There is nothing magic about the number 7 billion, which, according to the United Nations, became the population of planet Earth sometime earlier this week. The resources available to feed, clothe, house and transport the world’s people aren’t stretched far thinner today than they were yesterday. But it’s good to have milestones like this to cause us to think about where we’re going.

As discussed in this NPR segment, the critical pinch points of a growing population are not so much associated with running out of room, but running out of stuff. The populations that are growing fastest, those in India and Africa, are going to want to live like we do here in the US, i.e., as mega-consumers.

So what’s the big deal? Well, it’s that delivering on that promise of lots of stuff requires vast amounts of energy that currently can come only from fossil fuels and nuclear, all of which come with significant costs to the health and safety of our environment – as well as to us personally.

As physicist Dan Kammen, head of an energy laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley notes, “What’s needed is renewable energy that’s cheap and won’t run out. But by essentially every measure, we’re not moving fast enough.”

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The United Nations has put renewable energy at the top of its agenda in 2012.

“We can create jobs that will stimulate economies and provide universal access to all the people,” said the UN’s Secretary General Ban Ki-moon. “That is why the General Assembly has declared next year as the International Year for Sustainable Energy for All”.

He added that providing renewable energy to the 1.4 billion people living without electricity is a priority of the United Nations.

The announcement was made earlier this week during a meeting with National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) researchers.

He emphasized that alternative energy can create jobs, address climate change, empower women and create food security.

The UN hopes that by 2030 every village in the world will have electricity. It wants renewable energy capacity to double by that same year.

Article by Antonio Pasolini, a Brazilian writer and video art curator based in London, UK. He holds a BA in journalism and an MA in film and television.

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It did not attract as much media attention as COP15 in Copenhagen did in 2009. Despite that, or perhaps because of that, COP16 folded on a slightly more positive note than the disappointing edition of the previous year. But the agreement reached may have saved the UN process, Greenpeace said, but not the climate.

In an official press release, the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) said “nations launched a set of initiatives and institutions to protect the poor and the vulnerable from climate change and to deploy the money and technology that developing countries need to plan and build their own sustainable futures. And they agreed to launch concrete action to preserve forests in developing nations, which will increase going forward”.

The conference produced a package of resolutions dubbed “Cancun Agreements” that was seen as a step forward, although it could have gone further, according to analysts.

Agreement

According to a report in the UK’s Guardian newspaper, the most promising aspect of the agreements sealed in Cancun is the mechanism to prevent deforestation in developing nations, a major source of emissions and biodiversity loss.

Still according to the Guardian, a fund of $100bn a year by 2020 will be raised to help poor nations cope with the impacts of climate change and help them make a shift to low-carbon technologies.

Not enough

“What Cancun has done is restore confidence in the negotiation machinery that last year’s Copenhagen experience left in tatters,” said Dr. Kenneth Graham, of New Zealand’s Green Party. “But when the substance of current pledges is analyzed, we must realise we’re in danger of cementing in national pledges that are insufficient to avoid dangerous climate change.”

Dr. Graham says the combined pledges fall short of the agreed goal of keeping temperatures from rising less than 2º Celsius. The combined pledges made in Copenhagen result in a reduction to about 49.5 Gt while it’s necessary to reduce them to 45 Gt.

Greenpeace
The international environmental organization welcomed the deal but singled out the US, Russia and Japan for criticism, saying the three countries had a negative influence on the negotiations. Russia and Japan were unhelpful by their statements against the continuation of the Kyoto Protocol, Greenpeace said. The US’s commitment to reduce emissions was “meagre”, they said.

Greenpeace added that it was positive that governments acknowledged the gap between their current weak pledges to cut greenhouse gas emissions and the goals they should aim for. They also recognized that these goals need to be in line with science (25-40 per cent cuts by 2020) and global temperature rise needs to be kept below two degrees.

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All industries across the world face the same regulatory maze and misdirection. In some cases it has led to industry leaving and going to China where laws are more permissive, That is not an option for the aviation industry which flies everywhere. All aviation stakeholders, including manufacturers, airlines, airports and navigation service providers, have issued a joint call for governments to agree a global plan to address aviation emissions at December’s United Nations climate summit in Cancun.

The call from the international aerospace industry comes as the International Civil Aviation Organisation (ICAO) is holding its general assembly in Montreal.

Industry worries that a fragmented worldwide regulatory system would raise compliance costs for the sector and hurt the global industry.

The industry believes that ICAO, a specialized UN agency which codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation, is the right forum to draw up an appropriate global framework and implement it.

The summit communiqué of September 17th urged the states involved in the UN climate negotiations “to summon the political will to endorse the industry targets for reducing emissions and establish the necessary global framework to deliver them”. The suggested goals included:

1. 1.5% fuel efficiency improvement per year to 2020.
2. Cap air emissions in 2020; CO2 neutral or better after that date.
3. Halve net air emissions by 2050 versus 2005 levels.
4. Increase use of biofuels.
5. Improve air traffic control systems both for safety and improved fuel efficiency.
6. Other new technology (such as solar perhaps)

According to figures from the US Air Transport Association, US airlines have already cut fuel use by 3% between 2000 and 2007, despite rising passenger numbers.

While the industry is committed to improving its fuel efficiency, as well as stopping and then halving its net carbon emissions, it stresses that these goals are subject to governmental incentives such as funding technological research and development for airframes and engines and the commercial development of alternative low carbon fuels while also providing modern airport and airspace infrastructure.

The communiqué further notes that the most effective current means of lowering CO2 emissions is to invest in new aircraft, but that the industry’s ability to do so “is threatened by increasing and costly regulatory burdens, including taxes, charges and economic measures”.

Article by Andy Soos, appearing courtesy Environmental News Network.

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(Reuters) – About 45 nations met on Thursday to seek ways to raise billions of dollars in aid to help the poor combat climate change as the United Nations warned them of a long haul to slow global warming.

Environment ministers and senior officials in Geneva were reviewing whether rich nations, hit by austerity cuts, are keeping a promise of $30 billion in “new and additional” climate aid for 2010-12 made at the U.N.’s Copenhagen summit.

“The funds are critical” to build trust between rich and poor, Christiana Figueres, the U.N.’s climate chief, told Reuters in an interview.

About 120 countries in Copenhagen also pledged to increase aid for developing nations to $100 billion aid a year from 2020.

Figueres said cash could be a key to unlock progress on other climate problems, such as sharing clean technologies or protecting carbon-storing forests at the next meeting of environment ministers in Cancun, Mexico, from November 29-December 10.

Swiss Environment Minister Moritz Leuenberger told the start of the two-day talks that “the regulation of the financial issues is a key precondition for the successful conclusion of the climate negotiations in Cancun.”

But Figueres predicted there would be no new global treaty to combat climate change in Cancun, even though she said that extreme weather such as floods in Pakistan or Russia’s heat wave were “warning bells” about the risks of inaction.

“I don’t think that governments are considering (a treaty) for Cancun,” she said. A year ago, many nations were hoping that the Copenhagen summit in December would be a “big bang” deal to help solve climate change.

But that didn’t happen and Figueres said it was more realistic to look for gradual progress in solving climate change, adding that there was no “magic bullet.”

Cancun could end up setting a new deadline for working out a more binding deal, perhaps by the end of 2012.

CANCUN

Figueres said it was vital that developed nations be able to point to $10 billion allocated to climate aid for 2010 by the time they meet in Cancun. But she urged developing nations to give leeway in judging if it was truly “new and additional” as agreed in Copenhagen.’

She said that all nations’ 2010 budgets were agreed by national parliaments by the time of the December summit. “There are justifiable reasons to see why 100 percent of this allocation (in 2010) will not be additional,” she said.

The Netherlands plans to launch a new website on Friday to track climate promises.

An overview by Reuters shows that aid promises total $29.8 billion for 2010-12, but it is unclear how much is new. Japan, for instance, has pledged the most aid, at $15 billion, but much of that was decided several years ago.

Figueres told a news conference that the Copenhagen pledge meant $100 billion a year from 2020 was a “minimum” required.

She also said that the world could make progress even if the United States did not pass legislation to curb emissions by 2020 in line what she called a “pledge” by President Barack Obama in Copenhagen. U.S. legislation has stalled in the Senate.

Article by Alister Doyle, edited by Noah Barkin; appearing courtesy Reuters.

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(Reuters) – A UN panel will review carbon offset issuances requests by three Chinese greenhouse gas destroying projects, a UN spokeswoman said on Tuesday, a sign the most lucrative projects under the Kyoto Protocol may face more scrutiny.

The Shandong Dongyuen, Zhejiang Dongyang and China Fluoro projects, which destroy a potent gas called hydrofluorocarbon-23 and are approved under Kyoto’s $2.7 billion Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), had requested 4.5 million offsets, called Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs), from the UN’s climate change secretariat.

The CDM funds clean energy projects in emerging economies.

“There has been a request for review of the request for issuance,” a UN spokeswoman told Point Carbon News in an email.

Issuance to these three projects will now likely be delayed for at least two months as the board investigates the requests further, a move which could tighten CER supply further and drive up prices.

HFC projects approved under the CDM were accused by green groups earlier this year of intentionally upping their emissions in order to destroy them and collect more CERs.

The CDM’s executive board last month asked a working group to investigate the claims further.

There are around 20 HFC projects registered under the CDM and they account for around half of the 428.5 million CERs issued by the UN to date.

Technical problems following the implementation of new procedures at the UN’s climate arm had prevented the agency from publishing on its website which projects would have their CER issuance requests reviewed.

According to UN data, the three HFC projects’ CER buyers include Italian utility ENEL, Britain’s Natsource and Japan’s Mitsubishi, Sumitomo, Mitsui & Co., Tokyo Electric and Nippon Steel.

The three projects have received 45 million CERs to date.

A Chinese government fund told the CDM’s executive board in June it supported the country’s HFC project developers.

CERs futures for December delivery traded up 15 cents or 1.2 percent to 12.45 euros a tonne on Tuesday morning.

Article by Michael Szabo; Edited by Sue Thomas; Appearing Courtesy Reuters.

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(Reuters) – A United Nations agency cut its forecast on Wednesday for pre-2012 Kyoto Protocol carbon offsets by 3 percent, estimating that only 981 million tonnes will come to market by the end of 2012.

Under Kyoto, efforts to cut greenhouse gases can be outsourced to emerging countries such as China and India through investment in clean energy projects registered under the UN’s Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) scheme.

Investors receive offsets in return, called Certified Emissions Reductions (CERs), which can be used toward emissions reduction goals or sold for profit.

“The issuance in July was extremely low, only 2.5 million CERs. Due to this and the 22 projects rejected (recently) … we decreased our projection for the amount to be available by the end of 2012,” the UNEP Risoe Center said on its website.

Around 76 million more CERs could come soon from projects on the issuance waiting list, it added.

CER supply forecasts are of particular interest to utilities and industrial firms in the European Union, which can use CERs for compliance under the bloc’s emissions trading scheme.

Issuance dropped in July due to the phase-in of new procedures, a UN spokesman said last month.

The UN’s climate change secretariat has issued a total of 423.6 million CERs to date.

Future issuance may be in jeopardy after the CDM’s executive board last week rejected 22 projects seeking approval under the scheme, which would have cut 12.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide by 2012, and said it would conduct another spot check at the offices of the CDM’s largest emissions cut verifier.

Det Norske Veritas was suspended in late 2008 for three months for procedural breaches. Analysts said this and subsequent suspensions at three other emissions auditors since have choked the flow of CERs to market.

UNEP Risoe estimated in July that 1.012 billion CERs would be issued by the end of the 2012, when Kyoto’s first leg ends. That was up from a record low prediction of 975 million made in June.

The agency’s pre-2012 CER estimate has been sliding steadily as it has trimmed over 100 million CERs since the beginning of the year. The estimate is now around half the number predicted in 2007.

Supply concerns have caused the CER futures curve to become backwardated, with spot prices at 12.18 euros a tonne on Wednesday, trading around 10 cents above the Dec-10 futures and nearly 40 cents above the Dec-12s.

Average wholesale CER prices, or the initial price paid to the project owners, were around 9.50 euros per tonne late last week, according to analysts IDEAcarbon.

Article by Michael Szabo; edited by Jane Baird; appearing courtesy Reuters.

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(Reuters) – President Barack Obama pledged on Tuesday to keep pushing for legislation to fight climate change despite a move in the U.S. Senate to focus energy reform more narrowly on offshore drilling.

Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid is expected to unveil a bill later on Tuesday that does not include setting caps on carbon emissions — the key element of a more comprehensive energy and climate bill that did not find sufficient support in the Senate.

Obama said the revised bill was “an important step in the right direction” but he said it would not be enough.

“I want to emphasize it’s only the first step and I intend to keep pushing for broader reform, including climate legislation,” he told reporters in the White House Rose Garden after meeting with congressional leaders.

“If we’ve learned anything from the tragedy in the Gulf, it’s that our current energy policy is unsustainable.”

Among its provisions, the bill will likely force companies to spend more money to cover the costs of oil spills, raising the liability cap to $10 billion or more from $75 million.

Obama did not set out a timetable for a future climate push and it is very unlikely that any legislation on the subject will be passed this year.

If likely Republican gains in November elections change the balance of power in Congress, climate change legislation would face an even more uncertain future.

Obama’s comments were likely meant as a nod to the international community and environmentalists, who are counting on U.S. action to help advance U.N. talks to form an international pact to curb greenhouse gas emissions and fight global warming.

Obama said climate change legislation would create high-wage U.S. jobs in the renewable energy sector.

“We can’t afford to stand by as our dependence on foreign oil deepens, as we keep on pumping out the deadly pollutants that threaten our air and our water and the lives and livelihoods of our people,” he said.

Article by Jeff Mason; edited by Eric Beech; appearing courtesy Reuters.

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Two separate high-level diplomatic events last week gave more credence to the notion that in the months leading up to the next round of U.N. climate talks in Mexico in December, developing countries are working on building some strategic alliances — strategic alliances structured around the principle that it will be harder to develop without the help of fossil fuels like coal and oil, than it was to develop with them.

If there is ever going to be an international climate treaty that puts limits on the emissions of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, developing nations are going to make sure they don’t get the short end of the stick.

Making sure they don’t end up with that deal, the environment ministers of Brazil, South Africa, India and China (BASIC) met in Cape Town over to discuss their approach at upcoming global climate change negotiations. In a joint statement issued by the environment ministers, the BASIC countries said that a legally binding follow-up treaty to the Kyoto protocol should be agreed no later than the U.N. climate summit late 2011 in Cape Town.

The BASIC countries are responsible for about 30 percent of global carbon emissions, but represent a much larger proportion of the world’s population. In some respects, they command more bargaining power than the industrialized countries of the global North.

“Developing countries strongly support international legally binding agreements, as the lack of such agreements hurts developing countries more than developed countries,” the statement said.

The BASIC countries also reiterated the need for rich countries to ramp up their emission reduction targets and called for the UN to be the only legitimized global body for climate change negotiations.

Environmental groups welcomed the statement from BASIC — a statement that seems to represent a big policy shift, particularly for China.

“There is momentum coming out of these countries after what was essentially an almost collapsed negotiation in Copenhagen,” said Themba Linden, a political advisor for Greenpeace Africa.

“China openly calling for a legally binding agreement, this is awesome progress,” Linden said.

The People’s Summit

Across the Atlantic, and also in the Southern Hemisphere, Bolivian President Evo Morales hosted a three-day ‘People’s Summit’ focusing on the world’s poorest people. Representatives of nearly 130 countries, including many of the world’s poorest, gathered in Cochabamba, Bolivia to give voice to a group they say was largely ignored at the United Nations COP 15 climate talks in Copenhagen last December.

The World People’s Conference on Climate Change and Mother Earth Rights was designed to give louder voice to a coalition of poorer countries and their leaders a louder voice leading up to the next round of climate talks in Mexico in December.

“We’re here because industrialized countries have not honored their promises,” president Morales told a crowd of 20,000 people gathered at the summit.

“Either capitalism dies, or it will be Mother Earth,” Morales said.

Conference attendees drafted new proposals for the next U.N. climate talks in Mexico, but until then, they showed they had little tolerance for the United Nations, almost booing the U.N. representative out of the building.

“We came with all respect to hear the people, you invited us to be here. If you don’t want us to be here we can leave,” said Alicia Barcena , executive secretary of the U.N. Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean.

Leaders in the developing world are well aware that economic development in a carbon constrained world will not be cheap or easy. But they’re also aware that the economies that sprang to life during the industrial revolution did so almost entirely on the back of coal — the most carbon intensive energy ever used.

Article by Timothy B. Hurst appearing courtesy Celsias.

photo: kk+

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UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – Global investors representing $13 trillion in assets called on the United States and other countries on Thursday to adopt policies to fight climate change they said would unleash a potential flood of private money into renewable and efficient energy.

“Without policies that create a stable investment environment our hands are tied,” Anne Stausboll, chief executive of the California Public Employees Retirement System, a pension fund with more than $205 billion in assets, said at a meeting called the Investor Summit on Climate Risk.

“We are ready and willing to up the ante to finance the transition to a low carbon global economy but you need to have the courage to act,” said Mindy Lubber, the president of Ceres, a coalition of investors and environmentalists which was hosting the meeting.

More than 20 countries, including China and the United States, agreed to a non-binding Copenhagen Accord at a U.N. climate summit last month. They are hoping at least 100 countries sign on to the accord by pledging carbon cuts or action on climate in order to show the momentum needed to form a binding global agreement, a Western diplomat said.

But the United States, the world’s second-largest emitter, has not formed a national plan to cut emissions as climate legislation has stalled in the Senate. And major developing countries want the United States to act first before agreeing to take binding action.

Opportunities for investing in the low carbon economy have been proven, investors said. A Deutsche Bank report released on Thursday found companies that specialize in renewable energy like wind, solar and geothermal power and energy efficiency outperformed peers across the wider global economy last year and expected that to continue in 2010.

“Until the U.S. Congress passes climate regulation, America will be at a competitive disadvantage in the development of renewable energy and other climate change industries,” said Kevin Parker, the bank’s head of global asset management, which had $695 billion in assets as of September 2009.

Article by Timothy Gardner; editing by Todd Eastham; appearing courtesy of Reuters

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