The latest issue of the Carbon Capture Journal is available as an open access issue. The issue has several excellent articles on the current status of Carbon Capture & Sequestration. The piece by the International Energy Agency assessing what needs to be done to make CCS a viable climate change strategy could be a good brief reading for students at any level.

Interesting commentary below on the optimal way to proceed on addressing climate change, good grist for class discussion. Monbiot and Climate Politics andrewpendleton | September 21, 2010 at 8:11 pm | Categories: Uncategorized | URL: http://wp.me/pM3Da-9s

In Today’s Guardian newspaper in the UK, environmental columnist George Monbiot has seemingly woken up to the politics of climate change – almost. He finishes a lengthy soliloquy to the global climate change negotiations and climate campaigning more generally with the following:

‘All I know is that we must stop dreaming about an institutional response that will never materialise and start facing a political reality we’ve sought to avoid. The conversation starts here.’

The conversation in fact began a while ago, notably over at the Breakthrough Institute in the US and in Anthony Giddens book. Here at Political Climate we’ve been trying to bring some of the thinking on climate politics together and to present some of the evidence to support a climate politics focus in addition to science and economics.

Monbiot falls short of naming precisely which politics he means, although mentions in passing the activities of corporate lobbyists, the customary bête noir of environmentalists, and the failure of leadership:

‘Greens are a puny force by comparison to industrial lobby groups, the cowardice of governments and the natural human tendency to deny what we don’t want to see.’

He also confuses the failure of an intergovernmental agreement, whose crime was to try and move ahead of national politics based on the assumption that leadership would win through, with government action in general. We still need governments and institutions to take climate change seriously, but not necessarily or primarily within the frame of a global agreement.

It’s hardly a revelation to say this, but climate change is a long-term problem that requires short-term responses; this paradox is shot through with politics. And so while polls suggest two-thirds or more of people accept the role of humans in changing the climate, they do not tend to prioritise it in the decisions they take at the checkout or, critically, at the ballot box. Thus while political and corporate rhetoric on the issue has become more shrill in recent years, costly investments to stem still-rising emissions have on the whole not been forthcoming.

Pushing for a grand, global agreement was a bold endeavour, but Monbiot is correct to observe that, at least for now, it is also a fruitless one as politicians justifiably feel that the space for high ambition is not yet available to them. That’s why we’ve been trying to identify the politics and championing the concept of learning by doing (see the previous post). It may not satisfy the carbon accountants and scenario geeks as much as top-down targets, but at least it’s concrete progress.

OECD has released three papers exploring new issues in carbon markets, including linking emission trading systems and voluntary markets:

Towards Global Carbon Pricing: Direct and Indirect Linking to Carbon Markets (July 2010)
By R.B. Dellink, S. Jamet, J. Chateau and R. Duval
Emissions trading systems (ETS) can play a major role in a cost-effective climate policy framework. Both direct linking of ETSs and indirect linking through a common crediting mechanism can reduce costs of action. This paper analyses the impact of linking emission trading schemes directly and through the use of offsets. Using a global recursive-dynamic computable general equilibrium model, the effects of direct and indirect linking of ETS systems across world regions are assessed. The analysis in this paper shows, however, that the potential gains to be reaped are so large, that substantial efforts in this domain are warranted.

Voluntary Carbon Markets: How can they serve climate policies?
By Pierre Guigon, BlueNext
This paper aims to examine how voluntary carbon markets can provide a valuable contribution to strengthening domestic and international climate policies. The research shows that the several carbon project certification schemes that have emerged in the voluntary carbon market have developed potential innovative solutions to deal with some of the issues faced by compliance markets.

Buying and Cancelling Allowances as an Alternative to Offsets for the Voluntary Market: A Preliminary Review of Issues and Options
By Anja Kollmuss and Michael Lazarus, Stockholm Environment Institute
In recent years, businesses, local governments and individuals have set goals for reducing their emissions of greenhouse gases. In addition to directly reducing their own emissions, many of these entities have purchased carbon offsets to help achieve their mitigation goals. Yet establishing offset quality can be difficult, due to issues such as additionality, measurement, leakage, permanence, and verification. This paper explores scenarios under which, as an alternative to offsets, voluntary buyers could instead buy and cancel allowances from compliance markets.

Dear Colleagues,

The Coordinated Low Emissions Assistance Network (CLEAN) will be offering a free webinar to share experiences on low emissions development planning, approaches, and methodologies. We invite all officials and experts interested in preparation of low emission development plans to attend. It will be held on September 29, 2010 from 15:30-17:00 Central European Time and will feature the following presenters:

·      Ms. Jane Ebinger, Sr. Energy Specialist, World Bank; Energy Sector Management Assistance Program (ESMAP)
·      Dr. Juan Mata, Mexico’s Secretariat of Environment and Natural Resources (SEMARNAT)
·      Ms. Sadie Cox, International Analyst, US National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL)

Presenters will provide an overview of their respective low emissions planning activities including ESMAP’s Knowledge Products for Low-Carbon Development, Mexico’s Special Program on Climate Change (PECC) and NREL’s DOE supported generalized methodology and toolkit for low emission development strategies. Following the presentations, a discussion and Q&A session will be held. We hope that participants will be able to provide insightful feedback on low emissions planning needs in developing countries during this discussion.

This webinar is the first in a series of CLEAN webinars that will be provided on low emissions planning topics. The recorded webinar archive and information on future webinars will be posted online to the OpenEI CLEAN wiki site at http://openei.org/CLEAN. If you are interested in attending the webinar or participating in future webinars as either a participant or speaker please contact Samuel Tobin at [email protected].

Access Information
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3. Enter the meeting password: clean
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Provide your phone number when you join the meeting to receive a call back. Alternatively, you can call:
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There’s an interesting new article in Science assessing the climatic implications of current energy infrastructure that could be an excellent student reading in a class section on solutions and future scenarios, Davis, et al., Future CO2 Emissions and Climate Change from Existing Energy Infrastructure, 329 Science 1330-1333 (2010).

Among the key take-aways of the piece:

1. Barring the widespread use of carbon capture and sequestration or early de-commissioning of energy and transportation infrastructure, the “committed emissions represent infrastructural inertia,” translating into a projected mean warming of 1.3C above the pre-industrial era. Scenarios that assume continued expansion of fossil-fuel-based infrastructure lead to projections of warming of 2.4-4.6C, with atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide greater than 600ppm;
2. Of energy generating capacity built worldwide since 2000, 31.4% was generated from coal, 33.9% from oil, 17.4% from carbon-free sources, and the remainder from sources e.g. oil and nuclear power;
3. Nearly one quarter of electrical generating capacity since 2000 is from coal-fired power plants in China; China’s cumulative emissions by the end of this century could exceed 300 Gt of carbon dioxide assuming continued expansion of fossil fuel infrastructure in China;
4. Satisfying growing energy demand without producing carbon dioxide emissions will require a “truly extraordinary” development and deployment of carbon-free sources of energy, perhaps as much as 30 terrawatts by 2050

Dear Colleagues,

If you know of students or graduates who would might like to do a PhD (or MPhil) in China, please encourage them to consider the Hong Kong Institute of Education. I would welcome the opportunity to work with candidates interested in global environmental politics and related areas. Students interested in GEP with some kind of education focus, such as climate change education, sustainability education and similar fields, especially if there is some connection to China or East Asia, would find find our resources, facilities and access extremely beneficial.

For more details, please visit the Graduate School website, http://www.ied.edu.hk/gradsch/, or see the information below. Note that we have generous funding support for qualified candidates.

I would welcome hearing from potential candidates to discuss ideas for doctoral research in particular.

Many thanks, and all the best,

Paul
—
P.G. Harris
Chair Professor of Global and Environmental Studies
Department of Social Sciences
Hong Kong Institute of Education
10 Lo Ping Road
Tai Po, HONG KONG
General Office Tel.: +852 2948 7707
Direct Tel.: +852 2948 6763
Fax: +852 2948 8047
Email: pharris @ ied.edu.hk
http://www.ied.edu.hk/ssc/