"These Kids Can't Wait": New Win in Youth Climate Lawsuit in Washington

Common Dreams - Nadia Prupis

Judge orders state Department of Ecology to create new rules to cap emissions by end of 2016

Friday's ruling is "the first time [that] a U.S. court not only recognized the extraordinary harms young people are facing due to climate change, but ordered an agency to do something about it." (Photo: Joe Brusky/flickr/cc)

The young activists suing the U.S. government over its role in climate change scored another victory in court on Friday, as a judge in Seattle ordered the Washington Department of Ecology (DOE) to announce an emissions reduction rule by the end of the year and make recommendations to reach those targets to the state legislature in 2017.
King County Superior Court Judge Hollis Hill also ordered the department to consult with the young plaintiffs on crafting those recommendations.
"This is an urgent situation," Hill said in issuing the order. "These kids can't wait."
The DOE in February withdrew its proposal to cap emissions, following a landmark ruling in November 2015 which found that the state's current standards fail to "preserve, protect, and enhance the air quality for the current and future generations."
Friday's ruling is "the first time [that] a U.S. court not only recognized the extraordinary harms young people are facing due to climate change, but ordered an agency to do something about it," said Andrea Rodgers, an attorney with the Western Environmental Law Center who represents the young plaintiffs. The DOE "is now court-ordered to issue a rule that fulfills its constitutional and public trust duty to ensure Washington does its part to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and protect the planet."

"This is an urgent situation ... these kids can't wait." Judge Hollis R. Hill, Seattle, Washington

The case in Washington is one of several similar legal battles underway in the U.S., all supported by the environmental advocacy group Our Children's Trust, as youth activists take U.S. agencies to court to demand action over climate change. An Oregon judge ruled earlier this month that a complaint filed by more than a dozen young plaintiffs against the federal government—referred to by advocates as "the most important lawsuit on the planet right now"—can go to trial.
"It was absurd for [the DOE] to withdraw its proposed rule to reduce carbon emissions," petitioner Aji Piper, 15, who is taking part in both the state and federal lawsuits, said in a statement on Friday. "Especially after Judge Hill declared last fall that our 'very survival depends upon the will of [our] elders to act now…to stem the tide of global warming.'"
Julia Olson, executive director and chief legal counsel at Our Children's Trust, added, "This case explains why youth around this country, and in several other countries, are forced to bring their governments to court to secure a healthy atmosphere and stable climate. Despite clear scientific evidence and judicial recognition of the urgency of the climate crisis, Washington and most governments across the U.S. and other countries are failing to take correspondingly urgent, science-based action."
"That failure unfairly consigns youth to a disproportionately bleak future against which they can only reasonably ask the courts to step in to address this most sensitive issue of our time," Olson said.

Links

• Youths Secure Second Win In Washington State Climate Lawsuit
• "Landmark Climate Lawsuit: Meet the Youth Activists Suing the U.S. Government & Fossil Fuel Industry"
• VICTORY IN LANDMARK CLIMATE CASE!
• In Wake of WA Climate Rule Withdrawal, Youth Petitioners Return to Court
• Youth Files Constitutional Climate Petition with the Supreme Court of Pakistan
• Colorado Youth File Appeal After Court Places Oil & Gas Development Above Public Health Interests

At Last: Non-Toxic And Cheap Thin-Film Solar Cells For 'Zero-Energy' Buildings

ScienceDaily - University of New South Wales

World's highest efficiency rating achieved for CZTS thin-film solar cells

Dr Xiaojing Hao of UNSW's Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics holding the new CZTS solar cells. Credit: Quentin Jones/UNSW

Summary 'Zero-energy' buildings -- which generate as much power as they consume -- are now much closer after engineers have achieved the world's highest efficiency using flexible solar cells that are non-toxic and cheap to make.

Zero-energy' buildings -- which generate as much power as they consume -- are now much closer after a team at Australia's University of New South Wales achieved the world's highest efficiency using flexible solar cells that are non-toxic and cheap to make.
Until now, the promise of 'zero-energy' buildings been held back by two hurdles: the cost of the thin-film solar cells (used in façades, roofs and windows), and the fact they're made from scarce, and highly toxic, materials.
That's about to change: the UNSW team, led by Dr Xiaojing Hao of the Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics at the UNSW School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, have achieved the world's highest efficiency rating for a full-sized thin-film solar cell using a competing thin-film technology, known as CZTS.
NREL, the USA's National Renewable Energy Laboratory, confirmed this world leading 7.6% efficiency in a 1cm2 area CZTS cell this month.
Unlike its thin-film competitors, CZTS cells are made from abundant materials: copper, zinc, tin and sulphur.
And CZTS has none of the toxicity problems of its two thin-film rivals, known as CdTe (cadmium-telluride) and CIGS (copper-indium-gallium-selenide). Cadmium and selenium are toxic at even tiny doses, while tellurium and indium are extremely rare.
"This is the first step on CZTS's road to beyond 20% efficiency, and marks a milestone in its journey from the lab to commercial product," said Hao, named one of UNSW's 20 rising stars last year. "There is still a lot of work needed to catch up with CdTe and CIGS, in both efficiency and cell size, but we are well on the way."
"In addition to its elements being more commonplace and environmentally benign, we're interested in these higher bandgap CZTS cells for two reasons," said Professor Martin Green, a mentor of Dr Hao and a global pioneer of photovoltaic research stretching back 40 years.
"They can be deposited directly onto materials as thin layers that are 50 times thinner than a human hair, so there's no need to manufacture silicon 'wafer' cells and interconnect them separately," he added. "They also respond better than silicon to blue wavelengths of light, and can be stacked as a thin-film on top of silicon cells to ultimately improve the overall performance."
By being able to deposit CZTS solar cells on various surfaces, Hao's team believe this puts them firmly on the road to making thin-film photovoltaic cells that can be rigid or flexible, and durable and cheap enough to be widely integrated into buildings to generate electricity from the sunlight that strikes structures such as glazing, façades, roof tiles and windows.
However, because CZTS is cheaper -- and easier to bring from lab to commercialisation than other thin-film solar cells, given already available commercialised manufacturing method -- applications are likely even sooner. UNSW is collaborating with a number of large companies keen to develop applications well before it reaches 20% efficiency -- probably, Hao says, within the next few years.
"I'm quietly confident we can overcome the technical challenges to further boosting the efficiency of CZTS cells, because there are a lot of tricks we've learned over the past 30 years in boosting CdTe and CIGS and even silicon cells, but which haven't been applied to CZTS," said Hao.
Currently, thin-film photovoltaic cells like CdTe are used mainly in large solar power farms, as the cadmium toxicity makes them unsuitable for residential systems, while CIGS cells is more commonly used in Japan on rooftops.
First Solar, a US$5 billion behemoth that specialises in large-scale photovoltaic systems, relies entirely on CdTe; while CIGS is the preferred technology of China's Hanergy, the world's largest thin-film solar power company.
Thin-film technologies such as CdTe and CIGS are also attractive because they are physically flexible, which increases the number of potential applications, such as curved surfaces, roofing membranes, or transparent and translucent structures like windows and skylights.
But their toxicity has made the construction industry -- mindful of its history with asbestos -- wary of using them. Scarcity of the elements also renders them unattractive, as price spikes are likely as demand rises. Despite this, the global market for so-called Building-Integrated Photovoltaics (BIPV) is already valued at US$1.6 billion.
Hao believes CZTS's cheapness, benign environmental profile and abundant elements may be the trigger that finally brings architects and builders onboard to using thin-film solar panels more widely in buildings.
Until now, most architects have used conventional solar panels made from crystalline silicon. While these are even cheaper than CZTS cells, they don't offer the same flexibility for curved surfaces and other awkward geometries needed to easily integrate into building designs.

Links

• Higher Solar-Cell Efficiency Achieved With Zinc-Oxide Coating
• Understanding What Makes a Thin Film Solar Cell Efficient
• Thin Film Solar Cells: New World Record for Solar Cell Efficiency
• New Insights Into Power-Generating Windows

Greenland Ice Sheet Melting Has Started Early

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

In a year of startling data pointing to a warming world, the thin blue line in the chart below of Greenland's ice melt was initially dismissed as just too outlandish to be accurate.
Greenland is home to the world's second largest ice mass, containing enough water to lift average sea levels about seven metres if it all melted.

The early-season melting of Greenland ice has scientists worried. Photo: Daniel Beltra, via Catherine Edelman Gallery (Chicago)

So in early April, signs that the giant ice sheets were melting at least a month earlier than typical during the three decades-plus of reliable records stunned scientists at the Danish Meteorological Institute.

"We had to check that our models were still working properly" Peter Langen, a climate scientist at DMI, told Polar Portal earlier this month.

Water lies on part of the glacial ice sheet that covers about 80 per cent of Greenland. Photo: Getty Images

And they were.
Warm air sweeping in from the south-west of Greenland had prompted more than 12 per cent of the ice sheet to register melting.
Weather stations 1840 metres above sea-level reported temperatures of above 3 degrees, conditions that would be considered a warm day in July, let alone April.

Meltwater flows along a glacial river on the Greenland ice sheet last July. Photo: New York Times

"Everything is melting", said Aqqaluk Petersen, a resident of Nuuk, Greenland's capital.
The heatwave, Greenland style, added to other evidence that the top of the world continues to warm about twice as fast as the rest of the planet.

'The big show'
"Greenland is really the big show when it comes to ice melt," said Matt King, Professor of Polar Geodesy and an ARC Future Fellow at the University of Tasmania. "It's probably losing as much ice as all the small glaciers around the world combined, and probably more than Antarctica.
"Greenland is being eaten away from away from above and from the edges."
Arctic air temperatures have risen about two degrees since the 1960s. Ocean temperatures are also warming, thawing Greenland glaciers in contact with surrounding seas.
Since satellite records date only from the 1970s, some natural fluctuations may be in play, he said. Still, Greenland's early April warmth was consistent with other signals of a warming planet.
"Such a big spike in melting so early is in complete agreement with what you'd expect when we heat the atmosphere so much," Professor King said, referring to the impact from humans burning fossil fuels and releasing other greenhouse gases.
The Arctic sea ice, for instance, also set a record low maximum range this year, setting up a shorter-than-usual melt season in spring and summer, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Center. Less ice also fosters more warming since there is less reflection of solar radiation back into space, with more of the warmth absorbed by the now ice-free waters.
Warmer conditions mean there are more days when polar temperatures are positive, meaning that they is more melting of surface ice.

Sea-level impact
While April's early warm spurt in Greenland eased back, the loss of ice mass has continued, running at about two months ahead of the average for the period since 1990, according to the DMI.

The loss of a gigatonne of ice per day amounts to about one cubic kilometre, or one billion tonnes, of water.
For the 2003-2011 period, Greenland net annual ice loss was 234 cubic km of water. That's enough to lift global sea levels by an average of 0.65 mm, the DMI said.
"This process of mass loss started around 1990 and has accelerated since the year 2000," the Polar Portal said. "The mass loss in recent years is approximately four times greater than it was before 2000."
Professor King said that one effect of early melting is that the surface snow turns to water, exposing the darker glacial ice below. That ice has a lower albedo effect, trapping in more warmth and adding to the melting trend.
The warm start to April, meanwhile, has continued for much of the month, leaving Greenland on course for a month well-above normal temperatures:

Updated April surface temperature anomalies show nearly all of #Greenland averaging at least 4°C above normal 

Links

• Greenland's ice is melting
• Scorching start to 2016
• Emerging threat in the oceans
• Emerging threat from climate change: ocean oxygen levels are starting to drop
• 'Perilous': Bureau of Meteorology boss Rob Vertessy exits with climate warning