Climate change impacts such as rising temperatures and changes in ocean
salinity, acidity, and oxygen levels are expected to result in decreased
catches
"Developing countries most dependent on fisheries for food and revenue will be hardest hit," study's lead author says. Photo: twoblueday, Flickr
Global fisheries stand to lose approximately $10 billion of their
annual revenue by 2050 if climate change continues unchecked, and
countries that are most dependent on fisheries for food will be the
hardest hit, finds new University of British Columbia research.
Climate change impacts such as rising temperatures and changes in
ocean salinity, acidity, and oxygen levels are expected to result in
decreased catches, as previous research from UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries
has found. In this study, the authors examined the financial impact of
these projected losses for all fishing countries in 2050, compared to
2000.
"Developing countries most dependent on fisheries for food and
revenue will be hardest hit," said Vicky Lam, a postdoctoral fellow at
UBC's Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, and the study's lead
author. "It is necessary to implement better marine resource management
plans to increase stock resilience to climate change."
While many communities are considering aquaculture, also known as
fish farming, as a solution to ease the financial burden of fishing
losses and improve food security under climate change, when researchers
examined the growing industry, they found it may exacerbate the negative
impact on revenues
"Climate adaptation programs such as aquaculture development may be
seen as a solution," said William Cheung, associate professor at UBC's
Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries and a study co-author. "However,
rather than easing the financial burden of fishing losses and improving
food security, it may drive down the price of seafood, leading to
further decreases in fisheries revenues."
The researchers used climate models from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
to examine the economic impact of climate change on fish stocks and
fisheries revenues under two emission scenarios. In a high emission
scenario, the rates continue to rise unchecked, while a low emission
scenario meant ocean warming is kept under two degrees Celsius.
"Global fisheries revenues amount to about $100 billion every year,"
said co-author, Rashid Sumaila, professor at UBC's Institute for the
Oceans and Fisheries and Liu Institute for Global Studies.
"Our modeling shows that a high emissions scenario could reduce global
fishing revenue by an average of 10 per cent, while a low emissions
scenario could reduce revenues by 7 per cent."
The researchers found the countries that rely highly on fish are the
most vulnerable, including island countries like Tokelau, Cayman
Islands, and Tuvalu. Meanwhile, many developed countries, such as
Greenland and Iceland, could see revenue increases as fish move into
cooler waters.
The study was published Sept. 7 in Scientific Reports.
Australia is set to triple its large-scale solar energy capacity
after funding from a threatened federal agency helped drive down costs
almost to those of wind farms.
The Australian Renewable Energy
Agency (ARENA) announced the 12 projects that will share part of its
latest funding round of $92 million on Thursday.
UNSW researchers break world record for solar cell efficiency. Australian researchers find a way to hugely increase the efficiency of solar panels.
Queensland was a big winner, landing six of the projects, while NSW won five and WA the other one. (See map below.)
Solar energy costs continue to fall in Australia and overseas. Photo: FRV
The plants will generate about one-tenth of the power needed to meet
Australia's 2020 Renewable Energy Target, supply enough electricity for
150,000 average homes and create 2,300 direct jobs alone, ARENA said.
The
agency's chief executive, Ivor Frischknecht, said that when announced
last September the funds had been expected to enable 200 megawatts of
new solar capacity, compared with the 240 megawatts already in place.
Instead, the dozen ventures will deliver an extra 480 megawatts if
all proceed, and drive $1 billion of investment in regional Australia.
The
level of grant funding needed to make the large-scale solar
photovoltaic projects had dropped from about half the cost to just 10
per cent in three years, Mr Frischknecht said.
Solar panels being installed at the Sydney Town Hall. Photo: Damian Shaw
"It's a phenomenal change from the Moree solar farm and AGL's [two
plants in NSW], where it was a little less than one commercial dollar
for every subsidy dollar," he told Fairfax Media.
The success of
ARENA's solar support comes at a critical time for the program's future.
The Turnbull government wants to end all grant funding by the agency
and strip $1.3 billion from its budget.
Labor, which went to the
July election quarantining $300 million of those cuts, may decide as
soon as Tuesday's caucus meeting whether it will back the government's
omnibus funding through Parliament.
Opponents of the grant cuts
say the move would trigger the loss of possibly hundreds of research
positions at universities, the CSIRO and elsewhere, and slow advances in
renewable energy at a time when Australia has to shift to a low-carbon
future.
While large-scale solar costs are about 10 per cent more
than wind farms, many other technologies require support to make them
less expensive, Mr Frischknecht said. These include large-scale
batteries and so-called dispatchable renewables such as solar thermal
and bio power that can be switched on and off as needed.
Josh
Frydenberg, minister for environment and energy, said the latest round
brought federal investment through ARENA to $1.2 billion for around 250
projects, drawing a further $1.6 billion from the private sector.
"ARENA
will continue to be a major supporter of renewable energy through the
$1 billion Clean Energy Innovation Fund [for concessional loans] which
will see new jobs and investment in the sector," Mr Frydenberg said.
Biggest plant
The winners include what will become the country's largest solar
farm, with ARENA chipping in $20 million towards the $216.7 million
needed to build the 110 MW plant.
That project, to be owned by Origin Energy, will be on Queensland's Darling Downs. (See list of winning projects below.)
The title of largest plant, though, may be up for grabs. Genex's 50
MW Kidston Solar Plant, which has a 20-year supply deal with the
Queensland government, has plans to extend to 150 MW.
For NSW, the
ARENA-funded projects will support as many as 800 jobs during
construction and, when fully operational, will provide enough
electricity to power about 62,000 homes or 2,800 schools.
"These
five new solar facilities save about 350,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas
emissions per year, the equivalent of taking 78,000 cars off the road,"
Mark Speakman, the state's environment minister, said.
Falling costs
The recent steep drop in large-scale solar costs is mostly from domestic gains, ARENA said.
A
falling Australian dollar had largely nullified the drop in global
price of imported panels, inverters and other equipment, which typically
make up 40 to 50 per cent of total costs, Mr Frischknecht said.
Banks
were becoming more comfortable supporting large-scale solar, resulting
in cheaper finance, he said, while expanded scale and improved
construction process through experience also helped make plants more
competitive.
Kellie Caught, a spokeswoman for WWF Australia, said
the winning bids amounted to "one billion reasons" for the government to
maintain full grant funding.
"ARENA plays a critically important
role in building new technologies, reducing the cost of renewable
energy, increasing renewable energy supply and diversity in Australia,
improving grid stability and reliability, building industry skills,
developing export capabilities and creating thousands of jobs," she
said.
Open letter
Details of solar's advance came as 11 major energy companies issued
an open letter to federal politicians calling on them to protect ARENA's
funding.
The companies – which include AGL, General Electric,
First Solar, wind turbine maker Vestas, electric car and battery maker
Tesla and wind farm operator Infigen Energy – said investment confidence
would be undermined in the sector if one of the new Parliament's first
moves was to cut ARENA's support.
"The grants provided by the
agency are modest investments that will lead to the jobs and investment
of the future," Kane Thornton, chief executive of the Clean Energy
Council, said.
"Hundreds of projects have been funded to date,
and hundreds more are needed if we are to transform Australia's energy
system at the lowest possible cost to consumers."
Queensland's
Energy Minister, Mark Bailey, said additional support from the
Palaszczuk government had helped boost the "competitiveness of so many
Queensland projects in the ARENA process".
The backing is in the form of long-term revenue contracts to aid investor confidence.
Mr
Frischknecht said the current funding round would be "a litmus test" to
determine whether additional rounds would be needed in the future for
large-scale solar PV – an outcome that could be known within six to 12
months.
The Guardian - Andrew Simms A UK cross-party initiative addresses the appetite and mechanics for the
cooperation needed to help us live within Earth's limits
'New alliances in the UK are being explored to reverse inequality and live within the Earth's limits.'
Photograph: Deco / Alamy/Alamy
Four months and counting
China and the US's announcement that they will join the Paris climate accord comes at a time when the UK's own climate and energy policies appear at best in disarray, and worst at odds.
Imagine you're stuck in a burning building. Stay and you perish, but
the complexity of the building means that to physically escape you have
to work with the others also trapped. If everyone does their own thing,
many valiant efforts will be made, but ultimately you'll all be doomed.
Tackling climate change is fundamentally a challenge of first
accepting that action sufficient to prevent irreversible warming is
non-negotiable – you need to get out of the burning building – and then
of solidarity and cooperation, you need to make the escape plan happen
together.
In the UK only the Green party has climate targets roughly in line
with what climate science says is needed. Meanwhile, solidarity and
cooperation within parties is proving hard enough to achieve after the
vote for the UK to leave the EU, let alone presenting the electorate
with an undivided progressive choice in elections.
Post-Brexit we can expect little of the UK government on sufficient
and clear climate action. The great irony of the lobby to leave, which railed against the "red tape" of Brussels,
is that it has triggered probably Britain's biggest ever open-ended,
bureaucratic exercise. Forty years' worth of legislation and
cross-border agreements need rewriting in a more complicated, multipolar
world. Not only will this distract, decisively, from achieving much
else, but international treaty negotiation will be dictated by the old
economics of competition and division.
Fortunately, new alliances in the UK are being explored to reverse inequality and live within the Earth's limits.
Caroline
Lucas has joined with Lisa Nandy, Labour's former shadow spokesperson
on energy and climate change, and Liberal Democrats including the
current leader, Tim Farron, to launch an initiative for greater direct
political cooperation, called for in a new book, The Alternative: Towards a New Progressive Politics. The title echoes the name of the mould breaking new political party in Denmark of the same name, The Alternative, set up in 2013 to be a fresh, collaborative and progressive voice and change the divisive tone of domestic politics.
Writing in the book, Uffe Elbæk, its party leader, compares the
emergence of The Alternative to Syriza and Podemos as a reaction to a
failure of the political system so serious that it leaves democracy
itself under threat. But, far from strident, their response is to
advocate for new, shared values that are the inverse of the emergent
chest-beating and fearful nationalism threatening international
cooperation on everything, including climate change. They speak instead
of political mobilisation based on humility, empathy, courage,
generosity and even humour.
The scope and ambition of contributors to the UK initiative addresses the appetite and mechanics for cooperation.
In a chapter on re-imagining Britain's approach to the environment, I
argue in the book that from government to anti-austerity groups in
opposition, there is a kind of denial about the full economic
implications of preventing irreversible climatic upheaval. The clamour
for a return to growth inevitably results in a kind of business as usual
consumerism.
In terms of alternative economic visions among progressive circles,
if any are discernible they tend toward the vague promise of "fully automated luxury communism" - a world in which technology and redistribution deliver lives of leisure and plenty.
But not only does this founder on broken planetary, environmental
boundaries, it also contains a kind of impoverished digital
disengagement with the real, material world. The alternative is a green,
circular and genuinely shared economy of "better not more". In this,
reskilled and reconnected, rather than passive, disposable consumerism,
we take back more control of our lives making, mending, re-using and
sharing more of the things we need.
Not only does this bring greater independence, wellbeing, cost and
resource savings, but it draws on long-standing working class traditions
of self and mutual help that let people and communities flourish in
tough economic times. The cultivation of new skills and craft also
counter the alienation of much modern work.
A new more plural, progressive politics, capable of supporting the
changes needed to prevent climate disaster, itself needs a new economic
model, judged not by how quickly it grows, but by how well it allows us
all to thrive within planetary environmental boundaries.
