Lethal Heating: 02/07/21

07/02/2021

Bill Gates: Here's A Formula That Explains Where We Need To Invest In Climate Innovation

TIME - Bill Gates

Green Premiums have helped solar power plants—like this one near Copiapó, Chile, shown in July 2017—become cheaper sources of energy than fossil fuels. Jamey Stillings

Author

Bill Gates is an entrepreneur and philanthropist and a co-founder of Microsoft. He is a co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and founder of Breakthrough Energy. He is the author of How To Avoid a Climate Disaster, to be published Feb. 16.

I came to focus on climate change indirectly—through the problem of energy poverty.

In the early 2000s, I learned that about a billion people didn’t have reliable access to electricity and that half of them lived in sub-Saharan Africa. (The picture has improved since then, though today roughly 860 million people don’t have electricity.)

In remote villages, Melinda and I met women and girls who spent hours every day collecting firewood so they could cook over an open flame in their homes. We met kids who did their homework by candlelight.

I thought about our foundation’s motto—“Everyone deserves the chance to live a healthy and productive life”—and how it’s hard to stay healthy if your local medical clinic can’t keep vaccines cold because the refrigerators don’t work. And it’s impossible to build an economy where everyone has job opportunities if you don’t have massive amounts of reliable, affordable electricity for offices, factories and call centers.

I began to think about how the world could make energy affordable and reliable for the poor. But the more I learned, the more I came to understand the dilemma of energy and climate change: although the world needs to provide more energy so the poorest can thrive, we need to provide that energy without releasing any more greenhouse gases. In fact, we need to eliminate our emissions, all the way to zero.

The accompanying analysis is adapted from How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need by Bill Gates, publishing on Feb. 16, 2021 by Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright © 2021 by Bill Gates.

The climate is like a bathtub that’s slowly filling up with water. Even if we slow the flow of water to a trickle, the tub will eventually fill up and water will come spilling out onto the floor. That’s the disaster we have to prevent. To stop filling the tub—to get to zero—we have to understand everything we do to cause emissions.

Did you brush your teeth this morning? The toothbrush probably contains plastic, which is made from petroleum, a fossil fuel. If you ate breakfast, the grains in your toast and cereal were grown with fertilizer, which releases greenhouse gases when it’s made. They were harvested by a tractor that was made of steel—which is made with fossil fuels in a process that releases carbon—and ran on gasoline.

If you had a burger for lunch, as I do occasionally, raising the beef caused greenhouse-gas emissions—cows burp and fart methane—and so did growing and harvesting the wheat that went into the bun. In short, fossil fuels are practically everywhere.

Some sources of emissions, like electricity and cars, get lots of attention, but they’re only the beginning. The biggest contributor to climate change is manufacturing—making things like steel, cement and plastic—at 31% of global emissions. Second in line is producing electricity, at 27% of emissions; after that comes growing things like crops, at 19%. Transportation comes in fourth, at 16%, followed by the emissions from heating and cooling buildings.

These percentages are less important than the overall point: any comprehensive plan for climate change has to account for all the activities that cause emissions, and that’s much more than making electricity and driving cars. Unless you’re looking across all five areas—how we plug in, make things, grow things, move around, and keep cool and stay warm—you’re not going to solve the problem.

It’s also crucial to understand how much getting to zero will cost. Right now, the primary reason the world emits so much greenhouse gas is that fossil- fuel technologies are by and large the cheapest energy sources available. In part, that’s because their prices don’t reflect the environmental damage they inflict. In other words, moving our immense energy economy from “dirty,” carbon-emitting technologies to ones with zero emissions will cost something.

These additional costs are what I call Green Premiums. For example, the average retail price for a gallon of jet fuel in the U.S. over the past few years is $2.22. Advanced biofuels for jets, to the extent they’re available, cost on average $5.35 per gallon. The Green Premium for zero-carbon fuel, then, is the difference between these two prices, which is $3.13. That’s a premium of more than 140%.

During every conversation I have about climate change, Green Premiums are in the back of my mind. Once you’ve figured Green Premiums for all the big zero-carbon options, you can start having serious discussions about trade-offs. How much are we willing to pay to go green? Will we buy advanced biofuels that are twice as expensive as jet fuel? Will we buy green cement that costs twice as much as the conventional stuff?

I mean “we” in the global sense. It’s not just a matter of what Americans and Europeans can afford. We need the premiums to be so low that everyone will be able to decarbonize. That’s the solution to the dilemma of providing affordable energy for everyone without causing a climate disaster. Green Premiums help us answer questions like these:

Which zero-carbon options should we be deploying now? Answer: the ones with a low Green Premium, or no premium at all. In the U.S., electricity is a good example. The Green Premium is the additional cost of getting all our power from non-emitting sources, including wind, solar, nuclear power, and coal- and natural-gas-fired plants equipped with devices that capture the carbon they produce.

Changing the entire U.S. electricity system to zero-carbon sources would cost roughly 15% more than what most people pay now. That adds up to a relatively low Green Premium of $18 a month for the average home, and it’s due largely to substantial drops in the cost of solar infrastructure over the past decade. Europe is similarly well situated.

These low Green Premiums mean that renewable energy sources like solar and wind can play a substantial role in getting the U.S. and Europe to zero. In fact, we need them to. We should be deploying renewables quickly wherever it’s economical to do so, and building the infrastructure to let us make the most of them—things like power lines capable of carrying clean electrons from wherever they’re created to wherever they’re needed.

Unfortunately, few countries are as lucky as the U.S. in this regard. They might have some sun but no wind, or some wind but little year-round sun, or not much of either. And they might have low credit ratings that make it hard to finance big investments in new power plants. So, they’ll have to get their electricity from other zero-carbon options.

Here’s another question the Green Premiums can answer: Where do we need to focus our research and development spending, our early investors and our best inventors? Answer: wherever we decide Green Premiums are too high. For example, advanced bio-fuels cost 600% more than the bunker fuel that cargo ships run on. No shipping business is going to voluntarily raise its fuel costs by that much.

In cases like this, there’s an opening for new technologies, companies and products that make it affordable. Countries that excel at research and development can create new products, make them more affordable and export them to the places that can’t pay current premiums. Then no one will have to argue about whether every nation is doing its fair share to avoid a climate disaster; instead, countries and companies will race to create and market the affordable innovations that help the world get to zero.

There’s one last benefit to the Green Premium concept: it can act as a measurement system that shows us the progress we’re making toward stopping climate change. What would it cost to use the zero-carbon tools we have now? Which innovations will make the biggest impact on emissions? The Green Premiums provide the answer by measuring the cost of getting to zero, sector by sector, and highlighting where we need to innovate.

Leaders around the world will need to articulate a vision for how we can lower the Green Premiums and make the transition to zero carbon. That vision can, in turn, guide the actions of people and businesses. Government officials can write rules regarding how much carbon that power plants, cars and factories are allowed to emit. They can adopt regulations that shape financial markets and clarify the risks of climate change to the private and public sectors. They can invest more in scientific research and write the rules that determine how quickly new products can get to market. And they can help fix some problems that the market isn’t set up to deal with—including the hidden costs that carbon-emitting products impose on the environment and on humans.

In the U.S., states can play a crucial role in demonstrating innovative technologies and policies, such as using their utilities and road-construction projects to drive technologies like long-duration storage and low-emissions cement into the market. And cities can do things like can buy electric buses, fund more charging stations for electric vehicles, use zoning laws to increase density so people travel less between work and home, and potentially restrict access to their roads by fossil-fuel-powered vehicles.

But you don’t have to be a politician or a policymaker to have an impact. If you’re a voter, you can hold your elected officials accountable for having plans to reduce Green Premiums and put us on a path to zero. As a consumer—or someone running a business—you can also send a signal to the market that people want zero-carbon alternatives and are willing to pay for them. When you pay more for an electric car, a heat pump or a plant-based burger, you’re saying, “There’s a market for this stuff. We’ll buy it.”

With the threat of climate change upon us, it can be hard to be hopeful about the future. But as my friend Hans Rosling, the late global health advocate and educator, wrote in his amazing book Factfulness: “When we have a fact-based worldview, we can see that the world is not as bad as it seems—and we can see what we have to do to keep making it better.”

When we have a fact-based view of climate change, we can see that we have some of the things we need to avoid a climate disaster, but not all of them. We can see what stands in the way of deploying the solutions we have and developing the breakthroughs we need. And we can see all the work we must do to overcome those hurdles.

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(AU) 'Do-Nothing Document': Australian Electric Vehicle Strategy Lets Emissions Keep Rising

The Guardian - Adam Morton

Paper does not include policies to make it more affordable to buy EVs or a phase-out date for the sale of new fossil fuel cars

The Morrison government’s ‘future fuels strategy’ discussion paper was sharply criticised by those who argue a rapid uptake of EVs is necessary for Australia to play its part in combating the climate crisis. Photograph: Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images

The Morrison government has ruled out subsidies to encourage people to buy electric or hybrid vehicles, and assumes they will be adopted at a pace that would lead to greenhouse gas emissions from transport increasing over the next decade.

A “future fuels strategy” discussion paper released on Friday is largely consistent with a leaked draft in December. It does not include policies to make it more affordable to buy electric vehicles (EVs) or a phase-out date for the sale of new fossil fuel cars, as some other countries have announced.

The government said its focus would be installing EV charging and hydrogen car refuelling stations where needed, encouraging businesses that wanted to include more low-emissions cars in their fleets and giving Australians “access to the right information to help them make informed choices’’.

The paper notes the government’s emissions projections in December forecast that battery EVs would make up 26% of new car sales by 2030.

The projections report found that pace of adoption would be associated with a 6% increase in transport emissions over the decade to 2030, a time in which the government is committed to cutting emissions and scientists and some global leaders, including US president Joe Biden, are urging much deeper cuts than currently planned.

The emissions reduction minister, Angus Taylor, said the government’s policy was based on the principle people should be empowered to make decisions about new technologies. “Australians should be able to choose the type of car they drive,” he said.

The policy was sharply criticised by advocates and analysts who argue a rapid uptake of EVs is necessary for Australia to play its part in combating the climate crisis.

Richie Merzian, the climate and energy program director at the Australia Institute, said: “This is a climate policy that will ensure emissions continue to rise.”

The Electric Vehicle Council said the discussion paper was a “flaccid, do-nothing document” that would prevent Australians getting access to the range of EVs available in other countries.

The council’s chief executive, Behyad Jafari, compared Australia’s approach with what he said were accelerating incentive programs for EVs in other countries. He cited the British Conservative government’s allocation of more than $1bn in subsidies for EV buyers and charging stations as it attempts to phase out new fossil fuel cars by 2030.

He said a rapid transition to EVs would lead to cleaner air, cut emissions and free the country from “our insecure dependence on foreign oil imports”.

“Global leaders from Biden to Boris [Johnson] are rushing to accelerate their transition to electric vehicles, but Angus Taylor reckons he knows something they don’t,” Jafari said.

EVs make up only 0.6% of new car sales in Australia, less than nearly all comparable countries, and it is one of few nations without emissions or fuel efficiency standards for passenger cars.

The government announced plans for a national EV strategy in February 2019, before the last federal election. That was replaced last year with a broader approach that also covers hydrogen fuel-cell and biofuel powered vehicles.

It has rejected introducing fuel efficiency standards, which would involve setting a target to lower the average emissions from the national vehicle fleet, despite a departmental analysis in December 2016 finding the benefits in savings on fuel and reduced emissions would outweigh the costs under all scenarios examined.

Taylor said on Friday modelling had showed a fuel efficiency standard of 105 grams of CO2 per kilometre, which Labor had proposed before the last election following the 2016 departmental analysis, would increase the cost of cars by $4,863 and “force people out of the cars they love and into EVs”. He did not mention the finding that the overall benefits would outweigh the costs.

The minister confirmed a budget pledge of $74.5m to be mostly spent on the rollout of charging infrastructure, but said the discussion paper showed direct subsidies would not be value-for-money for taxpayers as they were an expensive way to cut emissions. He said the cost would be reduced if commercial fleets switched to using cleaner cars as it would help build a second-hand market.

Taylor said the paper also showed plug-in hybrid cars would have immediate emissions reduction benefits above EVs in most parts of Australia due to the high-level of emissions from Australia’s electricity grid.

But Simon Holmes à Court, a senior adviser to the Climate and Energy College at Melbourne University and clean energy commentator, said this was a flawed analysis as it assumed a vehicle life of only five years, rather than a typical 15 years.

It also did not factor in that people often charged EVs from their own rooftop solar panels, and that the three biggest EV charging networks in the country offered 100% zero emissions power, he said.

“You have to work hard to make electric vehicle emissions look bad, and Angus Taylor has put in those hard yards,” Holmes à Court said.

Taylor said Australians were “already making the choice to switch to new vehicle technologies where it makes the most economic sense”, with hybrid sales doubling last year.

“We are optimistic about how quickly the technology cost will reduce for other electric vehicles compared to traditional cars, making it an easier choice for consumers,” he said.

Labor’s climate change spokesman, Chris Bowen, said years of government inaction had left Australia with the lowest uptake of EVs in the developed world and car makers “no longer bothering to send their most affordable” cars to the country.

He said Taylor and Scott Morrison had spent the whole last election campaign claiming EVs would “end the weekend”. “They’re asking voters to trust them when their ideology and neglect has made EVs more expensive for years,” he said.

The Greens leader Adam Bandt said the government’s policy was “no carrot and no stick”. “This hands-off approach will make it harder for Australia to reduce emissions,” he said.

Australia has become increasingly isolated on its approach to the climate crisis. More than 100 countries having supported a mid-century net zero emissions target as expected under the Paris agreement, but the Morrison government has resisted setting goal.

The prime minister, Scott Morrison, this week said he wanted to meet net zero emissions “preferably by 2050” through low-emissions technology, not by imposing new costs, but has not explained how the government’s technology approach could get there.

Several major car companies plan to phase out fossil fuel models. GM, which has been accused of not acting to address its emissions, recently announced it would be all-electric by 2035.

The government has invited submissions on the future fuels discussion paper until 2 April, with a final policy promised mid-year.

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Study Shows Sea Level Will Rise More And Faster Than Previously Believed

AZoCleantech

When assessing the rise in sea levels, two major elements should be observed. One element is the loss of ice on land, for example, inland ice sheets and melting mountain glaciers on Antarctica and Greenland, while the other is that the sea will increase in size as it becomes warmer. In other words, the sea level will rise quickly with increasing temperatures.

The warmer it gets, the faster the sea level rises. the sensitivity models of the future appear to be inconsistent with historical data. Image Credit: Aslak Grinsted.

Now, scientists from the Niels Bohr Institute at the University of Copenhagen have developed a new technique to precisely measure how fast the sea will respond to warming.

The sea level is tracked carefully and its responsiveness can be compared in models using ancient data. The comparison demonstrates that previous estimations of sea level have been extremely conservative, which means the sea will probably rise more and faster than assumed.

The study results were recently published in Ocean Science, the journal from the European Geosciences Union.

Over the last 150 years, in what is said to be the industrial period, sea levels have been rising, as explained by Aslak Grinsted, an associate professor from the Niels Bohr Institute research section, Physics of Ice, Climate and Earth. "We expect, of course, that there is a connection between rising temperature and the rate indicating the momentum of the rise. Observations are telling us that the rate has been accelerating over the past 150 years. This means we can create a picture of how the connection between temperature and sea-level rise has been, historically."
Aslak Grinsted, Associate Professor, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen
Grinsted continued, “But 150 years is not very long, actually, because of the great inertia in the warming of the oceans and inland ice sheets, so several hundreds of years can pass before we see the full consequences of warming in the atmosphere. This is why we compare the observations with the results from the detailed computer models we use to depict a future scenario.”

“Among others, the climate panel of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has gathered these projections, made from a collection of many smaller models. These, in turn, have been validated, obviously, as well as can be done,” he added.

Sea Level Projections are a Fairly Complicated Game

The IPCC used predictions that are built on a jigsaw puzzle of models for glaciers, ice sheets and the rising temperature of the sea. But the predictions suffer as only a reduced volume of data is, at times, available for the models to be verified on.

No data was practically available on the melt-off rate for Antarctica before there was coverage from satellite observations earlier in the 1990s. "We have better historical data for the sea-level rise in total, which, in principle, allows for a test of the combined puzzle of models. However, it has not been part of the routine to make sea-level hindcasts at IPCC, so presently we are not able to tell if these models are capable of reproducing the historical sea level."
Aslak Grinsted, Associate Professor, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen
“At the Niels Bohr Institute, we have used this situation as our starting point, and so we observe how sensitive the models are in reacting to warming. We expect that if we compare observational data from the fairly short period of time from 1850 onwards with the sensitivity of the models, it should allow us to assess whether the models are realistic or not,” Grinsted explained further.

Models do Not Match Historical Observations

The researchers from the Niels Bohr Institute believe that their technique for verifying upcoming situations by delving into the past can gain a foothold in how the rise in sea levels will be examined in the days to come. "Apparently, the models we are basing our predictions of sea-level rise on presently are not sensitive enough. To put it plainly, they don’t hit the mark when we compare them to the rate of sea-level rise we see when comparing future scenarios with observations going back in time."
Aslak Grinsted, Associate Professor, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen
“It is crucial for our faith in model-based climate predictions that they are able to reproduce the realized climate as realistically as possible,” added Jens Hesselbjerg Christensen, a Professor at the Ice, Climate and Geophysics Section from the Niels Bohr Institute and the co-author of the study.

Professor Christensen continued, “We hope this new comparison metric will be adopted to as large extent as is possible and can become a tool we can apply in comparing different models. A good example is that we don’t expect the sensitivity to be the same all the way back to the last millennium or several millions of years back in time, but the added understanding of how the sensitivity might change over time is something we can add to the comparisons between models and observations.”

“Besides, we’d like to see the method applied to the individual processes contributing to sea-level rise. This might make the understanding of the sensitivity even more detailed, we believe,” added Professor Christensen.

“You could say that this article has two main messages: The scenarios we see before us now regarding sea level rise are too conservative—the sea looks, using our method, to rise more than what is believed using the present method. The other message is that research in this area can benefit from using our method to constrain sea-level models in the scenarios in the future,” Grinsted concluded.

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