Op-Ed - Air freight greenhouse gas emissions up 25% since 2019

Journal Article Link

Video - Carbon Compounds - Introduction

Journal Article - Net Zero: Science, Origins, and Implications

Journal Article Link

Journal Article - Estimating CO2 emissions for 108000 European cities

Journal Article Link

Journal Article - Global Carbon Budget 2021

Journal Article Link

Journal Article - Long-Term Variation in Carbonaceous Components of PM2.5 from 2012 to 2021 in Delhi

Journal Article Link

Report - How the Keeling Curve will need to bend to limit global warming to 1.5C (by Carbon Brief)

Full article Link

The Keeling Curve is an iconic graph showing how levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) have been building up in the atmosphere, driving an increase in global temperatures. The Keeling Curve: atmospheric CO2 concentrations measured at Mauna Loa, Hawaii from 1958 to 2021. Dark blue curve shows monthly data with the seasonal cycle, yellow lines illustrate trends at different times. Data from Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego. Chart by Joe Goodman for Carbon Brief

Journal Article - Achieving net-zero emissions in China’s passenger transport sector through regionally tailored mitigation strategies

Matertial Footprint of Countries

The 20 Countries With The World’s Biggest "Material Footprints".
Fast Co-Exist, September 20th, 2013

Sustainable economic development requires pulling off a difficult feat: increasing people’s wealth while also reducing their material impact on the planet. It's not a trick society has mastered yet. But the world is apparently digging itself into a deeper hole than most experts ever imagined.

In the past, some measures have shown that richer nations have managed to grow wealth and reduce impact in certain scenarios. Economists call this feat the "decoupling" of wealth and consumption. But this might really be a red herring, according to a new analysis.

Researchers from the University of New South Wales, CSIRO, and the University of Sydney calculated a new measure they call the “material footprint” of 186 nations and published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences recently.

The researchers made a point to include the true resources that go into all of the goods that a country imports. That means not only the resources that make it into a finished product, but also the materials--from biomass to metal ores to fossil fuels--that go into enabling the complicated web of global trade. "It's very similar to a carbon footprint," says Tommy Wiedmann, the study's lead author. "It's exactly the same principle."

"As an example you might think of Japan exporting cars to the U.S.," Wiedmann explains to Co.Exist. The existing indicator measures consumption in terms of trade statistics, and trade statistics show that the U.S. consumes a certain tonnage of cars per year. "But further upstream in the production processes, somewhere in Japan or in another country there would be mining of iron ore to produce steel," Wiedmann says. "Maybe you get one ton of steel out of 1,000 tons of iron ore, and this amount of material of iron ore is actually not recorded in trade statistics."

They learned that a whopping two-fifths of all global raw materials were extracted for the purpose of exporting goods in 2008. Overlooking figures like this has allowed countries that are huge importers to seem like they’ve slowed their growing environmental footprints.

In the new rankings, China’s material footprint is the highest--twice as large as the U.S., which is in second place. Much of China’s resource consumption is linked to construction materials. But taking into account population size, Australia has the highest material footprint. Its per-person material footprint, at 35 tons a person, is more than double the average developing world nation. India’s is at the lower end at 3.7 tons per person. South Africa is the only country that has demonstrated "absolute" decoupling.

All industrialized nations show the same pattern: As GDP grew over the last decades, their material footprint grew in parallel. A common indicator that looks only at “domestic material consumption” is what previously showed a more optimistic (and incorrect) decoupling trend. The researchers write:
 “As wealth grows, countries tend to reduce their domestic portion of materials extraction through international trade, whereas the overall mass of material consumption generally increases. With every 10% increase in gross domestic product, the average national MF increases by 6%. Our findings call into question the sole use of current resource productivity indicators in policy making.”

And it's just going to get worse: "There have been some projections of how economic growth will develop in some Asian countries," says Wiedman." And some very rough estimates have suggested that if we continue on the path that we've been on for a while that by 2050 we will use up to four times as much [natural resources] as we currently use."

Data Availability for Measuring and Reporting Transport related Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Chinese Cities (GIZ)

China, one of the most rapidly growing countries in the world, is experiencing rapid and substantial growth in economic and motorized mobility. Transport related energy consumption and pollution problems are poised to soar further. In 2008, consumption of fossil fuels in the transport sector accounted for 36% of national total fossil fuel consumption.

Link to the GIZ Sustainable Transport Site

A fundamental requirement in the effort to control GHG-emissions and pollutants in any form is to quantify the emissions being released. A robust approach to measure energy savings and emission reductions in the end of the designed schedule is an essential element in reviewing the performance. A reliable and transparent model should be applied to track the emission reductions, but so far this kind of model is not publicly available in China.

The report on “Data Availability for Measuring and Reporting Transport related Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Chinese Cities” by the Institute of Comprehensive Transportation (ICT) and GIZ assesses availability and characteristics of data required for establishing a GHG emission quantification model in Chinese cities.

The Sino-German Climate Change Programme is implemented by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) on behalf of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ) and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC).

Within the Low Carbon Transport Development component, the Programme supports national institutions in developing a climate protection strategy in the transport sector and to implement measures and incentive structures with a special focus on urban transportation. The Low Carbon Transport Development component therefore supports the development of tools to quantify and monitor GHG emissions in the Chinese transport sector both at the national and urban level.

Biomass 'Insanity' May Threaten EU Carbon Targets

today..
From Mr. Lalloobhoy Battliwala

"Around half of the EU’s target for providing 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020 will be made up by biomass energy from sources such as wood, waste and agricultural crops and residues, according to EU member states’ national action plans.

Wood makes up the bulk of this target and is counted by the EU as ‘carbon neutral’, giving it access to subsidies, feed-in tariffs and electricity premiums at national level.

But because there is a time lag between the carbon debt that is created when a tree is cut down, transported and combusted – and the carbon credit that occurs when a new tree has grown to absorb as much carbon as the old one – biomass will increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the interim.
Where were these folks the last 15 years??? Rather, for all their post-middle school years?

And of course, they possibly haven't heard of Kirk Smith. Even if EU folks don't burn their wood in open, inefficient fires, I am sure it's not all in power plants either.

Oh, well. I thought boreal forests are net warmers (since they reduce the albedo effect by reducing snow exposure as they expand). Perhaps European forests should be converted into charcoal and exported to Africa, where forests will re-grow faster and have a real sink contribution. "Renewable biomass" means you can grow it anywhere.

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Article was published on Euractiv, April 2nd, 2012
Biomass "Insanity" May Threathen EU's Carbon Targets

The EU’s emissions reduction target for 2020 could be facing an unlikely but grave obstacle, according to a growing number of scientists, EU officials and NGOs: the contribution of biomass to the EU’s renewable energy objectives for 2020.

On 29 March, a call was launched at the European Parliament for Brussels to reconsider its carbon accounting rules for biomass emissions, and EurActiv has learned that the issue is provoking widespread alarm in policy-making circles.

“We’re paying people to cut their forests down in the name of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and yet we are actually increasing them. No-one is apparently bothering to do any analysis about this,” one Brussels insider told EurActiv.

“They’re just sleepwalking into this insanity,” he added.

Around half of the EU’s target for providing 20% of energy from renewable sources by 2020 will be made up by biomass energy from sources such as wood, waste and agricultural crops and residues, according to EU member states’ national action plans.

Wood makes up the bulk of this target and is counted by the EU as ‘carbon neutral’, giving it access to subsidies, feed-in tariffs and electricity premiums at national level. 

But because there is a time lag between the carbon debt that is created when a tree is cut down, transported and combusted – and the carbon credit that occurs when a new tree has grown to absorb as much carbon as the old one – biomass will increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations in the interim.

Carbon neutrality

“It is wrong to assume that bio-energy is ‘carbon neutral’ by definition, it depends what you replace it with” Professor Detlef Sprinz, the Chairman of the independent Scientific Committee advising the European Environment Agency (EEA) told EurActiv.

“If you replace a growing forest by energy crops under the current accounting rules of the EU, you may very well increase greenhouse gas emissions.”
An opinion of the EEA's Scientific Committee last September, argued that “legislation that encourages substitution of fossil fuels by bioenergy, irrespective of the biomass source, may even result in increased carbon emissions – thereby accelerating global warming.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) also says that biomass can only be considered carbon neutral if all land use impacts have been considered first.

The EU is aware of the issue and a proposal that could impose binding criteria for biomass for energy production, delayed many times, had been expected later this year but may be delayed again.

Forest-rich Scandinavian countries oppose binding biomass criteria – Finland and Sweden produce 20% and 16% of their energy from biomass – while industrial interests tend to support criteria that ignore combustion emissions and carbon stock losses from burning wood.

Sustainability criteria are one climate area in which the US leads Europe. The Environmental Protection Agency there has already conducted a public consultation on how to account for emissions from biomass burning, and submitted a legislative proposal.

EU despair

Several EU officials spoken to by EurActiv expressed despair at the lack of enthusiasm for tougher accounting rules by the EU’s energy directorate, which holds the biomass portfolio.

“I don’t think they have any intention of considering the carbon emissions from wood combustion. They are not convinced that it’s an important enough issue,” one said.

Asked whether the current pattern of biomass production and use would prevent a 20% reduction of carbon emissions by 2020, he replied “the certainty is 100% because there is hardly any [wood-based] biomass that wouldn’t increase emissions. The question is for how long?”

There are no reliable accounting figures measuring the length of time that Europe will suffer a ‘carbon deficit’ caused by the use of biomass for energy, in particular harvesting timber for that.

But “the risk of having emissions for too long I think is very high,” the official said. “I see a very significant risk that we will increase emissions for several decades to come.”

Carbon deficit

There is consensus that when a carbon deficit extends beyond 30-50 years, it is no longer of use in the EU's present strategy to decarbonise Europe by 2050.

One report last month by the US-based Southern Environmental Law Center using woody biomass for a modelled expansion of power generation, found that it would take 35-50 years to provide an ongoing carbon reduction benefit.

Biomass from composted waste or agricultural residues is a highly efficient way of reducing carbon
emissions, but critics say that the EU has vague and ill-conceived definitions of what constitutes residue in many cases.

It does not, for instance, take into account the impact that removing crop residues such as straw can have in depleting the soil's carbon stock, with resulting increases in fertiliser and irrigation use, and lower yields.

Equally, a felled tree instantly produces wood with a higher carbon footprint than coal because burning a 100-year-old tree will release all the carbon it has absorbed into the atmosphere, and it its replacement will take 100 years to reabsorb the same amount of carbon.

The EU’s current accounting rules do not distinguish between residues or woods used in this way, and more sustainable biomass, terming them both ‘carbon neutral’ without consideration of bio-recovery times .

“These calculations have just not been done,” an EU source told EurActiv. “No one has looked at this in sufficient seriousness.”

Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Assessment Tools from SLoCAT

Project Design Document for the Delhi Metro Phase II CDM project.

World Bank designed ROADEO (Road Emissions Optimization), software for calculating GHG emissions at the planning, design, and construction phases, calculator user manual, and a report on GHG emissions generated by road construction and rehabilitation activities, which is classified by work categories and includes analysis of local and international best practices.

ALMEC. 2009. “Guidelines for Preliminary Estimations of Carbon Emissions Reduction in Urban Transport Projects.” Final report and calculators. May 2009. Series of Excel based calculators on BRT, Bio Diesel and Idling developed at request of the World Bank.

The UNEP Risoe Tool for Selecting CDM Methodologies & Technologies – www.cdm-meth.org, gives an overview of the technologies used in CDM projects and the sectors (including transportation) where they are applicable as well as the methodologies and their applicability for every subtype.

Emission Reduction from Bus Rapid Transit and Pedestrian Improvements in Jakarta, Progress Report 2008 - 2010. Report produced by Pelangi as part of MoU with ITDP in which the applicability of CDM methodology AM0031 is reviewed for the Trans-Jakarta BRT.

Manual for calculating Greenhouse Gas Benefits of GEF projects. The Manual provides step-by-step guide for development of baseline, impact estimation and calibration of transport projects across a wide range of interventions including transport efficiency improvement, public transport, non-motorized transport, transport demand management, and comprehensive transport strategies.

Guidelines for Calculating GHG Benefits from Clean Technology Fund Investments in the Transport Sector. CTF co-financed operations in transport will be required to calculate GHG emissions reductions resulting from the investment. Annex 3 in this document summarizes the guidelines to be applied in CTF cofinanced operations.

This ADB evaluation knowledge brief provides new tools to measure how different transport projects funded by ADB affect carbon emissions.

Based on a case study in India ADB also published a report on measuring GHG emissions from road projects.

The Ecological Transport Information Tool (EcoTransIT) calculates environmental impacts of any freight transport. Thereby it is possible to determine the energy consumption, CO2 and exhaust emissions transported by rail, road, ship and aircraft in any combination. EcoTransIT is free of charge for any non-commerical use. http://www.ecotransit.org/index.en.phtml

UNEP has launched a cleaner fleet management toolkit which evaluates the impact of vehicle fleets on environment, including climate change, and human health. It can also be used to develop and assess the impact of corrective actions.

IPCC Guidelines for National Greenhouse Gas Inventories, Chapter 3: Mobile Combustion. This document describes the guidelines Non-Annex I Parties are expected to use for estimating and reporting their national GHG inventories.

IGES has been working closely with researchers at Nihon University in Tokyo, Japan and associated organizations in Thailand and the Philippines to develop such a tool. “Mainstreaming a Transport Co-benefits Approach: A Guide to Evaluating Transport Projects” represents the result of these efforts. The guidelines or TCG, provide a set of user-friendly, step-by-step instructions for policymakers, transport planners, and development specialists interested in quantifying co-benefits of transport projects in Asia.

CHANGER is the greenhouse gas calculator developed by the International Road Federation (IRF) specifically for road infrastructure projects. The tool is very flexible allowing estimation of GHG emissions for each of the construction operations performed or for the entire project. The results are expressed in tons of CO2 equivalent. A video presentation of CHANGER illustrating its main features is available on www.irfghg.org

Methodology for Determining GHG Emission Reductions Through Bicycle Sharing Projects. This methodology is applicable for project activities under the Verified Carbon Standard that reduce GHG emissions through the usage of public sharing-based bicycle projects which introduce an alternative mode of transportation to displace other, more carbon intensive modes.

Assessment of Greenhouse Gas Analysis Techniques for Transportation Projects. This report developed on behalf of American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Standing Committee on Environment identifies a total of 17 tools or methods that can be used to analyze the GHG implications of transportation projects. Existing tools are categorized into three groups: (a) Transportation GHG calculation tools, (b) Transportation/emissions strategy analysis tools, and (c) Energy/economic forecasting tools.

Perspective on CO2. Detailed phased approach to calculate emissions from freight and logistics. (In Dutch). English summary available at http://issuu.com/sdcom/docs/co2inperspective

NTM. Online emission calculator for road, rail, sea and air freight.

Methodology for Transport Energy Efficiency from Light Weight Pallets
This methodology outlines procedures to estimate the avoided net greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions resulting from project activities involving the use of pallets - the flat, portable structures that support goods during handling, transportation and storage - that are lighter in weight than their conventional alternatives for freight transport.

World's largest clean cookstoves program in India

today..
From Mr. Lalloobhoy Battliwala

An ambitious pro-poor cleaner energy plan is under way in India.

The Energy chapter of the most recent Economic Survey describes (in the excerpt below) a vision of extending new LPG service to 55 million customers by 2015, to reach in total 75% of the population. (That suggests current household coverage of 50%, a bit surprising. Anyway, some 50 million households will still need kerosene and perhaps even improved woodstoves if available then.)

The avoided GHG emissions are staggering - additional 500 million tons CO2-e per year roughly in gross terms including all GHGs and black carbon, using 20-year GWPs, and ignoring the 'renewable biomass' theology). Benefits in terms of avoided disease and death - and improvements in the quality of life gained - incalculable.

And there is a particular capital subsidy program under consideration for Below Poverty Line households - some 20 million at around $30 each or $600 m total, HALF of which from the mandated CSR activities on the Indian oil companies.

For about the same sum - $600 m - financed in roughly the same manner - a half from the oil companies, the remainder from the budget (or other grant sources) - and the same period (if not less), about the same number (20 million) of BPL users of kerosene lighting (off-grid or victims of unreliable grid) can be given capital subsidies for changing to solar lanterns. (Say ~$20 each to BPL families on the grid to ~$40 each to BPL families off-grid).

And unlike the LPG program - which has a running budget of some $3.5 billion a year of price subsidy - there will be no operating subsidies. (Total kerosene and LPG "under-recoveries" will hit almost $10 b this year.

Rs 3 billion (~$600 m) price tag might also appeal the Finance Minister. (Because Pranab Mukherjee says 3 is his favorite number.)

Another measure of my ignorance and silliness. (Worrying about cleaner energy for the poor or saving the climate; what else do YOU worry about when vacationing like I am? :-)).

Note for non-Indians: Lakh = 100k; Crore = 100 lakhs = 10 m. ~ 45 Rs/US$

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Rajiv Gandhi Gramin LPG Vitaran Yojana (RGGLVY)

11.48 The 'Vision-2015' adopted for the liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) sector, inter-alia, focuses on raising the population coverage of LPG in rural areas and areas where coverage is low. The RGGLVY for small-size LPG distribution agencies was launched on 16 October 2009. This scheme targets coverage of 75 per cent of the population by 2015 by release of 5.5 crore new LPG connections. Oil marketing companies (OMCs) have issued advertisements to set up 2329 LPG distributors in 22 States, namely Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Bihar, Chattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Manipur, Mizoram, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Tripura, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, and Pondicherry. Out of this, 75 LPG distributors have already been commissioned. Selection for the rest of the locations is in progress as per policy. The price of administered pricing mechanism (APM) gas produced by ONGC and OIL has been increased from June 2010 to the level of US$ 4.2/mmbtu, less royalty, which is equal to the price of gas produced by NELP operators.

Free LPG Connections to BPL Rural Households

11.49 A proposal for providing one-time financial assistance to BPL households for acquiring new LPG connections is under consideration of the Government. Under the proposed scheme, the Government and Oil Marketing Companies would provide one-time assistance of Rs. 1400 for acquiring a new LPG connection to a BPL family. The scheme would cover all eligible households in the BPL list of the State Government/Union Territory. About 32-40 lakh new LPG connections are to be released annually under this scheme.

11.50 The annual financial implication of the scheme is estimated to be Rs. 490 crore. The proposed budgetary support has been restricted to the extent of 50 per cent of the total funds required. The remaining 50 per cent would be partly drawn from the Corporate Social Responsibility Funds (CSRFs) of the six major oil companies, namely ONGC, IOCL, BPCL, HPCL, OIL, and GAIL and partly borne by the three oil marketing companies (OMCs) namely IOCL, HPCL, and BPCL in the ratio of LPG connections released to BPL households by each company. It is expected that the OMCs will incur Rs. 6.00 crore during the current financial year.

China's Urban Low Carbon Future in Shanghai

Article from World Changing on November 1st, 2010

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The Shanghai Expo officially closed yesterday with pomp, circumstance, and a confirmation of the city as the planet's primary hope for a low-carbon future.

"Eco-friendly development and dissemination of renewable energy sources and new materials will influence the way we live and will lead the course of industrial development in the future," said China's Premier Wen Jiabao to the closing Expo Summit contingent of domestic and foreign dignitaries (eight heads of state), Nobel Prize winners and business leaders.

The World Expo, the world's largest in history with 73 million attending, for the first time in 159 years focused on cities, sustainable ones that is. China's plans for 350-600 million more urban residents by 2050 threatens to tip the earth's scales in terms of climate change and the economy so much that China is now focused on a fifth global industrial wave: the low-carbon or green economy.

"The low-carbon economy is a new industrial revolution," said Sir Nicholas Stern, Chairman of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics. "Low-carbon growth is cleaner, safer, far more attractive while high-carbon growth will kill itself. China is well placed for this industrial revolution."

Stern, author of the groundbreaking 2006 "Stern Review: the Economics of Climate Change", was referring to China's new national pilot program announced this summer by its all-powerful National Development Reform Commission for five low-carbon provinces and eight low-carbon cities.

One of the low-carbon cities, Baoding, for instance, within the last three years added 20,000 new jobs in wind, PV solar ( the city of one million is home to Yingli Solar, among other renewable start-ups), and other renewable energy technologies. It's also the site of large-scale energy efficiency and renewable energy installations in everything from building-integrated solar to streetlights. The new national pilot programs are expected to pick up the pace and provide a template for the rest of the nation's provincial and city low-carbon transformations.

Throughout its six-month run, the Shanghai Expo featured numerous forums on urban sustainability. Meanwhile, its pavilions employed many new green technologies in design and architecture. More than 500 new technologies in solar, heat pumps, energy efficiency, transportation and advanced material were developed as part of the Expo, according to ShiFang Tang, Technical Office Vice Director for the Shanghai Expo Bureau.

The massive China Pavilion and the country's "theme" pavilions on sustainable cities and urban best practices repeatedly and effectively emphasized how the challenges of climate change, pollution and growing consumer consumption can be met with more advanced urban planning, green technology innovation and citizen education.

The displays and creativity were the best I've experienced, anywhere, in terms of sustainability information, education and multi-media. For instance, one entire building was devoted to four real families living in the cities of four different contenents, Australia, North America, Africa and China. The exhibit demonstrated through video, waxed figures (the mostly Chinese crowds especially loved these) and other physical displays how each family lived and what they did for work, fun, and school. At the same time it taught people experiencing the multi-level walk-through how much each family consumed in terms of resources, even land, and how that impacted climate change; carbon or ecological footprinting education for the masses.

The takeaway is that China is serious about climate change as a threat to the world and itself, and it intends to capitalize on this inevitability with all its might. China's National Development Reform Commsision's low carbon pilot projects comprise 27 percent of the nation's population, and about one-third of its total economic output. The new low-carbon pilot projects span not only provincial and city planning and operations, but also industrial, economic and social planning, including education. In short, the whole ball of wax: "China will accelerate the model of sustainable development where nature, the planet and people can survive and thrive," said China's Premier Wen Jiabao at the Expo Summit's closing ceremonies.

It will be a tough path, indeed. Only one day after industrial controls were lifted that were in place for six months during the Expo in order to reduce regional air pollution, the air quality in Shanghai has already gone from crystal clear to disturbingly smoggy. As Stern pointed out to a rapt audience at the Shanghai Expo Summit, China will need to reduce its projected total greenhouse gas emissions from 35 billion tons in 2030 to 20 billion tons by 2050 if the world will have any chance of realizing the 2 degree Celsius maximum global temperature increase agreed to with the 2009 Copenhagen Accord.

China, if it continues on its current trajectory of yearly greenhouse gas emission increases, will by 2030, according to Stern, account for 50 percent of the world's greenhouse gas "budget" under Copenhagen while being home to only 17-18 percent of the world's population.

"New green investments will help China continue its lead in the green race that has already begun," Stern predicted. "Green policies are at the heart of the 12th Five-year Plan (the nation's economic master plan for the near future, a new version which was recently drafted), showing the world what is possible."

Meanwhile, Shanghai, China's largest and most cosmopolitan city, is deconstructing many of its Expo buildings for reuse in other parts of the nation, and also for other bidders outside China so that its Expo theme of "Better City, Better Life" gets a second and maybe even more lives.

Warren Karlenzig is president of Common Current, an internationally active consultancy based in San Anselmo, California. He is a Fellow at the Post-Carbon Institute and co-author of a forthcoming United Nations manual on global sustainable city planning and management.

Inforgraphics: Powering the Earth (CNN)

CNN presents an interactive map of carbon emissions and energy consumption across the world



The platform used for this infographics is similar to GAPMINDER, which I recommend that you all see. This demonstrates the power of having access to information and putting it in a form that all can understand.

"Unveiling the beauty of statistics for a fact based world view", Dr. Hans Rosling

Copenhagen's Carbon Debt = GHG's of 100,000 Ethiopians (Scientific American)

December 18th, 2009 - Scientific American

How many greenhouse gas emissions does negotiating a climate change treaty take?

That's the sound of climate change negotiations—and CO2 being released. All this talking is a seemingly significant source of greenhouse gas emissions and not just because negotiators have traveled to Copenhagen from all corners of the globe.

Whether it be the jets of world leaders—or shutting down the city to proceed in motorcades—transportation contributes 25 percent of global emissions. Then there's the vital warm and cozy hotels to house us here in this wintry town. In fact, the government of Denmark estimates that this climate conference will produce in its two weeks the equivalent greenhouse gas emissions of more than 600,000 Ethiopians.

The bulk of that is the more than 46,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide that comes just from all the flights into and out of Copenhagen airport. But the Danes have a plan. They've sent enough cash to Bangladesh to replace 20 old, heavily polluting brick factories with more modern facilities, which will lead to an annual savings of some 100,000 metric tons of CO2.

Of course, the only thing that would really justify all this "hot air" is a global, binding, verifiable, equitable agreement to combat climate change. But achieving that is a lot harder than buying a new brick factory in Bangladesh.

--David Biello, from Copenhagen
Scientific American

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More on the Dhaka Brick Kilns

The SIM-air working paper, SIM-21-2009, presents the results from the dispersion modeling of the brick kiln cluster emissions and their impact on the air quality in Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Image below presents monthly average PM2.5 concentrations in Dhaka, Bangladesh, with the brick manufacturing season (October-March) separated, which account for ~40-50% of the observed PM pollution in Dhaka city. Click on the image to enlarge view.

Low Carbon Transport in Asia (Earthscan)

Low Carbon Transport in Asia - Strategies for Optimizing Co-benefits
Edited By Eric Zusman, Ancha Srinivasan and Shobhakar Dhakal (IGES)

This publication is in the press. The Hyderabad co-benefit study (co-authored with Dr. Ramani from APPCB) is presented as one the case studies.

This book is essential reading for transport policy makers, planners, and researchers concerned with low carbon transport, climate change and development in Asia and the wider world.

The introductory section makes the case for co-benefits in developing Asia's transport sector. The second section features analytical frameworks to identify strategies with potential co-benefits, offering new findings on black carbon and dieselization. The third section grounds the analytic work in case studies on fuel switching in Pakistan, urban planning in Bandung, Indonesia, congestion charges in Beijing, vehicle restraints in Hanoi and bus rapid transit in Jakarta. A final section examines how the climate regime can help transform a rapidly motorizing Asia into a climate-friendly Asia.

Cities can learn from comparing their carbon footprints (Economist)

An article in the Economist (September 28th, 2009) "Cities can learn from comparing their carbon footprints" presents a good summary of a paper published in Environment Science and Technology titled "Greenhouse Gas Emissions from Global Cities".

The cities compared in the study are four were in North America (Denver City and County, Los Angeles County, New York City and the Greater Toronto Area). Four were in Europe (Barcelona City, the Canton of Geneva, the Greater London Authority area and the Greater Prague Region). The other two were in Asia (Bangkok) and Africa (Cape Town).

A similar paper 24-2009, "Motorized Passenger Travel in Urban India: Emissions & Co-benefits Analysis" paper presents the emissions analysis of the motorized “in-city” passenger travel from twenty cities in India, covering

• the current trends in four modes of transport (passenger cars, motorcycles, 3 wheelers, and buses)
• estimated energy consumption for the assumed growth patterns, and
  
• possible co-benefits of three combined scenarios (public transport, policy reforms, and non-motorized transport).
  

The cities included in this analysis are Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Kanpur, Agra, Pune, Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Jaipur, Surat, Pondicherry, Bhubaneswar, Panaji, Patna, Kochi, Nagpur, and Guwahati.

This emphasizes the need to share information and learn from experiences across the world and between cities.

Lord Nick Stern Comparing China and the Western World

This article is from Wall Street Journal "Stern Truths: Some Parts of China Have Western-Style Emissions" and an interesting comment below.

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When it comes to comparing countries’ greenhouse-gas emissions, lots of developing countries prefer to use per-capita emissions, rather than absolute emissions. That makes India and China look pretty tame, and countries such as the U.S. and Australia pretty awful.

Plenty of rich-country diplomats bristle at such talk, most recently Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in India. Today in Beijing, Nicholas Stern offered another reason why per-capita emissions might not be a very useful yardstick.

Lord Stern, the former chief economist of the World Bank and author of a reknowned report on the cost of tackling climate change, was speaking in Beijing today. Much of his talk revolved around the usual climate-speak: China has to play ball one way or another with global efforts to tackle climate change, and the West can help China get there.

But he also noted something important: There are parts of China that are starting to look very Western indeed—when it comes to the amount of greenhouse gases they produce. AFP reports:

“There are many parts of China where emissions intensity and emissions per capita are looking much like some of the richer countries in Europe,” [Lord Stern] said in a speech that laid out his predictions on global warming.

He said there are 13 regions with higher per-capita emissions than France, and six with higher per-capita emissions than the U.K. (None, apparently, have yet caught up with Australian or American levels.) These are the countries, remember, that are being asked to underwrite China’s transition to a cleaner economy. Lord Stern has also come out lately in favor of the West paying for emissions from Chinese factories, and also for limiting atmospheric carbon-dioxide levels to 350 parts per million, a really tall order.

Why does the regional difference matter? Those “dirtier” regions are presumably the more urban and industrialized bits of China, precisely the parts of the country responsible for the bulk of China’s absolute greenhouse-gas emissions and economic growth. They are also the regions expected to grow the most through migrations from the countryside over the next 20 years.

In other words, when it comes to the global climate debate, there’s not one “China,” with a relatively low level of greenhouse-gas emissions which could grow by leaps and bounds before ever coming close to American or European levels of emissions.

There are several Chinas—and one, in particular, is already on par with rich countries which do have obligations under the Kyoto Protocol to reduce emissions and which are being asked to shoulder much of the burden of China’s economic transformation.

Something to keep in mind as the climate-policy poker game continues in the months before the big December summit in Copenhagen.

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A comment on the WSJ blog:

That fact that anyone believes there is a single China on anything is still one of the more interesting pieces of this debate.

OF COURSE Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou are going to have the highest contribution from a personal consumption sense. these are properous cities where residents began driving cars, buying larger reseidential properties, and enjoying the life of happy consumers before anyone else.

Take a deeper dive, and there are probably 15-20 other cities who are the provincial capitals (Nanjing, Tianjin, Chengdu, Xian, Wuhan, Xiamen, etc) that are growing at rates (GDP, buildings, and people) faster than the first three mentioned. These are the cities that are going to absorb the next 400 million that are expecteed to move to the city over the next 15-20 years.

Dive a bit deeper than that though, and that is where you will find American emissions. Not American “like” emissions”. America’s Emissions. Call it a carbon trade if you like, but a visit to the city of Shantou, Foshan, Dongguan, or any one of China’s industrial clusters, and one will find goods that are being produced for American consumers in carbon belching factories. Many of which are American owned and managed.

Which brings me to the point that the previous anon poster made. Per capita carbon rates are not an accurate measure of anything excepted the media’s misunderstanding of the issues. On the one hand, no one is calculation the carbon footprint of American consumers that can be found in China’s factories, and no one is accurately determining the various carbon footprints that exist in China…. and those are just two of the major adulterations that exist before you take into consieration the fact that carbon readings from either State as a whole are just guesses.

Where that leaves us in the COP15 is in a position where little will be achieved. there are rumors of a backroom deal between the US and China on developing technologies, but if anyone is looking for a “cap” and “trade” deal, I think they should look elsewhere. The two States operate in different realities of the same issue, so developing a solution is near impossible when only focusing on “carbon” as it is not the real problem.. it is the byproduct of many problems.

Microsoft Joins the Climate Change Calculations - Project 2 Degrees

While the Microsoft founder Bill Gates and a dozen other scientists have raised eyebrows by submitting patent applications for a technology to reduce the danger of approaching hurricanes by cooling ocean temperatures, the global software firm has created an online tool called Project 2 Degrees for cities across the world to monitor their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions.

The carbon footprint calculations and compensating ones (individuals and firms) footprint by buying appropriate carbon credit is already a known practice. However, the Project 2 Degrees for cities takes on different challenge of inventorizing carbon in the cities - where the the real action is.

A article recently published in Foreign Policy in Focus quotes "Cities Can Save the Earth" (May, 2009). Though the article tends to focus more on the transport oriented protection of the cities, the underlying message is clear - the protection comes from less consumption. Lesser the consumption, lesser the demand for energy, lesser the emissions, lesser the pollution, and sustainable the city and healthy the people. Alternet in April 2009 wrote, "Consumption, not population is our main environmental threat".

Cities account for only 2 percent of the worlds land mass but produce up to 75 percent of worldwide greenhouse gas emissions, so became the focus for Project 2 Degrees that is a collaboration with software designers Autodesk and the Clinton Climate Initiative.

Currently 40 cities are participating in this program called "C40 group", with New York and Sydney as pilot studies. Other cities in the program include cities Delhi, Bangkok, Manila, Sao Paulo, etc. Check the best practices section for examples of low carbon applications.