Climate Change Thread

[ReluctantSamurai]

Of course those are some hopeful signs......with some caveats

I'll start with this: the top five carbon emitters in 2020 in order---China, United States, India, Russian Federation, Japan. These five produce more carbon emissions than the rest of the world combined. And while it's important to get reductions in every country producing carbon emissions, reductions for the top five will have a greater impact on the world as a whole.

My focus is on those five.

First, India. The link from the Independent is four years old. Much has changed in India since then, especially changes wrought by the pandemic. The current Modi regime is anything but environmentally friendly:

https://www.newframe.com/indias-modi...al-safeguards/

The ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government has proposed changes to the environmental impact assessment (EIA) process, which was originally designed to safeguard the country’s diverse ecology. In March, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change issued a revised draft policy on evaluating the environmental impact of large projects.

Among the many changes, the draft proposes a mechanism to legitimise some actions currently listed as violations, such as projects starting construction without a valid clearance. It also expands the list of projects exempted from public consultation, a crucial part of the EIA process.

Although Modi has publicly advocated for clean power and committed to increasing India’s renewable energy target to 450GW as part of a stronger climate action plan, his government, in January this year, passed an ordinance to amend the Coal Mines (Special Provisions) Act of 2015 to open up the coal sector for commercial mining to all local and global firms after easing restrictions.

Under the new provisions, Modi launched the auction of 41 coal blocks, many of which are located in dense forests in Central India. Challenging this decision, the Jharkhand government has approached the Supreme Court of India to halt the auction. The Chhattisgarh government has raised red flags over blocks being located in biodiversity-rich forests spanning across an elephant reserve.

The biggest statistical evidence of India regressing under the Modi regime lies in the 2020 Environmental Performance Index­, which ranks the country 168th out of 180 countries, behind all South Asian nations except Afghanistan, which scored the 178th place.

Now whether this deregulation passes court tests remains to be seen. Personally, as long as Modi, and authoritarian leaders of his ilk remain in power, the world environment is going to take a hit.

Next, China. There's conflicting numbers concerning China, with some stating coal production is down, some up. I'll start with this, from a BP global energy report for 2020:

https://www.bp.com/en/global/corpora...ergy/coal.html

The Good:

World coal consumption fell by 0.6% (-0.9 EJ), its fourth decline in six years, displaced by natural gas and renewables, particularly in the power sector (see electricity section). As a result, coal’s share in the energy mix fell to 27.0%, its lowest level in 16 years.

The Bad (as far as China is concerned):

Coal consumption continued to increase in some emerging economies, particularly in China (1.8 EJ), Indonesia (0.6 EJ) and Vietnam (0.5 EJ) [althought the above japantimes link seems to suggest a marked falling off of coal consumption in Vietnam] with the latter posting a record increase in part related to a sharp drop in hydroelectric power. Growth in India, usually a key driver of coal consumption, was only 0.3% (0.1 EJ) – its lowest since 2001. These increases in coal consumption were more than offset by falls in demand in the developed world, led by the US (-1.9 EJ) and Germany (-0.6 EJ), with OECD coal consumption falling to its lowest level in our data series (which goes back to 1965).

Global coal production rose by 1.5%, with China and Indonesia providing the only significant increases (3.2 EJ and 1.3 EJ respectively). As with consumption, the largest declines in production came from the US (-1.1 EJ) and Germany (-0.3 EJ).

The Ugly (from the above powermag link):

While global coal consumption decreased in 2019 by 0.6%, China’s coal consumption increased by 2.3%, and accounted for 57.6% of its energy use and 51.7% of the world’s total coal use. Despite the world’s lower coal usage, the global coal fleet increased by 34 GW in 2019—the first increase in net capacity additions since 2015. Nearly two-thirds (43.8 GW) of the 68.3 GW of newly commissioned capacity was constructed in China.

Then there's this (a bit dated, but still plenty of relevant info):

https://newint.org/features/2019/10/16/how-green-china

China’s decisive move away from coal as a primary source of energy is probably one of the few pieces of good news in terms of humankind’s efforts to avoid the worst of climate change. In a remarkably short time span, coal’s share of China’s energy pie dropped from 72 per cent in 2005 to 59 per cent in 2018; at the same time, wind power has grown 173 fold, nuclear 5.4 fold and solar energy from virtually nothing to producing 170 gigawatts (GW) a year, according to government figures.

Hopeful, but then comes the pandemic (again):

Pushing for positive climate action requires a level of intellectual investment that most members of the public, including journalists, are not ready to make. This problem looks worse in light of the current data: even though China has been relatively successful so far in slowing emissions growth, after a period of plateauing between 2014-17, emissions have started rising again due to new stimulus spending in infrastructure aimed at staving off an economic slowdown.

Then there's this offset:

As the country, albeit belatedly, embraces and appreciates clean air, green forests and abundant coastal waters, it tends to push those same problems out of its borders. China has quickly become the world’s largest financier and builder of coal-power plants overseas. Based on a recent estimation, Chinese financial institutions and corporations are funding about 102 gigawatts of coal-power plants overseas, which is close to the total electricity capacity of Italy.

But cutting down coal consumption at home while building up coal capacities abroad is no contradiction under Xi’s ecological nationalism. The state-owned enterprises that lose out on their coal plants in China are effectively paid off by a Chinese state that is using all available means to export its coal technologies abroad: the resilience of these enterprises is a key part of the ‘national strength’ that the leadership is keen to build up. The same goes for having increasingly strict fishery regulations domestically to preserve the depleted coastal environment while strengthening a formidable deep-water fishery fleet to exploit more efficiently the high seas, and introducing a decisive natural forest logging ban, which turns timber traders to look elsewhere. Exporting environmentally destructive industries abroad and cutting them at home are both means of strengthening the nation – this, rather than any conception of a global commons that needs protecting, is what drives China’s environmentalism.

A mixed bag, to say the least.

The United States is next, but will require an entire post in itself....

[ReluctantSamurai]

Now for the US, another mixed bag. First, energy consumption by sector (there's a jillion sources for this info, this one is simple and to the point):

https://www.e-education.psu.edu/ebf301/node/457

U.S. Energy Consumption by Energy Source, 2019
Total = 100.2 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu)

• Petroleum: 37%
• Natural Gas: 32%
• Coal: 11%
• Nuclear electric power: 8%
• Renewable Energy: 11% (10.2 quadrillion Btu)

Renewable energy is broken down as follows:

• Hydroelectric: 22%
• Biomass: 43%
  
  • Wood: 20%
  • Biofuels: 20%
  • Biomass Waste: 4%
  
  
• Wind: 24%
• Solar: 9%
• Geothermal: 2%

Use of coal is declining steadily and is being replaced by natural gas and renewable energy. Gas is still a carbon emitter, but much less than coal or oil. Unlike ending pharmaceutical addictions, the US can't just go "cold turkey" from coal and oil. There has to be a transitional period of the infrastructure to renewable energy sources. Fracking, the major source of the recent natural gas supplies, is fraught with problems and a topic in, and of itself.

With the transportation sector being the largest consumer of energy, the switch to electric vehicles is a huge plus:

https://blog.ucsusa.org/dave-reichmu...-yes-heres-why

When looking at all these factors, driving the average EV is responsible for fewer global warming emissions than the average new gasoline car everywhere in the US. In some parts of the country, driving the average new gasoline car will produce 4 to 7 times the emissions of the average EV. For example, the average EV driven in upstate New York has emissions equal to a (hypothetical) 231 mpg gasoline car. And in California, a gasoline car would need to get 122 mpg to have emissions as low as the average EV.

The use of renewable energy in the US is growing steadily:

https://www.c2es.org/content/renewable-energy/

• Renewable energy is the fastest-growing energy source in the United States, increasing 100 percent from 2000 to 2018.
• Renewables made up more than 17 percent of net U.S. electricity generation in 2018, with the bulk coming from hydropower (7.0 percent) and wind power (6.6 percent).
• Solar generation (including distributed) is projected to climb from 11 percent of total U.S. renewable generation in 2017 to 48 percent by 2050, making it the fastest-growing electricity source.
• Globally, renewables made up 24 percent of electricity generation in 2016, much of it from hydropower (16 percent).
• Renewable ethanol and biodiesel transportation fuels made up over 12 percent of total U.S. renewable energy consumption in 2018, up from 7 percent in 2006.

All good signs, but is the transition happening fast enough? An interesting look at the current performance ratings:

https://ccpi.org/ranking/

Rankings are based on each country’s overall score. This is calculated from the individual scores in four categories, consisting of 14 indicators. Click on a country name for greater detail. No country performs well enough in all index categories to achieve an overall very high rating. The first three overall positions therefore remain empty. The results show that, even if all countries were as committed as the current frontrunners, efforts would still be insufficient to prevent hazardous climate change. The countries with high rankings also have no reason to ease up. Even greater efforts and actions by governments are needed to set the world on track to keep global warming well below a 2°C increase.

Not very encouraging....

Next up, Japan and the Russian Federation.

[ReluctantSamurai]

An overview of Japan's energy usage:

https://www.enerdata.net/estore/energy-market/japan/

Total energy consumption has been decreasing since 2010 (by 2%/year on average) to 420 Mtoe in 2019.

Slower economic growth coupled with structural trends in the transport sector (shift to electric cars and reduced car use among young generations) and the gradual phaseout of oil-fired power plants are reducing the oil demand.

Gas consumption increased by 21% following the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster in 2011 and has declined since 2013 by -2.2%/year on average.

Coal consumption is declining slightly since 2013, by 1%/year, and reached 186 Mt in 2019. It increased rapidly between 2000 and 2007 (3%/year) with most of the utilities switching to this cheap fuel.

In the government's latest Energy White Paper (2020), renewables are recognised as a major energy source for Japan's future. The plan aims to raise the share of renewables in the power mix to 22-24% (including hydropower) in 2030, with plans to make renewables Japan's main power source by 2050.

GHG emissions dropped by 3.9% in FY 2019 for a fifth straight year and by 12% from FY 2013 to FY -2019.

The long-term goal, announced in June 2019 in the long-term growth strategy under the Paris Agreement, is to become carbon neutral in 2050.

Again all relatively good news, but is carbon neutrality by 2050 fast enough?

The outlook for the Russian Federation is not so good:

https://link.springer.com/article/10...25-019-00016-8

Russia, ranking fourth in the world in primary energy consumption and carbon dioxide emissions, adheres to the strategy of “business as usual” and relies on fossil fuels. Decarbonization of the energy sector is not yet on the horizon: a skeptical attitude towards the problem of global climate change prevails among stakeholders. GDP energy intensity remains high, supported by relatively low energy prices and high cost of capital. The share of solar and wind energy in the energy balance is insignificant and is not expected to exceed 1% by 2040.

Russia is definitely a fossil fuel addict, and a large portion of their GDP depends on fossil fuel exports:

For Russia, as for many other resource-rich and energy-exporting countries, the energy transition creates new long-term challenges, questioning the sustainability of the entire economy, which is highly dependent on hydrocarbon export revenues. Since the beginning of the 2000s, Russia has managed to increase energy exports dramatically: from 2000 to 2005, exports grew by an unprecedented 56%, exceeding the total energy exports of the USSR, providing an incredible acceleration of the national economy and strengthening the country’s position on the international stage as an “energy superpower”.

According to estimates by the Energy Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences (ERI RAS), with the transformation of the global markets and reduced call for Russian hydrocarbons, the contribution of oil and gas to Russian GDP will decline by approximately half, from 31% in 2015 to 13–17% by 2040 (depending on the scenario). Therefore, climate-related policies that target a reduction in GHG emissions from hydrocarbons can substantially affect the Russian economy.

Climate change is not prominent phraseology in Russia:

[...]the climate agenda and the drive for decarbonization are not yet essential factors in the energy strategy of the Russian Federation. Indeed, the Paris Agreement is mentioned only once in the draft version of the “Russian Energy Strategy Up to 2035”, a key document defining the country’s strategic priorities in this critically important industry, which was submitted to the government by the Energy Ministry in 2015 but not approved until now[...]

[...]skepticism concerning the anthropogenic nature of climate change is prevalent among stakeholders, as senior representatives of the Russian Academy of Sciences and many state officials publicly express their doubts regarding the very concept of anthropogenically driven climate change.

Despite that, GHG emissions have decreased in Russia largely due to the increase of nuclear/hydro/and natural gas energy sources.

Use of renewables is only a very small part of Russia's energy consumption, and will seemingly remain so in the coming decades:

The Russian energy balance is strongly dominated by fossil fuels, with natural gas providing 53% of total primary energy demand, and coal and oil-based liquid fuels each accounting for 18%. Carbon-free sources of energy are represented primarily by large-scale hydro and nuclear power (which enjoy strong state support). The total share of renewables (including hydro, solar, wind, biomass, and geothermal) was just 3.2% of Russia’s primary energy consumption in 2015. By the end of 2015, total installed renewable power generation capacity was 53.5 GW, representing about 20% of Russia’s total installed power generation capacity (253 GW), with hydropower providing nearly all of this capacity (51.5 GW), followed by bioenergy (1.35 GW). The installed capacity for solar and onshore wind amounted to 460 MW and 111 MW, respectively, as of 2015. [that's MW not GW!]

Since then, annual renewable capacity additions rose from 57 MW in 2015 to 376 MW in 2018 (320 MW solar, 56 MW wind). What is more important is the significant decline in capital expenditures in renewables auctions during the past 2 years, by 35% for wind and 31% for solar, according to the Energy Ministry. This process was not smooth; some capacity auction rounds have struggled to attract bids for a number of reasons, just over 2 GW of renewable capacity was awarded in tenders between 2013 and 2016, while the 2017 auction resulted in a total of 2.2 GW of wind, solar, and small hydro awarded in a single round, and in 2018, 1.08 GW of capacity was allocated among 39 projects. In 2017, five waste-to-energy projects were also introduced to the capacity market scheme, with a total capacity of 335 MW. But in 2018, the tender for waste energy capacity failed because of the strict new requirements for bidders to provide performance guarantees.

Outlook for the Russian Federation getting on board with climate change policies is not good mainly because of government views on the importance of carbon reduction:

Russia’s attitude towards the energy transition is quite controversial: trying to introduce in a traditional centralized manner some components of this trend. First, with regard to new technologies, the country is essentially refusing to accept the main driver of the trend—the decarbonization agenda. Existing strategic documents (primarily a draft version of the “Russian Energy Strategy Up to 2035”, which was submitted to the government by the Energy Ministry in 2015, but not approved until now) do not take the energy transition into account.

[a completely inoffensive name]

While those five are important, we can't dismiss the rest of the world. Nigeria could very well have more people than the US by end of the century. As more people in Africa, SE Asia and SA move up the tiers of income, their energy needs will increase and it is just as important they are scaling with clean energy.

Europe seems to be well on track already, let's call that area's goals "promising": https://twitter.com/_HannahRitchie/s...72408461369345

Russia will be the last to change for sure. I don't know anything about Indian politics, the push on coal for cheap widespread electricity could very well be a poor attempt by Modi to keep his popularity after pissing off all the farmers. When are the next elections?

Japan has clear path forward to transition, I'm not sure what the hold up is besides Fukushima throwing a wrench in their short term plans. Tbh if population trends continue I think they will see something like a 50% reduction in total population by 2100 in which case they wouldn't be emitting much assuming they haven't already hit carbon neutrality by then.

Reductions are the most important thing right now, but I have no doubt carbon removal and sequestration technologies will be developed/deployed by any and all countries who start to feel the strain of climate change. It is going to be wild seeing the shit people try.

[Furunculus]

Interesting read on how well nations are doing in achieving the reality of their climate commitments:

https://ccpi.org/download/the-climat...ce-index-2021/

[ReluctantSamurai]

Interesting that the majority of the worst performers are countries with authoritarian governments...

After some checking:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...v9RtLeQP7Q-iYc

Very, VERY, long read, with an interesting conclusion:

There has been critique of democracy, saying it relies too much on the supposedly naive belief that citizens will push for greener decisions, when they in reality are not at all compelled to do so. Shearman and Smith criticizes democracy, saying it is intertwined with capitalism and that it promotes individual and selfish behaviour while failing to protect the common resources of the world. They question if protection of one political philosophy or another is important when the most concerning issue is the preservation of the human species and as China and Russia continues to assert themselves internationally, ideas of what is desirable and not whenit comes to governance and values of a country are blurred. When the environmental threat intensifies, even the West might agree that any form of order is preferable to disorder, and thus put democracy on hold while handling more pressing issues.

In the six African cases used for this thesis there were many different aspects which played in regarding the way autocracies and democracies handled their policy-making and project implementation, including levels of economic growth, conflict and ambition. However, broadly speaking, the performance was quite similar between all the cases and differed only to a minor extent in some areas, meaning the type of government did not affect the performance extensively. In general, the autocratic countries did, in line with the theory, perform better than expected and actually had an extensive focus on climate change. However, unsurprisingly, they lacked in public participation, but seeing as they did not perform considerably worse than the countries with bigger participation perhaps it is not as important as it has been proclaimed to be. Although, it is worth remembering that despite perhaps being environmentally preferable, autocracies are not preferable from a human rights perspective.

Or is it the other way around:

https://theenergymix.com/2018/08/12/...limate-change/

And a view from the pro-democracy side:

https://issues.org/exceptional-circu...ump-democracy/

It seems there is quite a debate on the role of authoritarian vs democracy in climate change....

[ReluctantSamurai]

Interesting (and short) read on possible reasons for the accelerated rate of warming happening in Earth's polar regions, which no model, as of yet, has successfully explained. The article has a bunch of embeded links to follow, which are quite informative in their own right:

https://www.theatlantic.com/science/...roblem/618159/