Tag: greenhouse gases

Great Barrier Reef should be placed on the ‘in danger’ list, UN-backed report shows | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The Great Barrier Reef should be added to the list of world heritage sites that are “in danger”, a team of scientists concluded after conducting a mission to the world’s largest coral reef system.

In a new UN-backed report released on Monday, the scientists said that the reef is facing major threats due to the climate crisis and that action to save it needs to be taken “with upmost urgency.”

“The mission team concludes that the property is faced with major threats that could have deleterious effects on its inherent characteristics, and therefore meets the criteria for inscription on the list of World Heritage in danger,” the report said.

The 10-day monitoring mission by UNESCO scientists in March came months after the World Heritage Committee made an initial recommendation to list Australia’s Great Barrier Reef as “in danger” due to the accelerating impacts of human-caused climate change.

At the time, the agency called on Australia to “urgently” address the worsening threats of the climate crisis, but received immediate pushback from the Australian government.

The long-anticipated final mission report lays out key steps that the scientists say need to be taken urgently, though the report itself was published after a six-month delay. Originally scheduled to be released in May before UNESCO’s World Heritage Committee meeting in Russia, the report was postponed due to the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The recommendations include slashing greenhouse gas emissions, reassessing proposed projects and credit schemes, and scaling up financial resources to ultimately protect the reefs.

Jumbo Aerial Photography/Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority/AP

Spanning nearly 133,000 square miles and home to more than 1,500 species of fish and over 400 species of hard corals, the Great Barrier Reef is an extremely critical marine ecosystem on the Earth.

It also contributes $4.8 billion annually to Australia’s economy and supports 64,000 jobs in tourism, fishing and research, according to the Great Barrier Reef Foundation.

But as the planet continues to warm, because of the growing amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, the reef’s long-term survival has come into question. Warming oceans and acidification caused by the climate crisis have led to widespread coral bleaching. Last year, scientists found the global extent of living coral has declined by half since 1950 due to climate change, overfishing and pollution.

The outlook is similarly grim, with scientists predicting that about 70% to 90% of all living coral around the world will disappear in the next 20 years. The Great Barrier Reef, in particular, has suffered many devastating mass bleaching events since 2015, caused by extremely warm ocean temperatures brought by the burning of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas.

During the UNESCO monitoring missions, reef managers found that the Great Barrier Reef is suffering its sixth mass bleaching event due to heat stress caused by climate change. Aerial surveys of around 750 reefs show widespread bleaching across the reef, with the most severe bleaching observed in northern and central areas.

Bleaching happens when stressed coral is deprived of its food source. With worsening conditions, the corals can starve and die, turning white as its carbonate skeleton is exposed.

“Even the most robust corals require nearly a decade to recover,” Jodie Rummer, associate professor of Marine Biology at James Cook University in Townsville, previously told CNN. “So we’re really losing that window of recovery. We’re getting back-to-back bleaching events, back-to-back heat waves. And, and the corals just aren’t adapting to these new conditions.”

Weeks before the mission, global scientists with the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released an alarming report concluding that with every extreme warming event, the planet’s vital ecosystems like the Great Barrier Reef are being pushed more toward tipping points beyond which irreversible changes can happen.

As researchers on the mission assessed the dire state of one of the world’s seven natural wonders, they witnessed how the climate crisis has drastically changed the coral reef system.

A decision on whether the reef should be officially labeled as “in danger” will be made by the World Heritage Committee next year, once UNESCO compiles a more thorough report that will include responses from the Australian federal and state governments.

[ad_2]

Source link

November 28, 2022
Opinion: ‘Africa’s COP’ made some big promises. Here’s how to deliver | CNN

[ad_1]

Editor’s Note: Adjoa Adjei-Twum. She is the Founder & CEO of the Africa-focused and UK-based advisory firm Emerging Business Intelligence and Innovation (EBII) Group for global investors interested in Africa and emerging markets.
The opinions expressed in this article are solely hers.

CNN
—

The recently-concluded COP27 was dubbed the “African COP” – with the continent center stage in the global effort to fight the causes and effects of climate change.

As negotiations in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh spilled over into the weekend, there was a significant breakthrough on one of the most fractious elements – creating a fund to help the most vulnerable developing nations hit by climate disasters.

The backdrop for COP27 was a series of catastrophic global weather events including record-breaking floods in Pakistan and Nigeria, the worst droughts in four decades in the Horn of Africa, and severe European heatwaves and hurricanes in the US.

The loss and damage fund – to pay for the sudden impacts of climate change which are not avoided by mitigation and adaptation – has been a major obstacle in COP talks.

The richest, most polluting nations have been reluctant to agree to a deal, worried that it could put them on the hook for costly legal claims for climate disasters.

I welcome progress here, as African nations are bearing the brunt of climate change. The continent contributes around 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to the UN Environment Programme and the International Energy Agency (IEA).

Climate change is estimated to cost the continent between $7bn and $15bn a year in lost economic output or GDP, rising to $50bn a year by 2030, according to the African Development Bank (AfDB).

But my joy is muted – the devil is in the detail, as ever. As an African diaspora entrepreneur whose work focuses significantly on the impact of climate change on the risk profile of African financial institutions and nations, I am concerned about the lack of detail about how the fund would work, when it will be implemented, and the timescale. I fear these could take years.

During a recent visit to the US, I discussed reparation money with US Democrat Congresswoman Rep. Ilhan Omar. She said it was important for the US and other countries to make heavy investments, which could come in the form of reparations.

She spoke about the importance of consulting impacted communities in Africa to avoid exploitation and the need for countries such as the US and China to end fossil fuel expansion and phase out existing oil, gas, and coal in a way that is “fair and equitable.”

Adaptation is Africa’s big challenge – the AFDB estimates that the continent needs between $1.3 to $1.6 trillion by 2030 to adapt to climate change.

The bank’s Africa Adaptation Acceleration Program, in partnership with the Global Center on Adaptation (GCA), aims to mobilize $25bn in finance for Africa, for projects such as weather forecasting apps for farmers and drought-resistant crops.

It is now time for African nations to levy a climate export tax on commodities, such as cocoa and rubber, to help pay for climate adaptation. But it still falls short of the money Africa needs.

Adaptation is all about building resilience and capacity, and I believe our governments, banks, and businesses must also adapt.

I am calling on our governments, institutions, and companies to boost efforts to attract green finance and make Africa more resilient by improving governance, tax systems, anti-corruption efforts, and legal compliance.

Sustainability is not a business tax, it is essential for business survival. Only companies focused on the changing world around us – from regulation to consumer and investor attitudes – will survive the climate crisis.

Businesses that ignore this can expect fines, boycotts, and limited access to funding. Banks will suffer too. So the financial sector must be better prepared and more agile.

This message will be reinforced when I meet CEOs, banking executives, and Nigeria’s central bank at the 13th Annual Bankers’ Committee Retreat, organized by the Nigerian Bankers Committee, in Lagos next month. The aim is to support the country’s biggest banks as they navigate new international sustainability rules.

Increasingly, investment funds must conform to green taxonomies – a system that highlights which investments are sustainable and which are not. In other words, banks will only support investments by institutions in G20 countries if they conform to national or supranational rules, such as the European Union’s Green Taxonomy.

This will not only help tackle greenwashing but also help companies and investors make more informed green choices. Additionally, G20 countries are asking their banks to forecast how risky their loans are due to climate change.

African nations must implement robust systems to mobilize private capital and foreign direct investment in key sectors. Governments must ensure they have an enabling environment for increased green investments.

Regulators must strengthen their capacity to develop and effectively enforce climate-related rules. Companies, especially banks, should strengthen climate risk management teams, regulatory compliance expertise, and preparation of bankable projects for international climate finance. This is the foundation for a successful transition to a low–carbon economy.

Looking ahead, there are other actions we can take. The African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA) – the world’s largest free trade area and single market of almost 1.3bn people – could protect Africa from the adverse impacts of climate change, such as food insecurity, conflict, and economic vulnerability.

It could lead to the development of regional and continental value chains, inter-Africa trade deals, job creation, security, and peace. A single market could drive less energy-intensive economic growth while keeping emissions low, for example by developing regional energy markets and manufacturing hubs.

But we need much better pan-Africa coordination, like the European Union, to accelerate the AfCFTA. I urge our governments to work together and take swift and concrete actions to ensure the full and effective implementation of the AfCFTA. There is no time to waste.

This will not be popular with some African regimes because they will be forced to be more transparent and accountable with their public finances.

This year’s COP may have been marred by chaos, rows between rich and poorer nations, and broken multi-billion-dollar pledges by developed countries who created the climate crisis.

Many observers point out the final deal did not include commitments to phase down or reduce the use of fossil fuels.

But, the deal to create a pooled fund for countries most affected by climate change is significant, and as UN secretary general António Guterres warned, it was no time for finger-pointing.

It is also no time for the blame game. It is a wake-up call for African governments, banks, institutions, and companies to unite, step up, and adapt to a new climate reality.

[ad_2]

Source link

November 24, 2022
This company wants to make air travel sustainable | CNN Business

[ad_1]

New York
CNN Business
—

In 2019, Air Company made a splash when it launched vodka derived from recaptured carbon, in an effort to reduce the amount of the harmful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.

Today, the Brooklyn-based startup has begun using the same process to make fuel for airplanes.

Air Company’s sustainable aviation fuel, which was recently tested by the US Air Force, could ultimately help the airline industry hit its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2050. Currently, the airline industry accounts for about 3% of total global carbon emissions each year, and mostly relies on traditional, fossil-based fuels that require various forms of environmental disruption to produce.

Already, some of the world’s biggest airlines are signing on to Air Company’s vision. The company announced last month that Jet Blue and Virgin Atlantic, as well as startup aircraft company Boom Supersonic, have agreed to purchase millions of gallons of its fuel in the coming years. Jet Blue Ventures, the airline’s investment arm, also invested directly in Air Company’s $30 million Series A funding round earlier this year.

“How we think about what the company does is trying to solve humanity’s toughest problems,” Gregory Constantine, co-founder and CEO of Air Company, told CNN in an interview last month. “For us, climate change is the greatest challenge that we’re facing as humanity to date … so if we can work on technologies that take what was once really thought of as a problem and turn it into a solution, then that’s a massive win.”

A number of producers of sustainable aviation fuel have emerged in recent years, including a major Finnish producer called Neste, many of them using ingredients such as plant material and cooking oil. But Air Company’s production process starts by pulling harmful carbon emissions out of the air.

The company first harvests carbon, mostly from industrial settings such as biofuel production facilities. It then takes water, separates the hydrogen from the oxygen, and blends the captured carbon with the hydrogen and a proprietary mix of other compounds, according to Air Company CTO Stafford Sheehan. It then distills that solution down, using what looks like a larger version of, say, a whiskey distilling system. The final products are ethyl alcohol, which is used to make the company’s vodka and other products such as perfume, as well as paraffin, which forms the basis of its jet fuel.

In some ways, Sheehan said, the process mimics how plants work: It takes in carbon, and aside from the final products, the only other offput is oxygen. And the company says its tests have indicated that planes should be able to fly using its fuel without blending it with fossil-based fuels or modifying their engines.

By the time a plane has flown using Air Company’s fuel, it will have released the same amount of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere as was captured to make the fuel, meaning the process on the whole is carbon-neutral, Sheehan said. The company uses renewable energy sources like solar to power its production facility.

Air Company does still have some work to do until its carbon-derived fuel is ready to be used widely on commercial flights. It needs more testing, and it needs to grow its manufacturing footprint. Sheehan said the company’s next production facility is already in the works and will be about 100 times the size of its Brooklyn test facility, which is probably about the size of a two-bedroom New York City apartment.

The company will also need to bring down the cost of its fuel, which is currently more expensive than traditional jet fuels, although the company declined to provide details on just how much. Air Company said that “consumers will not feel the impact of this shift,” and added that lowering the cost will be achieved in part “through an array of government incentives made available to fuel producers generating sustainable alternatives.”

Constantine said the company is planning for the first test of its fuel on a commercial plane next year, and expects to have its fuel used on its first commercial passenger flight by 2024.

Still, Air Company is hopeful that its efforts could eventually disrupt the aviation industry for the better, just as it’s been working to do with its consumer goods.

“Aviation has been a part of the goal since the start,” he said. “However, to get to those, you know, large industrial markets like aviation fuel, which it is traditionally known as the hottest industry industries to decarbonize, is going to take time. It’s going to take a lot of money and a lot of effort.”

[ad_2]

Source link

November 13, 2022
Belching lakes, mystery craters, ‘zombie fires’: How the climate crisis is transforming the Arctic permafrost | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Four years ago, Morris J. Alexie had to move out of the house his father built in Alaska in 1969 because it was sinking into the ground and water was beginning to seep into his home.

“The bogs are showing up in between houses, all over our community. There are currently seven houses that are occupied but very slanted and sinking into the ground as we speak,” Alexie said by phone from Nunapitchuk, a village of around 600 people. “Everywhere is bogging up.”

What was once grassy tundra is now riddled with water, he said. Their land is crisscrossed by 8-foot-wide boardwalks the community uses to get from place to place. And even some of the boardwalks have begun to sink.

“It’s like little polka dots of tundra land. We used to have regular grass all over our community. Now it’s changed into constant water marsh.”

Thawing permafrost — the long-frozen layer of soil that has underpinned the Arctic tundra and boreal forests of Alaska, Canada and Russia for millennia — is upending the lives of people such as Alexie. It’s also dramatically transforming the polar landscape, which is now peppered with massive sinkholes, newly formed or drained lakes, collapsing seashores and fire damage.

It’s not just the 3.6 million people who live in polar regions who need to be worried about the thawing permafrost.

Everyone does – particularly the leaders and climate policymakers from nearly 200 countries now meeting in Egypt for COP 27, the annual UN climate summit.

The vast amount of carbon stored in the northernmost reaches of our planet is an overlooked and underestimated driver of climate crisis. The frozen ground holds an estimated 1,700 billion metric tons of carbon – roughly 51 times the amount of carbon the world released as fossil fuel emissions in 2019, according to NASA. It may already be emitting as much greenhouse gas as Japan.

Permafrost thaw gets less attention than the headline-hogging shrinking of glaciers and ice sheets, but scientists said that needs to change — and fast.

“Permafrost is like the dirty cousin to the ice sheets. It’s a buried phenomenon. You don’t see it. It’s covered by vegetation and soil,” said Merritt Turetsky, director of the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research at the University of Colorado Boulder. “But it’s down there. We know it’s there. And it has an equally important impact on the global climate.”

It’s particularly pressing because Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has stopped much scientific cooperation, meaning a potential loss of access to key data and knowledge about the region.

Warmer summers — the Arctic is warming four times faster than the global average — have weakened and deepened the top or active layer of permafrost, which unfreezes in summer and freezes in winter.

This thawing is waking up the microbes in the soil that feast on organic matter, allowing methane and carbon dioxide to escape from the soil and into the atmosphere. It can also open pathways for methane to rise up from reservoirs deep in the earth.

“Permafrost has been basically serving as Earth’s freezer for ancient biomass,” Turetsky said. “When those creatures and organisms died, their biomass became incorporated into these frozen soil layers and then was preserved over time.”

As permafrost thaws, often in complex ways that aren’t clearly understood, that freezer lid is cranking open, and scientists such as Turetsky are doubling efforts to understand how these changes will play out.

Permafrost is a particularly unpredictable wild card in the climate crisis because it’s not yet clear whether carbon emissions from permafrost will be a relative drop in the bucket or a devastating addition. The latest estimates suggest that the magnitude of carbon emissions from permafrost by the end of this century could be equal to or bigger than present-day emissions from major fossil fuel-emitting nations.

“There’s some scientific uncertainty of how large that country is. However, if we go down a high emissions scenario, it could be as large or larger than the United States,” said Brendan Rogers, an associate scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center in Massachusetts.

He described the permafrost as a sleeping giant whose impact wasn’t yet clear.

“We’re just talking about a massive amount of carbon. We don’t expect all of it to thaw … because some of it is very deep and would take hundreds or thousands of years,” Rogers said. “But even if a small fraction of that does get admitted to the atmosphere, that’s a big deal.”

Projections of cumulative permafrost carbon emissions from 2022 through 2100 range from 99 gigatons to 550 gigatons. By comparison, the United States currently emits 368 gigatons of carbon, according to a paper published in September in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

Not all climate change models that policymakers use to make their already grim predictions include projected emissions from permafrost thaw, and those that do assume it will be gradual, Rogers said.

He and other scientists are concerned about the prevalence of abrupt or rapid thawing in permafrost regions, which has the power to shock the landscape into releasing far more carbon than with gradual top-down warming alone.

The traditional view of permafrost thaw is that it’s a process that exposes layers slowly, but “abrupt thaw” is exposing deep permafrost layers more quickly in a number of ways.

For example, Big Trail Lake in Alaska, a recently formed lake, belches bubbles of methane — a potent greenhouse gas, which comes from thawing permafrost below the lake water. The methane can stop such lakes from refreezing in winter, exposing the deeper permafrost to warmer temperatures and degradation.

Rapid thawing of the permafrost also happens in the wake of intense wildfires that have swept across parts of Siberia in recent years, Rogers said. Sometimes these blazes smolder underground for months, long after flames above ground have been extinguished, earning them the nickname zombie fires.

“The fires themselves will burn part of the active layer (of permafrost) combusting the soil and releasing greenhouses gases like carbon dioxide,” Rogers said. “But that soil that’s been combusted was also insulating, keeping the permafrost cool in summer. Once you get rid of it, you get very quickly much deeper active layers, and that can lead to larger emissions over the following decades.”

Also deeply concerning has been the sudden appearance of around 20 perfectly cylindrical craters in the remote far north of Siberia in the past 10 years. Dozens of meters in diameter, they are thought to be caused by a buildup and explosion of methane — a previously unknown geological phenomenon that surprised many permafrost scientists and could represent a new pathway for methane previously contained deep within the earth to escape.

“The Arctic is warming so fast,” Rogers said, “and there’s crazy things happening.”

A lack of monitoring and data on the behavior of permafrost, which covers 15% of the exposed land surface of the Northern Hemisphere, means scientists still only have a patchwork, localized understanding of rapid thaw, how it contributes to global warming and affects people living in permafrost regions.

Rogers at the Woodwell Climate Research Center is part of a new $41 million initiative, funded by a group of billionaires and called the Audacious Project, to understand permafrost thaw. It aims to coordinate a pan-Arctic carbon monitoring network to fill in some of the data gaps that have made it difficult to incorporate permafrost thaw emissions into climate targets.

The project’s first carbon flux tower, which tracks the flow of methane and carbon dioxide from the ground to the atmosphere, was installed this summer in Churchill, Manitoba. However, plans to install similar monitoring stations in Siberia are in disarray as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“It’s always been more challenging to work in Russia than other countries … Canada, for example,” Rogers said. “But this (invasion), of course, has made it exponentially more challenging.”

Sebastian Dötterl, a professor and soil scientist at ETH Zurich, a Swiss university, who studies how warmer air and soil temperatures change plant growth in the Arctic, was able to travel to the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard in the Arctic this summer to collect soil and plant samples.

However, the field trip cost twice as much as initially budgeted because the group was forbidden to use any Russia-owned infrastructure, forcing the team to hire a tourist boat and reorganize its itinerary. But Dötterl said the more pressing issue is that he can no longer interact with his counterparts at Russian institutions.

“We are now splitting a rather small community of specialists all over the world into political groups that are disconnected, where our problems are global and should be connected,” he said.

Turetsky agreed, saying that the war in Ukraine had been a “disaster for our scientific enterprise.”

“Russia and Siberia are huge, huge players. … Many of the (European Union-) and US-funded projects to work in Siberia to do any kind of lateral knowledge sharing, they’ve all been canceled.

“Will we stop trying? No, of course not. And there’s a lot we can do with existing data and with global remote sensing products. But it’s been a real setback for the community.”

[ad_2]

Source link

November 12, 2022
The US-China climate deal was a rare bright spot in an otherwise thorny relationship. Should it be mended? | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

One of the biggest surprises at last year’s United Nations climate summit came in the form of a handshake.

US climate envoy John Kerry and his China counterpart Xie Zhenhua did so at COP26 in Glasgow as they announced a commitment to cooperate on the climate crisis. The countries vowed to work together to reduce their fossil fuel emissions, and China pledged to release a plan to slash its emissions of methane – a powerful planet-warming gas – which it delivered on this week.

The terms of the agreement weren’t terribly specific, and it didn’t come with many measurable action points. But the deal was still widely applauded as a step in the right direction in an otherwise discontented geopolitical relationship.

It didn’t last long.

The newfound cooperation abruptly fell apart in August when China suspended climate talks with the US – one of several measures it took in response to US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan.

The question now is whether COP27 in Egypt can provide the jolt of momentum needed to mend the countries’ climate change relationship. At an event hosted by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Kerry said he has spoken to Xie this week, though they have not had any formal meetings.

“We need to be talking to each other because we’re the two biggest economies in the world and we’re the two biggest emitters in the world,” Kerry said at the event. “And we have a common interest in working together to try to reduce emissions and be leaders on this level. So the answer is I’ve said to China many times publicly, and President Biden has indicated to them, that we are open to resuming climate and hope that we’ll be able to.”

Before the summit, Kerry told reporters that the ultimate decision to resume formal talks rests with China President Xi Jinping. Biden and Xi are expected to meet at the upcoming G20 summit in Indonesia.

“That will come from one person, and until then we are in limbo,” Kerry said of Xi.

There are many reasons, as Kerry notes, that the two countries should be in sync on the climate crisis. Not only are they historically the most to blame for climate change, their actions also have significant sway in the rest of the world, which look to the US and China to lead on the issue.

Yet, now that cooperation is ostensibly at a standstill, some experts are weighing whether it is necessary; could competition lead to faster change?

Going into Egypt, one big thing is different from last year – the US has actually passed a massive climate law.

Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act contained $370 billion in clean energy and climate funding and included tax credits for electric vehicles and batteries written in a way to compete with China.

But China had a head start in the clean-energy race and has spent the last decade cruising ahead on wind and solar. Last year, China installed 80% of the world’s new offshore wind capacity, dwarfing the rest of the world’s nations, according to the Global Wind Energy Council. It is also surging ahead on electric vehicles and buses; about a quarter of all new passenger cars registered in China are electric.

The US has a lot of catching up to do, but it’s “back in the race,” said Kelly Sims Gallagher, a professor of energy and environmental policy at the Fletcher School at Tufts University.

“I believe a healthy competition between the two countries will benefit everyone,” she said. “This new money is going to be a really important global injection into clean energy technology and innovation, and it’s likely to catalyze even more (development) in China. But in many respects, China currently has a first-mover advantage; there’s a lot of work for the US to do.”

In China, the US climate bill is being viewed as a “competitive gesture,” and with a certain amount of skepticism that the US can move as fast as it wants to on the clean energy transition, according to Li Shuo, a Beijing-based global policy adviser for Greenpeace East Asia.

“Part of this sentiment is sour grapes, but I think part of it is based on cool-headed analysis – if you are a country who manages to ramp up renewable energy from zero to huge in 10 years, you know the secret to success better than anyone else,” Shuo said.

Chinese officials “are not convinced the US is capable of replicating it,” Shuo said. “Only the US can prove itself and the stakes – our climate future – are high.”

The US and China – due to the sheer scale of their planet-warming emissions, money and political heft – have historically been the power players at international climate summits. It’s no different this year, with all eyes on the two countries and whether they’ll resume collaboration.

Xie announced Tuesday at COP27 that his country has developed a national strategy to reduce its methane emissions, fulfilling the promise it made at last year’s summit as it pledged to cooperate with the US.

Speaking at a panel event in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, Xie said China’s methane strategy will focus on three areas: reducing methane from its energy sector, agriculture and waste management areas.

However, within the energy sector, Xie only mentioned reducing emissions from oil and gas – and didn’t mention China’s coal sector, which produces much of the country’s methane emissions in addition to CO2 emissions. China produces the most methane emissions from coal mines in the world, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

Xie’s announcement is the latest evidence that cooperation between the world’s two largest emitters matters – even more so because of the peer-pressure effect it can have on other countries.

“We have seen times where [US-China cooperation] is producing good results; a positive force in both the domestic context of each country, and also a boost to the international discussions,” said Nate Hultman, director of the University of Maryland’s Center for Global Sustainability, and a former Kerry official. “In that context, the suspension of the talks is a hindrance.”

The end of the US-China agreement triggered an information void as the lines of communication shut down – something that could breed mistrust, according to Sims Gallagher.

“I’m sure China knows we passed the (Inflation Reduction Act),” Sims Gallagher said. “At a high level that’s understood. But at the granular level, it’s much harder to understand what’s happening and why it’s happening.”

A senior administration official conceded they think something has been lost due to the suspended talks, killing the momentum that came out of the US and China’s joint declaration at Glasgow last year. That official said it is still an open question whether cooperation can continue this year.

Ultimately, it is in China’s best interest, and the world’s, to resume talks with the United States, said Joanna Lewis, associate professor of energy and environment at Georgetown University, because it elevates China’s stature going into a key international summit – allowing a country that is often cast as the climate villain some positive spin.

“When the Chinese lead negotiator and the US lead negotiator get up before the world together, it calls China out as a leader and puts them on a new level of climate leadership,” Lewis said. “Particularly during an international negotiation where they’re not always viewed as taking a leadership role.”

[ad_2]

Source link

November 9, 2022
As countries convene at climate summit in Egypt, reports show the world is wildly off track. Here’s what to watch at COP27 | CNN

[ad_1]

CNN
—

As global leaders converge in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for the UN’s annual climate summit, researchers, advocates and the United Nations itself are warning the world is still wildly off-track on its goal to halt global warming and prevent the worst consequences of the climate crisis.

Over the next two weeks, negotiators from nearly 200 countries will prod each other at COP27 to raise their clean energy ambitions, as average global temperature has already climbed 1.2 degrees Celsius since the industrial revolution.

They will haggle over ending the use of coal, the dirtiest fossil fuel, which has seen a resurgence in some countries amid the war in Ukraine, and try to come up with a system to funnel money to help the world’s poorest nations recover from devastating climate disasters.

But a flood of recent reports have made clear leaders are running out of time to implement the vast energy overhaul needed to keep the temperature from exceeding 1.5 degrees Celsius, the threshold scientists have warned the planet must stay under.

Reports from the United Nations and the World Meteorological Association show carbon and methane emissions hit record levels in 2021, and the plans countries have submitted to slash those emissions are beyond insufficient. Given countries’ current promises, Earth’s temperature will climb to between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius by 2100.

Ultimately, the world needs to cut its fossil fuel emissions nearly in half by 2030 to avoid 1.5 degrees, a daunting prospect for economies still very much beholden to oil, natural gas and coal.

“No country has a right to be delinquent,” US Climate Envoy John Kerry told reporters in October. “The scientists tell us that what is happening now – the increased extreme heat, extreme weather, the fires, the floods, the warming of the ocean, the melting of the ice, the extraordinary way in which life is being affected badly by the climate crisis – is going to get worse unless we address this crisis in a unified, forward-leaning way.”

Here are the top issues to follow at COP27 in Egypt.

Developing and developed countries have for years tussled over the concept of a “loss and damage” fund; the idea which suggests countries causing the most harm with their outrageous planet-warming emissions should pay poorer countries, which have suffered from the resulting climate disasters.

It has been a thorny issue because the richest countries, including the US, don’t want to appear culpable or legally liable to other nations for harm. Kerry, for instance, has tiptoed around the issue, saying the US supports formal talks, but he has not given any indication of what solution the country would sign on to.

Meanwhile, small island nations and others in the Global South are shouldering the impact of the climate crisis, as devastating floods, intensifying storms and record-breaking heat waves wreak havoc.

The deadly flooding in Pakistan this summer, which killed more than 1,500 people, will surely be an example the countries’ negotiators point to. And since September, more than two million people in Nigeria have been affected by the worst flooding there in a decade. At this very moment, Nigerians are drinking, cooking with and bathing in dirty flood water amid serious concerns over waterborne diseases.

It is likely loss and damage will have space on the official COP27 agenda this year. But beyond countries committing to meet and talk about what a potential loss and damage fund would look like, or whether one should even exist, it is unclear what action will come out of this year’s summit.

“Do we expect that we’ll have a fund by the end of the two weeks? I hope, I would love to – but we’ll see how parties deliver on that,” Egypt’s chief climate negotiator Ambassador Mohamed Nasr recently told reporters.

Former White House National Climate Adviser Gina McCarthy told CNN she thinks loss and damage will be the top issue at the UN climate summit this year, and said nations including the US will face some tough questions about their plans to help developing nations already being hit hard by climate disasters.

“It just keeps getting pushed out,” McCarthy said. “There’s need for some real accountability and some specific commitments in the short-term.”

People will be watching to see if the US and China can repair a broken relationship at the summit, a year after the two countries surprised the world by announcing they would work together on climate change.

The newfound cooperation came crashing down this summer when China announced it was suspending climate talks with the US as part of broader retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan.

Kerry recently said the climate talks between the two countries are still suspended and will likely remain so until China’s president Xi Jinping gives the green light. Kerry and others are watching to see whether China fulfills the promise it made last year to submit a plan to bring down its methane emissions or updates its emissions pledge.

The US and China are the world’s two largest emitters and their cooperation matters, particularly because it can spur other countries to act, too.

Separate from a potential loss and damage fund, there is the overarching issue of so-called global climate finance; a fund rich countries promised to push money into to help the developing world transition to clean energy rather than grow their economies with fossil fuels.

The promise made in 2009 was $100 billion per year, but the world has yet to meet the pledge. Some of the richest countries, including the US, UK, Canada and others, have consistently fallen short of their allocation.

President Joe Biden promised the US would contribute $11 billion by 2024 toward the effort. But Biden’s request is ultimately up to Congress to approve, and will likely go nowhere if Republicans win control of Congress in the midterm elections.

The US is working on separate deals with countries including Vietnam, South Africa and Indonesia to get them to move away from coal and toward renewables. And US officials often stress they want to also unlock private investments to help countries transition to renewables and deal with climate effects.

COP27 is intended to hold countries’ feet to the fire on fossil fuel emissions and gin up new ambition on the climate crisis. Yet reports show we are still off-track to keep global warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius.

A UN report which surveyed countries’ latest pledges found the planet will warm between 2.1 and 2.9 degrees Celsius. Average global temperature has already risen around 1.2 degrees since the industrial revolution.

Records were set last year for all three major greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, according to the World Meteorological Organization.

There is a spot of encouraging news: the adoption of renewable energy and electric vehicles is surging and helping to offset the rise in fossil fuel emissions, according to a recent International Energy Agency report.

But the overall picture from the reports shows there is a need for much more clean energy, deployed swiftly. Every fraction of a degree in global temperature rise will have stark consequences, said Inger Andersen, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program.

“The energy transition is entirely doable, but we’re not on that pathway, and we have procrastinated and wasted time,” Andersen told CNN. “Every digit will matter. Let’s not say ‘we missed 1.5 so let’s settle for 2.’ No. We must understand that every digit that goes up will make our life and the life of our children and grandchildren much more impacted.”

The clock is ticking in another way: Next year’s COP28 in Dubai will be the year nations must do an official stocktake to determine if the world is on track to meet the goals set out in the landmark Paris Agreement.

[ad_2]

Source link

November 5, 2022
Facing risk of blackouts this winter, the UK will drill for more oil | CNN Business

[ad_1]

London
CNN Business
—

The UK government could award oil and gas companies more than 100 new licenses to drill in the North Sea, as it looks for ways to bolster energy security amid a global supply crunch.

Launched Friday, the licensing round won’t lead to new UK production for several years. And when drilling does begin, Britain will still be dependent on energy imports, according to the government, leaving it vulnerable to soaring prices and supply disruptions of the kind that threaten blackouts this winter.

UK utilities company National Grid

(NGG) warned Thursday that households and businesses could be left without power for up to three hours at a time in a worst-case scenario of very cold weather, low levels of wind, gas shortages and an inability to import electricity from Europe. It said it would take steps to mitigate the risk, including bringing old coal-fired power stations back online if necessary.

Starting November 1, National Grid will also offer financial incentives to customers to reduce power consumption at peak times.

Kathryn Porter, an energy consultant at Watt-Logic, told CNN Business that National Grid was still underestimating the risks to supply, but that blackouts for households were unlikely because it could disconnect large energy users at peak times if necessary.

The latest licensing round won’t improve the immediate supply picture and could face a legal challenge from environmental activists. Greenpeace said that new oil and gas licenses were “potentially unlawful” and that it would be looking for ways to act.

“New oil and gas licenses won’t lower energy bills for struggling families this winter or any winter soon nor provide energy security in the medium term,” Philip Evans, energy transition campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said in a statement.

“New licenses — and more importantly more fossil fuels — solve neither of those problems but will make the climate crisis even worse,” he added.

Analysis by the North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA), the regulator that grants licenses, shows the average time between discovery of oil and gas deposits and first production is close to five years, though that lag is “falling.”

In a statement on Friday, the NSTA said it will prioritize areas in the southern North Sea that can be developed quickly and where gas has already been discovered. Companies have until January 12 to apply for licenses, with permits expected to be issued as soon as the second quarter of 2023.

The NSTA said the licensing round has been subject to a “climate compatibility check” to ensure it aligns with the UK government’s commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. It added that producing gas domestically has a much lower carbon footprint than importing it from abroad.

The International Energy Agency said last year that investment in new fossil fuel supply projects, including drilling for oil and gas, must stop immediately if the world is to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.

The UK government set out plans earlier this year to generate 95% of Britain’s electricity from low carbon sources by 2030. The plan, which allows drilling for oil and gas, will also ramp up nuclear power and wind energy.

[ad_2]

Source link

October 7, 2022
EPA preparing to release strict vehicle emissions rules | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

The US Environmental Protection Agency is preparing to release strict new proposed federal emissions standards for light-duty vehicles that, if implemented, would move the US car market decisively toward electric vehicles over the next decade.

The EPA is considering emissions standards that could make up to two-thirds of new passenger vehicles sold in the US electric by 2032, according to a source familiar with the proposal.

If implemented, the new greenhouse gas performance standards would start for light-duty vehicles that are model year 2027 and gradually increase through model year 2032.

By 2032, the rules would ensure that 64% to 67% of all new-car sales in the US would be electric vehicles, according to the source.

The EPA’s proposal, which was first reported by The New York Times, comes after California air regulators voted last year to ban the sale of new gasoline-powered cars by 2035 and set interim targets to phase these cars out.

EPA spokesperson Tim Carroll did not comment on the specifics of the proposal but said the agency is working on developing new standards “to accelerate the transition to a zero-emissions transportation future, protecting people and the planet,” as directed by a previous executive order from President Joe Biden.

“Once the interagency review process is completed, the proposals will be signed, published in the Federal Register, and made available for public review and comment,” Carroll said.

The new rules could come as soon as Wednesday.

The EPA proposal is a monumental step toward zero-emissions vehicles, coming as the US tries to keep up with other countries racing toward EV adoption, one expert told CNN.

“I believe it’s pretty doable,” said Margo Oge, chair of the International Council on Clean Transportation and a former Obama EPA official. “The industry is there. Europe is ahead of the US, China is ahead of Europe, and these companies are global companies.”

Oge noted that in the US, California is already proposing 70% new zero-emissions vehicle sales by 2030 and other states are planning to adopt California’s rules – meaning much of the US car industry will be transitioning ahead of any proposed federal rule.

Still, the EPA’s proposal takes a different approach from California’s policy. Whereas California is mandating car companies sell a certain percentage of electric vehicles, the EPA would gradually raise greenhouse gas emissions standards to increasingly stringent levels from 2027 to 2032, pushing the industry toward electric vehicles to meet those high standards.

The EPA rule would ensure that the rest of the country and the US car industry would follow California’s lead, Oge said.

Biden has made electrifying the cars that Americans drive a key part of his climate goals. In 2021, the president set a new target that half of all vehicles sold in the US by 2030 would be battery electric, fuel-cell electric or plug-in hybrid.

The US Treasury Department is set to release rules for new federal electric vehicle tax credits on April 18. While these tax credits are complex and could take time for consumers to take full advantage of, experts hope they will help accelerate the transition to EVs in the US.

“Given the industry, the [Inflation Reduction Act] and what companies are doing globally, I just don’t see this number as being out of reach,” Oge said.

The proposed EPA rules will go through a lengthy public comment process and could be changed before they are finalized.

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
Accelerating the EV revolution whether you like it or not | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.

CNN
—

The Environmental Protection Agency proposed a plan to remake the way car-obsessed Americans live, using public safety rules to accelerate the shift from internal combustion to electric vehicles.

Just a fraction of the current auto market is EVs, but under standards announced by the EPA Wednesday, up to two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the US would be zero-emission or plug-in hybrid within a decade.

The rules, which are not yet final, would use authority under the Clean Air Act to force auto companies to cut pollution and slash vehicle emissions by more than half. They would phase in with model year 2027 vehicles and be fully implemented by 2032. Read CNN’s full report.

While ambitious, the goals are not unprecedented. They put the federal government on track to catch up with state governments, led by California, that want to stop allowing the sale of internal combustion vehicles by 2035. Read this report from CNN Business about why that’s not as crazy as it seems.

There is a very big legal question mark looming behind California’s action and the EPA’s effort, which still has a public comment and revision period.

The current Supreme Court, dominated by conservative justices, has already shown its scorn for EPA rulemaking and its indifference to addressing climate change. Last year, the court nixed the Biden administration’s plan to curb emissions from existing power plants.

I asked CNN climate reporter Ella Nilsen for her takeaways from the EPA announcement. She offered these key points:

► The standards are ambitious, but doable

If enacted, the newly proposed EPA emissions standards would be one of the Biden administration’s most aggressive climate-change policies yet – moving the US auto market decisively toward electric vehicles in the next decade.

However, multiple experts said the standards are doable, and even lag slightly behind the California standards, which will completely phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035 to usher in electric vehicles. The US is also following countries including the EU and China, which are moving more aggressively toward electric vehicles.

► Charging infrastructure and consumer incentives could be tricky

This new proposed rule won’t happen overnight; it would be gradually phased in over the next decade. At the same time, the US needs to build up a network of electric charging stations in addition to the ubiquitous gas station. Federal officials have also talked about needing to incentivize more Americans to buy EVs by bringing the cost down, with federal tax credits.

However, the new $7,500 tax credits (passed last year by Democrats in the Inflation Reduction Act) are incredibly complex due to manufacturing requirements. The credits could actually shrink the eligible number of cars that qualify (however, leased vehicles have more leeway under the new system). Regardless, it will take years for the EV infrastructure, incentives and supply to fall into place to make electric vehicles available to most Americans.

► This is a big deal for US climate policy

This rule will impact the US economy, but it’s also major climate policy. The proposed EPA tailpipe standards would cut planet-warming pollution from US cars in half. Combined with the agency’s medium and heavy-duty vehicles standard, the proposals could cut nearly 10 billion tons of CO2 emissions by 2055.

Given Americans’ reliance on cars, transportation is a big part of overall US emissions – it accounts for nearly 30% of all greenhouse gas emissions in the US, according to the EPA. Cutting down on tailpipe pollution from gas-powered cars and trucks is a big part of decarbonizing the US.

While the federal government and key states are all in on moving toward EVs, and auto companies are spending big to get competitive in the market, Americans generally are not yet completely embracing the idea.

Just 4% of Americans currently own an EV, and a scant 12% are seriously considering buying one, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday. Less than half, 43%, say they would consider buying an EV in the future, and a sizable 41% are completely closed off to the idea.

The expected partisan breakdown applies to those figures. Most of the interest in EVs is among Democrats. Most of the staunch opposition is among Republicans. Younger Americans and those making $100,000 and above are also more interested in buying an EV in the future.

There are also key regional disparities. In the West, where states are already working to phase in EVs, only 28% say they would not buy an EV. Compare that to half of Southerners who would not consider buying an EV.

A majority of the country is skeptical that EVs will even have an effect on the climate, according to the poll, with 61% saying EVs will help address climate change only a little or not at all.

In a separate AP-NORC poll released this week, the most-cited major reasons for not wanting to purchase an EV – out of eight offered in the poll – were expense (60% said they cost too much) and convenience (50% said there aren’t enough charging stations available).

Access and affordability should be addressed as inventory increases, writes CNN’s Peter Valdes-Dapena, who covers the auto industry. A decade from now, charging should be quicker and easier, EV ranges should be longer and prices should be at or below the cost of an internal combustion vehicle. Read his full report.

Rather than fighting the rules, as the fossil fuel industry is sure to do, the auto industry is already investing heavily in EVs, responding to tougher regulation already imposed around the world and by California, which moved to ban the sale of new gas and diesel powered vehicles by 2035.

California actually took the lead on pushing for EVs in the years when the Trump administration was dialing back on federal climate policy. Other states, like Oregon, Washington and Minnesota, have tied their standards to California’s.

Valdes-Dapena notes that car companies with loyal customer bases are slowly making the switch. He writes:

Currently, Toyota offers only one electric model in the United States, the BZ4X SUV, but more are planned. Honda, another Japanese brand with a loyal following, offers no EVs currently but the company is gearing up factories in Ohio to build future EV models. Honda expects to offer its first EV next year. General Motors also has a number of EV models coming in the next year or two.

He also notes that GM has pledged to sell only electric passenger vehicles by 2035.

And no, this does not mean internal combustion vehicles will be banned. They will still make up the vast majority of vehicles on the road in a decade even if this rule is finalized and withstands challenges in court. But it would represent a tectonic shift.

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
Can Biden achieve his cornerstone climate goal? Why 100% clean power is still out of reach | CNN Politics

[ad_1]

CNN
—

Tucked into President Joe Biden’s ambitious, sweeping climate commitments is a crucially important goal that dates back to his campaign: Transforming the US electric grid to run entirely on clean energy by 2035.

The goal could make or break Biden’s pledge to slash the country’s planet-warming emissions in half by 2030. And if successful, 100% clean electricity could energize vast sectors of the US economy: electric vehicles, home and office heating and cooling, and appliances. It could even power heavy industry and manufacturing, which is currently reliant on fossil fuels.

“When you have a fully clean grid, versus a grid that either is a quarter or a half clean, that makes a significant difference in terms of the greenhouse gas performance of the things you’re plugging in to that grid,” White House national climate adviser Ali Zaidi told CNN. “That electric vehicle now is twice or three times cleaner when you shift to a fully clean grid.”

Yet while renewable energy has exploded over the past decade, bringing Biden’s cornerstone climate goal to fruition by 2035 could be beyond his grasp.

As of this year, about 44% of America’s electricity was powered by zero-emissions sources like wind, solar, nuclear and hydropower, according to the Department of Energy. The rest comes from fossil fuels like methane gas and coal.

After the Inflation Reduction Act passed last year – legislation that aimed to supercharge clean energy in the US – an analysis from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory predicts the US will get to around 80% clean electricity by 2030, a number that includes renewables, nuclear energy and carbon capture on fossil fuel plants.

By 2035, the federal analysis shows clean and renewable sources will make up about 86% of US energy, spurred in large part by the IRA. (That analysis did not include the Biden administration’s proposed pollution rules for power plants, which could increase the adoption of clean energy.)

“That’s a doubling from today, which is huge,” Ben King, an associate director at the nonpartisan think tank Rhodium Group, told CNN. But it’s also short of Biden’s goal of 100% clean electricity by that date.

Decarbonizing the last portion of the power sector will be the most difficult, federal officials and experts told CNN. The closer you get to 100% percent clean electricity, the harder it is to go all the way.

“We’ve known that the last 10% – maybe the last 20 to 25% – is going to be challenging,” Zaidi said. “And the reason is because you’re not just trying to deliver clean electrons onto the grid. You’re trying to deliver cleaner electrons when you want them, where you want them. That’s a hard thing to do.”

Not only does the power need to come from clean sources, it also needs to be readily available to energize the US economy during peak demand.

But wind and solar are still variable – especially without massive, costly battery storage. And newer technologies, like green hydrogen, carbon capture and small modular nuclear reactors haven’t yet been built to a large enough scale.

That could mean some fossil fuels plants outfitted with carbon capture would need to remain connected to the grid to provide power that can brought online quickly, King said.

There are also big infrastructure hurdles for renewables to take the lead. Even if massive amounts of wind and solar are developed by the end of this decade, the US may not have enough electrical transmission infrastructure to move all of that renewable energy around the grid.

“The bottlenecks of a lack of transmission are very real,” Lena Moffitt, executive director of Evergreen Action, told CNN. There also needs to be significant investment in massive batteries to store the power generated by wind and solar to be used at all hours, she said.

While companies and the federal government are racing to scale up new zero-carbon technologies, traditional wind and solar will largely power this clean electricity transition.

They are the most reliable and trusted clean energy sources for utilities and developers, and they have quickly become cheaper than fossil fuels – so inexpensive that it is becoming more cost-effective for some utilities to build new wind and solar, rather than constructing new fossil plants or even running existing ones, experts told CNN.

Wind and solar are also mature technologies that developers know they can finance and get huge tax breaks on through the Inflation Reduction Act.

They are the “natural choice for developers who are looking for those low risk and very cost-effective projects to develop,” Sonia Aggarwal, a former White House senior advisor for climate policy and CEO of nonpartisan think tank Energy Innovation, told CNN. “We will see them play a large role because of how good they look from an economic perspective.”

By the end of 2021, wind and solar together made up about 228 gigawatts of power. By 2034, NREL predicts that number – including offshore wind – will grow by more than four times to over 1 terawatt, or 1 trillion watts of power.

“Where we are now is very different from even 5 or 10 years ago as far as the costs of clean energy, particularly renewables, being significantly lower than they’ve been in the past,” Carla Frisch, acting executive director of the US Energy Department’s Office of Policy, told CNN. “So just a really rapid acceleration that we’re already experiencing right now.”

While getting new clean technologies to scale will be difficult, it’s work worth doing, Zaidi said.

“Let’s deploy the stuff we have right now, right away,” he said. “And let’s work hard as we can to innovate on the stuff that we need in the future.”

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021
AC is hard on the planet. This building has a sustainable solution | CNN Business

[ad_1]

New York
CNN
—

In mid-July at the construction site at 1 Java Street in Brooklyn, New York, the outside temperatures can reach sweltering highs in the 90s. But 500-feet underground, it’s 55 degrees all year round.

That stable, underground temperature will be key to making life comfortable in the residential building that will soon sit on the site, a scenic spot in the Greenpoint neighborhood along Brooklyn’s waterfront.

With 834 rental apartments plus commercial space, 1 Java Street is set to be the largest multifamily, residential building with “geothermal” heating and cooling system in New York State — and potentially the country — when it’s completed in late 2025, according to developer Lendlease.

Geothermal technology is essentially a more eco-friendly version of an HVAC system, allowing the building spaces and water to be cooled and heated more efficiently, without traditional window AC units and natural gas. Lendlease says the technology will make it possible for the nearly 790,000-square foot building to release around 55% less carbon and achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions.

With summer temperatures reaching record highs around the world, experts say finding ways to cool buildings that are less taxing on the environment could be crucial in fighting climate change. Even back in 2018, air conditioning and electric fans accounted for around 20% of total global electricity use, according to a report cpublished that year by the International Energy Agency. Now, energy and urban development experts are urging cities and developers to implement new solutions to keep buildings cooler. And both New York City and the Biden administration have identified geothermal systems as one way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

“Whenever we look at a site, we consider how we can make it more sustainable,” Layth Madi, Lendlease’s senior vice president and director of development, told CNN, adding that the development firm is aiming to reach net zero by 2025 and be fully decarbonized by 2040.

“I think many residents will choose to live in this building because of its green credentials,” Madi said. “We know a lot of people are thinking about climate change and our impact on the planet.”

Geothermal plumbing works by sending water from a building deep into the ground below it to take advantage of the earth’s naturally stable internal temperature — on hot days, the underground temperature will reduce the temperature of warm water from the building to help with cooling; on cold days, it will warm up cold water to help with heating.

At 1 Java Street, construction crews are drilling 320 holes, each around 4 inches in diameter and 499-feet deep, to create the building’s geothermal piping system through which the water will be pumped.

“Your thermostat turns on and it tells your building, ‘I need heating or cooling.’ And it energizes pumps, and those pumps flow fluid through the [geothermal] circuit that we’ve established here on site,” said Adam Alaica, director of engineering and development at Geosource Energy, the Canadian firm that’s installing and drilling the vertical geothermal piping at 1 Java Street.

For now, the process doesn’t come cheap. Installing the building’s geothermal system increased construction costs by around 6%, according to Madi, and required securing equipment and trained manpower that remains relatively scarce.

“We’re seeing rapid growth — I would say approaching that of exponential growth year over year in interest in the technology, which is very exciting for the industry as a whole,” Alacia said. “The bottlenecks to that growth have always been, and will continue to be in the years to come, specialty machinery to implement this infrastructure and the people resources it takes to do this.”

Eventually, though, as more developers invest in geothermal and more companies provide the specialty training needed to install the technology — Geosource operates its own training program — Madi said he expects the costs to come down. And once the building is up and running, it should be more cost efficient to heat and cool.

Lendlease didn’t specify whether residents of 1 Java Street will experience any cost savings on utilities thanks to the geothermal system (the units themselves will be priced at market rate, with 30% of them set aside as affordable housing). “Ultimately, it will be up to tenants to manage their power consumption and work with the utility company on billing,” the company told CNN.

While 1 Java Street will be one of relatively few geothermal buildings in the state, the companies behind its development say New York — and the world — could use more buildings like it.

“Geothermal is not a new technology … there’s kind of a primitive component to it, using the earth as a heat source and heat sink,” Alacia said. “In general, geothermal can really be used anywhere you have ground under your feet … The cost and the business case can vary, but technically it has strong credentials really anywhere in the country.”

[ad_2]

Source link

April 12, 2021