Wednesday, January 06, 2016 12:47:30 AM
The World Needs Drastic Action to Meet Paris Climate Goals
"One more small step toward a cleaner world for all children."
Nick Stockton 12.16.15 7:00 am.
Getty Images
Last week’s UN climate meeting took place inside six massive, climate-controlled warehouses, on the grounds of France’s oldest commercial airport. That airport is in the suburb of Le Bourget, which itself is part of the Paris metropolitan region—home to some 12 million people and their homes, workplaces, commutes, appetites, and pastimes. With the exception of a small but growing slice powered by renewables, the majority of everything that everybody does in Paris and beyond is powered by fossil fuels.
That’s the electricity powering your computer, Xbox, microwave, refrigerator, and heater. Gas goes in your car, into the trucks that deliver your year-round vegetables, into the ship that brought your hoverboard over from China. Coal provides the heat to make the steel in every building, every train track. It’s essential for concrete, too.
The goal of the Paris climate deal is to keep average global temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius, and as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible. Let’s assume the best case scenario, compliance-wise. Every nation outdoes their pre-submitted plans (which currently add up to 2.7 degrees above global average by the end of the century). Every five years every nation ratchets up their commitments, and carbon pricing sends a planet-wide price signal to the economy that it is cheaper to do business with renewables. What does all that look like? What exactly needs to happen in order to meet that ambitious goal?
“The first steps you take are with renewable energy,” says Michael Jacobs .. http://www.michaeljacobs.org/ , senior advisor to New Climate Economy, an economic think tank. Which is pretty obvious. Also relatively low hanging, as far as climate change solutions go. For one, renewable energy is developing at a pace that is relatively safe to call revolutionary. According to the US Energy Information Administration .. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/archive/ieo13/electricity.cfm , total electricity capacity from renewables grows about 2.8 percent per year. Currently, they provide about 11 percent of the globe’s energy.
At this point, the biggest cudgel to renewables is their limited availability—the sun don’t always shine, the wind don’t always blow. To fix that problem, the world needs better batteries. Tesla’s Powerwalls are a nice start, but won’t scale up to meet grid-wide needs. And lithium-ion batteries aren’t just relatively rare: They also have the tendency to blow up when they get too hot (witness the hoverboard .. http://www.wired.com/2015/12/why-hoverboards-keep-exploding/ ).
Even before batteries and renewables come fully online, though, the energy industry can do plenty to button up efficiency. Their first target: waste heat. A 2013 study by Lawrence Livermore National Lab found that over 58 percent .. https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/energy/energy_archive/energy_flow_2012/2012new2012newUSEnergy.png .. of US energy goes unused, most of it lost to heat. Switching to microgrids could reduce the amount of heat lost when electricity is converted from AC to DC and back again.
Now, power sources represent the supply side of emissions. But there are plenty of cuts to be made on the demand side as well—anything that demands electricity or heat. “Buildings contribute about one third of all global emissions,” says Jennifer Layke, director of building efficiency at the World Resources Institute. Most of that is operations—keeping the lights on, the servers running, the ventilation ventilating.
What places need, says Layke, are better codes. “Nobody in San Francisco would build something that wasn’t up to earthquake code,” she says. Green building codes would require buildings to use efficient means for heating and cooling—things like chilled beam cooling and all-electric heat. Plus, boring old insulation and windows go a long way towards keeping that hot or cold air inside. Keep in mind that’s all the buildings, in all the cities. Making that happen means that in addition to new codes, governments are going to need some kind of incentive to offset renovation costs to homeowners and businesses.
From buildings you get to cities, and most in America are not equipped for efficiency. See, the best way to get people around is by public transportation or bicycle. But American cities are all about sprawl—the antithesis of bikeability, and bane of public transportation. This is where electric cars come in. “Vehicles turn over much more quickly than buildings,” says Jacobs. Because of the pace of development, he says he can see the turnover from petro to electro happening over the next two generations of vehicles, in something like 10 to 14 years.
Scale up from cities, and now you’re talking about global transportation—aviation and shipping. Neither of which, by the way, were mentioned in the Paris agreement, but that doesn’t let them off the hook.
No matter how cool it is that some dude flew a solar powered plane .. http://www.wired.com/2015/07/solar-impulse-2-surprising-zen-of-a-5-day-flight-over-the-pacific/ .. over the Pacific, sunshine ain’t gonna get you to Tahiti any time soon. “The aviation industry is ultimately looking at biofuels,” says Jacobs. This is touchy, because growing corn or whatever for fuel takes up ag land. “The risk is that basically the demand for developed world transport will outweigh the developing world’s demand for food,” he says. Scientists are working on tank-grown algae for biofuels, but as of yet no formula is ready for business class.
As for shipping, don’t hold your breath for the return of the tallship. The best way to reduce emissions in shipping is through slower ships. “Slowing down a few knots saves an enormous amount of fuel,” says John Sterman .. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=12066 , professor of systems dynamics at MIT.
Agriculture and capital-I Industry will be the last sectors to change. Ag’s emissions are notoriously hard to rein in, from methane-burping cattle to petroleum-based fertilizers. “There are also huge amounts of degraded land that need to come back into production,” says Jacobs.
And if you’ve been slavering for a big, tasty tech fix, wait no more: Industry desperately needs one. Coal is pretty much the only way to make fires hot enough to smelt steel. Likewise, most concrete plants have on-site coal plants to make the aggregate. “Carbon capture and storage looks likely to be an important part of controlling industrial emissions,” says Jacobs. Besides a few scattered power plants, carbon capture and storage—which involves capturing emissions and storing them underground—is mostly in R&D stages.
Needless to say, meeting the goals of the Paris agreement is a pretty comprehensive assignment. Virtually every single thing you look at—whether lit up, manufactured, chewable, or vrooming—relies on fossil fuels. “Which is why nobody should feel optimistic,” says Jacobs. “It is an extraordinary agreement, at the top end of what the governments could reach, but it’s really a framework for an incredibly difficult challenge ahead.” Not to say that pessimism should necessitate failure.
http://www.wired.com/2015/12/the-world-needs-drastic-action-to-meet-paris-climate-goals?mbid=synd_moz_newsgen
.. a long held bugbear, years of wonderings and why*^*?? nots .. have many cities reassessed the 'need' to have all tall buildings ALL lit up at night .. yet?
"One more small step toward a cleaner world for all children."
Nick Stockton 12.16.15 7:00 am.
Getty Images
Last week’s UN climate meeting took place inside six massive, climate-controlled warehouses, on the grounds of France’s oldest commercial airport. That airport is in the suburb of Le Bourget, which itself is part of the Paris metropolitan region—home to some 12 million people and their homes, workplaces, commutes, appetites, and pastimes. With the exception of a small but growing slice powered by renewables, the majority of everything that everybody does in Paris and beyond is powered by fossil fuels.
That’s the electricity powering your computer, Xbox, microwave, refrigerator, and heater. Gas goes in your car, into the trucks that deliver your year-round vegetables, into the ship that brought your hoverboard over from China. Coal provides the heat to make the steel in every building, every train track. It’s essential for concrete, too.
The goal of the Paris climate deal is to keep average global temperature increase well below 2 degrees Celsius, and as close to 1.5 degrees Celsius as possible. Let’s assume the best case scenario, compliance-wise. Every nation outdoes their pre-submitted plans (which currently add up to 2.7 degrees above global average by the end of the century). Every five years every nation ratchets up their commitments, and carbon pricing sends a planet-wide price signal to the economy that it is cheaper to do business with renewables. What does all that look like? What exactly needs to happen in order to meet that ambitious goal?
“The first steps you take are with renewable energy,” says Michael Jacobs .. http://www.michaeljacobs.org/ , senior advisor to New Climate Economy, an economic think tank. Which is pretty obvious. Also relatively low hanging, as far as climate change solutions go. For one, renewable energy is developing at a pace that is relatively safe to call revolutionary. According to the US Energy Information Administration .. http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/archive/ieo13/electricity.cfm , total electricity capacity from renewables grows about 2.8 percent per year. Currently, they provide about 11 percent of the globe’s energy.
At this point, the biggest cudgel to renewables is their limited availability—the sun don’t always shine, the wind don’t always blow. To fix that problem, the world needs better batteries. Tesla’s Powerwalls are a nice start, but won’t scale up to meet grid-wide needs. And lithium-ion batteries aren’t just relatively rare: They also have the tendency to blow up when they get too hot (witness the hoverboard .. http://www.wired.com/2015/12/why-hoverboards-keep-exploding/ ).
Even before batteries and renewables come fully online, though, the energy industry can do plenty to button up efficiency. Their first target: waste heat. A 2013 study by Lawrence Livermore National Lab found that over 58 percent .. https://flowcharts.llnl.gov/content/energy/energy_archive/energy_flow_2012/2012new2012newUSEnergy.png .. of US energy goes unused, most of it lost to heat. Switching to microgrids could reduce the amount of heat lost when electricity is converted from AC to DC and back again.
Now, power sources represent the supply side of emissions. But there are plenty of cuts to be made on the demand side as well—anything that demands electricity or heat. “Buildings contribute about one third of all global emissions,” says Jennifer Layke, director of building efficiency at the World Resources Institute. Most of that is operations—keeping the lights on, the servers running, the ventilation ventilating.
What places need, says Layke, are better codes. “Nobody in San Francisco would build something that wasn’t up to earthquake code,” she says. Green building codes would require buildings to use efficient means for heating and cooling—things like chilled beam cooling and all-electric heat. Plus, boring old insulation and windows go a long way towards keeping that hot or cold air inside. Keep in mind that’s all the buildings, in all the cities. Making that happen means that in addition to new codes, governments are going to need some kind of incentive to offset renovation costs to homeowners and businesses.
From buildings you get to cities, and most in America are not equipped for efficiency. See, the best way to get people around is by public transportation or bicycle. But American cities are all about sprawl—the antithesis of bikeability, and bane of public transportation. This is where electric cars come in. “Vehicles turn over much more quickly than buildings,” says Jacobs. Because of the pace of development, he says he can see the turnover from petro to electro happening over the next two generations of vehicles, in something like 10 to 14 years.
Scale up from cities, and now you’re talking about global transportation—aviation and shipping. Neither of which, by the way, were mentioned in the Paris agreement, but that doesn’t let them off the hook.
No matter how cool it is that some dude flew a solar powered plane .. http://www.wired.com/2015/07/solar-impulse-2-surprising-zen-of-a-5-day-flight-over-the-pacific/ .. over the Pacific, sunshine ain’t gonna get you to Tahiti any time soon. “The aviation industry is ultimately looking at biofuels,” says Jacobs. This is touchy, because growing corn or whatever for fuel takes up ag land. “The risk is that basically the demand for developed world transport will outweigh the developing world’s demand for food,” he says. Scientists are working on tank-grown algae for biofuels, but as of yet no formula is ready for business class.
As for shipping, don’t hold your breath for the return of the tallship. The best way to reduce emissions in shipping is through slower ships. “Slowing down a few knots saves an enormous amount of fuel,” says John Sterman .. https://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail.php?in_spseqno=12066 , professor of systems dynamics at MIT.
Agriculture and capital-I Industry will be the last sectors to change. Ag’s emissions are notoriously hard to rein in, from methane-burping cattle to petroleum-based fertilizers. “There are also huge amounts of degraded land that need to come back into production,” says Jacobs.
And if you’ve been slavering for a big, tasty tech fix, wait no more: Industry desperately needs one. Coal is pretty much the only way to make fires hot enough to smelt steel. Likewise, most concrete plants have on-site coal plants to make the aggregate. “Carbon capture and storage looks likely to be an important part of controlling industrial emissions,” says Jacobs. Besides a few scattered power plants, carbon capture and storage—which involves capturing emissions and storing them underground—is mostly in R&D stages.
Needless to say, meeting the goals of the Paris agreement is a pretty comprehensive assignment. Virtually every single thing you look at—whether lit up, manufactured, chewable, or vrooming—relies on fossil fuels. “Which is why nobody should feel optimistic,” says Jacobs. “It is an extraordinary agreement, at the top end of what the governments could reach, but it’s really a framework for an incredibly difficult challenge ahead.” Not to say that pessimism should necessitate failure.
http://www.wired.com/2015/12/the-world-needs-drastic-action-to-meet-paris-climate-goals?mbid=synd_moz_newsgen
.. a long held bugbear, years of wonderings and why*^*?? nots .. have many cities reassessed the 'need' to have all tall buildings ALL lit up at night .. yet?
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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