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Copenhagen Climate Talks Set to Begin: What's Likely to Happen and What's at Stake

Here are a few of the places that bear watching, to see if some kind of consensus develops over the course of the proceedings:

• What's the science really saying? For almost five years, the consensus position of those who cared about producing a treaty has been that we're struggling to avoid a temperature rise greater than two degrees, and that to do that we'll need to limit atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide to less than 450 parts per million. These sound like the kind of eye-glazing numbers that journalists try to avoid -- but the vast and slow-moving bureaucracy of the climate negotiations process has adopted them as the goal, and most of the proposals on the table are geared to reaching (or plausibly approaching) those targets.
  
  The problem is, that's not good science any more. After the rapid melt of Arctic sea ice in the summer of 2007, researchers recalibrated. A NASA team said that the right figure is 350 -- that anything more is not compatible with "the planet on which civilization developed and to which life on earth is adapted." That assertion has been backed up by no less than Rajendra Pachauri, the UN's chief scientist, who has gotten grief for saying -- most recently in an interview with Yale Environment 360 -- that 350 is where we need to go. Ninety-two of the poorest nations on Earth have officially signed on to that target, and at the moment it's still in the negotiating text, albeit in a preamble about a "shared vision" for the future.
  
  The problem, of course, is that meeting a 350 target goes far beyond anything the Obama administration, much less the Senate, or the Chinese, or many of the other big players, are currently contemplating. We now know that Obama will arrive on Dec. 9 en route to Oslo, and that he will offer roughly a 17 percent cut in 2005 emissions levels by 2020. That would be about a zero percent cut from 1990 levels; in other words, not very ambitious -- the absolute minimum for saving face, but not enough to save the world.
  
  Going further would be fundamentally disruptive -- it would mean not incremental change but a wartime footing. So the question of which science you embrace is really a proxy for how much you're willing to do. And in this case "political realists" are the opposite of "scientific realists." If you're figuring the odds, there will more politicians than scientists on hand in Copenhagen.


• How tough will the developing countries be? Since Obama's announcement that he will go to Copenhagen robbed journalists of their first cliffhanger, the next is likely to be whether the most vulnerable nations walk out on the proceedings. Here's Mohammed Nasheed, president of the Maldives, whose country sets aside money in its budget each year in case it needs to buy a new homeland when its current one sinks beneath the waves, talking about what a 2 degree Celsius temperature increase would mean: "At two degrees we would lose the coral reefs. At 2 degrees we would melt Greenland. At 2 degrees my country would not survive." He called the proposals from the big players a "suicide pact" and pledged to try and stop them. "As a president I cannot accept this. As a person I cannot accept this. I refuse to believe that it is too late, and that we cannot do anything about it."
  
  Nasheed rallied a dozen of the most vulnerable nations earlier this month at a summit in his capital of Male. And virtually every poor nation is starting to realize how badly they're going to be hit by climate change: The vulnerability of Andean glaciers, Asian monsoons, African rainfall patterns become clearer with each passing year. But the pressure from the rich nations -- and indeed from some of the big environmental groups -- not to be a skunk at the garden party will be intense. And it will come with sums of money attached — the kind of money that traditionally has been enough to buy off the anger of the poor world.


• Which leads to the next obvious question -- just how much money will be on the table? The sums required are staggering. The World Bank recently estimated that keeping temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius would mean spending $140 to $675 billion a year in the developing countries -- which, after all, will only be developing if they keep figuring out how to acquire more energy. And adaptation -- dealing with the effects of the climate change we can't prevent — would run another $75 billion a year (an estimate that other research paints as extremely optimistic).
  
  Sums like that are not on offer. The Europeans have talked about a deal in the range of $100 billion a year, but that depends on the Americans ponying up, and so far the U.S. has been as coy about its willingness to pay as about its willingness to rein in emissions. Everyone outside the U.S. knows that this is -- overwhelmingly -- a problem we've caused; since the carbon molecule has a residence time of over a century in the atmosphere, it will be the decades before the Chinese, despite their vastly larger numbers, are as responsible for climate change as Americans. But if Obama puts a realistic number on the table, Senator James Inhofe (R-Armageddon) will be on hand to take it off. (Inhofe originally announced he was going to Denmark as a "one-man truth squad," but then added John Barasso (R-WY) and "a secret person" to his delegation). In our poisonous politics, the idea of the U.S. meeting anything like its moral obligation seems small -- and without that, the politics gets harder for everyone else in the world.

Against this backdrop, there's a lot of important and less flashy stuff that has to move forward if we're ever going to reach an agreement. Nations with large swaths of forest, for instance, seem willing to make a deal to stop their destruction. It's cheap compared with the other steps we'll need to take, so it will probably happen -- though the devil is deeply in the details. The same with credits for farmers for keeping carbon in the soil -- it could be a big help, or a loophole large enough to drive an endless fleet of combines through.

PORTUGAL: MEGA SOLAR POWER PLANT BEGINS TO OPERATE

AMARELEJA (IPS) - The most ambitious and innovative solar power project in the world kicked off Monday in this white-walled village in the southern Portuguese municipality of Moura, one of the most impoverished areas in the European Union.
The Acciona Energy S.A. company has put into service the Amareleja photovoltaic power plant, located 150 km south of Lisbon, which is capable of producing enough energy to supply 30,000 households in the south-central region of Alentejo.

Almost simultaneously, the mayor of Moura, José María Prazeres Pós-de-Mina, was selected as one of the ten finalists for the prestigious 2008 People of the Year award granted by OneWorld, a non-governmental news network that is one of the most highly-respected international organisations devoted to raising environmental awareness and promoting change. The only requirement for nomination was that the candidates embody the values of OneWorld, which include human rights for all, fair distribution of the world's natural and economic resources, simple and sustainable ways of life, the right of every individual to inform and be informed, participation and transparency in decision-making, and social, cultural, and linguistic diversity.
Pós-de-Mina, who was born 50 years ago in Pías, another village in the municipality of Moura, keeps a low profile, but has nevertheless become famous throughout Europe as "the mayor of the future" for his pioneering work in renewable energy.
The grandson, son and nephew of prominent anti-fascist activists who were persecuted and incarcerated by Portugal’s 1926-1974 dictatorship, Pós-de-Mina became politically active at an early age when he joined the Union of Communist Students, an organisation that played a major role in the opposition to the dictatorial regime.
But his militant background did not prevent Pós-de-Mina from becoming a skilful businessman, and after earning a BA in business administration he took on the challenge of founding the Amper Solar power company, planting the seed for what is now the world’s largest solar energy plant.
Located in the Baldio da Ferraría, a 250-hectare sun-scorched plain, the plant was built at a cost of 410 million dollars in the sunniest area of Portugal, the European country with the greatest number of sunlight hours per year.
The reputation of this unassuming mayor of a small municipality of Portugal has transcended national borders, as he has come to be known as the architect of the most ambitious renewable energy project in the world. "It all happened without my even realising it," Pós-de-Mina confessed modestly when he learned that OneWorld described him as "the mayor of the future."

The Amareleja Power Plant project involves photovoltaic (PV) technology that uses semiconductors to convert the sun’s rays into electric power. Within a year, the plant will have an installed capacity of 46 megawatts (MW).
It is expected to be operating at full capacity by the year 2010, when it will produce 64 MW using 2,520 solar trackers supporting 262 modules with 268,000 PV panels producing 93 gigawatts/hour per year, generating sufficient electricity to power 30,000 homes.
The plant’s solar power production will contribute enormously to helping Portugal meet its greenhouse gas reduction commitments, drastically cutting carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions by 152,000 tons a year.
"This project is important for Moura and for Alentejo, but it is also important because of its contribution to the development of Portugal and its significance in Europe due to its size, as it will convert sunlight into 64 million watts," making it 12 times bigger than the largest solar power plant that exists today in the EU, which is located in Germany and produces five million watts, Pós-de-Mina told IPS in a recent interview.
At the same time, the municipality of Moura launched the Sunflower project, which involves a network of eight municipalities from eight different countries in Europe (Bulgaria, Britain, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain) that seek to transform their towns into what the EU calls "Zero Carbon Communities" under its Intelligent Energy - Europe (IEE) programme for the promotion of alternative energy sources.
Sunflower’s goal is to "convert these EU communities into environments free of CO2 emissions by turning them into areas where only renewable energies are used," Pós-de-Mina added. The idea is to "conduct campaigns to raise awareness on the use of renewable energies and the benefits for the population," he said.
Pós-de-Mina’s work in Amareleja and the Sunflower project earned him the nomination for the OneWorld award. Both efforts began as a way of finding solutions to the area’s growing economic problems, but eventually turned into pioneer initiatives that serve as encouraging examples for the entire world.
For this pragmatic communist mayor and businessman, harnessing Alentejo’s abundant sunlight seemed like "the most obvious way" to develop alternative renewable energy sources that would in turn create jobs in a region where unemployment -- at 15 percent -- is twice the national average.
In 2007, the municipality of Moura sold the 88 percent stake it held in Amper Solar -- owner of the plant installation rights -- to the Spanish company Acciona, which has since become the sole shareholder in the solar plant, after the minority shareholders decided to follow the municipality’s example.

Portugal’s solar, wind, and wave energy projects have received unconditional backing from the European Commission, the executive body of the EU, which seeks to speed up the continent’s transition to a low-CO2 economy.
Until April 2004, Portugal’s solar and wind power generation was very low, in spite of the fact that the country is extremely sunny and windy.
The wind energy generated in Portugal prior to 2007 was in fact practically marginal. At present, this country of 92,000 square kilometres and 10.6 million inhabitants is one of the top wind power generators in the EU.
From 2004 to 2006, several wind power parks were built in Portugal, producing a total of 500 MW and putting this country in third place in the EU, after Germany (357,000 sq km and 82 million inhabitants), which produces 1,808 MW, and Spain (504,000 sq km and 46 million inhabitants), with a production of 1,764 MW, and ahead of Italy (301,000 sq km and 59 million inhabitants), which has a total production of 452 MW.
The change has been so drastic that Portugal went from being at the bottom of the EU’s renewable energy ranking to becoming one of the continent’s leading generators. (END)

Double Trouble

Research Highlights

Nature Reports Climate Change
doi:10.1038/climate.2008.137

Olive Heffernan

Conservation Biol. doi:10.1111/j.1523–1739.2008.01096.x (2008)

Replacing tropical rainforests with oil palm plantations threatens biodiversity and efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, report scientists. One of a number of biofuel crops touted as a sustainable, environmentally friendly energy source, palm oil now covers some 13 million hectares of land surface worldwide, mostly in Southeast Asia.

An international team of researchers, led by Finn Danielsen of Denmark's Nordic Agency for Development and Ecology, has carried out the most comprehensive analysis yet of the impact of oil palm plantations on tropical forests. They estimate it would take 75 to 93 years for the carbon saved through the use of biofuels to compensate for the carbon lost through clearing tropical rainforest. This payback time would increase to more than 600 years if the original habitat was peatland, and would decrease to just 10 years on degraded grassland, they say. Based on a meta-analysis of faunal data and a comparative field study of flora on forested and converted land in Indonesia, they also show that plantations support species-poor communities compared to forests, and that the most abundant species in converted lands are generalists of low conservation value.

The authors call for global standards to assess the sustainability of biofuel crops.

Methane Mystery

Research Highlights

Nature Reports Climate Change
doi:10.1038/climate.2008.134

Alicia Newton | Geophys. Res. Lett. 35, L22805 (2008)

Atmospheric levels of the potent greenhouse gas methane rose sharply in early 2007, having remained largely stable over the past decade. Methane is released from wetlands and wildfires as well as from human activities, such as fossil fuel use and farming, but is destroyed in the atmosphere through reaction with a compound known as the hydroxyl radical.

Now Matthew Rigby of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and colleagues have examined the change in global emissions of methane over a ten year period. They retrieved atmospheric measurements of methane and other chemical compounds from two monitoring networks with a total of 12 worldwide locations. Methane levels rose simultaneously across all global sites since early 2007. The team propose that the increase may have coincided with a slight decline in levels of the hydroxyl radical, but the changes in hydroxyl chemistry alone were insufficient to explain the entire methane rise.

By combining the data with numerical simulations from an atmospheric transport and chemistry model, they were able to attribute the methane spike to a worldwide rise in emissions between 2006 and 2007, the bulk of which originated in the Northern Hemisphere. The exact source of the extra methane, however, remains a mystery.

Argentinian glacier begins rare winter rupture

Palin says cause of global warming “doesn’t matter”

In an interview with CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric that aired Tuesday, Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin said that it “kinda doesn’t matter at this point” if human activity is responsible for climate change.
You can see a video of the interview.



The topic of global warming comes up about four and a half minutes in:

Couric: What’s your position on global warming? Do you believe it’s manmade or not?
Palin: Well, we’re the only Arctic state, of course, Alaska. So we feel the impacts more than any other state, up there, with the changes in climates. And, and certainly it is apparent. We have erosion issues, and we have melting sea ice, of course. So, what I’ve done up there is form a sub-cabinet to focus solely on climate change. Understanding that it is real, and …
Couric: Is it man-made, though in your view?
Palin: You know there are – there are man’s activities that can be contributed [sic] to the issues that we’re dealing with now, with these impacts. I’m not going to solely blame all of man’s activities on changes in climate. Because the world’s weather patterns are cyclical. And over history we have seen changes there. But it kinda doesn’t matter at this point, as we debate what caused it. The point is: it’s real; we need to do something about it.

Gov. Palin’s response is similar to the one she gave last month when ABC News’s Charlie Gibson asked her the same question. Mr. Gibson pressed the issue harder than Ms. Couric did. Here’s how that exchange went:

Palin: I believe that man’s activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming, climate change. Here in Alaska, the only Arctic state in our Union, of course, we see the effects of climate change more so than any other area, with ice pack melting. Regardless, though, of the reason for climate change – whether it’s entirely, wholly caused by man’s activities or is part of the cyclical nature of our planet, the warming and the cooling trends – regardless of that, John McCain and I agree that we got to do something about it, and we have to make sure that we’re doing all we can to cut down on pollution.
Gibson: But it’s a critical point, as to whether this is manmade. He says it is. You have said in the past it’s not.
Palin: The debate on that even really has evolved into, “OK, here’s where we are now: Scientists do show us that there are changes in climate. Things are getting warmer. Now, what do we do about it?” John McCain and I are going to be working on what we do.
Gibson: Yes, but isn’t it critical as to whether or not it’s manmade? Because what you do about it depends on whether it’s manmade.
Palin: That’s why I’m attributing some of man’s activities to potentially causing some of the changes in the climate right now.

Gibson’s point – that humanity’s response to global warming should be informed by its cause – is a valid one. If greenhouse gas emissions are changing the earth’s climate, then efforts to protect ourselves from the effects of climate change should include curbing these emissions. If global warming is caused only by natural cycles, then curbing emissions will do nothing and humanity should focus on adaptation.
Alaska’s Climate Change Sub-Cabinet, which Palin established in September 2007, does take up issues of mitigation, but most of its focus is on adaptation – such as how to help remote Inuit communities deal with coastal erosiion.
A story last week in the Washington Post indicates that the Alaska governor is well aware of global warming’s effects on her state, but has dodged the question of its causes:

Palin does not minimize the consequences. When she established her climate sub-cabinet last September, she said in a news release that Alaskans “are already seeing the effects” of warming: “Coastal erosion, thawing permafrost, retreating sea ice and record forest fires affect our communities and our infrastructure.”

But when environmentalists urged the governor to include language attributing global warming to humans and suggested that the state set a target for limiting greenhouse gas emissions, Palin hedged. Instead, she issued an executive order saying the state needed to develop a strategy that would “guide its efforts in evaluating and addressing known or suspected causes of climate change. Alaska’s climate change strategy must be built on sound science and the best available facts and must recognize Alaska’s interest in economic growth and the development of its resources.”

Before being selected as John McCain’s running mate, Palin took a stronger stance against the notion that humans are to blame for global warming. When Newsmax asked for the Alaska governor’s “take on global warming” this summer, she said, “A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I’m not one though who would attribute it to being manmade.”
According to the Associated Press, in December 2007, Palin said to the Fairbanks (Alaska) Daily News-Miner, “I’m not an Al Gore, doom-and-gloom environmentalist blaming the changes in our climate on human activity.”
Palin’s current position, that the causes of climate change are unimportant but that we should take action to protect ourselves from it, is somewhat undercut by the Climate Change Sub-Cabinet’s website. The section called “What Is Alaska Already Doing,” has only two words: “coming soon.”

Wind Energy Bumps Into Power Grid’s Limits

When the builders of the Maple Ridge Wind farm spent $320 million to put nearly 200 wind turbines in upstate New York, the idea was to get paid for producing electricity. But at times, regional electric lines have been so congested that Maple Ridge has been forced to shut down even with a brisk wind blowing.
That is a symptom of a broad national problem. Expansive dreams about renewable energy, like Al Gore’s hope of replacing all fossil fuels in a decade, are bumping up against the reality of a power grid that cannot handle the new demands.
The dirty secret of clean energy is that while generating it is getting easier, moving it to market is not.
The grid today, according to experts, is a system conceived 100 years ago to let utilities prop each other up, reducing blackouts and sharing power in small regions. It resembles a network of streets, avenues and country roads.
“We need an interstate transmission superhighway system,” said Suedeen G. Kelly, a member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.
While the United States today gets barely 1 percent of its electricity from wind turbines, many experts are starting to think that figure could hit 20 percent.
Achieving that would require moving large amounts of power over long distances, from the windy, lightly populated plains in the middle of the country to the coasts where many people live. Builders are also contemplating immense solar-power stations in the nation’s deserts that would pose the same transmission problems.
The grid’s limitations are putting a damper on such projects already. Gabriel Alonso, chief development officer of Horizon Wind Energy, the company that operates Maple Ridge, said that in parts of Wyoming, a turbine could make 50 percent more electricity than the identical model built in New York or Texas.
“The windiest sites have not been built, because there is no way to move that electricity from there to the load centers,” he said.
The basic problem is that many transmission lines, and the connections between them, are simply too small for the amount of power companies would like to squeeze through them. The difficulty is most acute for long-distance transmission, but shows up at times even over distances of a few hundred miles.
Transmission lines carrying power away from the Maple Ridge farm, near Lowville, N.Y., have sometimes become so congested that the company’s only choice is to shut down — or pay fees for the privilege of continuing to pump power into the lines.
Politicians in Washington have long known about the grid’s limitations but have made scant headway in solving them. They are reluctant to trample the prerogatives of state governments, which have traditionally exercised authority over the grid and have little incentive to push improvements that would benefit neighboring states.
In Texas, T. Boone Pickens, the oilman building the world’s largest wind farm, plans to tackle the grid problem by using a right of way he is developing for water pipelines for a 250-mile transmission line from the Panhandle to the Dallas market. He has testified in Congress that Texas policy is especially favorable for such a project and that other wind developers cannot be expected to match his efforts.
“If you want to do it on a national scale, where the transmission line distances will be much longer, and utility regulations are different, Congress must act,” he said on Capitol Hill.
Enthusiasm for wind energy is running at fever pitch these days, with bold plans on the drawing boards, like Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s notion of dotting New York City with turbines. Companies are even reviving ideas of storing wind-generated energy using compressed air or spinning flywheels.
Yet experts say that without a solution to the grid problem, effective use of wind power on a wide scale is likely to remain a dream.
The power grid is balkanized, with about 200,000 miles of power lines divided among 500 owners. Big transmission upgrades often involve multiple companies, many state governments and numerous permits. Every addition to the grid provokes fights with property owners.
These barriers mean that electrical generation is growing four times faster than transmission, according to federal figures.
In a 2005 energy law, Congress gave the Energy Department the authority to step in to approve transmission if states refused to act. The department designated two areas, one in the Middle Atlantic States and one in the Southwest, as national priorities where it might do so; 14 United States senators then signed a letter saying the department was being too aggressive.

Energy Department leaders say that, however understandable the local concerns, they are getting in the way. “Modernizing the electric infrastructure is an urgent national problem, and one we all share,” said Kevin M. Kolevar, assistant secretary for electricity delivery and energy reliability, in a speech last year.
Unlike answers to many of the nation’s energy problems, improvements to the grid would require no new technology. An Energy Department plan to source 20 percent of the nation’s electricity from wind calls for a high-voltage backbone spanning the country that would be similar to 2,100 miles of lines already operated by a company called American Electric Power.
The cost would be high, $60 billion or more, but in theory could be spread across many years and tens of millions of electrical customers. However, in most states, rules used by public service commissions to evaluate transmission investments discourage multistate projects of this sort. In some states with low electric rates, elected officials fear that new lines will simply export their cheap power and drive rates up.
Without a clear way of recovering the costs and earning a profit, and with little leadership on the issue from the federal government, no company or organization has offered to fight the political battles necessary to get such a transmission backbone built.
Texas and California have recently made some progress in building transmission lines for wind power, but nationally, the problem seems likely to get worse. Today, New York State has about 1,500 megawatts of wind capacity. A megawatt is an instantaneous measure of power. A large Wal-Mart draws about one megawatt. The state is planning for an additional 8,000 megawatts of capacity.
But those turbines will need to go in remote, windy areas that are far off the beaten path, electrically speaking, and it is not clear enough transmission capacity will be developed. Save for two underwater connections to Long Island, New York State has not built a major new power line in 20 years.
A handful of states like California that have set aggressive goals for renewable energy are being forced to deal with the issue, since the goals cannot be met without additional power lines.
But Bill Richardson, the governor of New Mexico and a former energy secretary under President Bill Clinton, contends that these piecemeal efforts are not enough to tap the nation’s potential for renewable energy.
Wind advocates say that just two of the windiest states, North Dakota and South Dakota, could in principle generate half the nation’s electricity from turbines. But the way the national grid is configured, half the country would have to move to the Dakotas in order to use the power.
“We still have a third-world grid,” Mr. Richardson [supporting the Obama-Energy-Plan] said, repeating a comment he has made several times. “With the federal government not investing, not setting good regulatory mechanisms, and basically taking a back seat on everything except drilling and fossil fuels, the grid has not been modernized, especially for wind energy.”

OK, but how about to do it yourself?