t mean we will ignore events and news from further afield. This issue certainly has information and announcements from Singapore and Australia, but also taps into the views of UK volcanologist Bill McGuire, prompted by last issue’s mention of the climate change connection to geological events, including earthquakes. UN Climate Change chief Christiana Figueres gets a word or two in, as do experts on green buildings from Malaysia and South Korea. Biofuels for aviation are taking off, with views and actions from the US and Australia. China renews its green agenda, while Africa is on the climate page with differing views on whether it faces more droughts or too much water. Australia struggles with its impending carbon pricing plan with support coming from unexpected sources. While Australia has its annual Clean Up Day and Singapore gets set to mark World Water Day on 20 March, the global community looks set to celebrate Earth Hour on 26 March. Turn off the lights and turn on to energy efficiency everywhere. – Ken Hickson