Category: Low Carbon Energy

Labour’s Great British Energy is a good start – here’s how to make it work for everyone

Posted on by janet.crompton

In a packed auditorium in Liverpool, Labour leader Keir Starmer stood at a plinth emblazoned with the words “A Fairer, Greener Future”. It was the key theme of this year’s party conference and is evident in Starmer’s landmark policy announcement: the creation of a new publicly-owned energy company, Great British Energy.

The company would effectively be a start-up to grow British renewables. So while Great British Energy is not nationalisation of the electricity sector (or of any one energy company), it would represent a new and different sort of organisation positioned to fund new projects while working to remove the hurdles faced by new wind and solar projects.

This follows calls from various organisations for a new way of generating and providing electricity. For many, the scale of action needed to both reach net zero and address energy poverty is incompatible with the current model of doing things, which focuses on paying shareholders and avoiding riskier investments.

Like EDF in France or Vattenfall in Sweden, Great British Energy would be state-owned. But it would be independent, making its own investment decisions and working closely with private energy companies.

Being backed by the government, the new company can take on riskier investments. This might be in bigger projects or in new, innovative technologies such as tidal energy. Rather than paying shareholders, the profit that this company makes can then be reinvested in new projects, or for cutting bills or insulating homes.

Great British Energy is one part of a broader approach that Labour has put forward, including measures on energy efficiency and an £8 billion national wealth fund to help decarbonise industry.

The public supports public energy

Despite some concerns about how these policies might be sold on the doorstep, there is public support. Polling in May 2022 showed that 60% of UK voters support bringing energy companies into public ownership – and such patterns of support have remained relatively constant.

Popular campaigns have called for nationalising the sector. Others have highlighted how the current system prioritises shareholders over addressing energy poverty.

Offshore wind farm viewed from a beach
Renewable energy has become a national security issue for the UK.
Colin Ward/Shutterstock

When Labour raised a similar policy in the 2019 election, it was treated as foolish by much of the media. Yet Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its aggressive use of disruptions to its natural gas exports to Europe as a political weapon have changed energy politics in Europe.

Those calling for the expansion of renewable energy used to highlight how they were greener and cheaper than fossil fuels. Events in 2022 have now made renewables the basis for energy security too.

Who makes decisions, and who benefits from them?

While this policy pledges a different type of energy company, being state-owned does not make any organisation inherently “good”. For instance, EDF in France has been caught spying on Greenpeace. Elsewhere, Vattenfall has sold off its coal power stations rather than replacing them with renewables, merely shifting emissions on to somebody else’s balance sheet.

Addressing these issues requires a reflection on who is making decisions. The proposed national wealth fund would include co-investments with private companies. But who would be involved in directing these investments and who might benefit from them?

Hydrogen energy was mentioned in several speeches at Labour’s conference, and the industry’s lobbyists were reported to have been active and hosted meetings. However, recent work has shown that any move to use hydrogen for home heating is likely unviable.

Elsewhere at the conference, climate campaigners accusing Drax, the biggest emitter in the UK, of environmental racism were reportedly removed from a meeting on net zero and green jobs.

A national energy company must also wrestle with where new renewable energy projects, which tend to demand large tracts of land, will be built and who might suffer from the impacts. Compensation payments in the UK have rewarded unfair patterns of land ownership and the monopolisation of land by the rich and the powerful.

In the UK, a small number of landowners stand to gain financially from the expansion of onshore wind, while offshore wind power is permitted by the crown estate which owns the seabed.

Wind turbines in field
Wind and solar farms can use lots of land.
Traceyaphotos2/Shutterstock

Those living nearby often receive limited compensation. In Scotland, communities living near onshore wind turbines get 0.6% of the value of electricity generated.

This does very little to address regional issues of inequality or exclusion. Community-owned projects have a better track record, providing up to 34 times the financial benefits of those built by private energy companies.

Great British Energy is a policy that many voters will support. While there remain questions about the forms it might take and how it might change the energy sector, it represents an opportunity to generate and use energy differently – as long as it is part of a broader, just energy transition.

These policies are coming at a time of spirallling energy costs and energy poverty for millions, and any national energy company must make addressing this a priority. Labour’s energy efficiency plans show that the party is intent on doing so. The cheapest electricity is the electricity that we don’t use, after all.

It is also politically savvy: some of the areas worst affected by energy prices are in marginal seats. A national energy company playing a central role in funding and directing renewable schemes would allow them to be better targeted, would allow funding for unprofitable projects, and any financial returns could be used to further support families and communities.

But there is still room for Labour to be more ambitious. Great British Energy could be the first step towards an inclusive energy transition, but we must think about what comes next.The Conversation

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member Dr Ed Atkins, Senior Lecturer, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ed Atkins

 

 

Why the aviation industry must look beyond carbon to get serious about climate change

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Flying is responsible for around 5% of human-induced climate change.
Wichudapa/Shutterstock

Commercial aviation has become a cornerstone of our economy and society. It allows us to rapidly transport goods and people across the globe, facilitates over a third of all global trade by value, and supports 87.7 million jobs worldwide. However, the 80-tonne flying machines we see hurtling through our skies at near supersonic speeds also carry some serious environmental baggage.

My team’s recent review paper highlights some promising solutions the aviation industry could put in place now to reduce the harm flying does to our planet. Simply changing the routes we fly could hold the key to drastic reductions in climate impact.

Modern aeroplanes burn kerosene to generate the forward propulsion needed to overcome drag and produce lift. Kerosene is a fossil fuel with excellent energy density, providing lots of energy per kilogram burnt. But when it is burnt, harmful chemicals are released: mainly carbon dioxide (CO₂), nitrogen oxides (NOₓ), water vapour and particulate matter (tiny particles of soot, dirt and liquids).

Aviation is widely known for its carbon footprint, with the industry contributing 2.5% to the global CO₂ burden. While some may argue that this pales in comparison with other sectors, carbon is only responsible for a third of aviation’s full climate impact. Non-CO₂ emissions (mainly NOₓ and ice trails made from aircraft water vapour) make up the remaining two-thirds.

Taking all aircraft emissions into account, flying is responsible for around 5% of human-induced climate change. Given that 89% of the population has never flown, passenger demand is doubling every 20 years, and other sectors are decarbonising much faster, this number is predicted to skyrocket.

Aircraft contrails don’t last long but have a huge impact.
Daniel Ciucci/Unsplash

It’s not just carbon

Aircraft spend most of their time flying at cruise altitude (33,000 to 42,000 ft) where the air is thin, to minimise drag.

At these altitudes, aircraft NOₓ reacts with chemicals in the atmosphere to produce ozone and destroy methane, two very potent greenhouse gases. This aviation-induced ozone is not to be confused with the natural ozone layer, which occurs much higher up and protects the Earth from harmful UV rays. Unfortunately, aircraft NOₓ emissions cause more warming due to ozone production than they do cooling due to methane reduction. This leads to a net warming effect that makes up 16% of aviation’s total climate impact.

Also, when temperatures dip below -40℃ and the air is humid, aircraft water vapour condenses on particles in the exhaust and freezes. This forms an ice cloud known as a contrail. Contrails may be made of ice, but they warm the climate as they trap heat emitted from the Earth’s surface. Despite only lasting a few hours, contrails are responsible for 51% of the aviation industry’s climate warming. This means they warm the planet more than all aircraft carbon emissions that have accumulated since the dawn of powered flight.

Unlike carbon, non-CO₂ emissions cause warming through interactions with the surrounding air. Their climate impact changes depending on atmospheric conditions at the time and location of release.

Cutting non-CO₂ climate impact

Two of the most promising short-term options are climate-optimal routing and formation flight.

Left: Climate optimal routing. Right: Formation flight concept.

Climate-optimal routing involves re-routing aircraft to avoid regions of the atmosphere that are particularly climate-sensitive – for example, where particularly humid air causes long-lived and damaging contrails to form. Research shows that for a small increase in flight distance (usually no more than 1-2% of the journey), the net climate impact of a flight can be reduced by around 20%.

Flight operators can also reduce the impact of their aircraft by flying in formation, with one aircraft flying 1-2 km behind the other. The follower aircraft “surfs” the lead aircraft’s wake, leading to a 5% reduction in both CO₂ and other harmful emissions.

But flying in formation can reduce non-CO₂ warming too. When aircraft exhaust plumes overlap, the emissions within them accumulate. When NOₓ reaches a certain concentration, the rate of ozone production decreases and the warming effect slows.

And when contrails form, they grow by absorbing the surrounding water vapour. In formation flight, the aircraft’s contrails compete for water vapour, making them smaller. Summing all three reductions, formation flight could slash climate impact by up to 24%.

Decarbonising aviation will take time

The aviation industry has fixated on tackling carbon emissions. However, current plans for the industry to reach net zero by 2050 rely on an ambitious 3,000-4,000 times increase in sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) production, problematic carbon offsetting schemes, and the introduction of hydrogen- and electric-powered aircraft. All of these could take several decades to make a difference, so it’s crucial the industry cuts its environmental footprint in the meantime.

Climate-optimal routing and formation flight are two key examples of how we could make change happen faster, compared with a purely carbon-focused approach. But there is currently no political or financial incentive to change tack. It is time governments and the aviation industry start listening to the science, and take aircraft non-CO₂ emissions seriously.The Conversation

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member Kieran Tait, PhD Candidate in Aerospace Engineering, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Kieran Tait

 

 

IPCC blog series – Working Group 3 – Mitigation of climate change

Posted on by janet.crompton

This blog is part of a series on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent 6th Assessment Report, with this post covering the output of Working Group III and the proposed solutions and mitigations for the climate crisis. This article also features a chat with IPCC Lead Author Dr Jo House and contributor Viola Heinrich, researchers at the University of Bristol and Cabot Institute for the Environment. 

Of the three Working Groups, the third makes for the most positive reading. As the title suggests, this one is all about the mitigation of climate change and preventing the disastrous climate futures explained by Working Groups I and II. Whilst remaining focussed on the impending nature of the climate crisis, this report spells out that we have the solutions.

As discussed in the previous posts, massive behavioural changes are needed at government and societal levels. When I spoke to academics, they were positive that we were well past the point of whether climate change is real or has an impact on humanity and that economically minded leaders are starting to see the benefits of sustainable practice and the economic security it brings. Governments and states are listening and looking at policy to mitigate the crisis.

Let’s look at some of the solutions and mitigations proposed:

The quicker we act, the less economic impact

This follows on nicely from previous reports that stated the effects of warming increase with each incremental global average temperature increase. That is to say, a +1.5 degrees C future will see less devastation than a +2 degrees C or even a +1.7 degrees C rise in temperature. Such disasters (drought, extreme weather, flooding) require huge amounts of money resources to sort out. From an economic security point of view, it makes complete sense to act with great urgency. The climate crisis is already here, and therefore already having an economic impact. Action immediately will mitigate against the future potential costs of a climate disaster.

Relative to the economic impact of climate disaster in the future, the investment of reducing the impact of the crisis and securing a liveable planet is small.

The immediate reduction of fossil fuel production and limitation of greenhouse gases in the pursuit of Net Zero

As discussed before, the greatest culprit of the climate crisis is unequivocally greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from fossil fuels. Therefore, in an ideal world, the immediate halt of fossil fuel extraction, production and consumption would be enough to prevent an overshoot +1.5 degrees C (as discussed in the first report, there is a lag between emissions and warming). Unfortunately, this is not an ideal world, so significant policy to pursue a Net-Zero will be needed.

Going further, carbon must also be removed from the atmosphere somehow, to allow the planet to return to preindustrial atmospheric carbon levels.

Carbon removal, naturally and technologically

A key aspect to the third Working Group is its arguments for carbon capture. This could be either through natural carbon removal through plants and trees, or by using carbon removal technology through direct air capture.

Carbon capture will be essential to solving the climate crisis, as carbon needs to be removed in order to return to the pre-industrial levels of atmospheric carbon. As well as this, proposed tech allows for carbon to be captured at the source of emissions. The issue is that carbon capture could lead to a dependence on the technology.

Companies, understandably, are drawn to the idea of “planting trees” to offset their emissions. It’s visible, tangible, and easy for the public to grasp. However, it’s not always the most efficient use of land and resources, and some worry that these methods will be exploited as a crutch to not reduce emissions output. While an extremely important step in mitigating climate change, some worry that there may be a resultant reliance on carbon removal over carbon emission reduction, allowing the world’s most prolific polluters to continue maintain their carbon output.

One of the most cost-effective mitigation techniques is simply the protection of existing forests and natural sites. The IPCC also stresses that decisions of protection like these must involve the input of the indigenous communities living there.

From the policy level to the personal level

It’s brilliant to be making the personal decisions to limit your own carbon impact, but individuals have limited impact on the climate system. What these reports suggest is wide reaching policy at state level to incentivise populations to make better climate conscious choices, by making things easier through improved infrastructure and methods of “demand management”, reducing the consumption of resource intensive products like meat and dairy. Diet changes at a population scale will be needed to combat the emissions of methane (another greenhouse gas) in particular.

In urban environments, investment in public transportation and cycling infrastructure would go a long way to reduce emissions. As would policy that makes retrofitting buildings to be more energy efficient and building new infrastructure with energy efficiency in mind.

For a great bit of further reading, the IPCC Special report on Climate Change and Land goes into much further detail about the impact of changing diets and consumption habits at scale.

Read the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land

As previously discussed in the blog post on the WGII report, the impacts of climate change are not equal or in proportion to climate impact of the nation affected. Therefore, much of the mitigation will need to take the form of humanitarian aid, improving infrastructure for nations without the resources to do so themselves.

The IPCC reports end on a poignant note: “International cooperation is a critical enabler for achieving ambitious climate change mitigation goals”.

Insight from IPCC Lead Author Dr Jo House and contributor Viola Heinrich

Dr Jo House

Dr Jo House is Reader in Environmental Science and Policy, Research Lead of Cabot Institute for the Environment’s Environmental Change theme and a Lead Author on the IPCC’s AR6 Working Group III report.

Viola Heinrich is a Physical Geography PhD Candidate at the University of Bristol, studying the emissions and climate mitigation potential within the land use sector in the tropics, especially the Brazilian Amazon. Viola assisted Dr House in her AR6 work, producing figures for WG III.

How did you get involved with the IPCC and WGIII?

Dr Jo House – “I have been working on IPCC reports for 20 years. I was first employed as a chapter scientist to support the chapter team for working group I, 3rd assessment report carbon cycle chapter. I was then made a lead author for the synthesis report for AR3. Since then, I have been a lead author or contributing author on all three Working Groups, as well a lead author for the Special Report on Climate Change and Land. I am also a lead author twice for the IPCC Task Force on Inventories, who provide methodological guidance to countries on how to produce their greenhouse gas inventories, for reporting to the UNFCCC, as well as accounting under the Kyoto Protocol.

Viola Heinrich

Despite the long hours and the many thousands of comments we must respond to, I do IPCC because I care about climate change, and IPCC gets the science into the hands of people who can do something about it.”

Viola Heinrich – “I’m a PhD student working on understanding the emissions and climate mitigation potential within the land use sector in the tropics, especially the Brazilian Amazon. Jo, as my supervisor, approached me in 2019 to help produce some figures for her work on AR6 and WGIII.

It was a great learning experience seeing how these report cycles work and one bonus was that the work I produced for the IPCC reports was able used in the introduction to my PhD thesis”

What’s one key message you’d like to highlight from WGIII?

Dr Jo House – “We are nearly already too late to stay within 2 degrees, so we need to reduce fossil fuels usage drastically and rapidly to avoid even worse impacts.

Also specifically from a land perspective: The land has potential for mitigation, but it cannot do it all, planting trees is not a get out of jail free card for continuing to burn fossil fuels.”

Viola Heinrich – “This report has followed nicely on form previous cycles in that it has reaffirmed what we know about the land use component and the mitigation potential of the land use sector (20% to 30% by 2050). The big caveat of course is that the land can’t do it all and we need to be actively reducing emissions rather than relying in capture methods from trees for example.

Another interesting factor about the report is that it stresses the importance of considering the local communities in places where solutions and mitigations take place, seeking their expertise in protection, and understanding how these actions will affect them.”

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As always, we recommend taking a look at the IPCC’s full reports and report summaries for yourself if you seek to further understand the evidence and reasoning behind their headline statements.

That wraps up the blog series, I hope that it was enjoyable and informative.

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This blog series was written by Cabot Communications Assistant Andy Lyford, an MScR Student studying Paleoclimates and Climate modelling on the Cabot Institute’s Master’s by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at the University of Bristol.

Andy Lyford

 

 

IPCC blog series – Working Group 2 – Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

 

This blog is part of a series from the Cabot Institute for the Environment on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent sixth Assessment report, with this post covering the output of Working Group 2 and the impacts of climate change on society and ecosystems. This article also features a chat with Prof Daniela Schmidt, a Professor at the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol, and a Lead Author on the IPCC’s AR6 report. For links to the rest of the series, see the bottom of the post.

Welcome to the next post in this series on the IPCC sixth Assessment Report (AR6). Now that we’ve covered the background science to climate change, the next phase looks at the impacts on society, ecosystems, and the intricate fabric of everything in between – combining the science and aiding the transition of translating to policies that governments can implement to better the planet and mitigate the impacts.

This report is, in my opinion, the most alarming of the bunch – some scientists referring to this as the “bleakest warning yet”. Here are the key points:

The increased frequency of Extreme Weather and Temperature will have a cataclysmic impact – Everywhere will be affected

There is no inhabited region on earth that escapes the impacts of climate change. It’s estimated that over 3.3 billion people are living in areas highly vulnerable to climate change effects – largely extreme temperatures, leading to food insecurity and water shortages. Extreme weather events, such as tropical storms and flooding, are also set to increase in both frequency and severity.

As we’ve seen in recent years, wildfires have become more common (Australia and California making international news) and will continue to rise in frequency – wreaking devastation on communities and wildlife. This, along with the retreat of glaciers and polar ice caps, also results in a release of even more carbon to the atmosphere as the Earth’s natural carbon sinks continue to be dismantled. The ensuing feedback loop amplifies the warming, only serving to increase the severity of these events.

However, the impacts of climate change won’t be experienced uniformly across the planet…

The Impacts of Climate Change will not be experienced equally

This is one of the most important statements from all three Working Groups. It’s been well reported that sea level rise will be existentially cataclysmic for atoll island nations such as Kiribati and the Maldives, but there are other effects of climate change that will be unequally experienced. At the other end of the scale, Britain and other western European nations will see less drastic impacts, despite having some of the greatest contribution to the emissions at the root of the climate crisis. In summer, some parts of the globe are already becoming unliveable due to the extremely high temperatures. In India and Africa for example, where temperatures can exceed 40 degrees C, the number of deaths due to heat are increasing year on year. Poorer communities, especially those who work outdoors, are disproportionately affected as their occupation puts them at greater risk.

Some of the nations with the lowest development and therefore lowest contribution to climate change will experience the impacts more than some of the greatest contributors.

A Climate Crisis exacerbates other ongoing Crises

The effects of a climate crisis add an extra layer of complexity to all sorts of problems the world is already facing. Threats to food and water security because of climate change will increase pre-existing geopolitical tensions as resources become more and more scarce. Therefore, the likelihood of conflict and war increases – which in turn shift focus from fighting climate change. To some extent, we are seeing this already with the war in Ukraine, for example. In summary, climate change can increase severity of a crisis and limits the efficacy of response.

Impacts on ecosystems are already happening as well

Mass die-offs of species are well underway, particularly in oceanic ecosystems as sea temperatures rise and ocean acidification takes place. Deforestation and wildfires are destroying ecosystems.

When I spoke to Professor Daniela Schmidt, a lead author on the WGII report (more from her at the end of the article), she was quick to point out and stress the connections between nature and society, links often underestimated – “Negative impacts on nature will negatively impact people”. Nature, land-use, and conservation will be some of the key tools in helping mitigate the effects of climate change.

This is something to explore further with the next blog in this series on Working Group 3: Mitigation of Climate Change.

Insight from IPCC AR6 Lead Author Professor Daniela Schmidt 

Daniela Schmidt is a Professor of Palaeobiology, Cabot Institute member and a key author on the IPCC’s WG2 report.

How did you get involved with IPCC AR6 and Working Group II in particular?

“I was a lead author on the fifth assessment report, working on the ocean chapter. I have since worked on reports for the European Commission on food from the ocean. I volunteered for this cycle with the expectation of working with WGI but I was assigned work on WGII, which was challenging because it was way out of my comfort zone. Working on this report has changed the way I will conduct research in the future, and has taught me to be more open to the complexities of life”

What’s one key point you’d like to get across from the WGII report?

“The official key strapline from AR6 is that the evidence is clear, climate change is real and happening right now. It’s a rapidly closing window of opportunity to do something about it.”

“One of the main things I like to communicate is that if we don’t hit 1.5 degrees C targets, then 1.7 degrees C is still better than for 2 degrees C example. The point is that every increment matters and that we can’t give up if we miss targets. I think it’s important to tell people that if we are overshooting 1.5 degrees C, yes, there will be consequences, some of which are irreversible, but we can still come back.”

“I also try not just to talk about climate change. Much of the adaptation action for climate change incidentally will, in my view, help to make the world a better place – providing clean drinking water, clean energy, habitable homes and ensuring there is nature surrounding them”

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We recommend taking a look at the IPCC’s full reports and report summaries for yourself if you seek to further understand the evidence and reasoning behind their headline statements.

Going further, potential solutions and climate change mitigations will be covered in greater detail in our summary of WG3’s report titled “Mitigation of Climate Change”, will be the next blog in this series, featuring a chat with IPCC AR6 Lead Author Dr. Jo House and contributor Viola Heinrich.

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Andy Lyford

This blog was written by Cabot Communications Assistant Andy Lyford, an MScR Student studying Paleoclimates and Climate modelling on the Cabot Institute Master’s by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at the University of Bristol.

IPCC blog series: Working Group 1 – The Physical Science Basis

Posted on by janet.crompton

This blog is part of a series from the Cabot Institute for the Environment on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s recent AR6 report (IPCC, AR6), with this post covering the output of Working Group 1 and the physical scientific basis of climate change. This article also features a chat with Professor Dan Lunt, a Climate Scientist at the University of Bristol who focusses on paleoclimates and climate modelling, and a Lead Author on the IPCC’s AR6 report. For links to the rest of the series, see the bottom of the post.

The IPCC begins their 6th Assessment Report by explaining the physical science basis and publishing the finding of Working Group 1 (WG1) in August 2021. This means that, rather than considering the impact on humans, ecosystems and societies covered by later working groups, this report only looks at the effects on the planet from a physical standpoint. Consider this part of the report to be describing the problem, where later reports describe the impacts and then the possible solutions.

Here are the key points from WG1, detailing the physical science basis:

Human activity has unequivocally caused a change in the global climate.

If you were in any doubt before, let this be the sole key message you take away from this report.

Human activity has caused widespread warming of the land, ocean an atmosphere, affecting weather systems, ecosystems, and the cryosphere (areas covered by ice such as mountain glaciers and the polar regions).

One of the main drivers of this change has been Greenhouse Gases (GHGs), which have been observed to be increasing in atmospheric concentration since as far back as 1750 and the beginning. These gases, such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O), come from human processes that burn fossil fuels – transport, energy production, intense cattle farming for example.

Greenhouse gases in the atmosphere act like blanket, trapping rather than heart from the sun, warming the Earth. We also know from studying past climates that the Earth will get warmer with greater atmospheric CO2 levels.

Changes to the climate are happening at an unprecedented rate.

Figure 1: Graph from AR6-WG1 showing the unprecedented levels of warming seen in the last 2000 years.

You may have heard that the Earth’s climate has naturally ebbed between periods of hot and cold. This is completely true, however it can be a misleading statement that completely undersells the issue. Human activity has caused the planet to warm at an unprecedented rate. We are currently undergoing thousands of years of warming in just a few decades (fig.1) – much to fast for adaptation from the world’s ecosystems.

As such, the Earth will take millions of years to recover and reach an equilibrium. I highly encourage you to check out climatearchive.org’s simulations of the next million years using cutting edge modelling data – created by the Cabot Institute for the Environment’s Sebastian Steinig.

Climate change is ALREADY affecting every inhabited region on Earth, with observed increases in extreme weather and climate extremes.

Many people believe that the climate crisis is far off in the future, a problem to prevent before it arrives. However, this is not the case. It’s already happening under our noses. And everywhere. Every inhabited region in the world currently experiences an increased likelihood of an extreme weather event, extreme heat drought, or extreme precipitation. This summer for example, temperatures in the UK have been modelled and subsequently measured to creep above 40°C, unprecedented for a region with a usually temperate climate and setting national records.

Increased warming leads to an increase in effect and creeps towards a tipping point from which recovery is impossible.

You might have heard phrases like “2 degree C future” or “1.5 degree C rise” in the news, but what do these really mean? These numbers refer to the global mean temperature rise using a rolling average of the previous 20 years, relative to the temperature measured between 1850-1900 when climate change started to begin. Currently, the average global temperature anomaly sits above 1 degree C of warming (fig.1).

The Earth system is remarkably robust, but not quite robust enough to maintain an equilibrium with such rapid warming in a short space of time. One place where this is most stark is the cryosphere – parts of the Earth usually covered by ice all year round (glaciers, polar regions for example).

Melting has already begun and will continue to happen for decades even if emissions magically ended tomorrow. This is incredibly troubling, since the cryosphere also happens to be huge carbon store in the form of methane trapped in the ice. This creates what’s known as a feedback loop, where the effects of warming lead to greater warming in themselves.

Through studying paleoclimates, the IPCC reports that climate sensitivity and therefore “tipping point” sits at around 3 degree C, resulting in total climate breakdown.

Significant and immediate action limiting Greenhouse Gas emissions will be a major key in fighting climate change.

The one silver lining the report alludes to is that IPCC scientists are confident that the climate crisis is caused primarily by greenhouse gas concentrations, therefore we know the solution – reducing emissions quickly and effectively will mitigate against the worst warming in a big way. Pursuing a net-zero CO2 strategy and limiting other GHG emissions will be absolutely necessary. Working Group 3’s report on the Mitigation of Climate Change goes into greater detail on how governments can work together to go about this. This will be published on 29 August 2022.

Insight from IPCC WG1 author Professor Dan Lunt

Professor Dan Lunt is a Professor of Climate Science, Cabot Institute member and a key author on the IPCC’s WGI report.

How did you get involved with IPCC AR6?

Dan Lunt

“I was involved with the previous IPCC report, AR5, providing some data and graphs for a section on polar amplification in past and future climates (the disproportionate warming of the polar regions relative to the rest of the Earth system). This time round, a call went out around four or five years ago for authors to work on the upcoming Sixth Assessment Report. I applied for and was chosen to be a Lead Author on Chapter 7 of the AR6 report – a section focussed the Earth’s radiation budget and Climate Sensitivity, as well as on paleoclimates as evidence for the patterns of global warming, such as polar amplification.”

What’s one key point you’d like to get across from the work of Working Group 1?

“For me, what I would interpret as the key message would be climate change is already happening, and it’s happening all over the globe. It’s unprecedented in terms of its magnitude and its speed of change, relative to the past tens of thousands of years. It’s unequivocally caused by human activity.”

“One of the new key points in this assessment report is that there’s a lot more evidence now that there are changes in the frequency of extreme events. We now have enough data to say that this increased frequency is human induced. So that’s more droughts, floods, extreme heat events etc.”

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We recommend taking a look at the IPCC’s full reports and report summaries for yourself if you seek to further understand the evidence and reasoning behind their headline statements.

As we’ve discussed the scientific basis for climate change, you may be wondering what the real-world impacts. The specific impacts on ecosystems, global health and on human society will be covered in greater detail in our summary of WG2’s report titled “Impacts, Adaption and Vulnerability”, publishing tomorrow (Thursday, 28th of August).

 

This blog was written by Cabot Communications Assistant Andy Lyford, an MScR Student studying Paleoclimates and Climate modelling on the Cabot Institute Master’s by Research in Global Environmental Challenges at the University of Bristol.

Andy Lyford

 

 

Tyre Extinguishers: activists are deflating SUV tyres in the latest pop-up climate movement

Posted on by janet.crompton
JARUEK_CH/Shutterstock

A new direct action group calling itself the Tyre Extinguishers recently sabotaged hundreds of sports utility vehicles (SUVs) in various wealthy parts of London and other British cities. Under cover of darkness, activists unscrewed the valve caps on tyres, placed a bean or other pulse on the valve and then returned the cap. The tyres gently deflated.

Why activists are targeting SUVs now can tell us as much about the failures of climate policy in the UK and elsewhere as it can about the shape of environmental protest in the wake of Extinction Rebellion and Insulate Britain.

The “mung bean trick” for deflating tyres is tried and tested. In July 2008, the Oxford Mail reported that up to 32 SUVs were sabotaged in a similar way during nocturnal actions in three areas of the city, with anonymous notes left on the cars’ windscreens.

In Paris in 2005, activists used bicycle pumps to deflate tyres, again at night, again in affluent neighbourhoods, again leaving anonymous notes. In both cases, activists were careful to avoid causing physical damage. Now it’s the Tyre Extinguishers who are deflating SUV tyres.

In the early 2000s, SUVs were still a relative rarity. But by the end of 2010s, almost half of all cars sold each year in the US and one-third of the cars sold in Europe were SUVs.

In 2019, the International Energy Agency reported that rising SUV sales were the second-largest contributor to the increase in global CO₂ emissions between 2010 and 2018 after the power sector. If SUV drivers were a nation, they would rank seventh in the world for carbon emissions.

At the same time, the Tyre Extinguishers’ DIY model of activism has never been easier to propagate. “Want to get involved? It’s simple – grab some leaflets, grab some lentils and off you go! Instructions on our website,” chirps the group’s Twitter feed.

Changing activist strategy

Though the actions led by the Tyre Extinguishers have numerous precedents, the group’s recent appearance in the UK’s climate movement does mark a change of strategy.

Extinction Rebellion (XR), beginning in 2018, hoped to create an expanding wave of mobilisations to force governments to introduce new processes for democratically deciding the course of climate action. XR attempted to circumvent existing protest networks, with its message (at least initially) aimed at those who did not consider themselves activists.

In contrast, activists in the Tyre Extinguishers have more in common with groups that have appeared after XR, such as Insulate Britain, whose members blockaded motorways in autumn 2021 to demand government action on the country’s energy inefficient housing. These are what we might call pop-up groups, designed to draw short-term media attention to specific issues, rather than develop broad-based, long-lasting campaigns.

After a winter of planning, climate activists are likely to continue grabbing headlines throughout spring 2022. XR, along with its sister group, Just Stop Oil, threaten disruption to UK oil refineries, fuel depots and petrol stations. Their demands are for the government to stop all new investments in fossil fuel extraction.

An industrial scene with three cooling towers and various chimneys lit up with yellow lights.
UK-based activists have threatened to block oil refineries in April 2022.
Orxy/Shutterstock

The Tyre Extinguishers explicitly targeted a specific class of what they consider anti-social individuals. Nevertheless, that the group’s action is covert and (so far at least) sporadic is itself telling.

In his book How to Blow up a Pipeline, Lund University professor of human ecology Andreas Malm asked at what point climate activists will stop fetishising absolute non-violence and start campaigns of sabotage. Perhaps more important is the question that Malm doesn’t ask: at what point will the climate movement be strong enough to be able to carry out such a campaign, should it choose to do so?

Given the mode of action of the Tyre Extinguishers, the answer on both counts is: almost certainly not yet.

The moral economy of SUVs

For now, the Tyre Extinguishers will doubtless be sustained by red meat headlines in the right-wing press. It’s still probable, however, that the group will deflate almost as quickly as it popped up: this is, after all, what has happened with similar groups in the past.

The fact that activists are once again employing these methods speaks to the failure of climate policy. Relatively simple, technical measures taken in the early 2000s would have solved the problem of polluting SUVs before it became an issue. The introduction of more stringent vehicle emissions regulations, congestion charging, or size and weight limits, would have stopped the SUV market in its tracks.

SUVs are important because they are so much more than metal boxes. Matthew Paterson, professor of international politics at the University of Manchester, argues that the connection between freedom and driving a car has long been an ideological component of capitalism.

And Matthew Huber, professor of geography at Syracuse University in the US, reminds readers in his book Lifeblood that oil is not just an energy source. It generates ways of being which become culturally and politically embedded, encouraging individualism and materialism.

Making SUVs a focal point of climate activism advances the argument that material inequality and unfettered individual freedoms are incompatible with any serious attempt to address climate change.

And here lies the crux of the conflict. The freedom of those who can afford to drive what, where and when they want infringes on the freedoms of the majority to safely use public space, enjoy clean air, and live on a sustainable planet.

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This blog is by Graeme Hayes, Reader in Political Sociology, Aston University and Cabot Institute for the Environment member Dr Oscar Berglund, Lecturer in International Public and Social Policy, University of Bristol

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Energy landscapes and the generative power of place

Posted on by janet.crompton

Spring 2020 will be remembered for the global Covid-19 pandemic. While in Britain people  were ordered to stay at home in a national lockdown, the nation also experienced its longest run of coal-free energy generation since the Industrial Revolution – 68 days of coal-free power. This wasn’t unconnected: as the economy shrunk almost overnight some of the major industrial energy uses stopped; steady low usage meant that the ‘back-up’ coal-fired generators of the national grid weren’t needed. Nor was this fossil-free: oil, alongside nuclear and gas, continued to fuel power plants. But, more than ever before, our energy was produced by renewable sources, and on 26 August 2020, the National Grid recorded the highest every contribution by wind to the national electricity mix: 59.9%.

This shift out of fossil dependence is both a historic moment, and the product of historical processes. The technological and scientific work that underpins the development of efficient turbines has taken decades – and it is what I’ve written about in my article, ‘When’s a gale a gale? Understanding wind as an energetic force in mid-twentieth century Britain’, out now in Environmental History. I look at how interest in the wind as a potential energy source (by the British state, and state scientists), generated the need for knowledge about how wind worked. Turbine technology needs airspace to operate, but it also needs land – to ground the turbines in, to connect to the grid by – and people to install and operate the devices. And so when looking at energy landscapes, we really need to think beyond the technology and consider the people and places with which it interacts,  to understand how energy is produced and used.

Hauling wind measuring equipment up Costa Hill, Orkney. In E.H. Golding and A.H. Stodhart, ‘The selection and characteristics of wind-power sites’ (The Electrical Research Association, 1952). Met Office Archive.

This was certainly the case for understanding wind energy. In 1940s and 50s Britain, scientists surveyed the wind regime at a national scale for the first time. They relied on the help and cooperation of local people to do this. In the brief mentions of this assistance in the archival record, we gain insight into the importance of embodied, localised knowledge in scientific processes which can at first seem detached from the actual landscapes of study.

The surveys determined Orkney as the best place to situate a test turbine. Embodied knowledge, knowledge that is learnt from being in place and from place, is very tangible in accounts of a hurricane which hit Orkney in 1952, during the turbine tests. By looking at how the islanders made sense of a disastrous wind, and brought the turbine technology into their narratives of the storm, we learn that it is not only electricity generated by the development of renewable energy, but also new dimensions to place-based knowledge and identities.

Seeing beyond the technology to consider its interactions with environments and societies is something that the energy humanities considers as essential. I’ll be working on this subject from this perspective for some time to come, and would love to hear your thoughts on the article.

Costa Hill from the coast path. Photograph by Marianna Dudley, 2017.

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This blog has been reposted with kind permission from the Bristol Centre for Environmental Humanities. View the original blog. This blog was written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member Dr Marianna Dudley. You can follow Marianna on Twitter @DudleyMarianna.

#CabotNext10 Spotlight on Low Carbon Energy

Posted on by janet.crompton
Dr Paul Harper (left) and Professor Tom Scott (right)

In conversation with Professor Tom Scott and Dr Paul Harper, theme leads at the Cabot Institute

Why did you choose to become a theme leader at Cabot Institute?

T.S: There is no single technology solution for our low carbon energy and net zero ambitions. Therefore, being a theme leader gives me the chance to work and coordinate research from all areas, such as wind, solar, nuclear and hydro, so we can work together to develop solutions.

P.H: I became increasingly inspired by renewable energy during my time at Bristol studying Aerospace Engineering (2000-2004, a long time ago now!). I know this is a real cliche, but I wanted to do something with my career that would help tackle some of the major challenges facing society around climate change and environmental sustainability. After completing my undergraduate degree and a PhD at Bristol in composite materials, I began a postdoc research post linked to tidal energy devices and also became involved in some the early development work of the Cabot Institute, so it has always had a special place in my heart. 10 years on and it is great to look back on so many new research developments in Low Carbon Energy and environmental sustainability more generally that have taken place across the University because of Cabot.

In your opinion, what is one of the biggest global challenges associated with your theme?

P.H: This is biased towards my interests in renewable energy, but I think the following are all major challenges associated with the Low Carbon Energy Theme:

  • Bringing down costs of both mainstream technologies (wind, solar) and more novel, less mature technologies (e.g., wave, tidal).
  • Applying circular design principles to prevent material going to landfill at end-of-life.
  • Designing improved ways of storing energy and integrating many distributed energy supply sources.
  • Electrification of the heating and transport sectors to increase the potential contribution of renewables.

T.S: Replacing fossil fuels with a mixed portfolio of viable and renewable alternatives. This is the fundamental challenge to tackle if the UK is to reach its 2050 Net Zero target, and if we are to provide reliable energy sources for future generations globally.

As we are looking into the future, what longer term projects are there in your theme?

T.S: In my specialist area of nuclear energy, there are several major projects and technologies in development to support low carbon energy production:

STEP – the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme will develop the world’s first commercial fusion plant in the UK, with a site set to be selected by the end of 2022. Complementary, large scale international consortia fusion projects ITER and DEMO are already underway.

Geological Disposal Facility (GDF) siting – The UK has begun the search for a site where radioactive waste can be stored permanently in a way that doesn’t burden future populations. We have to show we can deal with the waste produced by nuclear fission energy production to ensure support for nuclear power as a key low carbon energy source.

Advanced Modular Reactors (AMR) – We need to get the most from existing fission power, wherein there is much more value we can get from just producing electricity. Heat, Hydrogen and direct air-capture of CO2 are all viable from nuclear and AMRs, which operate at higher temperatures are the way to best exploit these other opportunities which will provide much more value than the current electricity-only proposition.

What’s more, Hydrogen will be the largest growth commodity in the next few decades. It gives us the opportunity to address issues around energy storage and transfer and especially, decarbonisation of transport, either directly as fuels for cars or indirectly as a precursor substance for making ammonia which can be used in heavy transport e.g., shipping.

Alongside all these technology developments, we will need to see a change in energy transport and storage infrastructure. For example, hydro or battery storage can help mitigate the intermittencies suffered by solar or wind. Equally, we cannot immediately swap methane for hydrogen in our domestic gas network and hence we need to upgrade or replace our infrastructure, with the former being much preferable and affordable.

Bringing the public along on this transitional journey will be incredibly important because they need to understand and support some of the tough technical decisions that need to be made.

P.H: A huge proportion of the world’s population has no existing access to a sustainable electricity supply and working on international development projects is vital to ensure communities can improve quality of life through access to low carbon energy. We currently have a rapidly growing portfolio of projects linked to international development and I think this trend is likely to continue in the future.

We are lucky to have a very large number of projects across a wide variety of different areas. The Cabot website gives a very good flavour of our diversity of projects (Energy | Cabot Institute for the Environment | University of Bristol) and these involve collaborations with a range of multinational companies, SMEs and start-ups, NGOs and policy makers.

Across the portfolio of projects in your theme, what type of institutions are you working with? (For example, governments, NGO’s)

T.S: The Government and its research organisations including National Nuclear Laboratory, UK Atomic Energy Authority.  I am also a member of the Nuclear Innovation & Research Advisory Board (NIRAB).

Working with other Universities in the UK and overseas as well as government research organisations and industry. It’s important that all these parties are talking and working together to ensure that there is both a push and a pull for the research we are doing towards net zero carbon by the middle of the century.

Please can you give some examples and state the relevant project.

T.S: My fellowship awarded earlier this year (Research Chair in Advancing the Fusion Energy Fuel Cycle) has the remit of doing just that. Being funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering and UKAEA, but with the remit to work with (and pull together) other academics with companies across a wide spectrum, from Cornish Lithium, to Rolls-Royce, EDF, Hynamics, Urenco and many others to advance the fuel cycle for future fusion power stations but also to develop spin-off opportunities in hydrogen storage, isotope production and even diamond batteries!

The South West Nuclear Hub provides a focus for civil nuclear research, innovation and skills in the South West of the UK, bringing together a strategic alliance of academic, industrial and governmental members, creating a unique pool of specialist talent and expertise that can be tapped into by industry

What disciplines are currently represented within your theme?

P.H: I’m sure I’ve missed some out but the main ones that spring to mind Engineering (all disciplines), Physics, Chemistry, Geography, Sociology, Economics and Law. We also have particularly close link with Cabot’s Future Cities Theme.

In your opinion, why is it important to highlight interdisciplinary research both in general and here at Bristol?

T.S: It’s quite simply because some of the big societal challenges are so multifaceted that they de facto require a multidisciplinary solution! At UoB we have a wealth of expertise and a wide network of collaborators that we can draw on to address key aspects around energy.

We can’t do everything, but we have been working hard to understand what we’re good at, our USPs and we’ll be concentrating on strengthening these going forwards as well as developing new opportunities.

P.H: In order to implement effective low carbon energy systems in society, interdisciplinary research is vital. You can design the most innovative and technically brilliant energy technologies but if they are not well suited to the social and economic environment where they will be deployed, they are of very limited value. For example, the type of energy system best suited to a UK community can be very different to the best solution for a community in the developing world, which may have no existing electrical grid infrastructure, relatively little access to skilled labour for installation/maintenance and relatively low incomes.

Are there any projects which are currently underway in your theme which are interdisciplinary that you believe should be highlighted in this campaign?

T.S: STEP is a classic example; you’d be forgiven for thinking it was just a big physics project (because this is what it was for many years) but now it is actually a huge interdisciplinary effort involving engineers, computer scientists, materials people (like myself), environmentalists, economists, and social scientists. The Physicists are still there working very hard too, but they are complemented by all this other activity which will help deliver this big scientific ambition into an actual working power station.

Is there anything else you would like to mention about your theme, interdisciplinary research and working as part of Cabot Institute?

P.H: It is essential to remember importance of teaching alongside research; the University are training the next generation of graduates who can address society’s environmental challenges and Cabot can play a key role in this through initiatives such as the Cabot MRes programme. I’m very pleased that within the Low Carbon Energy Theme, our members are playing a very active role in supporting both undergraduate courses and postgraduate study opportunities linked to Low Carbon Energy topics such as renewable energy.

T.S: The Cabot Energy theme is open and inclusive for anyone and any discipline! We enjoy a healthy debate about energy and the pros and cons of how we produce it, distribute it and use it. We’re proud to have different opinions and an open forum for discussion.

Please do come and join us even if you’re the tiniest bit curious and would like to help contribute to our collective efforts.

For more information, visit Low Carbon Energy.

Why green jobs aren’t good jobs – yet

Posted on by janet.crompton
Image credit: Oakland Images

In his speech at the October Conservative Party Conference, Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke of his vision of a transition of the UK national economy to one of high wages, high skills, and high productivity. One day later, the government unveiled its plans to decarbonise the UK power system by 2035.

These two events are not unrelated. A key plank of government environmental policy is how it might function to create new jobs (and save others). The ‘Net Zero Strategy’, also released in October and ahead of COP26, is a case in point, promising 440,000 jobs by 2030. Johnson’s Ten Point Plan for a Green Industrial Revolution pledged 60,000 jobs from offshore wind, 10,000 from nuclear, 50,000 in retrofitting and energy efficiency, and 30,000 in nature protection and restoration.

A ‘green’ job is a broad category – ranging from renewable energy production to organic agriculture and environmental education. They are the electricians, the roofers, the horticulturalists, the refuse and recyclable collectors. These jobs are fast-growing. Globally, there may be 24 million such jobs by 2030.

Yet, it is essential to question what these ‘green’ jobs might look like – and how they may differ from current work. If Johnson hopes for green jobs to be driving force towards a new decarbonised economy, current trends suggest that such words and hopes may dissolve into hot air.

Green jobs as a new environmentalism?

Decarbonisation will create new sets of winners and losers across the UK. These will not just be fossil fuel companies but also communities dependent on carbon-heavy work. One in five jobs in the UK may be affected by the transition to net-zero, with impacts heavily skewed by geography. Many regions, towns and communities are economically dependent on industries that others may see as dirty and in need of change. From airport towns like Hounslow to the oil and gas jobs in Aberdeen, a move away from fossil fuels will change the livelihoods for many.

‘Transition’ and ‘decarbonisation’ are words that are often met with fear – of jobs lost, local economies disrupted, and communities broken. The decline of fossil fuel industries elsewhere have proved traumatic – a loss of jobs in the Appalachia coalfields coincided with an opioid epidemic. History can also loom large. In the region of Latrobe Valley, Australia, memories of privatisation and redundancies remain central when discussing what comes next in the wake of decarbonisation agendas.

Contemporary environmental movements have often found themselves bogged down in a false decision between jobs and environmental health. Extinction Rebellion’s targeting of Canning Town underground station in 2019 is symbolic of a vision that has not only failed to make space for working people – but can also have a distinct lack of sympathy for their concerns. In France, the efforts of the Gilets Jaunes have highlighted what happens when decision-makers fail to understand how environmental policy (in this case increased fuel taxes) intersect with patterns of inequality.

Yet, working-class environmentalism can – and does – exist. The Green Bans movement in New South Wales in the 1970s provides a powerful example of how coalitions can be built by labour movements and environmentalists – to protect green spaces and local communities from re-development. For such a coalition to emerge today, environmentalism needs to move beyond a focus on communities making sacrifices – and towards comprehensively addressing people’s fears of lost jobs, unemployment, or loss of income.

A green job represents a key site at which such a coalition can be built. Whilst Johnson calls for such work should not be understood as motivated by the desire to build such an alliance, it does represent a repurposing of decarbonisation agendas. Moving them beyond shuttered industries and lost jobs and towards new forms of work.

This is not necessarily new. Previous economic transitions involved direct government action to protect livelihoods in flux. In the USA, government policies have supported communities in the wake of the closure of nearby military bases (redeveloping bases into university campuses or new business quarters) and awarded billions of dollars in compensation to tobacco farmers facing lost income due to government regulation. In the UK, the forced decline of the coal mining industry was accompanied by schemes that aimed at retraining redundant miners, encouraging entrepreneurialism, and creating coalfield ‘enterprise zones’, although none proved successful.

All such schemes demonstrate that government policy must be enacted to mitigate the impacts of policies elsewhere. New jobs and livelihoods aren’t magicked out of the air. This necessity remains evident in today’s quest for net-zero. Recent research commissioned by the Scottish Trade Union Congress has shown the importance of such concerted policy –an active industrial strategy, public ownership and significant investment can lead to up to 367,000 energy jobs in Scotland alone.

Low wages, lost skills

For all the talk of the ‘good’ jobs to be created by decarbonisation, the tangibility of such gains remains unclear.

Decarbonisation can also happen without such job creation and with any new jobs being poorly paid and precarious. In Germany, regional unemployment levels led to solar panel manufacturers imposing low wages. In the USA, non-unionised workers working on utility-scale solar projects are paid substantially less than others working elsewhere. Offshore wind projects in the UK have been found to used irregular migrant labour, paying substantially below the minimum wage and demanding extensive working hours.

A further complicating factor is how skills and training can be transferred from carbon-heavy industries to the renewables sector. Whilst the latter demands new skills and training programmes, there do remain some skills that are transferable. Plumbers and pipefitters in the gas sector may be able to move over to green hydrogen with limited fuss. Oil rig workers already have the skills and awareness of working at height to find a new home in the offshore wind sector.

Whilst the core skills may be the same, they are often treated as distinct. Recent work shows the roadblocks put in the way of workers moving from the oil and gas sector to the offshore wind industry. The two sectors often fail to recognise the training courses completed by workers in the other –requiring enrolment in a new course that significantly overlaps. The result is the need for two qualifications, with workers paying for training costs out of their own pocket. The only winners here are the training companies themselves.

What next?

81% of oil and gas workers surveyed in the UK would consider leaving the sector but are concerned about job security. This is understandable. Once a solar park or offshore wind plant is built – it reverts to skeleton staffing, for maintenance only. Community, small-scale and rooftop solar often involve ad-hoc and localised projects – with where the next job might come from uncertain.

In the USA, trade unions have sought to provide their own vision of decarbonisation – evident in Climate Jobs New York and the Texas Climate Jobs project. Such projects are centred on the protection of current working conditions and practices and the stemming of any circumvention of union labour. This has led to a series of project labour agreements, with renewable energy companies pledging to work with unions to provide good, secure, well-paid, high-skilled green jobs.

Supply chains and manufacturing are also key – with the parts required by the renewables sector stimulating job creation elsewhere. The success of any transition (and, with it, the provision of new forms of job security) depends on the continued health of local and regional economies. It is this that can assure a longer-term benefit of green job agendas.

Such moves represent substantial investment. The announcement of the BritishVolt electric vehicle battery factory in Blyth represents the biggest investment in the north-east since the 1980s.

In New York, a ‘Buy American’ provision has been extended to renewable energy projects – encouraging the use of national supply chains. This can also help avoid the use of forced labour elsewhere, as well as the collapse of locally significant employers. The debacle in Scotland surrounding the closure, the manufacturing firm, BiFab has demonstrated the sanctity of protecting renewables supply chains in national visions of decarbonisation.

Green jobs can be transformative. They can be targeted to address youth un- and under-employment. They can provide key points of transition for people leaving the armed forces and provide new lines of work for marginalised communities. Yet, they are not yet at the point where they represent ‘good’ jobs for all.

Transitions are rarely smooth processes. Jobs are lost and new lines of work must emerge. For a transition to net-zero to be inclusive, governments must adopt proactive frameworks to tie jobs created by moves to renewables to wider patterns of employment and economic support. Policies that decarbonise must be complemented by policies that stimulate new jobs and economic support.

The two come together. If they don’t, the jobs that power our route to net-zero will merely add to the list of losers of decarbonisation – and the split between environmentalism and labour will persist.

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This blog was written by Cabot Institute for the Environment member Dr Ed Atkins, Lecturer, School of Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol. This is reposted under the under Creative Commons CC BY-NC 4.0 licence. Read the original article.

Dr Ed Atkins

 

 

What Europe’s exceptionally low winds mean for the future energy grid

Posted on by janet.crompton

 

Shaggyphoto / shutterstock

Through summer and early autumn 2021, Europe experienced a long period of dry conditions and low wind speeds. The beautifully bright and still weather may have been a welcome reason to hold off reaching for our winter coats, but the lack of wind can be a serious issue when we consider where our electricity might be coming from.

To meet climate mitigation targets, such as those to be discussed at the upcoming COP26 event in Glasgow, power systems are having to rapidly change from relying on fossil fuel generation to renewables such as wind, solar and hydropower. This change makes our energy systems increasingly sensitive to weather and climate variability and the possible effects of climate change.

That period of still weather badly affected wind generation. For instance, UK-based power company SSE stated that its renewable assets produced 32% less power than expected. Although this may appear initially alarming, given the UK government’s plans to become a world leader in wind energy, wind farm developers are aware these low wind “events” are possible, and understanding their impact has become a hot topic in energy-meteorology research.

A new type of extreme weather

So should we be worried about this period of low wind? In short, no. The key thing here is that we’re experiencing an extreme event. It may not be the traditional definition of extreme weather (like a large flood or a hurricane) but these periods, known in energy-meteorology as “wind-droughts”, are becoming critical to understand in order to operate power systems reliably.

Recent research I published with colleagues at the University of Reading highlighted the importance of accounting for the year-to-year variability in wind generation as we continue to invest in it, to make sure we are ready for these events when they do occur. Our team has also shown that periods of stagnant high atmospheric pressure over central Europe, which lead to prolonged low wind conditions, could become the most difficult for power systems in future.

Climate change could play a role

When we think about climate change we tend to focus much more on changes in temperature and rainfall than on possible variations in near-surface wind speed. But it is an important consideration in a power system that will rely more heavily on wind generation.

The latest IPCC report suggests that average wind speeds over Europe will reduce by 8%-10% as a result of climate change. It is important to note that wind speed projections are quite uncertain in climate models compared with those for near-surface temperatures, and it is common for different model simulations to show quite contrasting behaviour.

Colleagues and I recently analysed how wind speeds over Europe would change according to six different climate models. Some showed wind speeds increasing as temperatures warm, and others showed decreases. Understanding this in more detail is an ongoing topic of scientific research. It is important to remember that small changes in wind speed could lead to larger changes in power generation, as the power output by a turbine is related to the cube of the wind speed (a cubic number is a number multiplied by itself three times. They increase very fast: 1, 8, 27, 64 and so on).

World map with dark blue (less wind) in Europe, North America and China
Change in wind speed compared to 1986-2005 if we were to limit global warming to 1.5C. Areas in blue will have less wind; areas in green, more wind.
IPCC Interactive Atlas, CC BY-SA

The reductions in near-surface wind speeds seen in the above map could be due to a phenomenon called “global stilling”. This can be explained by the cold Arctic warming at a faster rate than equatorial regions, which means there is less difference in temperature between hot and cold areas. This temperature difference is what drives large-scale winds around the globe through a phenomenon called thermal wind balance.

With all the talk of wind power being the answer to our energy needs, amid spiralling gas prices and the countdown to COP26, the recent wind drought is a clear reminder of how variable this form of generation can be and that it cannot be the sole investment for a reliable future energy grid. Combining wind with other renewable resources such as solar, hydropower and the ability to smartly manage our electricity demand will be critical at times like this summer when the wind is not blowing.The Conversation

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This blog was written the Cabot Institute for the Environment member Dr Hannah Bloomfield, Postdoctoral Researcher in Climate Risk Analytics, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Read all blogs in our COP26 blog series:

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