24/08/2016

Seven Charts Showing How Countries’ Carbon Footprints Compare

Carbon Brief - Sophie Yeo

Oil refinery, chemical and petrochemical plant at night. Photo: zorazhuang/E+/Getty Images.
The UN's climate body, which was responsible for the Paris Agreement adopted in December 2015, has long been collecting detailed data on greenhouse gas emissions.
When countries met in 2014 for their annual climate conference, they decided that it would be easier to track progress if some of the data from developed countries — annex one countries in UN jargon — was collected together in one document.
The UN produced such a document for the first time in 2015, which compiled emissions data from 2013. At this time, only 31 countries had submitted their data.
The UN has now released the latest version, with emissions compiled for 2014, and this time including 43 countries. Carbon Brief has mined the latest document for the most interesting nuggets of information.
All data is self-reported and, therefore, based on a range of different assumptions and methods, although countries do undergo a check-up by expert review teams. This process of data collection is seen as key to ensuring that each country is sticking to its commitments.
Greenhouse gases come from a variety of sources, including power generation, industry, cars, planes, aviation and leakages. Not every potential source of pollution contributes equally to a country's emissions.
Knowing the composition of a country's carbon footprint provides an insight into its economy, and also highlights which sectors it should be targeting as it tackles climate change.
Oil and gas platform. Photo: curraheeshutter/iStock/Getty Images.
Transportation
Road transport accounts for around 20% of countries' footprints, on average. Emissions are estimated based on fuel sales in each country, which explains why transport makes up 56% of Luxembourg's total footprint. Vehicles entering the country to buy fuel, thanks to low VAT and excise duty, raise its emissions on paper, even though the fuel is probably burnt outside the country's borders.

Road transport's share of total emissions in developed countries (%), 2014. Source: UNFCCC. Chart by Carbon Brief, using Highcharts.

The data for aviation tells a different story. Countries have reported the share of total emissions taken up by domestic aviation — that is, flights that stay within the country's borders.
Here, Norway takes the top spot, with 2.4% of its total emissions taken up by domestic flights. Hungary and Luxembourg, which run no internal flights, emit nothing in this category.

Percentage share of total emissions from domestic aviation for developed countries, 2014. Source: UNFCCC. Chart by Carbon Brief, using Highcharts.

Emissions from international aviation are not included in a country's individual inventory, but the data does compare how much fuel is consumed by domestic and international flights leaving each country.

Jet kerosene and aviation gasoline consumed by domestic (blue columns) and international aviation (yellow columns) in developed countries (exajoules, EJ), 2014. Source: UNFCCC. Chart by Carbon Brief, using Highcharts.

For almost all countries, most of the fuel is used in international flights — a sector which currently does not have an emissions reduction target.
The US is a notable exception to this rule, due to a number of factors, including its size, a preference for holidaying in America and poor public transport. Here, domestic flights consume more fuel than international flights, showing the significance of the recent move in the US to pave the way towards regulations that would limit emissions from domestic flights.

Fugitive emissions
Fugitive emissions are greenhouse gas emissions, mainly methane, that are accidentally lost during the production, storage or transport of oil, coal and gas.
These are, therefore, included in the data that countries have to report. They do so separately for coal, and oil and gas.
The following graph shows each country's total coal production set against the fugitive emissions this causes, expressed as a share of its total emissions.

Coal production in developed countries (blue bars, millions of tonnes, Mt, left-hand axis). Share of total emissions from coal production fugitive methane (purple dots, %, right-hand axis), 2014. Source: UNFCCC. Chart by Carbon Brief, using Highcharts.

The chart shows that producing a large amount of coal does not necessarily mean that the resulting fugitive emissions from mining and handling will occupy a large slice of a country's overall emissions.
The US is a case in point. It produces more coal than any other developed country, yet its fugitive emissions from coal occupy a small share of the country's total emissions, at just 1%. Compare this to Kazakhstan, at the other end of the scale, where coal production is comparatively low, but is nonetheless responsible for 8.5% of the country's emissions.
Such disparities will depend on factors such as the extent to which the economy depends on coal mining as a whole, and whether its mining technology is modern and efficient.
For oil and gas, fugitive emissions are only shown as a percentage of total aggregated emissions in the UNFCCC document, as the graph below shows.

Fugitive methane and CO2 emissions from oil and gas in developed countries as a share of total emissions (%), 2014. Source: UNFCCC. Chart by Carbon Brief, using Highcharts.

By this metric, Russia clearly has the biggest problem with fugitive emissions in its oil and gas sector, with leaked methane and CO2 responsible for more than 30% of its total footprint.
The following graph takes the total share of fugitive methane emissions for oil, coal and gas production in each country and compares it to the total volume of fugitive methane emissions. Countries submit the latter data to the UNFCCC, although it was not included in the aggregation document.

Fugitive methane emissions from oil, coal and gas (blue bars, Mt of CO2 equivalent, left-hand axis). Fugitive emissions' share of developed countries' total footprint (purple dots, %, right-hand axis). Fugitive emissions data for the US, Ukraine, Australia, Kazakhstan, Belarus, New Zealand, Austria and Ireland is for 2012, as 2014 data was not yet available. All percentage share data is for 2014. Source: UNFCCC and Annex 1 Global Map. Chart by Carbon Brief, using Highcharts.

This shows that Russia both emits more fugitive methane from its fossil fuel production than any other developed country, and that this occupies a larger share of the country's total emissions. The US emits the next largest volume of emissions, through this occupies a smaller slice of its overall emissions.
There are several reasons why fugitive methane emissions differ so drastically as a share of total emissions between countries.
It will partly depend on the size of the country's energy extraction industry compared to other emitting sectors, but also on the extent to which the sector is regulated and the type of fossil fuel production.
The inventory reports reflect estimates, rather than measurements of emissions. As a result, some of the reported differences could be down to the choice of accounting method rather than actual emissions.
According to a 2015 study of fugitive emissions by the economic research firm, Rhodium Group:
"Reported leakage rates can vary due to type of oil and gas produced (offshore generally has lower leakage rates than onshore), the state of national infrastructure, air quality and safety policies, and industry management practices, as well as differences in measurement accuracy. For example, using EPA emissions estimates, the US natural gas leakage rate is 1.3%. China's national methane emissions estimates imply a leakage rate of about 0.02%."

Animals
In some countries, agriculture may be responsible for a greater share of emissions than energy.
Countries have provided detailed estimates of their "enteric emissions" — that is, the methane emitted by cows, pigs and sheep. The following chart shows the number of these animals in each country, and the share of total emissions for which they are responsible.

Numbers of pigs, cows and sheep (blue and yellow columns, millions, left-hand axis). Enteric emissions as a share of total emissions (purple dots, %, right-hand axis), 2014. Source: UNFCCC. Chart by Carbon Brief, using Highcharts.

It is in this category that New Zealand dominates. Its 40 million pigs, cows and sheep are responsible for 35% of its emissions. The US has 163 million livestock, yet their methane emissions are responsible for only 5% of its total footprint.
Agriculture is responsible for 46% of New Zealand's emissions, with energy making up just 42%. In the US, energy is responsible for 85%, leaving agriculture responsible for just 11%.
Manure management is also responsible for a chunk of agricultural emissions. This is mainly small as a share of total emissions, but can be significant. For instance, in Denmark, it is responsible for 4% of the country's emissions.

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2 Critical Climate Change Problems Most People Don’t Know About

CleanTechnica - Zachary Shahan

Global warming and climate change get a lot of attention — well, not in the mainstream media, but among niche media outlets like CleanTechnica. However, whether in the mainstream media or in niche publications, some of the big challenges of a quickly changing climate are not often highlighted, and I'm quite confident that most people haven't considered them at all.
Yes, people probably get the point that global warming and climate change mean higher sea levels, melting ice in the Arctic, fewer species, less snow for skiing, and bigger storms and droughts. But thinking 1–3 steps further doesn't seem to be all that common, and media coverage of the following topics has been slim or nonexistent in much of the mass media.

Climate Change = Mass Migration

Immigration and war are two hot topics of this year's US presidential election season. I'm an American immigrant living in Europe and I'm well aware that the United States itself is a country built by immigrants, pretty much continuously. I'm certainly not against immigration! However, without a doubt, fast, large-scale immigration often poses a challenge for countries taking in the immigrants.
The Migration Policy Institute writes: "The impact of climate change as a driver of human migration is expected by many to dwarf all others. … The most significant mechanisms of displacement are sea-level rise, higher temperatures, disruption of water cycles, and increasing severity of storms."
In the US, Mexican immigration is expected to increase due to global warming, according to Princeton University researchers. These immigrants have already been termed "climate migrants."
A study published in Nature Climate Change found that heat stress is a driver of migration out of rural Pakistan. Who's surprised?
A few major media outlets have covered this topic. The Guardian, TIME, and The Independent all have great pieces on it.
An article in The Guardian states: "Thanks to global climate change, mass migration could be the new normal."
An article in TIME writes: "Even as Europe wrestles over how to absorb the migrant tide, experts warn that the flood is likely to get worse as climate change becomes a driving factor."
From The Independent: "The current refugee crisis marks a watershed moment in the history of global warming because it's the first wave of emigration to be explicitly linked to climate change, according to one leading scientist, who predicts rises in temperature and increasingly extreme weather will unleash many more mass movements of people in the future."
Here's an extended quote from The Guardian:
"There are lots of estimates as to what we can expect to see in the near future, but the best known (and controversial) figure comes from Professor Norman Myers, who argues that climate change could cause 200 million people to be displaced by 2050.
"In fact, it's already happening. According to the Pentagon, climate change is a 'threat multiplier' and does appear to be increasing risk of conflict.
"Indeed a new study released in March suggests this is exactly what happened in Syria, after a severe drought in 2006. As the study's co-author, Professor Richard Seager, explains, 'We're not saying drought caused the [Syrian conflict]. We're saying that added to all the other stressors, it helped kick things over the threshold into open conflict. And a drought of that severity was made much more likely by the ongoing human-driven drying of that region.' "
Luckily, some leading bloggers have been writing about these connections for several years. From Think Progress, see this piece, this piece, this piece, and this piece. That last one leads into the logical next issue of concern about global warming and climate change ramifications in society.



Climate Change = War

Naturally, mass migration will put stresses on the countries where migrants are trying to move, and the stresses that lead to mass migration will also spur civil unrest within those countries.
From that last article linked above:
"A new study finds that human-caused climate change was a major trigger of Syria's brutal civil war. The war that helped drive the rise of the terrorist Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria (ISIS) was itself spawned in large part by what one expert called perhaps 'the worst long-term drought and most severe set of crop failures since agricultural civilizations began in the Fertile Crescent,' from 2006 to 2010."
I know, it's shocking. Who would have thought that an extremely long and harsh period of drought and crop failures would lead (in part) to civil unrest and war?

Going on:
"That drought destroyed the livelihood of 800,000 people according to the U.N. and sent vastly more into poverty. The poor and displaced fled to cities, 'where poverty, government mismanagement and other factors created unrest that exploded in spring 2011,' as the study's news release explains.The study, 'Climate change in the Fertile Crescent and implications of the recent Syrian drought,' found that global warming made Syria's 2006 to 2010 drought two to three times more likely.
A long article on the topic from Science Heathen eloquently summarizes:
"Modern civilization, and its massive number of infrastructure-dependent people, is almost entirely reliant upon the delicate infrastructure of the modern world for its survival. If any significant damage were to occur to this delicately-balanced infrastructure, large numbers of people would starve, be forced to migrate, or be motivated to war — while, in the process, becoming increasingly susceptible to disease and illness. …"Large scale war or civil collapse is almost an inevitability in regions facing very scarce freshwater resources, very limited agricultural-land/productivity, and large-populations. And these are exactly the conditions that many regions of the world are expected to face as climate change intensifies."
Indeed.

So, seriously, if you are concerned about the "modest" amount of migration and war we are seeing today, you better be concerned about global warming and climate change, and the ridiculous amount of societal disruption they will cause as they get more and more extreme.







(IMAGE)
The time is now to make a monumental shift to clean, renewable energy and electrification of transport, among other things.

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Neither Coalition Nor Labor Emissions Reduction Targets Are Good Enough, Says Climate Body

The Guardian - 

Climate Institute report says negative-emissions technology is imperative because risks of global temperature reaching 2C are 'unmanageable'
2C of global warming would move the world into 'uncharted territory', analysis by Climate Analytics found. Photograph: John Giles/PA
Australia will blow its carbon budget with either the Coalition's emissions reduction targets, or those suggested by the Labor opposition, highlighting the urgent need for negative-emissions technology, analysis commissioned by the Climate Institute shows.
"Everyone is just now beginning to work out the implications of the 1.5C goal, and how hard it is to get to it," said John Connor, chief executive of the Climate Institute.
The report found that while the policy measures needed to keep global warming to 1.5C or 2C were similar, the risks and costs associated with letting global temperatures reach 2C would be "unmanageable".
Global warming of 1.5C would make rare events such as extreme heat waves and coral bleaching the new normal, but 2C of warming would move the world into "uncharted territory", the report by Climate Analytics found.

AUDIO ABC Radio National Breakfast: A new report for the Climate Institute has found significant differences between 1.5 and 2 degrees Celsius warming for Australia.

For Australia to cut its emissions in line with either target, it will almost certainly need to achieve negative emissions towards 2050.
But if the country follows its current targets to 2030 (26% to 28% below 2005 levels) it will then need to make devastating cuts, dropping to zero emissions within five years to stay within the carbon budget.
Even on the plan Labor took the election, which involved a cut to 45% below 2005 levels by 2030 and net zero emissions by 2050, will blow the carbon budget by 15%, the report found.
It said that "some level of negative emissions is virtually unavoidable at this stage, even with very rapid emissions reductions between now and 2050".
An earlier Climate Institute report, the group found technology such as bioenergy combined with carbon capture and storage could play a role in removing 65m tonnes of CO2 annually by 2050.
The report argues that a carbon-budget approach should be taken by policymakers, rather than simply focusing on an emissions target for a particular year: "Australia's contribution to limiting warming to 1.5C-2C is determined by cumulative emissions, not emissions in a single year."
The report noted that decarbonisation of the electricity sector should be the biggest priority, since it is the biggest contributor to emissions. Doing that would also allow emissions in transport and other sectors to be cut by electrifying them.
For the world to achieve the more ambitious 1.5C goal, the strategies would be the same but would just need to occur faster. It said doing it faster would cost between 1.5 times and twice as much, but "the benefits would be vast".
Warming of 2C would destroy almost all tropical coral around the world, but keeping warming to 1.5C could save 10% of coral cover.
And 2C of warming would increase heatwave days in northern Australia by 60 a year; the lower target would save 20 of those days from such hot weather.
The stronger target would also have dramatic impacts on water availability and sea level rise.
Connor said the government's review of climate policies, which will occur next year, is an opportunity to create bipartisan support for credible targets. "It will quite possibly be the first credible national climate policy conversation for five years or so," he said.
For Australia to start moving towards an emissions goal that is consistent with the commitments made in Paris last year, the Climate Institute called for three broad actions.
First, a pathway to zero emissions needed to be designed, and it needed to get Australia to zero emissions well before 2050.
Second, it called for climate and energy policies to be fully integrated so that coal power can be phased out and businesses can invest with confidence in renewable energy.
Finally, it called for Australia to take the lead from business and defence agencies around the world that were integrating climate costs and opportunities into their everyday decision making. That should involve a "national adaptation strategy", it said.

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