Lethal Heating: 01/02/19

02/01/2019

Here's What's On The Radar For Climate Change In 2019

CBC - Johanna Wagstaffe*

Could this year be a tipping point — for better or for worse?

The past year has seen heat waves, record-breaking wildfires, drought and destructive storms. (Francisco Seco/Associated Press)

2018 has been full of ominous climate news.
Record extreme weather across the country connected to our warming climate. An October report from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change PCC said we have just 12 years to cut carbon emissions in half to avoid catastrophic climate change. A December study found carbon emissions surging in the wrong direction. New research shows the planet is in the midst of an extinction crisis.
But we've also talked more about climate change than we ever have before. The science of human-caused climate change is unequivocal. We know what the science tells us will happen to our planet if we don't make drastic changes fast enough.
With the livelihoods of so many Canadians forever changed by decisions to adapt to a warming world, the debate about how fast we make those changes will most certainty rage on in 2019.
Here are some factors that will shape climate change coverage over the next 12 months and beyond.

El Niño and extreme weather
2019 may be one of the warmest years on record as a building El Niño event piles on top of human-caused global warming.
Typically, the routine climate pattern occurs when sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Pacific Ocean rise to above-normal levels for several months, causing warmer than normal global temperatures on average.
In fact, the strong El Niño of late 2015 to early 2016 helped boost global temperatures to their all-time warmest on record in 2016.
And that's not all. An El Niño event not only raises temperatures; it redistributes weather patterns around the world. Typically, extreme weather is more common during one of these events — ramping up everything from droughts to floods and typhoons.
According to the Climate Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the U.S., there is a 90 per cent chance that El Niño will form and continue through the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2018-19, and a 60 per cent chance that it will continue into the spring of 2019.

For the second summer in a row, wildfires led to a provincial state of emergency in B.C. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)

Climate policy
Although climate policy in Canada differs across the country, 2019 is the year that plans will start becoming reality.
And for those provinces and territories with no adequate emissions pricing plans of their own, the federal Liberal government will slap a carbon tax on fuels, with plans to send annual rebates to Canadian families to offset most of the added costs of this initiative.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes the added cost on fuels will tamp down carbon-intensive consumption, reduce emissions and help curb pollution.
"Starting next year, it will no longer be free to pollute anywhere in Canada. And we're also going to help Canadians adjust to this new reality ... Every nickel will be invested in Canadians in the province or territory where it was raised."
A big event to watch for is the next UN climate talks that will be hosted by Chile, in cooperation with Costa Rica. Before that, all eyes will be on the UN Secretary General's summit in September, when countries will be expected to lay out their plans to increase national commitments in 2020.

The Arctic is warming two to three times faster than anywhere else on the planet. (Jonathan Hayward/Canadian Press)

Technology
2019 is looking like an exciting year for clean technology. Around the world, countries, cities and companies are embracing the shift toward sustainable energy — and figuring out how to turn a profit while doing it.
Look for announcements over the next year in the sectors of energy storage and microgrid systems that use artificial intelligence and blockchain. Conventional power stations are centralized and often require electric energy to be transmitted over long distances, to serve a large number of customers at once. Microgrid systems, on the other hand, are located much closer to the area they service, and can operate autonomously from the main power source.
Using smart technology, local demands can be customized, and grid disturbances like power outages can also be minimized. They can make a power grid greener, more cost efficient and more reliable.
Meanwhile, 158 companies around the world have recognized their contributions to climate change and committed to transitioning to 100 per cent renewable power sources.

A rendering of Squamish-based Carbon Engineering’s 'air contactor design.' The company uses carbon capture technology that captures CO₂ directly from the atmosphere, and synthesizes it into clean transportation fuels. (Carbon Engineering)

*Johanna Wagstaffe is a senior meteorologist for CBC, covering weather and science stories, with a background in seismology and earth science.

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Brown Coal Generation Drops To Lowest For NEM As Solar, Wind Surge

AFR - Ben Potter

Brown coal generation fell to its lowest level in the history of the modern power grid in the December quarter, as solar and wind generation surged and coal's retreat was exacerbated by scheduled maintenance and accidents.
The development marks another milestone in the evolution of the modern eastern states' National Electricity Market from a centralised grid dominated by huge thermal generators to a decentralised grid with a constantly changing mix of fossil fuel, solar, wind and hydro energy.

But a resurgence in wholesale prices in the NEM shows the transition to clean energy is still a work in progress, with supply and demand tightly balanced, especially in South Australia and Victoria, and vulnerable to hot weather, sudden fluctuations in renewable generation and outages in ageing coal plant.

Progress towards the experts' vision of lower electricity prices thanks to the flood of wind and solar energy coming into the national grid is only being realised in fits and starts. Glenn Campbell

Brown coal generation in Victoria was 8227 gigawatt hours in the December quarter, down from 8500 GWh in the December 2017 quarter and well below the 11,000 GWh in the December 2016 quarter, the last full quarter before Hazelwood's closure in late March 2017, according to data compiled by Dylan McConnell, a researcher at the University of Melbourne's College of Climate and Energy.
Gas generation was also a big loser, plummeting to just 3183 GWh in the December quarter from 5692 GWH in the December 2017 quarter.
The big winners were rooftop solar, which surged by more than a quarter to 2690 GWh from a year earlier, utility-scale solar, which increased fivefold to 917 GWh as more large solar farms came online, and wind, up a fifth to 3426 GWh. Hydro generation also grew 17 per cent to 3400 GWh.

Black coal generation still dominates the NEM, but its contribution slipped to 27,550 GWh from 27,698 GWh a year earlier. Even so, the trend is unmistakable, with 7200 megawatts of large-scale wind and solar under construction, according to Green Energy Markets, and record rates of solar rooftop installation.

Betwixt and between

Average spot market electricity prices were higher in all states of the NEM in the December quarter.

Energy market agencies such as the Australian Energy Market Operator, the Australian Energy Market Commission and the Energy Security Board, and private energy experts say wholesale power prices should continue to moderate as more wind and solar supply floods the market because these are the cheapest forms of new supply and cheaper than existing coal and gas supply in some cases.

Average spot market electricity prices were higher in the December quarter than a year earlier in all states of the National Electricity Market - in some states sharply so. Dylan McConnell, Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne

Snowy Hydro said on November 1 that it could "firm" wind and solar power from its existing hydro resources for less than $70 per megawatt hour, well below recent NEM prices, which ranged from $80/MWh to $100/MWh over the past six months.
But new options for firming variable wind and solar power – batteries, pumped hydro, transmission and interconnectors – are still too costly or dependent on geography for widespread adoption. That leaves the NEM in transition, suspended betwixt and between its centralised, coal-dependent past and its decentralised, renewables-based destination – the worst of both worlds with some of the world's highest electricity prices and dirtiest generation.
South Australia, Queensland and Victoria had the largest NEM price increases in the December quarter compared with the December 2017 quarter, according to data compiled by Mr McConnell.
Average NEM prices in SA jumped 17.6 per cent to just over $100/MWh, in Queensland 16 per cent to $85/MWh, and in Victoria 13.7 per cent to $100/MWh.

NSW prices increased 9.3 per cent to just over $88/MWh, and prices in Tasmania – which dance to a different drum because of the island state's vast hydro resources – increased just 0.5 per cent to $85/MWh.

Progress checked
December quarter prices in Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland also were higher than in the September and June quarters, while prices in NSW were slightly lower than in those quarters and prices in SA were mostly in line with recent quarters.
In the September 2018 quarter prices were lower on average than prices in the September 2017 quarter in all NEM states. In the June 2018 quarter average prices were 14-21 per cent below the near panic level prices in the June quarter of 2017, when prices soared after the closure of the Hazelwood power station in Victoria and a series of power outages in the previous summer.
Experts attributed the increase in NEM prices in the second half of 2018 to drought and low hydro storages ahead of a hot summer, higher gas and black coal prices rolling into generator supply contracts, a tight supply-demand balance in Victoria and NSW anticipated over the summer, and the Morrison government's ditching of the National Energy Guarantee.

Prices for grid stabilising frequency control ancillary services were lower than in the December quarter of 2017 and lower than the September and June quarters of 2018. Dylan McConnell, Climate & Energy College, University of Melbourne

Energy companies Snowy Hydro, Origin Energy, AGL Energy and EnergyAustralia also said the government's plan to underwrite new "firm" generation made it hard to commit to investments in new generation or storage needed to help bring prices down.

Grid stability
Prices for grid stabilising frequency control ancillary services were lower than in the December quarter of 2017 and lower than the September and June quarters of 2018.
But FCAS prices are still much higher than in the March quarter of 2018, when AEMO said the introduction of the Hornsdale Power Reserve (the 100 MW Tesla Powerpack battery at Neoen Australia's Hornsdale wind farm in SA) and demand response company EnerNOC's FCAS offering may have explained a sharp fall in prices for grid steadying services.
The lesson is that a single utility scale battery or demand response program is not a silver bullet for grid problems that have been allowed to fester for a decade and even now are only being addressed in an ad hoc fashion in the absence of coherent, bipartisan national policy.

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5 Radical Ideas To Slow Climate Change And Tackle Our Waste Crisis

Huffington Post - Laura Paddison

While none will single-handedly save the world, extreme and sometimes controversial plans are gaining traction.

New scientific innovations could help solve our plastic trash crisis. 3d_kot via Getty Images

A slew of terrifying headlines have defined 2018. We have 12 years to drastically scale back emissions before catastrophic climate change becomes inevitable. The Earth looks to be hurtling toward a tipping point at which global systems will be pushed into a “hothouse” state, leading to temperature rises of up to 5 degrees and sea level rises of up to 197 feet. We are killing off animal and insect species at almost unprecedented speed.
The year has also seen a series of radical ideas aimed at providing humanity with a way out of the mess we’re in. Some are new, some are the development of much older ideas, some are controversial.
None is going to single-handedly save the world, not even close. For that we need fundamental change to the way we run our economies and societies. But the emergence of these radical, innovative, and sometimes terrifying ideas shows the increasing acceptance of the huge challenges we face. Here we look at five of them.

Turning Down The Sun

RomoloTavani via Getty Images

In the spring of 2019, a group of Harvard University scientists will send balloons up into the atmosphere to seed calcium carbonate particles into the air. The aim: to see if they can turn down the temperature of the Earth.
It will be the first real world test of a decades-old technology called solar geoengineering, previously confined to lab experiments. The basic idea is to seed the atmosphere with gases to block some of the sun’s rays – by reflecting them back into space – and so lowering the planet’s temperature. The process mimics the aftereffects of big volcanic explosions, where gasses released have caused global cooling.

An illustration of the effects of volcanic activity releasing large amounts of sulfur dioxide into the air, dimming the sun. Solar geoengineering aims to mimic these effects. Valentina Kruchinina via Getty Images

Geoengineering is one of the more extreme weapons in the arsenal of ideas for reducing the effects of climate change. And it’s an idea with support among a cohort of people not exactly known for taking climate change seriously. But as we face down the barrel of catastrophic temperature rises — we are on course to see rises of 4 C (7 F), according to an August government environmental paper — the technology’s appeal is obvious.
However, it’s untested, so no one really knows how well it might work or the potential consequences it could unleash once started. There are concerns it could disrupt rain patterns or deprive crops of sunlight in some regions. Plus, if we embark on geoengineering and then had to suddenly stop, temperatures could rise rapidly, pushing species to extinction and accelerating climate change, according to a January 2018 study.
Still, as global temperatures continue to rise, some scientists say we cannot afford to write off the technology. “Not talking about geoengineering is the greatest mistake we can make right now,” David Fahey, an atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, told Nature.

Using Electricity To Regrow Coral Reefs

Chris Langdon, professor of marine biology and ecology at the University of Miami, uses a dropper to feed coral in a lab as he studies how climate change will impact coral reef in the future. Joe Raedle via Getty Images

arming seas are bad news for coral. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, considered one of the natural wonders of the world, has been ravaged by temperature increases. In 2016, and again in 2017, it was hit by mass bleaching events essentially cooking the reef, killing large swaths of this colorful underwater world.
The death of coral around the world is devastating for sea life, which in turn harms the people who rely on reef fish to feed themselves and their families. Plus, reefs are a huge generator of tourism dollars for communities.
But scientists are experimenting with regrowing coral using electricity. They are placing steel frames on parts of the reef badly damaged in the bleaching and then electrifying them, causing the growth of mineral deposits which help the coral grow more quickly. This method is being trialed in Indonesia and in parts of the Great Barrier Reef which were damaged in the bleaching events.
Injured coral moved to these structures grow up to 20 times faster and have a 50 times better chance of survival, according to a BBC report.
The drawback? It’s relatively expensive and the teams need to work out how to use clean energy rather than relying on fossil fuels. Plus, even if this method allows for faster coral growth, whether it can ever keep up with the rate of destruction is another question. Coral can take hundreds and hundreds of years to grow.

The Plastic-Eating Mutant Enzyme

In April, scientists announced they had accidentally discovered a mutant enzyme that could “eat” plastic. It breaks down the polymers in P.E.T., a very widely-used type of plastic commonly found in single-use soft drinks bottles.
Unlike a lot of other recycling processes which degrade plastic, the material left behind after the enzyme has done its work can be recycled into high-quality, clear plastic again.
The story gained a huge amount of traction as it seems to offer a new solution to our plastic waste crisis. More than 16,000 plastic bottles are bought around the world every second, one million a minute. And most of these end up in landfill or dumped in the environment, where they take up to 400 years to biodegrade.
This accumulated plastic waste has a heavy toll on our environment, choking rivers and oceans, filling the stomachs of fish, birds and other animals, and even ending up in our poop. Of the plastic waste produced between 1950 and 2015, only 9 percent was recycled.
Of course, the enzyme does not address the problem at its root: the reality that our consumption is out of control. Louise Edge, senior oceans campaigner at Greenpeace, told HuffPost, “What we really need are system changes … An enzyme alone can’t clean up the complex and widespread legacy of plastic pollution that we have already created.”
But the scientists are buoyant about the possibilities and searching for other enzymes that could breakdown further types of plastics. “This unanticipated discovery suggests that there is room to further improve these enzymes, moving us closer to a recycling solution for the ever-growing mountain of discarded plastics,” said John McGeehan, a biology professor at the University of Portsmouth and one of the lead scientists on the research.

Waste-Munching Cockroaches

Antagain via Getty Images

Few creatures inspire as much squeamishness as cockroaches, synonymous with dirty conditions and disease. But in China they are experiencing something of a renaissance as a potential solution to the mountains of food waste produced each year.
Already farmed for their supposed medicinal properties, to help with stomach aches, colds and other ailments, they are now being used as living waste disposal units. At a facility in Jinan in the Shandong Province of eastern China, run by the agricultural-tech company Shandong Qiaobin, a billion cockroaches are fed 50 tons of food waste a day. The food arrives before dawn, reports Reuters, and is fed through pipes into the cockroaches’ cells.
The system is a circular one. The cockroach poop is used to make fertilizer, and when the cockroaches die they are processed into animal feed. “It’s like turning trash into resources,” Shandong Qiaobin chairwoman Li Hongyi told Reuters.
The company aims to build three more plants by the end of the year to process a third of the kitchen waste in the the city of Jinan, where 7 million people live.
The catch? If the cockroaches were to escape the facility, they could cause devastation to the local environment. In 2013, more than 1 million escaped from a farm after someone vandalized the greenhouse they were in.

Lab-Grown Meat

wildpixel via Getty Images

Our diets have been under the microscope this year as study after study pointed to the desperate need for people in richer countries to dramatically cut their consumption of meat to avoid the world’s slide into dangerous climate change.
Now our diets could literally come from under the microscope as the we head toward the first commercially available lab-grown meats.
Agriculture has a huge environmental impact, taking up vast tracts of land and huge amounts of resources like water. Then there’s the emissions — meat and dairy are responsible for 60 percent of the emissions created by agriculture. But people still love to eat meat.
A group of food startups think they have the answer: Meat grown without the need to raise and slaughter an animal. Known, among other things, as cultured meat, lab-grown meat and slaughter-free meat, it’s produced by feeding animal cells with nutrients, sugar and growth factors. Just, a San-Francisco based company, says it will release lab-grown chicken imminently and another company, Memphis Meat, says its chicken strips will be ready in 2019.
It’s an appealing idea for meat eaters but it’s early-stage and expensive. Currently, a lab-grown burger would set you back around $600. Of course, this cost is often an issue for early-stage technology and companies say they are confident prices can be reduced dramatically. We also don’t have enough information about the environmental impact of producing lab-grown meat and, importantly, whether people will be able to get over the “ick” factor and actually eat it.

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In 2018 The Australian Government Chased Its Energy Tail. Here's A More Hopeful Story

The Guardian - Simon Holmes à Court*

While the federal government dithered, business, the states and the public took matters into their own hands to dramatically change the energy picture

‘Almost everyone in the energy sector now accepts that renewables are cheaper than building new coal capacity’ Photograph: jjnogueron/Getty Images/iStockphoto

While the government continued to trash Australia’s international reputation by reaffirming allegiance to coal on the global stage, lying about progress on our climate commitments and dismissing the findings of the landmark IPCC report, the transformation in our electricity sector tells a different and hopeful story.
Attacks by the former prime minister Tony Abbott and his environment minister Greg Hunt on the renewable energy target, and the investment strike that followed, are a fading memory. Momentum is now unstoppable.
In the three years from 2018 Australia will install a little over 12 gigawatts of renewables, as much as was installed in the 30 years after the country’s first windfarm opened at Salmon Beach in Western Australia in 1987.
Since 2017, 19 new windfarms and 30 new solar farms have been registered and in early December the two millionth Australian household went solar. Once derided as insignificant, solar supplied more than 7% of Australia’s power over the past three months.
A little over a decade ago, when just 5.2% of our power was from renewables, the Rudd government was swept into office with an aspirational pledge of “20% by 2020”. That target has been met two years early, and analysts Green Energy Markets predict one-third of our power will be from clean energy by 2021.

A decade of transition in the electricity sector
Change in terawatt-hours generated in the National Electricity Market between 2008 and 2018.

Chart: @simonahac Source: OpenNEM, derived Get the data

The transformation of the national electricity market over the decade has been stunning. Highly polluting brown coal use is down 36.6% and black coal (still dirty!) has fallen 9.4%, mostly replaced by wind and solar. Surprising to many, we burn less gas in the NEM now than we did a decade ago.
Increasingly businesses are taking energy matters into their own hands. Sun Metals, a zinc refinery in George Christensen’s Queensland electorate, installed one million solar panels to lower their power costs.
The Commonwealth Bank became the first Australian company to join the RE100, a group of 156 global companies committed to 100% renewable power in the coming years. Much of the bank’s power will be supplied by the Sapphire windarm, which incidentally will be partly financed by a community investment project. The project, one of 105 of its kind around the country, has been overwhelmed with $7.5m pledges from locals keen to get in on the action.
The South Australian chamber of mines and energy secured a renewable energy deal that will save its members 20-50% on their power bills.
Macquarie Bank has joined a consortium developing a wind and solar farm bigger than every existing wind and solar farm in the country combined. The Asia Renewable Energy Hub, to be located in the Pilbara region of WA, is backed by Vestas, the world’s largest wind turbine manufacturer. The project will connect by sub-sea cable to Indonesia, supply processors in WA’s north west and generate “green” hydrogen.

Consumers are starting to see a welcome, albeit modest, retreat in power prices

Modest price falls for consumers
Almost everyone in the energy sector now accepts that renewables are cheaper than building new coal capacity, including the CSIRO and the country’s largest power companies, Origin and AGL. The latter pushed back against extraordinary pressure from the government and announced that its Liddell power station will close in 2022, to be replaced with a portfolio of projects delivering cheaper, more reliable and cleaner power.
As if to prove the point, Snowy Hydro, now owned 100% by the federal government, announced that it can offer long-term, reliable supply contracts based on a portfolio of wind, solar and hydro for less than $70MWh – a price coal-fired power stations can match only if someone else pays for the coal or the power station.
And consumers are starting to see a welcome, albeit modest, retreat in power prices. Retailer Powershop led with a 5% price reduction attributed to new renewables investment. The Australian Energy Market Commission announced that most consumers would soon receive price reductions largely thanks to increased wind and solar generation – South Australians can expect to see falls of 6.5%.
More than a dozen large wind and solar farms contracted at prices well below $60MWh – below the market prices for coal and gas – in arrangements that involve little or no subsidies.

Coal – our fleet is showing its age
The average Australian coal power station is 31 years old – five years older in New South Wales – and with an average age at retirement of 41, our fleet is showing its age. The Australia Institute tracked 108 coal unit “trips” during the year. In each case hundreds of megawatts of generation instantly and unexpectedly disappeared, stressing the network.
The Australian Energy Market Operator produced the most rigorous study of the possible future of our grid and determined that on the least-cost path – with no new policy – the grid would reach 47% renewables in 2030 and 72% in 2040, while keeping the lights on. As each coal-power station falls over it will be replaced by renewables and storage.

States go their own way
In an election year, the Victorian government upped its renewable energy target to 50% by 2030, wrote contracts for six large wind and solar projects at record low prices and rolled out a plan for an additional 700,000 solar rooftop installations, committing to focus on renters and low-income households. Climate-aware voters had an easy choice at the November state election, with the opposition’s policy limited to an ill-conceived TV giveaway and a plan to build new fossil fuel power stations.
Feeling the heat from the Victorian experience, the NSW Coalition government sought to distance itself from the trashed Liberal brand, with energy minister Don Harwin calling out his federal counterparts as out of touch on energy and climate. With little progress to show for the last eight years in office and the state lagging on almost every energy indicator, Harwin has much work to do before the March election.
A change of government in South Australia had many worried that the Weatherill government’s energy initiatives would be derailed, but the new Liberal government has embraced the state’s leadership position. Former coal town Port Augusta has bounced back with 13 clean energy projects under development, and the state is rolling out a virtual power plant project that will allow 50,000 households (starting with those on lower incomes) to be fitted with solar and batteries, saving on power bills and working in unison in much the same way as the mega-battery.
In Tasmania, the Liberal party pledged 100% renewables and their Labor counterparts responded with a 120% target. The ACT moved closer to its net 100% renewables target, Queensland oversaw the start of a construction boom of impressive scale, while Western Australia continued to muddle along without any real policy.

Federal fire-fighting
Meanwhile, the federal government spent 2018 chasing its tail. Former energy minister Josh Frydenberg attempted to put out the Coalition’s smouldering energy policy with a national energy guarantee that would not have reduced emissions by a single tonne. The backbench “Monash Forum”, whom it was written to appease, instead chose to fan the flames and sacrifice yet another prime minister on the ensuing fire.
For good measure, Scott Morrison threw petrol on the fire by appointing Tony Abbott’s energy man Angus Taylor to the energy ministry. Taylor has been flailing about ever since. His plan to set a cap on energy prices was soundly rejected by his states colleagues in a particularly angry Coag meeting. His legislation to give him a “big stick” to beat investors until confidence improves has been pushed off to a Senate committee and is unlikely to see the light of day.

Batteries supplied
Storage moved ahead in leaps and bounds. While SA’s Tesla mega-battery seemingly receives equal parts derision and adulation from politicians and commentators, energy experts have been quick to heap on praise – the $90m battery was actively providing stabilisation services 95% of the time in its first year, earning $19.6m in net market revenue.
Four other megabatteries have been commissioned – at Alice Springs, Ballarat, Dalrymple and Gannawarra. The Snowy 2.0 pumped hydro storage project moved a step closer with board approval, at least 10 other pumped hydro projects have been announced and the NSW government launched a roadmap identifying 24 potential pumped hydro projects leveraging existing state-owned reservoirs.
Energy market analysts SunWiz estimate that 25,000 households installed small-scale battery systems in 2018, collectively matching the combined capacity of the country’s grid-scale megabatteries. On the back of solid growth, three battery storage companies set up in South Australia.

A referendum on climate
As in 2007, the looming federal election is shaping up to be a referendum on climate – a choice between action and denial. The public, businesses and states, having learned from the climate and energy wars of the past 10 years, are now savvier and better prepared. The increasingly desperate coal lobby looks weak compared with 15,000 striking schoolchildren, many of whom will soon be voters.
We’re making great progress on the electricity sector, but much more needs to be done across the economy – locally and globally – if we’re to have a fighting chance of passing a safe climate to the next generation.
MPs valuing survival might want to heed the advice of energy thinker Michael Liebreich: “Face the direction of travel!”

*Simon Holmes à Court is senior adviser to the Climate and Energy College at Melbourne University

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