Conflict, Climate Change Choke Efforts To Cure Poverty, Inequality: U.N.

Reuters - Ellen Wulfhorst

A pastoralist in northern Somalia, a region hit hard by drought. He lost almost half of his sheep flock that originally numbered 70. UNICEF/Sebastian Rich

UNITED NATIONS - Climate change and conflict are forcing growing numbers of people to go hungry, flee their homes and lose critical access to water, the United Nations said on Wednesday in a look at progress in its global development goals.
The number of hungry people has risen for the first time in a decade, and violence and conflict are causing food problems in 18 nations, the U.N. said in its assessment.
Member nations of the U.N. adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2015 in a concerted effort to conquer poverty, inequality and other international woes by a 2030 deadline.
Progress has been hampered by climate change-related extreme weather and by violence and war, said Francesca Perucci, assistant director of the Statistics Division at the U.N. Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UN DESA).
“Countries face mounting challenges - a fast-changing climate, increased numbers of conflicts and inequality and persistent pockets of poverty and hunger,” she said at a U.N. news conference.
“For the first time in a decade, the number of people who are undernourished has increased from 777 million in 2015 to 815 million in 2016, mainly due to conflict, drought and disasters linked to climate change,” she said.

Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018: World Hunger infographic

Economic losses in 2017 came to more than $300 billion, among the highest in recent years due to three major hurricanes that hit the United States and countries in the Caribbean, the U.N. assessment said.
“With climate change ... we notice there’s a lot of significant economic losses and (that) probably will increase in coming years,” said Yongyi Min, chief of the SDG monitoring section at UN DESA, at the news conference.
More than 2 billion people are affected by water stress, when demand for water outweighs availability or supplies are of poor quality, she said.
“This number will increase with population growth and the effects of climate change,” Min said.
Increased violence and conflict caused the number of people driven from their homes to rise to a record high of 68.5 million last year, she said.

Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018: Youth Unemployment infographic

“With just 12 years left to the 2030 deadline, we must inject a sense of urgency,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a foreword to the assessment report.
Previous assessments by the U.N. of the goals have shown few and uneven advances, with conflict and violence to blame.
Outside assessments have also cited nationalism, protectionism and a need for more funding.
The cost of implementing the SDGs has been estimated at $3 trillion a year.



Links

• Conflict and climate change challenge sustainable development effort: UN report
• The Sustainable Development Goals Report 2018
• On World Day to Combat Desertification, UN shines spotlight on ‘true value’ of land
• ‘We face a global emergency’ over oceans: UN chief sounds the alarm at G7 Summit event
• World must unite against ‘preventable tragedy’ of ocean pollution: UN chief
• Plastic pollution choking world’s oceans
• Hunger surges amid deadly conflicts, poor weather conditions in many countries – UN agriculture agency
• The world is being ‘swamped’ by harmful plastic waste says UN chief, marking Environment Day
• UN agencies join forces against environmental risks that cause 12.6 million deaths a year
• Promoting biodiversity across all agricultural sectors ‘fundamental’ — FAO chief
• Rich variety of life on earth essential says UN chief Guterres, marking biological diversity day
• Climate change: An 'existential threat' to humanity, UN chief warns global summit

Coal To Be Kaput In Australia By 2050, As Renewables, Batteries Take Over

RenewEconomy - Sophie Vorrath

 Australia’s coal-fired generation capacity could be little more than a twinkle in Tony Abbott’s eye by as early as 2050, when it will have been all but snuffed out by cheap renewables and battery storage, and household energy investments.
The latest National Energy Outlook from Bloomberg New Energy Finance, predicts Australia will generate all but 8 per cent of its electricity from renewable energy sources by 2050, as dramatic reductions in battery storage costs boost solar and wind uptake.
The report, published on Tuesday night in Australia, neatly pole-vaults over the current national energy policy mire to forecast a six-fold growth in renewable capacity for Australia over the next 30-odd years, as technology and economics take over.

In fact, according to the NEO, renewables overtake fossil fuels as the major source of energy generation in Australia as early as 2031, before supplying 92 per cent of the total in 2050.
Renewables and storage make up 87 per cent of all new capacity additions to 2050, representing a $US138 billion ($A187 billion) investment opportunity.
By then, the report says, utility- and small-scale PV will have surged to 75GW, and wind to 48GW, while battery storage capacity will boom to at least 27GW in 2050 – the vast majority of which (23GW) will be installed by households and businesses behind-the-meter.
This behind the meter investment is significant and represents a reshaping of the grid. Together with demand response, behind-the-meter PV and storage will make up 44 per cent of total power capacity in Australia in 2050.
The solar capacity on household and business premises will supply more energy than coal in 2035, and nearly one quarter of Australia’s energy needs in 2050. Australia’s power system will be one of the two most decentralised in the world,
And by 2050, electric vehicles make up around 76 per cent of all new car sales in Australia, and 75 per cent of the total car fleet. Some 47TWh (14 per cent) of national electricity production will be used to charge EV batteries, but this also represents a flexible resource.
“Australia’s power sector is rapidly reorienting itself based on the economics of clean energy,” said Kobad Bhavnagri, head of BNEF in Australia. “New technology has set a path for Australia to achieve near-zero emissions power by 2050.
“The future grid will be underpinned by cheap wind and solar, with batteries and pumped hydro helping to smooth out the variability, and with more expensive gas acting as a fail-safe.”
For its part, BNEF says gas capacity will need also to increase, rising from 18GW today to 23GW in 2050, “to provide reliable supply in the rare periods when the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining.”

For coal, however, the news is all bad. Bloomberg NEF sees its share of the generation mix falling from 25GW in 2017 – when it was the source of 65 per cent of the country’s electricity – to 23GW in 2025.
And from there on, it’s on a slippery slope, as capacity diminishes to 18GW in 2030, and to just 6GW in 2040.
By 2050, BNEF expects coal to be gone almost completely from Australia’s generation mix – although the report does stress that this is “assuming there are no government attempts to save it with subsidies;” something certain Coalition members are currently working so hard to do.
“This year’s NEO confirms that cheap renewables combined with improved battery storage will eventually mean the demise of Australia’s coal-fired power plants,” said Leonard Quong, senior associate at BNEF.
“New coal will not be able to compete with increasingly cheap electricity from wind and solar, balanced with battery storage and other flexible technologies like hydro and gas,” he said.
“As existing coal generators reach end of life, they will not be life-extended or replaced.”
All this happens against a global backdrop where BNEF sees wind and solar surging to almost “50 by 50” – 50 per cent of world generation by 2050 – also largely due to the advent of cheaper and cheaper batteries, enabling electricity to be stored and discharged to meet demand and supply.
Indeed, the key focus of the report – which is based on eight months of analysis and modelling by a 65-person Bloomberg NEF team – is the huge impact of falling battery costs.
This is particularly pronounced for lithium-ion battery prices which, already down by nearly 80 per cent per megawatt-hour since 2010, are expected to continue to tumble.

“We see $US548 billion being invested in battery capacity by 2050, two-thirds of that at the grid level and one-third installed behind-the-meter by households and businesses,” said Seb Henbest, the lead author of the NEO 2018, and head of BNEF in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
“The arrival of cheap battery storage will mean that it becomes increasingly possible to finesse the delivery of electricity from wind and solar, so that these technologies can help meet demand even when the wind isn’t blowing and the sun isn’t shining.
“The result will be renewables eating up more and more of the existing market for coal, gas and nuclear.”
NEO 2018 sees $US11.5 trillion being invested globally in new power generation capacity between 2018 and 2050, with $US8.4 trillion of that going to wind and solar and a further $1.5 trillion to other zero-carbon technologies such as hydro and nuclear.
This investment will produce a 17-fold increase in solar photovoltaic capacity worldwide, and a sixfold increase in wind power capacity.

 The levellised cost of electricity, or LCOE, from new PV plants is forecast to fall a further staggering 71 per cent by 2050, while that for onshore wind drops by a further 58 per cent.
As BNEF notes, these two technologies have already seen LCOE reductions of 77 per cent and 41 per cent respectively between 2009 and 2018.
As for coal, it is forecast to be “the biggest loser” on the global stage, too.
“Beaten on cost by wind and PV for bulk electricity generation, and batteries and gas for flexibility, the future electricity system will reorganise around cheap renewables – coal gets squeezed out,” said Elena Giannakopoulou, head of energy economics at BNEF.
Conversely, the role of gas generation “will evolve” with the greater energy market, BNEF says, when it will be increasingly built and used to provide back-up for renewables rather than to produce “base-load” electricity.
BNEF sees $US1.3 trillion being invested in new capacity to 2050, nearly half of it in ‘gas peaker’ plants rather than combined-cycle turbines. Gas-fired generation is seen rising 15% between 2017 and 2050, although its share of global electricity declines from 21% to 15%.

AAP Image/Mick Tsikas

And what does all this mean for emissions? Bloomberg NEF says the bad news for coal is good for global pollution levels – although not good enough.
BNEF now sees global electricity sector emissions rising 2 per cent from 2017 to a peak in 2027, and then falling 38 per cent to 2050, the report says.
But this would still see the global electricity sector fall short of its part in the effort to keep global CO₂ levels below levels consistent with limiting the rise in temperatures to less than two degrees Celsius.
“Even if we decommissioned all the world’s coal plants by 2035, the power sector would still be tracking above a climate-safe trajectory, burning too much unabated gas,” said BNEF energy economics analyst Matthias Kimmel.
“Getting to two degrees requires a zero-carbon solution to the seasonal extremes, one that doesn’t involve unabated gas.”

Links

• Australian car fleet could be 90% EVs by 2050
• Tasmania may double size of hydro plant, in first step of big battery plans
• Five ways the NEG works against consumers, and solar
• Clean energy investment ‘must be 50% higher’ to limit warming to 1.5C
• NEG: Irrelevant at best, harmful at worst
• A 228MW Victorian wind farm to go ahead as big business snaps up cheap green power
• Who should control household rooftop solar and batteries?

Ex-NASA Scientist: 30 Years On, World Is Failing 'Miserably’ To Address Climate Change

The Guardian - Oliver Milman

James Hansen, who gave a climate warning in 1988 Senate testimony, says real hoax is by leaders claiming to take action

James Hansen: ‘All we’ve done is agree there’s a problem.’ Photograph: Ali Smith for the Guardian

Thirty years after a former NASA scientist sounded the alarm for the general public about climate change and human activity, the expert issued a fresh warning that the world is failing “miserably” to deal with the worsening dangers.
While Donald Trump and many conservatives like to argue that climate change is a hoax, James Hansen, the 77-year-old former NASA climate scientist, said in an interview at his home in New York that the relevant hoax today is perpetrated by those leaders claiming to be addressing the problem.
Hansen provided what’s considered the first warning to a mass audience about global warming when, in 1988, he told a US congressional hearing he could declare “with 99% confidence” that a recent sharp rise in temperatures was a result of human activity.
Since this time, the world’s greenhouse gas emissions have mushroomed despite repeated, increasingly frantic warnings about civilization-shaking catastrophe, from scientists amassing reams of evidence in Hansen’s wake.
“All we’ve done is agree there’s a problem,” Hansen told the Guardian. “We agreed that in 1992 [at the Earth summit in Rio] and re-agreed it again in Paris [at the 2015 climate accord]. We haven’t acknowledged what is required to solve it. Promises like Paris don’t mean much, it’s wishful thinking. It’s a hoax that governments have played on us since the 1990s.”
Hansen’s long list of culprits for this inertia are both familiar – the nefarious lobbying of the fossil fuel industry – and surprising. Jerry Brown, the progressive governor of California, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, are “both pretending to be solving the problem” while being unambitious and shunning low-carbon nuclear power, Hansen argues.

James Hansen: ‘Promises like Paris don’t mean much, it’s wishful thinking. It’s a hoax that governments have played on us since the 1990s.’ Photograph: Arrizabalaga/REX Shutterstock

There is particular scorn for Barack Obama. Hansen says in a scathing upcoming book that the former president “failed miserably” on climate change and oversaw policies that were “late, ineffectual and partisan”.
Hansen even accuses Obama of passing up the opportunity to thwart Donald Trump’s destruction of US climate action, by declining to settle a lawsuit the scientist, his granddaughter and 20 other young people are waging against the government, accusing it of unconstitutionally causing peril to their living environment.
“Near the end of his administration the US said it would reduce emissions 80% by 2050,” Hansen said.
“Our lawsuit demands a reduction of 6% a year so I thought, ‘That’s close enough, let’s settle the lawsuit.’ We got through to Obama’s office but he decided against it. It was a tremendous opportunity. This was after Trump’s election, so if we’d settled it quickly the US legally wouldn’t be able to do the absurd things Trump is doing now by opening up all sorts of fossil fuel sources.”
Hansen’s frustrations temper any satisfaction at largely being vindicated for his testimony, delivered to lawmakers on 23 June 1988.
Wearing a cream-coloured suit, the soft-spoken son of Iowan tenant farmers hunched over the microphone in Washington to explain that humans had entered a confronting new era. “The greenhouse effect has been detected and it is changing our climate now,” he said.
Afterwards, Hansen told reporters: “It is time to stop waffling so much and say that the evidence is pretty strong that the greenhouse effect is here.” He brandished new research that forecast that 1988 was set to be the warmest year on record, as well as projections for future heat under three different emissions scenarios. The world has dutifully followed Hansen’s “scenario B” – we are “smack on it” it, Hansen said last week – with global temperatures jumping by around 1C (1.8F) over the past century.
These findings hadn’t occurred in a vacuum, of course – the Irish physicist John Tyndall confirmed that carbon dioxide is a heat-trapping gas in the 1850s. A 1985 scientific conference in Villach, Austria, concluded the temperature rise in the 21st century would be “greater than in any man’s history”. The changes in motion would “affect life on Earth for centuries to come”, the New York Times warned the morning after Hansen’s testimony.

James Hansen testifies before a Senate transportation subcommittee on 8 May 1989, a year after his history-making testimony regarding climate change. Photograph: Dennis Cook/AP

Three decades of diplomacy has blossomed into an international consensus, albeit rattled by Trump, that the temperature rise must be curbed to “well below” 2C (3.6F) above pre-industrial times. But in this time emissions have soared (in 1988, 20bn tons of carbon dioxide was emitted – by 2017 it was 32bn tons) with promised cuts insufficient for the 2C goal. Despite the notable growth of renewable energy such as solar and wind, Hansen believes there is no pathway to salvation without a tax on carbon-producing fuels.
“The solution isn’t complicated, it’s not rocket science,” Hansen said. “Emissions aren’t going to go down if the cost of fossil fuels isn’t honest. Economists are very clear on this. We need a steadily increasing fee that is then distributed to the public.”
Hansen faced opposition even before his testimony – he recalls a NASA colleague telling him on the morning of his presentation “no respectable scientist” would claim the world is warming – and faced subsequent meddling and censorship from George HW Bush’s administration.
He eventually retired from NASA in 2013 and promptly reinvented himself as an activist who was arrested, wearing his trademark hat, outside the White House while protesting against the Keystone oil pipeline.

James Hansen is arrested outside the White House for protesting on 27 September 2010. Photograph: Alamy

The dawdling global response to warming temperatures means runaway climate change now looms. The aspirational 1.5C (2.7F) warming target set in Paris could be surpassed by 2040. Huge amounts of ice from western Antarctica are crashing into the ocean, redrawing forecasts for sea level rise. Some low-lying islands fear extinction.
“It’s not too late,” Hansen stressed. “There is a rate of reduction that’s feasible to stay well below 2C. But you just need that price on carbon.”
John Holdren, who was Obama’s chief science adviser, told the Guardian that the Paris agreement achieved what was possible without support from Congress and that legally binding lawsuits would be “problematic”.
However, he added that while he had reservations about Hansen’s policy ideas he was one of the “true giants” of climate science.
“Poor Jim Hansen. He’s a tragic hero,” said Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard academic who studies the history of science. “The Cassandra aspect of his life is that he’s cursed to understand and diagnose what’s going on but unable to persuade people to do something about it. We are all raised to believe knowledge is power but Hansen proves the untruth of that slogan. Power is power.”
That power has been most aggressively wielded by fossil fuel companies such as Exxon and Shell which, despite being well aware of the dangers of climate change decades before Hansen’s touchstone moment in 1988, funded a network of groups that ridiculed the science and funded sympathetic politicians. Later, they were to be joined by the bulk of the US Republican party, which now recoils from any action on climate change as heresy.
“Obama was committed to action but couldn’t do much with the Congress he had,” Oreskes said. “To blame the Democrats and Obama is to misunderstand the political context. There was a huge, organized network that put forward a message of confusion and doubt.”
Climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who testified at the same 1988 hearing about sea level rise, said the struggle to confront climate change has been “discouraging”.
“The nasty anti-science movement ramped up and now we are way behind.”
“I’m convinced we will deal with the problem,” he said. “[But] not before there is an amount of suffering that is unconscionable and should’ve been avoided.”

Links

• Americans 'under siege' from climate disinformation – former NASA chief scientist
• NASA full of 'fear and anxiety' since Trump took office, ex-employee says
• It's 50 years since climate change was first seen. Now time is running out
• We have every reason to fear Trump’s pick to head Nasa
• Americans 'under siege' from climate disinformation – former Nasa chief scientist
• The Guardian view on climate change: good news – but not yet good enough
• US emissions set to miss 2025 target in Paris climate change deal, research finds
• Nasa scientist: climate change is a moral issue on a par with slavery
• Climate change: the world looks to Washington
• Climate change policies failing, Nasa scientist warns Obama

Climate Change To Overtake Land Use As Major Threat To Global Biodiversity

Phys.org - University College London

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

Climate change will have a rapidly increasing effect on the structure of global ecological communities over the next few decades, with amphibians and reptiles being significantly more affected than birds and mammals, a new report by UCL finds.
The pace of change is set to outstrip loss to vertebrate communities caused by land use for agriculture and settlements, which is estimated to have already caused losses of over ten per cent of biodiversity from ecological communities.
Previous studies have suggested that ecosystem function is substantially impaired where more than 20 per cent of species are lost; this is estimated to have occurred across over a quarter of the world's surface, rising to nearly two thirds when roads are taken into account.
The new study, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that the effects of climate change on ecological communities are predicted to match or exceed land use in its effects on vertebrate community diversity by 2070.
The findings suggest that efforts to minimise human impact on global biodiversity should now take both land use and climate change into account instead of just focusing on one over the other, as the combined effects are expected to have significant negative effects on the global ecosystem.
Study author, Dr. Tim Newbold (UCL Genetics, Evolution & Environment), said: "This is the first piece of research looking at the combined effects of future climate and land use change on local vertebrate biodiversity across the whole of the land surface, which is essential when considering how to minimise human impact on the local environment at a global scale.
"The results show how big a role climate change is set to play in decreasing levels of biodiversity in the next few decades and how certain animal groups and regions will be most affected."
Dr. Newbold's research has found that vertebrate communities are expected to lose between a tenth and over a quarter of their species locally as a result of climate change.
Furthermore, when combined with land use, vertebrate community diversity is predicted to have decreased substantially by 2070, with species potentially declining by between 20 and nearly 40 per cent.
The effect of climate change varies around the world. Tropical rainforests, which have seen lower rates of conversion to human use than other areas, are likely to experience large losses as a result of climate change. Temperate regions, which have been the most affected by land use, stand to see relatively small biodiversity changes from future climate change, while tropical grasslands and savannahs are expected to see strong losses as a result of both climate change and land use.

Links

• Climate change to become ‘greatest pressure on biodiversity’ by 2070
• The double threat of climate and land use change enhances risks to biodiversity
• Biodiversity suffers as climate warms
• Study shows one third of world's protected areas degraded by human activities
• Climate change to cause dramatic drop in Persian Gulf biodiversity and fisheries potential
• Australia’s Biodiversity And Climate Change
• Save Our Bugs! How To Avert An Insect Armageddon
• 'Going Backwards': A Third Of Protected Land At Risk As Australia Lags
• Urgent Climate Action Required To Protect Tens Of Thousands Of Species Worldwide, New Research Shows
• Will Our Beloved Waratahs Survive Climate Change?
• As Biodiversity Declines, So Does Public Attention
• Climate Change Driving Birds To Migrate Early, Research Reveals
• Australian Scientists Found The Gene Trees Use To Adapt To Climate Change
• Tree Of Life Faces Deep Cuts From Climate Change
• An American Tragedy: Why Are Millions Of Trees Dying Across The Country?
• Study Identifies Key Species Which Act As Warning Signs Of Ecosystem Collapse
• Politics For The Planet: Why Nature And Wildlife Need Their Own Seats At The UN
• Proceedings of the Royal Society

Clean Energy Investment ‘Must Be 50% Higher’ To Limit Warming To 1.5c

Carbon Brief - Jocelyn Timperley

Burgos wind farm, Burgos, Ilocos Norte, Philippines. Credit: 500px / Alamy Stock Photo.

An extra $460bn per year needs to be invested on the low-carbon economy globally over the next 12 years to limit global warming to 1.5C, a new paper says.
This is 50% higher than the additional investment needed to meet a 2C limit, the paper says. It is the first to assess the difference in investments and monetary flows between the two temperature goals of the Paris Agreement, the lead author tells Carbon Brief.
The paper also finds a far faster increase in low-carbon energy and energy efficiency investment would be needed to limit warming to 1.5C. Meanwhile, coal investment would not change substantially between a 1.5C and 2C scenario, the lead author says, since a dramatic downscaling of coal investments is already required to meet the 2C goal.

Financial flows
The Paris Agreement says countries should scale up finance to the low-carbon economy. Article 2.1(c) of the deal commits signatories to:

“Making finance flows consistent with a pathway towards low greenhouse gas emissions and climate-resilient development.”

The new paper, published today in Nature Energy, aims to quantify the scale of financial flows that may be required to meet the overarching temperature goals of the Paris deal. It assesses how much would be needed for four scenarios.
In the first, countries meet the targets laid out in their current individual climate pledges (“nationally determined contributions”, or NDCs). The second looks at meeting the Paris goal of limiting global warming to “well below 2C”. The third scenario considers a world where the aspirational Paris target of limiting warming to 1.5C is met. These are compared to a business-as-usual scenario with no further tightening of current climate and energy policies.
The study combines the results from six different integrated assessment models (IAMs) to make its findings more robust. Each model represents the global energy system and the various mitigation options for the future in a slightly different way. All scenarios are in line with a “middle-of-the-road” future where social, economic, and technological trends broadly follow their historical patterns (SSP2).
The findings show an extra $132bn investment in low-carbon technology and energy efficiency is needed between 2016 and 2030 to meet the NDC targets, compared to a business-as-usual scenario.
The additional investments needed to meet climate pledges amounts to less then a tenth of the $1,700bn invested in the global energy system in 2016, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
It is also comparable in scale to $100bn per year in climate finance that rich countries have promised developing countries to help fund their climate efforts.
David McCollum, senior research scholar at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) and lead author of the paper, says this means the $100bn pledge would go a long way towards developing countries meeting their NDC targets. He tells Carbon Brief:

“It’s something that, in theory, could be done, if priorities were set in the right way…But as we know from this research and other research, the NDC targets don’t get us anywhere near where we need to be for 2C, and certainly not 1.5C. It starts us on the right track, but it’s already missing the mark in terms of emissions reductions by 2025-2030.”

The chart below shows the results of the investment gap found by the study, as well as the much higher average annual investment needed up to 2050. This is due to the need for clean energy investments to accelerate beyond 2030, raising the annual average figure.

Annual global investment gaps in low-carbon energy and energy efficiency in tightened policy scenarios, averaged up to 2030 and 2050. The scenarios consider a world where the NDC country pledges are met, and where the 2C and 1.5C temperature limits of the Paris Agreement are met. Source: McCollum, D.L. et al. (2018) Supplementary Material. Chart by Carbon Brief using Highcharts

2C vs 1.5C
For the 2C target, the extra annual investment needed in low-carbon energy and energy efficiency between now and 2030 increases to $303bn. Low-carbon investments would overtake fossil fuel investments as early as 2025 and grow rapidly thereafter, shown in the figure below. Around two-thirds of such supply side energy investments today are fossil-related, with the remaining third in low carbon.

Projected global-average annual investment pathways to meet the 1.5C (green), 2C (blue) and NDC (red) targets as well as the business-as-usual scenario (CPol; black). Values are given in supply-side investments as a share of total supply-side investments. Therefore, these values do not include energy efficiency investments. Source: McCollum, D.L. et al. (2018)

For the 1.5C target, an additional $458bn would be needed, the study says. This would mean a “step-change” in terms of the amount invested per tonne of CO2 avoided, it adds.
The extra investment effort needed going from 2C to 1.5C was surprising, says McCollum:

“Going this extra bit from 2C to 1.5C, it’s only a few hundred gigatonnes of carbon, but the investment efforts – particular in this near-term out to 2030 – what it means in terms of ramping up renewables and efficiency is much greater. So it’s non-linear in other words: there’s this tipping point if we want to move beyond 2C and go to 1.5C.”

It is also important to note that limiting global temperatures to 1.5C is expected to have economic advantages. One paper published earlier this year found per capita GDP would be 5% higher by 2100 if temperatures are stabilised at 1.5C rather than 2C.

Coal decline
One thing that does not change substantially between the 1.5C and 2C scenarios, however, is the need to move away from unabated coal investments, says McCollum.
Here, the difference going from 2C to 1.5C is even fewer investments into oil and natural gas, the paper finds. In some models, the authors found some limited room for natural gas investments with carbon capture and storage (CCS). Meanwhile, the share of investments going to electricity transmission and distribution, already currently around a quarter of all energy investments, will continue to rise.
Prof Sam Fankhauser, director of the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, says the key point from the new study is the need to use existing capital flows differently, rather than mobilising additional capital. He tells Carbon Brief:

“We need some extra investment, too, but the main thing is redirecting existing energy investment from fossil fuels to renewables. So no surprise, then, that accelerating clean investment will overtake declining fossil fuel investment within 10 years.”

He adds that the same redirection of capital is needed in other areas, such as transport, industry and urban design.

Links

• Energy investment needs for fulfilling the Paris Agreement and achieving the Sustainable Development Goals
• Interactive: The Paris Agreement on climate change
• Climate finance: the challenge of ‘shifting the trillions’
• David McCollum
• China leading on world’s clean energy investment, says report
• Cost of carbon should be 200% higher today, say economists

Huge Majority Supports Renewables Over Coal Even At Greater Cost

Fairfax - Nick O'Malley

Australians overwhelmingly believe that the government should focus on renewable energy over coal-fired power plants, even if such a measures were to cost more, the 2018 Lowy Institute’s annual poll on Australian attitudes has found.
When asked if the government should focus on renewables “even if this means we may need to invest more” or traditional energy “even if this means the environment may suffer to some extent” 84 per cent of respondents opted for renewables. Last year the figure was 81 per cent.

The poll also found that the number of Australians who believe that global warming is a “serious and pressing belief” has climbed to 59 per cent, up five percentage points since last year up and 23 points since 2012. Concern about global warming is now as high as it was back in 2006, the previous peak.

This jump in concern about climate change represents the most significant change in opinion ever found by the poll in its 14 years. It also found Australians consider climate change to be the third most significant national security threat after international terrorism and the North Korean nuclear program.

The government has called for the Liddell power station in the Hunter Valley to remain open. Photo: Janie Barrett

The Lowy Institute's director of research, Alex Oliver, said she believed that Australians' concern about climate change began to fall when key pieces of legislation were introduced by the Rudd government to combat it, but when they saw those policies being dismantled, concern for the issue began to grow again.
Ms Oliver said she had presumed that the government's fierce support for coal power, particularly its call to keep the Liddell power station open, would see support for coal increase this year. Instead the government finds itself out of step with popular support for renewable energy.

According to the research even among those who were most sceptical of climate change - the 10 per cent who say they are sure it is not a problem - 40 per cent still support a focus on renewables. Of the rest of the community, nine out of 10 support a focus on renewables over coal, as do 72 per cent of Liberal-National supporters.

The poll showed that the issue of climate change continues to divide the Australian community along generational lines.

A full 70 per cent of Australians between the ages of 18 and 44 see global warming as a serious and pressing issue, but only 49 per cent of people over that age do.
For this year’s Lowy Institute poll 1200 respondents were conducted via telephone and online surveys.

Links
2018 Lowy Institute Poll

Warming Pacific 'primed' for possible El Nino forming by this spring

Climate change action given low priority in NSW Budget

'Absolute rort': Snowy Hydro seeks to expedite pilot 2.0 project nod

Warming Pacific 'Primed' For Possible El Nino Forming By This Spring

Fairfax - Peter Hannam

Farmers beware: a build-up of warm water in the tropical eastern Pacific has lifted the odds for an El Nino forming late this spring, the Bureau of Meteorology said.
Five of the eight models used by the bureau now point to El Nino thresholds being crossed, a shift in climate patterns that would typically produce lower-than-average rain across eastern Australia.

An El Nino can point to a dry spell for eastern Australia - which would be bad news for dairy farmers such as Brendan Hayden, from Pilton, Queensland, who are already being forced to provide fodder for their herds. Photo: Peter Rickards

"The ocean is primed for an El Nino but it will need a push from the atmosphere" to get there, Robyn Duell, a senior climatologist at the bureau, said. "It will depend a lot on what happens to the trade winds in the next couple of weeks."
At present, the odds for an El Nino are about 50-50 but even a near miss can still translate into lower-than-average rain and hotter temperatures for much of the country. Given the winter outlook is already pointing to the continuation of the drier-than-usual conditions, those areas already in drought might be in for an extended dry spell.

IMAGE

Australia posted its fourth-warmest autumn by maximum temperatures on record, while NSW had its hottest and Victoria, its second-warmest. Rainfall was a third-below average for the season, while May alone was the third-driest in national records going back to 1910.
During El Nino years, easterly equatorial trade winds slow or reverse. The Pacific Ocean also absorbs less heat from the atmosphere, adding a temperature kick to the background warming from climate change.
The impacts of El Ninos on Australia are typically worst when reinforced by a so-called positive Indian Ocean Dipole, when temperatures off north-western Australia are relatively cool compared with those off eastern Africa. So far, only one of the models used by the bureau point to a positive-IOD forming, Ms Duell said.
Globally, May was the fourth warmest on record, with the other three coming since 2014, according to international agencies such as NASA.
The previous three months - marking the northern spring - were the third warmest in 138 years of records.

IMAGE

Links

• Sydney's autumn hottest on record with more than half the days above 25C
• Huge majority supports renewables over coal even at greater cost
• Climate change action given low priority in NSW Budget
• 'Absolute rort': Snowy Hydro seeks to expedite pilot 2.0 project nod
• El Niño Might Speed Up Climate Change
• Extreme El Nino Events To Double In Number Even With 1.5-Degree Warming: Study
• Meet El Niño’s Cranky Uncle That Could Send Global Warming Into Hyperdrive
• Scientists Search For El Niño Secrets
• El Niño: Why Predictable Climate Event Still Has The Scientists Guessing
• El Niño: State of Emergency