Agreement on a new deal to bring global warming under control is well within range, governments and top UN officials insisted yesterday as the climate summit opened in Copenhagen.
By Geoffrey LeanPublished: 7:30AM GMT 08 Dec 2009
Their surprisingly optimistic assessment is based on remarkable progress over the last weeks on the two most difficult issues facing the conference – reducing emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases and providing finance to help the world’s poorest people cope with the potentially devastating effects of climate change.
Of course, there is an element of talking up the prospects for success but, even so, I cannot remember in four decades so difficult a negotiating conference starting with such unexpected optimism or such widespread willingness to agree among governments.
Lars Lokke Rasmussen, who as Prime Minister of Denmark will chair the summit of more than 100 heads of governments when they arrive next week, said that "intensive consultations" with the leaders had revealed that "without exception" they backed "an ambitious agreement to halt global warming".
And Connie Hedegaard, his Minister for Energy and Climate – presiding over the conference in the meantime – added: "I have never seen anything like it when it comes to political willingness". She described the deal as "do-able".
The United Nations Environment Programme and Britain’s Grantham Research Institute, chaired by Lord Stern, jointly published a study which concluded that offers by rich countries to cut emissions and by industrialising developing ones to reduce their rate of growth already amounted to up to 80 per cent of what was needed.
Much of the difference could be made up of measures to reduce the felling of forests and to reduce pollution from shipping and aviation.
And Yvo de Boer – the top official in change of the negotiations – reported "encouraging" progress on agreeing on a $10 billion a year emergency fund to help poor countries. The United States, Australia, Japan and the EU have all supported it.
Many problems remain, not least in agreeing a long-term fund to do a similar job, which would have to be at least ten times bigger. The poorest developing countries, as Bangladesh and Nepal made clear last night, will block any deal that does not include it.
And the very momentum that has caused the present optimism carries its own dangers for, if the summit fails,it will be hard to generate it again. As Ms Hedegaard told the delegates, "If the opportunity was missed, it could take years before we get a new and better one. If ever."
Wednesday, 9 December 2009
Why did American newspapers refuse to run climate change leader?
Why was the Miami Herald the only US newspaper to carry the leading article on climate change that was published in 56 titles in 45 countries?
And, just as important, why did the Herald drop a key sentence from that leader?
According to Michael Wolff, the failure of American papers to run the article was due to their pusillanimity. "They have no fight left in them," he writes.
Much as I admire Wolff, and accept that he is writing about papers in his own backyard, I'm not so sure his answer is correct. I'm convinced the failure to take up the challenge had more to do with politics, misguided patriotism and also a good dose of editorial hubris.
Wolff does concede that editors might have been nervous about the leader's liberal ethos and liberal, even left-wing, provenance. I think that is, in fact, the main reason for the papers rejecting joint publication with so many other titles around the world
Look at the content of the editorial: though it sees President Obama as likely to reverse "years of US obstructionism", it continues:
Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.
The leader also mentions that the US and China are "the world's biggest polluters."
I would hazard a guess that many US editors couldn't stomach publishing those arguments, believing that readers might regard them as anti-American. (And I'm sure it plays a part in the Herald's omission).
Editors would also be aware, of course, of the huge split among their readers of believers and deniers of man-made climate change.
That's not to say that I disagree with Wolff over the lack of guts among American editors in failing to dare to publish home truths. So I nodded vigorously over his views in these paragraphs:
One of the great marketing tools for a newspaper is a campaign. If you can move your readers, have them want to join you in a mission, you build brand loyalty. That's the Fox method.
You would think the instant razzmatazz of a global editorial (even about climate change) would be a sure marketing advantage for liberal papers—I see the editorial in a big front-page box.
Even the [New York] Times might have preserved the pride of its own editorial authorship by putting this common editorial on its op-ed page. This might have been a win for climate change reform and for newspaper identity.
But I think the New York Times's reasoning had much more to do with journalistic snobbery. It sees itself as the big guy on the block and didn't see why it should be required to follow the lead of a British paper.
Hubris probably played a part in other decisions by editorial boards at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
And that viewpoint is implied in a snippy leader in today's Boston Globe, which said:
A group editorial is just as likely to foster accusations of groupthink as it is to push the world toward decisive action on climate change.
At a time when the climate debate is still plagued by the false notion that global warming is a myth perpetuated by an international conspiracy of liberal elites, a range of voices offering their own reasoning and routes to the same goal would have delivered a more potent message than a unified chorus.
So, should we be ready to praise the Miami Herald for its lone stand? I'm afraid not. I was about to conclude this posting with a pat on the back for the Miami Herald's editorial board editor, Myriam Marquez, for daring to tread where others had feared to go.
But my praise is altogether muted because, lo and behold, the Herald did NOT carry the editorial verbatim after all.
It omitted the very sentence I highlighted above: Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.
I emailed Ms Marquez two hours ago to ask why. I also called her without success. No word yet.
And, just as important, why did the Herald drop a key sentence from that leader?
According to Michael Wolff, the failure of American papers to run the article was due to their pusillanimity. "They have no fight left in them," he writes.
Much as I admire Wolff, and accept that he is writing about papers in his own backyard, I'm not so sure his answer is correct. I'm convinced the failure to take up the challenge had more to do with politics, misguided patriotism and also a good dose of editorial hubris.
Wolff does concede that editors might have been nervous about the leader's liberal ethos and liberal, even left-wing, provenance. I think that is, in fact, the main reason for the papers rejecting joint publication with so many other titles around the world
Look at the content of the editorial: though it sees President Obama as likely to reverse "years of US obstructionism", it continues:
Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.
The leader also mentions that the US and China are "the world's biggest polluters."
I would hazard a guess that many US editors couldn't stomach publishing those arguments, believing that readers might regard them as anti-American. (And I'm sure it plays a part in the Herald's omission).
Editors would also be aware, of course, of the huge split among their readers of believers and deniers of man-made climate change.
That's not to say that I disagree with Wolff over the lack of guts among American editors in failing to dare to publish home truths. So I nodded vigorously over his views in these paragraphs:
One of the great marketing tools for a newspaper is a campaign. If you can move your readers, have them want to join you in a mission, you build brand loyalty. That's the Fox method.
You would think the instant razzmatazz of a global editorial (even about climate change) would be a sure marketing advantage for liberal papers—I see the editorial in a big front-page box.
Even the [New York] Times might have preserved the pride of its own editorial authorship by putting this common editorial on its op-ed page. This might have been a win for climate change reform and for newspaper identity.
But I think the New York Times's reasoning had much more to do with journalistic snobbery. It sees itself as the big guy on the block and didn't see why it should be required to follow the lead of a British paper.
Hubris probably played a part in other decisions by editorial boards at the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post.
And that viewpoint is implied in a snippy leader in today's Boston Globe, which said:
A group editorial is just as likely to foster accusations of groupthink as it is to push the world toward decisive action on climate change.
At a time when the climate debate is still plagued by the false notion that global warming is a myth perpetuated by an international conspiracy of liberal elites, a range of voices offering their own reasoning and routes to the same goal would have delivered a more potent message than a unified chorus.
So, should we be ready to praise the Miami Herald for its lone stand? I'm afraid not. I was about to conclude this posting with a pat on the back for the Miami Herald's editorial board editor, Myriam Marquez, for daring to tread where others had feared to go.
But my praise is altogether muted because, lo and behold, the Herald did NOT carry the editorial verbatim after all.
It omitted the very sentence I highlighted above: Even now the world finds itself at the mercy of American domestic politics, for the president cannot fully commit to the action required until the US Congress has done so.
I emailed Ms Marquez two hours ago to ask why. I also called her without success. No word yet.
Clear findings offer reminder of climate change severity
Hannah Devlin
Ice cores, tree rings and supercomputer climate models. Each year the world of climate science appears to expand in complexity to the point where bystanders must either place their trust somewhat blindly in the conclusions or wonder whether they’ve been had.
The data from the World Meteorological Organisation is a welcome return to basics. It does not rely on any of the “proxy” measurements that are subject to criticism from sceptics; nor on satellite data, which reflect temperatures in the upper atmosphere; nor on computer predictions.
The 160-year record is based on the simplest, most direct measure of temperature — land and sea-based thermometers.
The figures shown on the graph are given in terms of “temperature anomaly”, which is a measure of how much warmer or cooler the Earth has been in a particular year compared with a reference period of 1961 to 1990. Anomalies are used rather than absolute temperature because getting a realistic estimate for the Earth’s average surface temperature would be unfeasible given that in some regions, for instance the Sahara desert, there are few measurement stations.
Guessing the real temperature for the rest of the desert would be impossible, but guessing that temperatures are going up and down in the same pattern as the surrounding desert is a reasonable assumption.
The first thing the record makes clear is that it is impossible to talk about global warming on a year-by-year basis. The short-term climate record is dominated with seemingly random ups and downs that are explained by separate climate phenomena. The apparent cessation of the warming trend in the latter part of this decade, for instance, is likely to be due to a lull in sunspot activity.
El Niño results in a warm peak every three to eight years. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines meant that 1991 was a cooler year than expected. Even if temperatures were on a trajectory to rise by 6C over the next century, the short-term variations mean if you watched it happen one year at a time the trend would be difficult to spot.
Averaged over decades, however, these cycles cancel out, revealing the bigger picture of a rapidly warming planet. Each decade since the 1950s has been warmer than the previous one. At a time when public confidence has been eroded in complex research, this record is a reminder of why the subject should be taken seriously.
Ice cores, tree rings and supercomputer climate models. Each year the world of climate science appears to expand in complexity to the point where bystanders must either place their trust somewhat blindly in the conclusions or wonder whether they’ve been had.
The data from the World Meteorological Organisation is a welcome return to basics. It does not rely on any of the “proxy” measurements that are subject to criticism from sceptics; nor on satellite data, which reflect temperatures in the upper atmosphere; nor on computer predictions.
The 160-year record is based on the simplest, most direct measure of temperature — land and sea-based thermometers.
The figures shown on the graph are given in terms of “temperature anomaly”, which is a measure of how much warmer or cooler the Earth has been in a particular year compared with a reference period of 1961 to 1990. Anomalies are used rather than absolute temperature because getting a realistic estimate for the Earth’s average surface temperature would be unfeasible given that in some regions, for instance the Sahara desert, there are few measurement stations.
Guessing the real temperature for the rest of the desert would be impossible, but guessing that temperatures are going up and down in the same pattern as the surrounding desert is a reasonable assumption.
The first thing the record makes clear is that it is impossible to talk about global warming on a year-by-year basis. The short-term climate record is dominated with seemingly random ups and downs that are explained by separate climate phenomena. The apparent cessation of the warming trend in the latter part of this decade, for instance, is likely to be due to a lull in sunspot activity.
El Niño results in a warm peak every three to eight years. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines meant that 1991 was a cooler year than expected. Even if temperatures were on a trajectory to rise by 6C over the next century, the short-term variations mean if you watched it happen one year at a time the trend would be difficult to spot.
Averaged over decades, however, these cycles cancel out, revealing the bigger picture of a rapidly warming planet. Each decade since the 1950s has been warmer than the previous one. At a time when public confidence has been eroded in complex research, this record is a reminder of why the subject should be taken seriously.
Copenhagen climate summit: past decade warmest on record, says Met Office
The past decade has been the warmest on record, according to the data presented by the Met Office at the Copenhagen climate change summit.
Published: 11:15AM GMT 08 Dec 2009
The figures, which indicate that 2009 was the fifith hottest year since the 1850s, prove that the world is getting warmer, according to researchers.
"These figures highlight that the world continues to see global temperature rise most of which is due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and clearly shows that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed,” Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice, said.
The global surface temperature record for the last 160 years is maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
However this year their report will come under unprecedented scrutiny because of the continuing scandal surrounding the leaked ‘climategate’ emails.
Global warming sceptics claim that emails stolen from UEA prove that scientists were willing to manipulate climate change data to show an increase in global warming and question the reliability of the latest data.
But the Met Office point out that the results are reflected in independent analyses made by the USA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), who also monitor the change in global temperature.
The Met Office has also released the raw data from more than 1,000 weather stations around the globe to the public so that people can see the information the records are based on.
Despite the coldest winter in a decade in 2008/09, global temperatures through the year averaged were 0.8 degrees Farenheit (0.44 C) above the long-term average of 57F (14 C).
Published: 11:15AM GMT 08 Dec 2009
The figures, which indicate that 2009 was the fifith hottest year since the 1850s, prove that the world is getting warmer, according to researchers.
"These figures highlight that the world continues to see global temperature rise most of which is due to increasing emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and clearly shows that the argument that global warming has stopped is flawed,” Vicky Pope, Head of Climate Change Advice, said.
The global surface temperature record for the last 160 years is maintained jointly by the Met Office Hadley Centre and the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia (UEA).
However this year their report will come under unprecedented scrutiny because of the continuing scandal surrounding the leaked ‘climategate’ emails.
Global warming sceptics claim that emails stolen from UEA prove that scientists were willing to manipulate climate change data to show an increase in global warming and question the reliability of the latest data.
But the Met Office point out that the results are reflected in independent analyses made by the USA’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) and the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), who also monitor the change in global temperature.
The Met Office has also released the raw data from more than 1,000 weather stations around the globe to the public so that people can see the information the records are based on.
Despite the coldest winter in a decade in 2008/09, global temperatures through the year averaged were 0.8 degrees Farenheit (0.44 C) above the long-term average of 57F (14 C).
The Copenhagen Concoction
For months, the U.N. climate change summit that began Monday in Copenhagen has been billed as the world's last best hope to match the scientific consensus on global warming with a policy consensus. But now it turns out there is little of either, and Copenhagen looks like it will go down as one of the more remarkable cases of political hubris in recent memory.
That's no bad outcome, given the ambitions of Copenhagen's organizers to impose heavy new carbon taxes on top of a struggling world economy. The Australian Senate last week defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's cap-and-trade legislation, largely due to its job-killing potential in the coal-producing continent. Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, said Thursday "there is no question of India accepting a legally binding emission reduction cut." China has promised to cut the rate of growth in its carbon emissions, which would nevertheless double over the next decade even on the most optimistic scenario.
As for the U.S., it has become clear even to liberals that it was not the Bush Administration alone that was standing in the way of a global climate deal. Last Thursday, nine Senators sent a letter outlining the terms of their support for cap-and-trade legislation, including that every other country enact and enforce carbon legislation of their own. And those were Democrats.
President Obama has promised an 83% cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (from their 2005 level) by 2050. But such extravagant pledges are only possible when everyone knows they won't happen. Monday's announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that it will regulate carbon as a dangerous pollutant is an attempt to run around Congress in order to impress Copenhagen's conferees, but it is also deeply undemocratic and betrays the lack of broader public support.
***
So what exactly is the point of Copenhagen? The question needs to be asked all the more insistently in the wake of last month's disclosure of thousands of documents and emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), long considered an authoritative center of temperature data, modeling and forecasts.
At a minimum, the emails demonstrate the lengths some of the world's leading climate scientists were prepared to go to manufacture the "consensus" they used to demand drastic steps against global warming. The emails are replete with talk of blacklisting dissenting scientists and journals, manipulating peer review and avoiding freedom of information requests.
Nor can the emails be dismissed as a handful of scientists showing their petulant streak. Scientific research must be subject to testing, verification and, if necessary, disproof. Otherwise, its conclusions are worthless. That's especially true if the basic data on which the climate records are based are deleted, as seems to have been the case with the CRU, or if the elaborate computer models used to forecast climate turn out to be poorly designed, as also seems to be the case.
The core question raised by the emails is why their authors would behave this way if they are as privately convinced of the strength of their case as they claim in public. The Earth's climate is a profoundly complex system, sensitive, dynamic and subject to a dizzying range of variables interacting in ways that remain poorly understood. Carbon dioxide is only one of those variables. Climate scientists failed to anticipate the absence of warming in the last decade, a point that Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, privately conceded in one of the disclosed emails was a "travesty."
Given this, the public is entitled to wonder how exactly climate scientists can state with such certainty that temperatures have never been higher, or that they are sure to rise in the coming decade, to say nothing of the rest of the century. The public is also entitled to know how the climatologists can suggest the precise degrees by which the Earth will warm, or why a warmer Earth is, on balance, worse than a colder one. Is there a "correct" global average temperature?
The public also has a right to wonder whether the bulk of the scarce financial resources available to mitigate ecological risks ought to be devoted primarily to climate change rather than to other threats to the environment and public health. For several years, Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg has been convening meetings in Copenhagen of some of the world's leading economists to consider that very question. Overwhelmingly they have concluded that the world's dollars, euros and yen are better spent on tackling diseases such as AIDS or malaria or problems such as malnutrition and run-of-the-mill pollution than on hugely expensive (and dubiously effective) carbon-mitigation schemes.
This conclusion is only common sense: Given the choice between spending $100 to feed a hungry child in the present or combat a notional climate problem that might or might not have real consequences a century hence, most of us would surely choose the former. We would do so, moreover, with the confidence that the technologies of the future will be better suited to deal with whatever climate problems might then exist.
A typical retort is that "we can't afford to wait until it's too late," but one may as well ask whether the child in our example should go hungry while the developed world spends its money on global warming mitigation in the Third World. Yet that is exactly what the conferees at Copenhagen seem prepared to do, to the tune of billions of dollars per year.
Even if the Earth does warm by a degree or two this century, the world will be better able to cope with any consequences the more prosperous it is. The worst policy would be to impose higher energy and other costs that reduce global growth for decades. The proponents of cap and trade point to this or that study claiming that a tax on the world's main current energy supplies (oil, natural gas, coal) is cost free. But this also defies common sense. The Chinese and Indians don't believe it, and neither do middle-class Americans who can't easily afford hundreds of dollars a year in extra electricity or transportation costs.
Meanwhile, none of the "green" energy sources—wind, solar or biofuels—has so far proved even remotely efficient or scalable, while often entailing serious environmental consequences of their own. These industries exist mainly because governments have thrown tens of billions in subsidies at them, and still they can't compete with carbon sources.
Much of the momentum for Copenhagen is now driven by the alternative fuels industry and its investors, who stand to lose vast sums unless governments artificially raise the price of carbon. These include our friends at Kleiner Perkins, the ecoventure capital fund that includes Al Gore as a partner. And of course that part of the political class congenitally eager to redistribute taxpayer monies also wants to dispense "carbon credits" to friends and political donors.
***
By now, the idea that global warming represents the gravest threat to humanity has become totemic in much of the world, a belief invested with religious fervor and barely susceptible to rational discussion, let alone debate. Yet it remains telling how quickly a sense of reality has reasserted its cold grip in light of the choices Copenhagen now brings starkly into view.
Mr. Obama has delayed his trip to the conference until its final day, when he thinks he might salvage some kind of deal. Perhaps he will. Then again, Copenhagen is more likely to prove that it takes more than environmental faith and political opportunism to forge a genuine global consensus.
That's no bad outcome, given the ambitions of Copenhagen's organizers to impose heavy new carbon taxes on top of a struggling world economy. The Australian Senate last week defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's cap-and-trade legislation, largely due to its job-killing potential in the coal-producing continent. Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, said Thursday "there is no question of India accepting a legally binding emission reduction cut." China has promised to cut the rate of growth in its carbon emissions, which would nevertheless double over the next decade even on the most optimistic scenario.
As for the U.S., it has become clear even to liberals that it was not the Bush Administration alone that was standing in the way of a global climate deal. Last Thursday, nine Senators sent a letter outlining the terms of their support for cap-and-trade legislation, including that every other country enact and enforce carbon legislation of their own. And those were Democrats.
President Obama has promised an 83% cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (from their 2005 level) by 2050. But such extravagant pledges are only possible when everyone knows they won't happen. Monday's announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that it will regulate carbon as a dangerous pollutant is an attempt to run around Congress in order to impress Copenhagen's conferees, but it is also deeply undemocratic and betrays the lack of broader public support.
***
So what exactly is the point of Copenhagen? The question needs to be asked all the more insistently in the wake of last month's disclosure of thousands of documents and emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), long considered an authoritative center of temperature data, modeling and forecasts.
At a minimum, the emails demonstrate the lengths some of the world's leading climate scientists were prepared to go to manufacture the "consensus" they used to demand drastic steps against global warming. The emails are replete with talk of blacklisting dissenting scientists and journals, manipulating peer review and avoiding freedom of information requests.
Nor can the emails be dismissed as a handful of scientists showing their petulant streak. Scientific research must be subject to testing, verification and, if necessary, disproof. Otherwise, its conclusions are worthless. That's especially true if the basic data on which the climate records are based are deleted, as seems to have been the case with the CRU, or if the elaborate computer models used to forecast climate turn out to be poorly designed, as also seems to be the case.
The core question raised by the emails is why their authors would behave this way if they are as privately convinced of the strength of their case as they claim in public. The Earth's climate is a profoundly complex system, sensitive, dynamic and subject to a dizzying range of variables interacting in ways that remain poorly understood. Carbon dioxide is only one of those variables. Climate scientists failed to anticipate the absence of warming in the last decade, a point that Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, privately conceded in one of the disclosed emails was a "travesty."
Given this, the public is entitled to wonder how exactly climate scientists can state with such certainty that temperatures have never been higher, or that they are sure to rise in the coming decade, to say nothing of the rest of the century. The public is also entitled to know how the climatologists can suggest the precise degrees by which the Earth will warm, or why a warmer Earth is, on balance, worse than a colder one. Is there a "correct" global average temperature?
The public also has a right to wonder whether the bulk of the scarce financial resources available to mitigate ecological risks ought to be devoted primarily to climate change rather than to other threats to the environment and public health. For several years, Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg has been convening meetings in Copenhagen of some of the world's leading economists to consider that very question. Overwhelmingly they have concluded that the world's dollars, euros and yen are better spent on tackling diseases such as AIDS or malaria or problems such as malnutrition and run-of-the-mill pollution than on hugely expensive (and dubiously effective) carbon-mitigation schemes.
This conclusion is only common sense: Given the choice between spending $100 to feed a hungry child in the present or combat a notional climate problem that might or might not have real consequences a century hence, most of us would surely choose the former. We would do so, moreover, with the confidence that the technologies of the future will be better suited to deal with whatever climate problems might then exist.
A typical retort is that "we can't afford to wait until it's too late," but one may as well ask whether the child in our example should go hungry while the developed world spends its money on global warming mitigation in the Third World. Yet that is exactly what the conferees at Copenhagen seem prepared to do, to the tune of billions of dollars per year.
Even if the Earth does warm by a degree or two this century, the world will be better able to cope with any consequences the more prosperous it is. The worst policy would be to impose higher energy and other costs that reduce global growth for decades. The proponents of cap and trade point to this or that study claiming that a tax on the world's main current energy supplies (oil, natural gas, coal) is cost free. But this also defies common sense. The Chinese and Indians don't believe it, and neither do middle-class Americans who can't easily afford hundreds of dollars a year in extra electricity or transportation costs.
Meanwhile, none of the "green" energy sources—wind, solar or biofuels—has so far proved even remotely efficient or scalable, while often entailing serious environmental consequences of their own. These industries exist mainly because governments have thrown tens of billions in subsidies at them, and still they can't compete with carbon sources.
Much of the momentum for Copenhagen is now driven by the alternative fuels industry and its investors, who stand to lose vast sums unless governments artificially raise the price of carbon. These include our friends at Kleiner Perkins, the ecoventure capital fund that includes Al Gore as a partner. And of course that part of the political class congenitally eager to redistribute taxpayer monies also wants to dispense "carbon credits" to friends and political donors.
***
By now, the idea that global warming represents the gravest threat to humanity has become totemic in much of the world, a belief invested with religious fervor and barely susceptible to rational discussion, let alone debate. Yet it remains telling how quickly a sense of reality has reasserted its cold grip in light of the choices Copenhagen now brings starkly into view.
Mr. Obama has delayed his trip to the conference until its final day, when he thinks he might salvage some kind of deal. Perhaps he will. Then again, Copenhagen is more likely to prove that it takes more than environmental faith and political opportunism to forge a genuine global consensus.
The Copenhagen Concoction
For months, the U.N. climate change summit that began Monday in Copenhagen has been billed as the world's last best hope to match the scientific consensus on global warming with a policy consensus. But now it turns out there is little of either, and Copenhagen looks like it will go down as one of the more remarkable cases of political hubris in recent memory.
That's no bad outcome, given the ambitions of Copenhagen's organizers to impose heavy new carbon taxes on top of a struggling world economy. The Australian Senate last week defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's cap-and-trade legislation, largely due to its job-killing potential in the coal-producing continent. Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, said Thursday "there is no question of India accepting a legally binding emission reduction cut." China has promised to cut the rate of growth in its carbon emissions, which would nevertheless double over the next decade even on the most optimistic scenario.
As for the U.S., it has become clear even to liberals that it was not the Bush Administration alone that was standing in the way of a global climate deal. Last Thursday, nine Senators sent a letter outlining the terms of their support for cap-and-trade legislation, including that every other country enact and enforce carbon legislation of their own. And those were Democrats.
President Obama has promised an 83% cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (from their 2005 level) by 2050. But such extravagant pledges are only possible when everyone knows they won't happen. Monday's announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that it will regulate carbon as a dangerous pollutant is an attempt to run around Congress in order to impress Copenhagen's conferees, but it is also deeply undemocratic and betrays the lack of broader public support.
***
So what exactly is the point of Copenhagen? The question needs to be asked all the more insistently in the wake of last month's disclosure of thousands of documents and emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), long considered an authoritative center of temperature data, modeling and forecasts.
At a minimum, the emails demonstrate the lengths some of the world's leading climate scientists were prepared to go to manufacture the "consensus" they used to demand drastic steps against global warming. The emails are replete with talk of blacklisting dissenting scientists and journals, manipulating peer review and avoiding freedom of information requests.
Nor can the emails be dismissed as a handful of scientists showing their petulant streak. Scientific research must be subject to testing, verification and, if necessary, disproof. Otherwise, its conclusions are worthless. That's especially true if the basic data on which the climate records are based are deleted, as seems to have been the case with the CRU, or if the elaborate computer models used to forecast climate turn out to be poorly designed, as also seems to be the case.
The core question raised by the emails is why their authors would behave this way if they are as privately convinced of the strength of their case as they claim in public. The Earth's climate is a profoundly complex system, sensitive, dynamic and subject to a dizzying range of variables interacting in ways that remain poorly understood. Carbon dioxide is only one of those variables. Climate scientists failed to anticipate the absence of warming in the last decade, a point that Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, privately conceded in one of the disclosed emails was a "travesty."
Given this, the public is entitled to wonder how exactly climate scientists can state with such certainty that temperatures have never been higher, or that they are sure to rise in the coming decade, to say nothing of the rest of the century. The public is also entitled to know how the climatologists can suggest the precise degrees by which the Earth will warm, or why a warmer Earth is, on balance, worse than a colder one. Is there a "correct" global average temperature?
The public also has a right to wonder whether the bulk of the scarce financial resources available to mitigate ecological risks ought to be devoted primarily to climate change rather than to other threats to the environment and public health. For several years, Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg has been convening meetings in Copenhagen of some of the world's leading economists to consider that very question. Overwhelmingly they have concluded that the world's dollars, euros and yen are better spent on tackling diseases such as AIDS or malaria or problems such as malnutrition and run-of-the-mill pollution than on hugely expensive (and dubiously effective) carbon-mitigation schemes.
This conclusion is only common sense: Given the choice between spending $100 to feed a hungry child in the present or combat a notional climate problem that might or might not have real consequences a century hence, most of us would surely choose the former. We would do so, moreover, with the confidence that the technologies of the future will be better suited to deal with whatever climate problems might then exist.
A typical retort is that "we can't afford to wait until it's too late," but one may as well ask whether the child in our example should go hungry while the developed world spends its money on global warming mitigation in the Third World. Yet that is exactly what the conferees at Copenhagen seem prepared to do, to the tune of billions of dollars per year.
Even if the Earth does warm by a degree or two this century, the world will be better able to cope with any consequences the more prosperous it is. The worst policy would be to impose higher energy and other costs that reduce global growth for decades. The proponents of cap and trade point to this or that study claiming that a tax on the world's main current energy supplies (oil, natural gas, coal) is cost free. But this also defies common sense. The Chinese and Indians don't believe it, and neither do middle-class Americans who can't easily afford hundreds of dollars a year in extra electricity or transportation costs.
Meanwhile, none of the "green" energy sources—wind, solar or biofuels—has so far proved even remotely efficient or scalable, while often entailing serious environmental consequences of their own. These industries exist mainly because governments have thrown tens of billions in subsidies at them, and still they can't compete with carbon sources.
Much of the momentum for Copenhagen is now driven by the alternative fuels industry and its investors, who stand to lose vast sums unless governments artificially raise the price of carbon. These include our friends at Kleiner Perkins, the ecoventure capital fund that includes Al Gore as a partner. And of course that part of the political class congenitally eager to redistribute taxpayer monies also wants to dispense "carbon credits" to friends and political donors.
***
By now, the idea that global warming represents the gravest threat to humanity has become totemic in much of the world, a belief invested with religious fervor and barely susceptible to rational discussion, let alone debate. Yet it remains telling how quickly a sense of reality has reasserted its cold grip in light of the choices Copenhagen now brings starkly into view.
Mr. Obama has delayed his trip to the conference until its final day, when he thinks he might salvage some kind of deal. Perhaps he will. Then again, Copenhagen is more likely to prove that it takes more than environmental faith and political opportunism to forge a genuine global consensus.
That's no bad outcome, given the ambitions of Copenhagen's organizers to impose heavy new carbon taxes on top of a struggling world economy. The Australian Senate last week defeated Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's cap-and-trade legislation, largely due to its job-killing potential in the coal-producing continent. Jairam Ramesh, India's environment minister, said Thursday "there is no question of India accepting a legally binding emission reduction cut." China has promised to cut the rate of growth in its carbon emissions, which would nevertheless double over the next decade even on the most optimistic scenario.
As for the U.S., it has become clear even to liberals that it was not the Bush Administration alone that was standing in the way of a global climate deal. Last Thursday, nine Senators sent a letter outlining the terms of their support for cap-and-trade legislation, including that every other country enact and enforce carbon legislation of their own. And those were Democrats.
President Obama has promised an 83% cut in U.S. greenhouse gas emissions (from their 2005 level) by 2050. But such extravagant pledges are only possible when everyone knows they won't happen. Monday's announcement by the Environmental Protection Agency that it will regulate carbon as a dangerous pollutant is an attempt to run around Congress in order to impress Copenhagen's conferees, but it is also deeply undemocratic and betrays the lack of broader public support.
***
So what exactly is the point of Copenhagen? The question needs to be asked all the more insistently in the wake of last month's disclosure of thousands of documents and emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), long considered an authoritative center of temperature data, modeling and forecasts.
At a minimum, the emails demonstrate the lengths some of the world's leading climate scientists were prepared to go to manufacture the "consensus" they used to demand drastic steps against global warming. The emails are replete with talk of blacklisting dissenting scientists and journals, manipulating peer review and avoiding freedom of information requests.
Nor can the emails be dismissed as a handful of scientists showing their petulant streak. Scientific research must be subject to testing, verification and, if necessary, disproof. Otherwise, its conclusions are worthless. That's especially true if the basic data on which the climate records are based are deleted, as seems to have been the case with the CRU, or if the elaborate computer models used to forecast climate turn out to be poorly designed, as also seems to be the case.
The core question raised by the emails is why their authors would behave this way if they are as privately convinced of the strength of their case as they claim in public. The Earth's climate is a profoundly complex system, sensitive, dynamic and subject to a dizzying range of variables interacting in ways that remain poorly understood. Carbon dioxide is only one of those variables. Climate scientists failed to anticipate the absence of warming in the last decade, a point that Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, privately conceded in one of the disclosed emails was a "travesty."
Given this, the public is entitled to wonder how exactly climate scientists can state with such certainty that temperatures have never been higher, or that they are sure to rise in the coming decade, to say nothing of the rest of the century. The public is also entitled to know how the climatologists can suggest the precise degrees by which the Earth will warm, or why a warmer Earth is, on balance, worse than a colder one. Is there a "correct" global average temperature?
The public also has a right to wonder whether the bulk of the scarce financial resources available to mitigate ecological risks ought to be devoted primarily to climate change rather than to other threats to the environment and public health. For several years, Danish statistician Bjorn Lomborg has been convening meetings in Copenhagen of some of the world's leading economists to consider that very question. Overwhelmingly they have concluded that the world's dollars, euros and yen are better spent on tackling diseases such as AIDS or malaria or problems such as malnutrition and run-of-the-mill pollution than on hugely expensive (and dubiously effective) carbon-mitigation schemes.
This conclusion is only common sense: Given the choice between spending $100 to feed a hungry child in the present or combat a notional climate problem that might or might not have real consequences a century hence, most of us would surely choose the former. We would do so, moreover, with the confidence that the technologies of the future will be better suited to deal with whatever climate problems might then exist.
A typical retort is that "we can't afford to wait until it's too late," but one may as well ask whether the child in our example should go hungry while the developed world spends its money on global warming mitigation in the Third World. Yet that is exactly what the conferees at Copenhagen seem prepared to do, to the tune of billions of dollars per year.
Even if the Earth does warm by a degree or two this century, the world will be better able to cope with any consequences the more prosperous it is. The worst policy would be to impose higher energy and other costs that reduce global growth for decades. The proponents of cap and trade point to this or that study claiming that a tax on the world's main current energy supplies (oil, natural gas, coal) is cost free. But this also defies common sense. The Chinese and Indians don't believe it, and neither do middle-class Americans who can't easily afford hundreds of dollars a year in extra electricity or transportation costs.
Meanwhile, none of the "green" energy sources—wind, solar or biofuels—has so far proved even remotely efficient or scalable, while often entailing serious environmental consequences of their own. These industries exist mainly because governments have thrown tens of billions in subsidies at them, and still they can't compete with carbon sources.
Much of the momentum for Copenhagen is now driven by the alternative fuels industry and its investors, who stand to lose vast sums unless governments artificially raise the price of carbon. These include our friends at Kleiner Perkins, the ecoventure capital fund that includes Al Gore as a partner. And of course that part of the political class congenitally eager to redistribute taxpayer monies also wants to dispense "carbon credits" to friends and political donors.
***
By now, the idea that global warming represents the gravest threat to humanity has become totemic in much of the world, a belief invested with religious fervor and barely susceptible to rational discussion, let alone debate. Yet it remains telling how quickly a sense of reality has reasserted its cold grip in light of the choices Copenhagen now brings starkly into view.
Mr. Obama has delayed his trip to the conference until its final day, when he thinks he might salvage some kind of deal. Perhaps he will. Then again, Copenhagen is more likely to prove that it takes more than environmental faith and political opportunism to forge a genuine global consensus.
Aviation policy? Rip it up, start again
The Committee on Climate Change report shows that aviation policy – including plans to expand Heathrow – has collapsed
Leo Murray
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 19.00 GMT
Lord Turner's Committee on Climate Change has finally published its long-awaited report on the future of UK aviation in the context of a shrinking national carbon budget. It tells us what we already knew: that it is time for a rethink.
Back in 2003 the government produced an air transport white paper that set out plans for expansion at no fewer than 30 airports across mainland Britain. The basic premise was that the aviation industry should be given everything it wanted because more runways are good for the economy. This was no surprise, since the single report that provided the economic justification for the new policy had been paid for by the very same aviation industry that stood to profit from it.
Climate change, even at this late stage, barely featured.
That bias at the highest levels of government has persisted ever since, right up to yesterday's report from the transport select committee. This insists that the 2003 white paper "remains a sensible basis for policy". Again, this is no surprise: the transport select committee is a motley crew of aviation industry stooges, including Graham Stringer, former chairman of Manchester Airport; Heathrow's cheerleader-in-chief, MP David Wilshire (now under investigation in the expenses scandal); and, until recently, climate change sceptic Sammy Wilson (the DUP's former environment minister who banned government carbon reduction advertisements from broadcast in Northern Ireland, calling them "insidious" propaganda).
Lord Turner's report reaches a very different conclusion. Even with generous assumptions about increases in fuel efficiency and the use of tele-conferencing, high-speed rail and biofuels, the CCC's work makes plain that in order to keep aviation emissions at 2005 levels, there can be expansion at no more than a handful of these airports. So what about the other 27? Even the most optimistic assessment must be that the current aviation policy is no longer fit for purpose. Some have chosen to spin today's report as giving the green light to expansion at Heathrow. But the reality is that the entire edifice of UK aviation policy – including Heathrow's third runway plans – has collapsed; its architects must return to the drawing board and start the entire conversation again, but this time taking climate change into account.
What's more, the CCC's report acknowledges that it is missing something important – something that will likely mean that aviation expansion must be reined in even further. Because of outstanding uncertainties in the science and the lack of an appropriate mechanism to include them, the non-CO2 impacts of aircraft emissions have been left out of the calculations. Given that the current best-guess puts these extra warming impacts at roughly equal to the CO2 alone, it is clear that once they are factored in, any further expansion at Britain's airports will almost certainly be untenable.
The transport select committee complains that aviation should not be "demonised" by climate policy, but treated just like every other sector. But if that were to happen, aviation would be having to make 80% emissions cuts over 1990 levels over the next 40 years – just like the rest of us. As it is, the government plans to let air travel stick at emissions levels that are already double what they were in 1990, and force every other person and every other sector of the economy to make even bigger cuts to accommodate this special treatment.
Pensioners struggling with fuel poverty and small companies trying to keep their vehicles on the road; we'll all have to fork out more to pay for a high-carbon leisure activity that is predominantly enjoyed by the rich.
Is this really how we want to spend our precious, shrinking carbon budget? I don't remember being asked.
Leo Murray
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 19.00 GMT
Lord Turner's Committee on Climate Change has finally published its long-awaited report on the future of UK aviation in the context of a shrinking national carbon budget. It tells us what we already knew: that it is time for a rethink.
Back in 2003 the government produced an air transport white paper that set out plans for expansion at no fewer than 30 airports across mainland Britain. The basic premise was that the aviation industry should be given everything it wanted because more runways are good for the economy. This was no surprise, since the single report that provided the economic justification for the new policy had been paid for by the very same aviation industry that stood to profit from it.
Climate change, even at this late stage, barely featured.
That bias at the highest levels of government has persisted ever since, right up to yesterday's report from the transport select committee. This insists that the 2003 white paper "remains a sensible basis for policy". Again, this is no surprise: the transport select committee is a motley crew of aviation industry stooges, including Graham Stringer, former chairman of Manchester Airport; Heathrow's cheerleader-in-chief, MP David Wilshire (now under investigation in the expenses scandal); and, until recently, climate change sceptic Sammy Wilson (the DUP's former environment minister who banned government carbon reduction advertisements from broadcast in Northern Ireland, calling them "insidious" propaganda).
Lord Turner's report reaches a very different conclusion. Even with generous assumptions about increases in fuel efficiency and the use of tele-conferencing, high-speed rail and biofuels, the CCC's work makes plain that in order to keep aviation emissions at 2005 levels, there can be expansion at no more than a handful of these airports. So what about the other 27? Even the most optimistic assessment must be that the current aviation policy is no longer fit for purpose. Some have chosen to spin today's report as giving the green light to expansion at Heathrow. But the reality is that the entire edifice of UK aviation policy – including Heathrow's third runway plans – has collapsed; its architects must return to the drawing board and start the entire conversation again, but this time taking climate change into account.
What's more, the CCC's report acknowledges that it is missing something important – something that will likely mean that aviation expansion must be reined in even further. Because of outstanding uncertainties in the science and the lack of an appropriate mechanism to include them, the non-CO2 impacts of aircraft emissions have been left out of the calculations. Given that the current best-guess puts these extra warming impacts at roughly equal to the CO2 alone, it is clear that once they are factored in, any further expansion at Britain's airports will almost certainly be untenable.
The transport select committee complains that aviation should not be "demonised" by climate policy, but treated just like every other sector. But if that were to happen, aviation would be having to make 80% emissions cuts over 1990 levels over the next 40 years – just like the rest of us. As it is, the government plans to let air travel stick at emissions levels that are already double what they were in 1990, and force every other person and every other sector of the economy to make even bigger cuts to accommodate this special treatment.
Pensioners struggling with fuel poverty and small companies trying to keep their vehicles on the road; we'll all have to fork out more to pay for a high-carbon leisure activity that is predominantly enjoyed by the rich.
Is this really how we want to spend our precious, shrinking carbon budget? I don't remember being asked.
Copenhagen agenda: emissions, carbon markets and a UN grilling on CDM
Your guide on what to look out for at the Copenhagen summitB
Today is the first day of detailed negotiations at the UN Climate talks in Copenhagen after yesterday's statements. They are conducted on two parallel tracks: one group of countries will discuss emissions cuts, land use, forestry and the potential of carbon markets to provide the money for poor countries to adapt. Another group will grapple with finance and technology.
Among the closed plenary sessions for arcane committees such as the subsidiary body for scientific and technological advice (SBSTA) - which advises the countries attending on climate and technology - and the subsidiary body for implementation (SBI) - which helps review how the convention is being applied and deals with financial and administrative matters - today's highlights from the meetings schedule include the World Bank's report on clean development mechanism, and later a UN question and answer session on the effectiveness of the CDM in reducing emissions.
Non-governmental groups say that it is imperative to close loopholes in the forestry text, and are deeply concerned about carbon markets. They will be lobbying delegates to get the best possible deal on finance, and commitments to cut emissions.
Behind the scenes, China, and a group of other countries are preparing a draft text which will be discussed informally by countries and could possibly be adopted as the base of a final agreement next week. However, the host country Denmark, along with the UN secretariat, is also preparing a draft text that is more likely to be presented to world leaders when they arrive next week.
A bit on the side meetings…08.00-18.00 - Voices from China: Greenpeace China will display video appeals from Chinese citizens calling for a deal in Copenhagen.
13.00 - Side event on international bunker fuels: A panel will analyse how aviation and shipping may be regulated in the post-2012 regime.
13.00 - IPCC information and activities: Highlights of IPCC fourth assessment report as well as the outlook towards the fifth assesement report.
14.00 - Green Belt Movement at Climate Change Kiosk: Community-based environmental projects with Nobel Laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai .
14.30 - High-level briefing to youth on expectations for COP 15: With Michael Zammit-Cutajar, AWG-LCA Chair, and John Ashe, AWG-KP Chair.
18.15 - CDM Executive Board Q&As: The Executive Board of the CDM will report on its activities and answer questions from the audience.
Today is the first day of detailed negotiations at the UN Climate talks in Copenhagen after yesterday's statements. They are conducted on two parallel tracks: one group of countries will discuss emissions cuts, land use, forestry and the potential of carbon markets to provide the money for poor countries to adapt. Another group will grapple with finance and technology.
Among the closed plenary sessions for arcane committees such as the subsidiary body for scientific and technological advice (SBSTA) - which advises the countries attending on climate and technology - and the subsidiary body for implementation (SBI) - which helps review how the convention is being applied and deals with financial and administrative matters - today's highlights from the meetings schedule include the World Bank's report on clean development mechanism, and later a UN question and answer session on the effectiveness of the CDM in reducing emissions.
Non-governmental groups say that it is imperative to close loopholes in the forestry text, and are deeply concerned about carbon markets. They will be lobbying delegates to get the best possible deal on finance, and commitments to cut emissions.
Behind the scenes, China, and a group of other countries are preparing a draft text which will be discussed informally by countries and could possibly be adopted as the base of a final agreement next week. However, the host country Denmark, along with the UN secretariat, is also preparing a draft text that is more likely to be presented to world leaders when they arrive next week.
A bit on the side meetings…08.00-18.00 - Voices from China: Greenpeace China will display video appeals from Chinese citizens calling for a deal in Copenhagen.
13.00 - Side event on international bunker fuels: A panel will analyse how aviation and shipping may be regulated in the post-2012 regime.
13.00 - IPCC information and activities: Highlights of IPCC fourth assessment report as well as the outlook towards the fifth assesement report.
14.00 - Green Belt Movement at Climate Change Kiosk: Community-based environmental projects with Nobel Laureate, Professor Wangari Maathai .
14.30 - High-level briefing to youth on expectations for COP 15: With Michael Zammit-Cutajar, AWG-LCA Chair, and John Ashe, AWG-KP Chair.
18.15 - CDM Executive Board Q&As: The Executive Board of the CDM will report on its activities and answer questions from the audience.
Nuclear fusion is the future
The Copenhagen Summit: Could a new nuclear fusion process allow us to escape the whole carbon trap?
By Roger Highfield Published: 7:00AM GMT 08 Dec 2009
'It's time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here." With that warning to the US Congress in June 1988, the Nasa climatologist James Hansen focused the minds of politicians on a danger that, until then, many of them had treated with scepticism.
A few days later came the first international conference to discuss man's impact on the Earth's climate, in Toronto, to which I had been packed off by The Daily Telegraph's then editor. I watched as scientists tried to persuade government representatives, legal experts, economists and industrialists that the time had come to take the threat seriously.
Two decades later, the waffling goes on. Over the past few days, about 15,000 delegates have expended vast amounts of carbon dioxide to attend the giant climate-change jamboree in Copenhagen. Hansen himself says that any agreement likely to emerge will be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.
Yet at a conference event I am chairing on behalf of the EU, to discuss research on low-carbon technologies, we will be hearing about a process that could allow us to escape the whole carbon trap. Prof Sir David King, a former chief scientist for the government, now of Oxford University, will remind us that the most radical solution to the underlying problem (and yes, climate-change deniers, there is one), remains the same as two decades ago: nuclear fusion.
Sceptics joke that this is the fuel of the future – and always will be. Commercial fusion, they gleefully point out, is as far away now as it was in Toronto, and as it was half a century ago, when Sir John Cockcroft, one of the great nuclear pioneers, began an article in New Scientist with the words: "It has long been the ambition of scientists to emulate the Sun."
Fusion is the process by which the Sun, and other stars, transmute matter, transforming hydrogen into helium to release colossal amounts of energy. The fused nuclei are a fraction lighter than their atomic ingredients, so – according to Einstein's famous equation E = mc² – that tiny loss of mass results in a colossal release of energy. Harness that release in an efficient way, and the world's energy needs are solved: near-infinite power, almost no harmful by-products.
An international consortium known as ITER ("the way" in Latin), is about to start building a prototype fusion reactor in Cadarache, France, at a cost of £6 billion. Critics argue that given the difficulties involved, that sum could be better spent on solar power, using the fusion reactor that nature has already given us. The challenge is indeed vast: in the core of the Sun, huge gravitational pressure allows fusion to take place at about 15 million C. In man-made devices, the temperatures need to be above 150 million C, a temperature that no material on Earth could withstand.
The solution came from the Soviet Union in the late 1950s: a doughnut-shaped device called a tokamak. This uses intense magnetic fields to hold the reacting plasma away from the furnace's walls. Prof Steven Cowley, director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, home of one of the leading fusion test plants, says the biggest hurdle lies in creating the technology needed to use it, such as developing walls that can withstand unbelievable pummelling by subatomic particles and cutting the cost of the superconducting magnets that will confine plasma 10 times the temperature of the sun's core.
At America's Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor in Princeton, the Joint European Torus in Culham, and the JT-60 in Japan, scientists have come tantalisingly close to the break-even point at which the device releases as much energy as is required to get the fusion going. Such is the cost of constructing a proper prototype, however, that the ITER Council includes all the world's leading powers: China, the EU, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States. The research they are funding could transform the lives of billions of people, and of future generations.
Will it work? Although the plan to put the experimental fusion plant into operation by 2018 looks unrealistic, and risks a costly overrun, we should, by February, have a date for it to burst into action. ITER's objective is to release 10 times as much energy as is used to initiate the reaction: if 50 MW is put in, ITER will generate 500 MW.
The hope is that ITER will pave the way for a demonstration power plant in the 2030s, which will feed energy into the grid by the middle of this century. Meanwhile, research will continue in other installations worldwide. If the gamble pays off, the last quarter of this century will see the end of the age of carbon, and usher in a future of almost limitless potential
By Roger Highfield Published: 7:00AM GMT 08 Dec 2009
'It's time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here." With that warning to the US Congress in June 1988, the Nasa climatologist James Hansen focused the minds of politicians on a danger that, until then, many of them had treated with scepticism.
A few days later came the first international conference to discuss man's impact on the Earth's climate, in Toronto, to which I had been packed off by The Daily Telegraph's then editor. I watched as scientists tried to persuade government representatives, legal experts, economists and industrialists that the time had come to take the threat seriously.
Two decades later, the waffling goes on. Over the past few days, about 15,000 delegates have expended vast amounts of carbon dioxide to attend the giant climate-change jamboree in Copenhagen. Hansen himself says that any agreement likely to emerge will be so deeply flawed that it would be better to start again from scratch.
Yet at a conference event I am chairing on behalf of the EU, to discuss research on low-carbon technologies, we will be hearing about a process that could allow us to escape the whole carbon trap. Prof Sir David King, a former chief scientist for the government, now of Oxford University, will remind us that the most radical solution to the underlying problem (and yes, climate-change deniers, there is one), remains the same as two decades ago: nuclear fusion.
Sceptics joke that this is the fuel of the future – and always will be. Commercial fusion, they gleefully point out, is as far away now as it was in Toronto, and as it was half a century ago, when Sir John Cockcroft, one of the great nuclear pioneers, began an article in New Scientist with the words: "It has long been the ambition of scientists to emulate the Sun."
Fusion is the process by which the Sun, and other stars, transmute matter, transforming hydrogen into helium to release colossal amounts of energy. The fused nuclei are a fraction lighter than their atomic ingredients, so – according to Einstein's famous equation E = mc² – that tiny loss of mass results in a colossal release of energy. Harness that release in an efficient way, and the world's energy needs are solved: near-infinite power, almost no harmful by-products.
An international consortium known as ITER ("the way" in Latin), is about to start building a prototype fusion reactor in Cadarache, France, at a cost of £6 billion. Critics argue that given the difficulties involved, that sum could be better spent on solar power, using the fusion reactor that nature has already given us. The challenge is indeed vast: in the core of the Sun, huge gravitational pressure allows fusion to take place at about 15 million C. In man-made devices, the temperatures need to be above 150 million C, a temperature that no material on Earth could withstand.
The solution came from the Soviet Union in the late 1950s: a doughnut-shaped device called a tokamak. This uses intense magnetic fields to hold the reacting plasma away from the furnace's walls. Prof Steven Cowley, director of the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy, home of one of the leading fusion test plants, says the biggest hurdle lies in creating the technology needed to use it, such as developing walls that can withstand unbelievable pummelling by subatomic particles and cutting the cost of the superconducting magnets that will confine plasma 10 times the temperature of the sun's core.
At America's Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor in Princeton, the Joint European Torus in Culham, and the JT-60 in Japan, scientists have come tantalisingly close to the break-even point at which the device releases as much energy as is required to get the fusion going. Such is the cost of constructing a proper prototype, however, that the ITER Council includes all the world's leading powers: China, the EU, India, Japan, Korea, Russia and the United States. The research they are funding could transform the lives of billions of people, and of future generations.
Will it work? Although the plan to put the experimental fusion plant into operation by 2018 looks unrealistic, and risks a costly overrun, we should, by February, have a date for it to burst into action. ITER's objective is to release 10 times as much energy as is used to initiate the reaction: if 50 MW is put in, ITER will generate 500 MW.
The hope is that ITER will pave the way for a demonstration power plant in the 2030s, which will feed energy into the grid by the middle of this century. Meanwhile, research will continue in other installations worldwide. If the gamble pays off, the last quarter of this century will see the end of the age of carbon, and usher in a future of almost limitless potential
Plans in place to meet our green energy targets 'three times over'
Published Date: 09 December 2009
By Jenny Fyall
SCOTLAND would meet its 2020 renewable energy targets three times over if all the schemes currently planned were granted permission.
There are enough on- and offshore wind farms, hydro projects and marine renewable schemes in the pipeline to generate 26,073 megawatts of electricity, according to a new report by Scottish Natural Heritage.This is more than three times that needed to meet the 2020 targets of 50 per cent of electricity generated from renewables – which would require about 8,000MW. SNH said the statistics showed "excellent" progress was being made towards renewable energy in Scotland.However, the report also highlighted concerns about the impact of so many wind farms and other renewables developments on the landscape and vulnerable habitats, such as peat.The report from SNH said 2,834MW of renewables were up and running, and another 3,739MW had been granted consent, but was yet to be built. Another 9,000MW of onshore renewables are in the planning system as well as 8,500MW offshore wind and up to 2,000MW of marine renewables by 2020.That all adds up to 26,073MW – enough to meet Scotland's targets three times over."Thus, Scotland can easily meet its existing renewables ambitions, and could easily meet 100 per cent of our electricity needs, based on the resource available," said the report.However, there are worries about the number of wind farms planned for Scotland, with campaigners raising concerns that they are damaging the environment. Figures from Scottish Renewables show there are 1,382 onshore turbines either operating or being built in Scotland. Permission has been granted for another 938, and there are plans for about 1,800 more. Jane Clark, the head of sustainable land use at SNH, said: "Scotland possesses exceptional renewable energy resources and the industry is expanding rapidly. Our role is to help developers and planners to exploit this huge potential at an acceptable cost to equally outstanding, and economically valuable, landscapes and wildlife."SNH's report revealed that it had dealt with more than 1,300 renewable energy applications. Three-quarters of which met with no objection from the organisation.A spokesman for Scottish Renewables said there was still a long way to go to meet the target of 50 per cent of electricity from renewables by 2020.Jenny Hogan, wind energy specialist at Scottish Renewables, said: "If we are serious about climate change, then we need to be serious about the rapid growth of wind power both on and offshore in the next decade."With the equivalent of around a quarter of Scotland's electricity demand coming from renewables, there is still a very long way to go."However, Helen McDade, head of policy for the John Muir Trust, said: "With Scotland on track to meet its electricity renewable targets, it is time to stop trying to build our way out of climate change. "Climate change targets are best tackled by improving energy conservation and cutting emissions from transport, rather than endlessly expanding renewable developments in some of our most sensitive and precious landscapes."
By Jenny Fyall
SCOTLAND would meet its 2020 renewable energy targets three times over if all the schemes currently planned were granted permission.
There are enough on- and offshore wind farms, hydro projects and marine renewable schemes in the pipeline to generate 26,073 megawatts of electricity, according to a new report by Scottish Natural Heritage.This is more than three times that needed to meet the 2020 targets of 50 per cent of electricity generated from renewables – which would require about 8,000MW. SNH said the statistics showed "excellent" progress was being made towards renewable energy in Scotland.However, the report also highlighted concerns about the impact of so many wind farms and other renewables developments on the landscape and vulnerable habitats, such as peat.The report from SNH said 2,834MW of renewables were up and running, and another 3,739MW had been granted consent, but was yet to be built. Another 9,000MW of onshore renewables are in the planning system as well as 8,500MW offshore wind and up to 2,000MW of marine renewables by 2020.That all adds up to 26,073MW – enough to meet Scotland's targets three times over."Thus, Scotland can easily meet its existing renewables ambitions, and could easily meet 100 per cent of our electricity needs, based on the resource available," said the report.However, there are worries about the number of wind farms planned for Scotland, with campaigners raising concerns that they are damaging the environment. Figures from Scottish Renewables show there are 1,382 onshore turbines either operating or being built in Scotland. Permission has been granted for another 938, and there are plans for about 1,800 more. Jane Clark, the head of sustainable land use at SNH, said: "Scotland possesses exceptional renewable energy resources and the industry is expanding rapidly. Our role is to help developers and planners to exploit this huge potential at an acceptable cost to equally outstanding, and economically valuable, landscapes and wildlife."SNH's report revealed that it had dealt with more than 1,300 renewable energy applications. Three-quarters of which met with no objection from the organisation.A spokesman for Scottish Renewables said there was still a long way to go to meet the target of 50 per cent of electricity from renewables by 2020.Jenny Hogan, wind energy specialist at Scottish Renewables, said: "If we are serious about climate change, then we need to be serious about the rapid growth of wind power both on and offshore in the next decade."With the equivalent of around a quarter of Scotland's electricity demand coming from renewables, there is still a very long way to go."However, Helen McDade, head of policy for the John Muir Trust, said: "With Scotland on track to meet its electricity renewable targets, it is time to stop trying to build our way out of climate change. "Climate change targets are best tackled by improving energy conservation and cutting emissions from transport, rather than endlessly expanding renewable developments in some of our most sensitive and precious landscapes."
Green CO2 acquisition fund stands at £10m
Green CO2 has jumped 11% - up 0.13p to 1.25p - after announcing plans for a £10m placing to raise funds to buy companies in the energy compliance markets. It has appointed John Prowse, former managing director of Connaught's compliance division, as its new chief executive, and at the same time chairman Bob Holt - boss of social housing group Mears - has agreed to put in close to £1m to pay off a debt to Barclays Bank. A number of acquistions are on the horizon.
Clean-thinking America prepares to fire the starting gun in its dash for gas
Carl Mortished: World business briefing
Carbon dioxide is dangerous, says Lisa Jackson, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is dangerous, like the growling exhaust pipe of a 25-year-old Chevy Corvette or the sulphurous plume from a coal-fired power station. Overnight, America has decided: carbon-dioxide pollution is a public health hazard and emitters will be shunned like cigarette smokers.
The EPA’s decision on Monday to treat CO2 as if it were a noxious poison was craved and dreaded in equal measure by climate activists and industrialists. It is a bombshell, more than just a public relations ploy to make President Obama look cool at the Copenhagen summit. It unleashes one of the toughest US regulators and gives it a mandate to go after heavy industry with compliance orders and fines. Power generators, oil refiners, chemical manufacturers and cement makers have been warned: the bloodhounds of the EPA will hunt you down and curb your emissions.
This is politics, of course. A lot must happen before the EPA begins to slap fines on recalcitrant power companies. The agency needs to draw up regulations that work — a monumental task. It needs to decide which CO2 abatement technologies are effective and affordable — at present, there are no commercial carbon-capture technologies, only government-subsidised pilot projects.
But make no mistake: this is the beginning of America’s puritanical crackdown on carbon. If you are surprised that the atmospheric gas that feeds the roses in your garden is being labelled a dangerous poison, remember that America doesn’t regulate its citizens with the gentle persuading hand of the Queen; it does so with the passion of the religious convert. If the EPA is unchallenged, carbon will be hunted down, in the tailpipes of cars in Los Angeles and in the stacks of power plants in Virginia.
America’s electricity industry has reacted with alarm to Ms Jackson’s decision. The US is mostly powered by coal, a fossil fuel that accounts for 80 per cent of America’s abundant greenhouse gas emissions. America has enormous coal reserves — indeed Warren Buffett has just made a big bet on the coal industry, buying a controlling interest in Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a railroad group that trucks coal from mines in Wyoming to Texas and southern California.
There is an alternative to the EPA’s bloodhounds: two climate change Bills making their way through the US Congress would create cap-and-trade systems to offer incentives to industry to curb emissions. The two Bills are similar and both give huge exemptions to power companies in the form of free emission allowances. The American legislation is, in microcosm, what a new Copenhagen climate treaty might look like: a hotchpotch of complex regulation, extravagant concessions, get-out clauses and bribes to politically sensitive groups.
On the one hand, America has the hydroelectric-powered Washington State, where Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell waves the climate-change hockey stick. At the other end of the country, you have coal-fuelled states, such as Georgia, where a federal tax on top of the monthly utility bill spells political death. So, inequality in the carbon burden means taxing Pacific Coast liberals in order to subsidise coalmining rednecks.
It begs the question whether a climate change Bill is possible. That is where the threat of the EPA looms. In a landmark case in 2007, the Supreme Court found that CO2 was an air pollutant within the meaning of the America’s Clean Air act, opening the door for Monday’s statement by Ms Jackson. Climate activists have been waiting for this moment, when the EPA would aim its guns at Big Oil and Big Coal.
Mr Obama is probably not keen to let the EPA do its job. It would be a blunt instrument and politically dangerous, for the important reason that the EPA would be “fair”. Unlike a congressional Bill, with its tweaks, trade-offs and bungs, the EPA would regulate carbon, everywhere. There would be no concessions: every tonne, whether emitted by car, cow or chemical plant, would have to be measured and fined.
The impact on US industry would be harsh and investment would flee from energy-intensive industries. Carbon leakage to Asia would become a flood and, quickly, a hue and cry would build for stringent US tariffs on Chinese goods.
There would be another important consequence of an EPA audit of US industry and that would be a huge rush to natural gas. Coal has secured a get-out for the time being in the congressional Bills. Without special treatment, however, the only quick lower-carbon solution available to US power utilities is huge investment in efficient gas-fired generation plant. Gas produces a third of the CO2 emissions of coal and, after new discoveries, gas in the US is extremely cheap. If Ms Jackson has her way, this could be America’s big dash for gas.
carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk
Carbon dioxide is dangerous, says Lisa Jackson, administrator of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). It is dangerous, like the growling exhaust pipe of a 25-year-old Chevy Corvette or the sulphurous plume from a coal-fired power station. Overnight, America has decided: carbon-dioxide pollution is a public health hazard and emitters will be shunned like cigarette smokers.
The EPA’s decision on Monday to treat CO2 as if it were a noxious poison was craved and dreaded in equal measure by climate activists and industrialists. It is a bombshell, more than just a public relations ploy to make President Obama look cool at the Copenhagen summit. It unleashes one of the toughest US regulators and gives it a mandate to go after heavy industry with compliance orders and fines. Power generators, oil refiners, chemical manufacturers and cement makers have been warned: the bloodhounds of the EPA will hunt you down and curb your emissions.
This is politics, of course. A lot must happen before the EPA begins to slap fines on recalcitrant power companies. The agency needs to draw up regulations that work — a monumental task. It needs to decide which CO2 abatement technologies are effective and affordable — at present, there are no commercial carbon-capture technologies, only government-subsidised pilot projects.
But make no mistake: this is the beginning of America’s puritanical crackdown on carbon. If you are surprised that the atmospheric gas that feeds the roses in your garden is being labelled a dangerous poison, remember that America doesn’t regulate its citizens with the gentle persuading hand of the Queen; it does so with the passion of the religious convert. If the EPA is unchallenged, carbon will be hunted down, in the tailpipes of cars in Los Angeles and in the stacks of power plants in Virginia.
America’s electricity industry has reacted with alarm to Ms Jackson’s decision. The US is mostly powered by coal, a fossil fuel that accounts for 80 per cent of America’s abundant greenhouse gas emissions. America has enormous coal reserves — indeed Warren Buffett has just made a big bet on the coal industry, buying a controlling interest in Burlington Northern Santa Fe, a railroad group that trucks coal from mines in Wyoming to Texas and southern California.
There is an alternative to the EPA’s bloodhounds: two climate change Bills making their way through the US Congress would create cap-and-trade systems to offer incentives to industry to curb emissions. The two Bills are similar and both give huge exemptions to power companies in the form of free emission allowances. The American legislation is, in microcosm, what a new Copenhagen climate treaty might look like: a hotchpotch of complex regulation, extravagant concessions, get-out clauses and bribes to politically sensitive groups.
On the one hand, America has the hydroelectric-powered Washington State, where Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell waves the climate-change hockey stick. At the other end of the country, you have coal-fuelled states, such as Georgia, where a federal tax on top of the monthly utility bill spells political death. So, inequality in the carbon burden means taxing Pacific Coast liberals in order to subsidise coalmining rednecks.
It begs the question whether a climate change Bill is possible. That is where the threat of the EPA looms. In a landmark case in 2007, the Supreme Court found that CO2 was an air pollutant within the meaning of the America’s Clean Air act, opening the door for Monday’s statement by Ms Jackson. Climate activists have been waiting for this moment, when the EPA would aim its guns at Big Oil and Big Coal.
Mr Obama is probably not keen to let the EPA do its job. It would be a blunt instrument and politically dangerous, for the important reason that the EPA would be “fair”. Unlike a congressional Bill, with its tweaks, trade-offs and bungs, the EPA would regulate carbon, everywhere. There would be no concessions: every tonne, whether emitted by car, cow or chemical plant, would have to be measured and fined.
The impact on US industry would be harsh and investment would flee from energy-intensive industries. Carbon leakage to Asia would become a flood and, quickly, a hue and cry would build for stringent US tariffs on Chinese goods.
There would be another important consequence of an EPA audit of US industry and that would be a huge rush to natural gas. Coal has secured a get-out for the time being in the congressional Bills. Without special treatment, however, the only quick lower-carbon solution available to US power utilities is huge investment in efficient gas-fired generation plant. Gas produces a third of the CO2 emissions of coal and, after new discoveries, gas in the US is extremely cheap. If Ms Jackson has her way, this could be America’s big dash for gas.
carl.mortished@thetimes.co.uk
Water meters 'help cut usage'
Review calls for rise in use of water meters to help households cut their consumption and bills
Sandra Haurant and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 12.54 GMT
Water meters are the most effective way to encourage sensible water use and should be installed in as many as 80% of British homes by 2020, according to an independent review published today.
The study, led by Anna Walker, chairman of the Office of the Rail Regulator and highly experienced in regulatory, environmental and social issues, looked at the current methods of charging for water and found them to be inadequate.
Water bills for around two-thirds of British homes are based on the rateable value (RV) of the property being served rather than the amount of water used, while 35% are on metered charging. The report said: "The RV system is out of date and does not target efficiently those who need help, nor does it provide customers with an incentive to save water."
The review team recommended that the future charging system should generally be based on the volume of water used, and therefore should be a metered system. The report said: "It is the charging approach most likely to encourage customers to use water efficiently and will best support the development of a sustainable water supply."
The report stopped short of recommending compulsory water meters across the UK, but did say that area-specific schemes could be brought in, and that if its recommendations were followed 80% of British homes could be on water meters by 2020.
While single occupiers are likely to save money with a water meter, large families could find that their bills grow, according to water regulator Ofwat.
The Environment Agency welcomed the review and said research had shown that water meters were effective in bringing down water usage, with metered households using between 10% and 15% less water than those without. According to the agency the UK is one of the few developed countries with a low level of water metering.
A spokesman said: "Widespread water metering implemented by water companies, including safeguards to protect vulnerable groups, would provide a fairer charging system and is vital to help reduce water consumption and avert future severe shortages.
"Water resources are already under pressure in many parts of England, with some 25 million people living in areas where there is less available water per person than Spain or Morocco."
Environment minister Huw Irranca-Davies said: "I welcome the publication of Anna Walker's excellent report. We will consider her recommendations carefully ahead of a full public consultation."
The report said that South West Water customers had paid 43% more for water bills than households in other areas since the company had committed to a larger investment in sewerage systems since it was privatised. In response to this, Irranca-Davies said: "We will ask Ofwat to consider the options for dealing with the high water bills which have resulted from the original privatisation, and to advise ministers accordingly."
According to the Environment Agency, the average Briton currently uses 148 litres (260 pints) a day, and the government has an aim to reduce this to 130 litres by 2030 in England.
Sandra Haurant and agencies
guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 8 December 2009 12.54 GMT
Water meters are the most effective way to encourage sensible water use and should be installed in as many as 80% of British homes by 2020, according to an independent review published today.
The study, led by Anna Walker, chairman of the Office of the Rail Regulator and highly experienced in regulatory, environmental and social issues, looked at the current methods of charging for water and found them to be inadequate.
Water bills for around two-thirds of British homes are based on the rateable value (RV) of the property being served rather than the amount of water used, while 35% are on metered charging. The report said: "The RV system is out of date and does not target efficiently those who need help, nor does it provide customers with an incentive to save water."
The review team recommended that the future charging system should generally be based on the volume of water used, and therefore should be a metered system. The report said: "It is the charging approach most likely to encourage customers to use water efficiently and will best support the development of a sustainable water supply."
The report stopped short of recommending compulsory water meters across the UK, but did say that area-specific schemes could be brought in, and that if its recommendations were followed 80% of British homes could be on water meters by 2020.
While single occupiers are likely to save money with a water meter, large families could find that their bills grow, according to water regulator Ofwat.
The Environment Agency welcomed the review and said research had shown that water meters were effective in bringing down water usage, with metered households using between 10% and 15% less water than those without. According to the agency the UK is one of the few developed countries with a low level of water metering.
A spokesman said: "Widespread water metering implemented by water companies, including safeguards to protect vulnerable groups, would provide a fairer charging system and is vital to help reduce water consumption and avert future severe shortages.
"Water resources are already under pressure in many parts of England, with some 25 million people living in areas where there is less available water per person than Spain or Morocco."
Environment minister Huw Irranca-Davies said: "I welcome the publication of Anna Walker's excellent report. We will consider her recommendations carefully ahead of a full public consultation."
The report said that South West Water customers had paid 43% more for water bills than households in other areas since the company had committed to a larger investment in sewerage systems since it was privatised. In response to this, Irranca-Davies said: "We will ask Ofwat to consider the options for dealing with the high water bills which have resulted from the original privatisation, and to advise ministers accordingly."
According to the Environment Agency, the average Briton currently uses 148 litres (260 pints) a day, and the government has an aim to reduce this to 130 litres by 2030 in England.
Balance of power returns to North Sea by burning coal beneath the ocean floor
Robin Pagnamenta Energy Editor
Vast coal deposits lying deep beneath the North Sea will be burnt in situ to generate up to 5 per cent of Britain’s energy needs, under new plans approved by the Government last week.
The UK Coal Authority has awarded licences to Clean Coal, an Anglo-American company, to develop five offshore sites for a technology called Underground Coal Gasification (UGC).
The method, which has not been used on a commercial scale in the UK, although it is widely used in Australia, taps the high energy content of coal while doing away with the costly and labour-intensive need to mine it first.
Rohan Courtney, a former director of Tullow Oil who is chairman of Clean Coal, said that the potential for the technology was enormous. “There are enormous amounts of coal lying beneath the North Sea which have never been accessed,” he said. “This technology is going to open up the industry again in the UK.”
The sites approved for use stretch up to 10km offshore from Sunderland, Grimsby and Cromer on the shores of the North Sea, Canonbie, near Annan in Dumfries and Galloway on the other side of Scotland, and Swansea Bay, outside the entrance to the Bristol Channel. The combined coal reserves are estimated to be at least one billion tonnes, equivalent to more than one sixth of all the coal consumed in an average year around the world. Global consumption of coal is about 5.8 billion tonnes a year. Total consumption in the UK is about 80 million tonnes a year.
The technique uses two bore holes drilled into a coal seam. The injection well is used to ignite the coal and keep it burning by pumping down oxygen to supply the fire. The other is used to extract a methane-rich synthetic gas that can be used to generate electricity by driving an above-ground power station.
Mr Courtney said that polluting carbon dioxide produced from the burning process could be stripped out and backfilled into the cavities created beneath the surface using a technology that was easier than the carbon capture and storage (CCS) method that is proposed for use by power stations. However, the methane gas produced will also emit carbon dioxide when it is burnt.
Catherine Bond, chief executive, said that Clean Coal planned to conduct seismic and bore-hole surveys over the next 12 to 18 months. If the surveys produced promising results, commercial operations could begin in 2014-15, with each site costing an estimated $250 million (£152 million) to develop.
The projects are likely to prove controversial because the sites are close to to big population centres, such as Swansea and Grimsby. Ms Bond said that the Environment Agency would need to grant permission for the projects before drilling could start and that a public relations campaign was planned to inform local people about the technology and how it worked. She said that the underground fires could be extinguished easily by pumping water down the injection well or by restricting the flow of air.
Opposition to the process in Australia has been modest because the onshore sites lie in remote areas, far from areas with large populations.
UGC technology was invented in Britain about a century ago but has been refined recently through the use of advanced seismic technology and directional drilling developed by the oil industry. Ms Bond said that UGC had become commercially viable in Britain with the advent of this new technology and because high oil prices had improved the economics.
Enormous deposits of coal are known to lie beneath the North Sea, extending from onshore deposits that have been mined in Britain. Offshore exploration for oil has also shown the presence of coal in many areas. Ms Bond said that, within 20 years, UGC could supply a large amount of Britain’s power needs, with some projects being developed far offshore using former oil platforms.
Vast coal deposits lying deep beneath the North Sea will be burnt in situ to generate up to 5 per cent of Britain’s energy needs, under new plans approved by the Government last week.
The UK Coal Authority has awarded licences to Clean Coal, an Anglo-American company, to develop five offshore sites for a technology called Underground Coal Gasification (UGC).
The method, which has not been used on a commercial scale in the UK, although it is widely used in Australia, taps the high energy content of coal while doing away with the costly and labour-intensive need to mine it first.
Rohan Courtney, a former director of Tullow Oil who is chairman of Clean Coal, said that the potential for the technology was enormous. “There are enormous amounts of coal lying beneath the North Sea which have never been accessed,” he said. “This technology is going to open up the industry again in the UK.”
The sites approved for use stretch up to 10km offshore from Sunderland, Grimsby and Cromer on the shores of the North Sea, Canonbie, near Annan in Dumfries and Galloway on the other side of Scotland, and Swansea Bay, outside the entrance to the Bristol Channel. The combined coal reserves are estimated to be at least one billion tonnes, equivalent to more than one sixth of all the coal consumed in an average year around the world. Global consumption of coal is about 5.8 billion tonnes a year. Total consumption in the UK is about 80 million tonnes a year.
The technique uses two bore holes drilled into a coal seam. The injection well is used to ignite the coal and keep it burning by pumping down oxygen to supply the fire. The other is used to extract a methane-rich synthetic gas that can be used to generate electricity by driving an above-ground power station.
Mr Courtney said that polluting carbon dioxide produced from the burning process could be stripped out and backfilled into the cavities created beneath the surface using a technology that was easier than the carbon capture and storage (CCS) method that is proposed for use by power stations. However, the methane gas produced will also emit carbon dioxide when it is burnt.
Catherine Bond, chief executive, said that Clean Coal planned to conduct seismic and bore-hole surveys over the next 12 to 18 months. If the surveys produced promising results, commercial operations could begin in 2014-15, with each site costing an estimated $250 million (£152 million) to develop.
The projects are likely to prove controversial because the sites are close to to big population centres, such as Swansea and Grimsby. Ms Bond said that the Environment Agency would need to grant permission for the projects before drilling could start and that a public relations campaign was planned to inform local people about the technology and how it worked. She said that the underground fires could be extinguished easily by pumping water down the injection well or by restricting the flow of air.
Opposition to the process in Australia has been modest because the onshore sites lie in remote areas, far from areas with large populations.
UGC technology was invented in Britain about a century ago but has been refined recently through the use of advanced seismic technology and directional drilling developed by the oil industry. Ms Bond said that UGC had become commercially viable in Britain with the advent of this new technology and because high oil prices had improved the economics.
Enormous deposits of coal are known to lie beneath the North Sea, extending from onshore deposits that have been mined in Britain. Offshore exploration for oil has also shown the presence of coal in many areas. Ms Bond said that, within 20 years, UGC could supply a large amount of Britain’s power needs, with some projects being developed far offshore using former oil platforms.
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