Tag: Paris

From Paris to Parliament: Is there a climate for action?

Posted on by janet.crompton

The Paris Agreement reached at the COP21 late last year was a big success, and the UK played an important, constructive role in that. But the UK is going backwards in policy terms with respect to greenhouse gas emissions.

That was the general message I took away from an event I attended last week in Parliament on behalf of the University of Bristol’s Cabot Institute. In truth, this wasn’t a big surprise to me. But what did strike me was the unanimity of the panellists who spoke: an MP, a scientist, an economist, a financial advisor, and an activist.* They were all more or less in agreement about the following:

  1. Paris was a big deal. There are certainly all kinds of things to be worried and dissatisfied about, and it would have been better to have had an agreement like this 20 years ago. (If you add up all the commitments national governments have made, we’re nowhere near keeping climate change under 2˚.) But it really does give us a much better shot than we had beforehand. In an important sense, to quote the scientist, December 2015 was when humanity really decided that climate change was “a problem we agreed to do something about”.
  2. Above all, Paris did two crucial things. First, it established a mechanism for making countries accountable to each other, and for making governments more accountable domestically. Second, it provided firms and investors with a clear steer: the world economy is going to decarbonise in this century. The private sector will appreciate the implications: some power stations will have to be decommissioned early; governments will sooner or later have to introduce policies favourable to renewables and unfavourable to fossil fuels; “climate risk” is going to be a huge issue for the financial services sector.
  3. And the private sector is not the problem. In a lot of ways, big companies are ahead of the government, and many are looking to governments to get with the programme and establish sensible, long-term targets and regulations. I found it striking that even an activist from Friends of the Earth and the former leader of the UK Green Party seemed to feel this way.
  4. Cutting carbon isn’t bad for the economy. Again, I wouldn’t have been surprised by a couple of the panellists saying this. But for all five to agree was impressive. They made the point in different ways. The scientist for example talked about employment growth in the clean energy sector, while the activist noted that greenhouse gas emissions have come way down in the UK in the last 25 years even as total economic activity has grown.
  5. Both of the UK’s major political parties–i.e., the Conservative Party included–have been positive forces shaping the global climate regime, and UK governments led by both parties have advised other countries on how to get their emissions down. This message too was striking to me.

All of the above just confirmed things I’ve thought for a while: That decarbonising is completely economically doable, and the reasons we’re not doing it fast enough are just political. And that at this point (in some contrast perhaps to 10 or 20 years ago) the private sector isn’t much of a problem politically.

What remains perplexing to me then is why the current government is not just doing so little, but actually going backwards–another more-or-less consensus view among the panellists. For example, revenues from environmental taxes have been flat or declining for years as a proportion of all tax revenues–directly contrary to what mainstream economics recommends. In the housing sector, the government has weakened energy-efficiency standards and killed off its flagship scheme to encourage better insulation. Subsidies for renewables have been cut (though the economic case for such subsidies is more equivocal). And this year’s Energy Bill is strangely silent on climate change.

So… What’s with the current government? I’m sure some of them are climate sceptics, but I wouldn’t expect a majority are (and I don’t think David Cameron is). Are they overestimating the economic costs of taking action on climate change? Maybe. But my best guess is that green issues just aren’t a big concern for them personally, and they don’t see the British public as too interested or supportive. As such, climate change is just constantly slipping down the agenda.

We may soon know more. The panellists noted that a number of big decisions are coming up in the UK within the next year, and in a sense this country will provide the first test of the Paris Agreement. Notably, there are questions about the climate implications of the Energy Bill, next month we will find out about funding for renewables post-2020, and we will see a new Carbon Plan by the end of the year. Let’s hope for some more positive news on those fronts.

* The panellists were Caroline Lucas (MP, former leader of the Green Party); Sir David King (formerly the Government’s Chief Scientific Advisor, and now Special Representative for Climate Change); Prof Michael Jacobs (various think tank and academic affiliations); Kirsty Hamilton (various finance affiliations); and Simon Bullock (Friends of the Earth). The event was a seminar of the All Party Climate Change Group (APPCCG) and Parliamentary Renewable and Sustainable Energy Group (PRASEG).

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Dr Malcolm Fairbrother, from the School of Geographical Sciences at the University of Bristol. 

COP21 daily report: While the politicians negotiate, the science does not stop

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He and other Cabot Institute members will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.  All blogs in the series are linked to at the bottom of this blog.

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I am on the train from Bristol Temple Meads to Paddington and then on to Paris. It seems appropriate leaving from a station that was built by Brunel, a symbol of the industrial revolution but also innovation. Tomorrow, I will be joining George Ferguson, Stephen Hilton of Bristol City Council, Amy Robinson of Low Carbon Southwest and others at the Sustainable Innovation Forum. I appreciate that addressing climate change means changing some aspects of how we live, but it also requires some fundamentally new technology; I am excited to see where the cutting edge thinking is.  Meanwhile, over a relatively calm weekend, the draft accord has been made public – there have been some significant advances but also a ways to go.  Negotiations will be continuing in earnest!  More on all of that tomorrow (I hope – it will be a long day).  



Today, however, my attention is elsewhere as our postgrads, research fellows and academic staff make their final preparations for the Annual Meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU).  The science goes on – as it must and will, regardless of the Paris negotiations. We still know far too little about the complexity of this magnificent planet, how to best live on it sustainably, and the imminent and the longer-term impacts of climate and wider environmental change.  
In my own research group (the OGU), my colleagues will be talking about increases in extreme rainfall during a past global warming event that is potentially analogous to the warming of today (see Matthew Carmichael’s research); the latest reconstructions of how carbon dioxide concentrations have changed over the past 3 million years (see Marcus Badger’s research); and the long-term controls on the hydrological cycle of the Mediterranean region (see Jan Peter Mayser’s research). All of them are collaborating with climate modellers in BRIDGE. Others in BRIDGE will be discussing how to improve the next generation of Earth System models, how to forecast land use impacts on the atmosphere, and examining the biological consequences of past ocean acidification events.  Anita Ganesan and Matt Rigby are both presenting talks on methane cycling and monitoring – a reminder that CO2 is not the only greenhouse gas and that cars and cities are not the only cause of global warming.  Our glaciologists are exploring the future of the ice sheets and glaciers. Our civil engineers and geographers are presenting the latest research on all aspects of the hydrological cycle: improved models of catchments; better flood and drought forecasting; and better understanding how land use change has affected the chemistry of our rivers.  


Through all of this, there is a persistent and recurring theme of constraining uncertainty as well as understanding uncertainty in the context of decision-making. Scientists, industry and leaders must develop better tools for navigating environmental uncertainty, a focus of the Cabot Institute in 2015 and for which the need has been aptly demonstrated by Storm Desmond’s impact on Cumbria.
It is a remarkable variety of research – and that is just a sample from the University of Bristol.  
I’m never apologetic about promoting Bristol achievements and activity – it is what I know best, it is world-leading and it is my job!  Here, however, singling out these Bristol-centric contributions makes a stronger point; the above are just a few examples of the research conducted in just one institution.  Some 20,000 scientists will attend AGU!  There is profound and diverse effort devoted to understanding our planet and improving how we live upon it.


A fantastic example of some research being led by our colleagues will be on display in London on Monday as part of a Royal Society Discussion Meeting on the Biological and Climatic Impacts of Ocean Trace Element Chemistry. The event is co-convened by our Oxford friend, colleague and frequent collaborator, Gideon Henderson. Chatting to Gideon a few days ago, he emphasised the importance of the ocean in regulating our climate: ‘The oceans consume 27% of the carbon we emit, after all, and the ocean biosphere naturally consumes 11 Gtonnes of C per year.’ This is a huge issue. Currently, the ocean buffers the atmosphere against human action – but it is unclear how long this will continue.  Moreover, the ocean does so at a cost:

 

  • As the ocean absorbs energy, it warms. 
  • As the ocean absorbs this carbon, its pH declines. 
  • As marine phytoplankton assimilate this carbon and sink, they change the chemical state of the ocean, from top to bottom, creating oxygen dead zones and transforming the redox state of trace but biologically vital elements.   

 

This research is an important reminder that the issues associated with rising greenhouse gas concentrations encompass more than just the weather – greenhouse gases are changing the chemistry, physics and biology of our planet, with unclear consequences.  Their full synergistic effects, through these complex biogeochemical systems, remain difficult to anticipate. Their consequences difficult to predict. 
 
And so, as the negotiations continue, we continue our research.  On the oceans and the tropical rain forests; the deserts of the Sahara and the Arctic; the peatlands and permafrost; the soils and the bedrock beneath; the atmosphere and the cryosphere.  On the plants, animals and microorganisms that coexist with and co-regulate these ecosystems.  And of course, the people dependent on them.
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This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Prof Rich Pancost

 

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:
 
Monday 30 November: COP21 daily report
Tuesday 1 December: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans
Wednesday 2 December: Reflecting on the science of climate change
Thursday 3 December: The politics and culture of climate change
Friday 4 December: Be brave, work together and involve the next generation

COP21 daily report: Setting a more ambitious agenda – Bristol’s Transformative Action Plans

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.

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On Monday, the Bristol Team arrived in Paris for the 2015 UN Climate Change Conference (COP21).  The Bristol cohort includes not just the Mayor and Bristol City Council, but also representatives from the Green Capital Partnership and an independent group from Love the Future (15 stalwarts who cycled from Bristol to Paris through typically British November weather). I’ll be joining them on Sunday… but some of the most exciting activity will happen today.

Bristol’s primary engagement with COP21 will be via the Cities and Regions Pavilion, hosted by Paris and Bristol and facilitated by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability, with support from over 40 partners.  It is testimony to the stature of Bristol as 2015 Green Capital that it is able to share this venue with Paris. Moreover, the Pavilion is a fantastic opportunity for Bristol to share, connect with and learn from hundreds of cities from across the globe.

Bristol is one of 88 cities and regions in 42 countries to present innovative projects aimed at placing local and regional governments at the heart of positive and long-term climate action.  These Transformative Action Plans (TAPs) represent a 10-year initiative that aims to transform the lives of their citizens.  They arise from ICLEI’s recognition that local entities must take the lead in delivering but also extending the commitments emerging from the national-scale negotiations.  Bristol is pitching two projects, one on energy efficiency and one on smarter future planning of cities. The University of Bristol, including its Cabot Institute, has been closely involved with the development of both and former Bristol Professor Andy Gouldson will be sharing the stage with Mayor George Ferguson today.

George Ferguson, Mayor of Bristol, said: 

“Bristol’s innovative plans, boosted by our year as European Green Capital, have been rated amongst the very best across cities and regions around the world thanks to their potential to transform the lives of our citizens. We’re proud to be among the world’s pioneering sustainable thinkers at COP21 and we look forward to bridging the gap ahead of the expected 2020 agreement with immediate actions that help reduce emissions, tackle poverty, improve lives and create new jobs through investment in low carbon projects.”

The first proposal, entitled ‘Energy efficiency for everyone’ (or Bristol Billion), is for a $1B (or £700m) investment to make Bristol’s buildings more energy efficient, thereby achieving significant carbon, energy, economic and even health savings. It will involve refurbishing 56,000 homes in Bristol – 30% of the city – and crucially it will not only make our city more sustainable but it will lift these homes out of fuel poverty and reduce health costs.  This proposal is based in part on a Cabot Institute-commissioned report that has also been released to the public today: The Economics of Low Carbon Cities: A mini-Stern Review for Bristol. This research shows that Bristol can achieve marked reductions in its emissions while saving money; in fact, the whole project could pay for itself in under a decade.  However, such a bold endeavour requires bold financing and hence the Bristol Billion proposition.

The Economics of Low Carbon Cities – report commissioned by the Cabot Institute

The Bristol Billion should achieve the energy efficiency gains necessary for the city to meet its 2015 to 2025 emissions reductions targets, but Bristol must also establish a foundation for the more challenging emission reductions to occur beyond 2025 and especially 2030.  Whether it be transforming the South West energy supply chain via the Bristol Energy Company or transforming its transport system, these changes will be more challenging and controversial. And that is the basis for the second project, the ‘Bristol Brain’, which seeks to reimagine how citizens and planners can work together to shape a sustainable future for the city. The Bristol Brain is ‘a physical and digital city model, on top of which, real-time data and sophisticated analytics can be projected and visualised, creating environments that can be explored through virtual and augmented reality. This will allow different scenarios for future developments to be explored as if they are real, and for the impact on energy, transport, air quality and other factors, to be fully understood.’

The Bristol Brain could facilitate city-scale planning decisions ranging from emergency services, road maintenance, and new public works. It could allow the social and economic impacts of major investments to be assessed and justified. Most importantly, it is a tool for testing and thereby empowering the radical reimagining of Bristol. It is the type of tool that citizens can use to justify maintenance of the M32… or its conversion into a bus-exclusive route… or even closing it and turning it into a city-scale garden.
This type of creative imagining is vital. Professor Colin Taylor, the head of the Cabot Institute’s Future Cities research theme, has argued that robust future city planning requires a city emulator so that we can truly explore the potential costs and benefits of truly transformative change. Crucially, the Bristol Brain would also support the more real-time interactive experiments that will be enabled by Bristol is Open and ensure that Bristol remains at the cutting edge of creative technology.
There remain challenges.  According to Bristol City Council, ‘The critical next step is to ensure these projects receive adequate financial resources to address urgent and evolving local needs to create a sustainable future.’ 

Another challenge is ensuring that such projects, especially the Bristol Brain, create an open and inclusive conversation about Bristol’s future. The University is committed to supporting these efforts.  If the Bristol Brain were to be made available to the public, perhaps via an allotment of the University’s High Performance Computing facility, then it becomes not just a resource for planning and consultation but for citizen-led propositions and inclusive innovation. 

The COP21 ambition, expressed by national governments via their Intended Nationally Determined Contributions (INDCs), is very likely to fall short of the global target of 2 degrees C warming. As such, it is crucial that other actors, including cities, take the lead in driving a more ambitious emissions reduction agenda. Moreover, they must work with universities, industry and civil society to stimulate, incubate and test new innovations. 

Bristol recognises that it can do more than follow an emissions path set by others. It can be a Laboratory for Change.
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Note: This blog is based partly on and includes text from a Bristol City Council press release.

This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Prof Rich Pancost
This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series:
 

COP21 daily report: Monday 30 November

Posted on by janet.crompton
Cabot Institute Director Professor Rich Pancost will be attending COP21 in Paris as part of the Bristol city-wide team, including the Mayor of Bristol, representatives from Bristol City Council and the Bristol Green Capital Partnership. He will be writing blogs during COP21, reflecting on what is happening in Paris, especially in the Paris and Bristol co-hosted Cities and Regions Pavilion, and also on the conclusion to Bristol’s year as the European Green Capital.  Follow #UoBGreen and #COP21 for live updates from the University of Bristol.
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I started pondering this opening blog, the first in our Bristol at COP21 series, on Friday morning, while walking from the St Werburgh’s Community Centre back to the University.

It was a reflective walk. The  previous evening, Bristol’s COP21 team met at Brunel House to talk logistics, covering everything from travel, to security, to the main messages Bristol would want to share with the rest of the world.  All of this had come at the end of a whirlwind month of events and announcements.  In November, we had already hosted George Marshall and Jonathan Porritt (with the National Union of Journalists and Festival of Ideas), celebrated our fifth birthday, and discussed what we will achieve in the next five years with our new VC and in a rapidly transforming university.  The previous week had seen the Festival of the Future City, at which we presented some of our findings from the year on Bristol’s climate challenges, its future resiliency, its nature and connection to the countryside, and the new governance and financial structures needed to achieve transformative change.

The interactive Bristol Data Dome had opened on 18 Nov, the first in the UK and part of the rollout of Bristol Is Open.  The City’s Sustainable Education programme launched, and the Shaun the Sheep app that underpins it won the ‘App with a Purpose’ prize.  Bristol City Council launched its own Energy Company, only the second in the UK.  George Ferguson gave his annual lecture in the Wills Memorial Building, at which he announced his ambition for an up to £1 billion investment in a citywide urban retrofit to increase energy efficiency and tackle fuel poverty (a plan partially based on our mini-Stern review of Bristol as a Low Carbon City).  And of course, we are headed to COP21, where Bristol will co-host the Cities and Regions Pavilion with Paris.

And despite all of these announcements and achievements, the year feels incomplete.  The meeting in St Werburgh’s, co-sponsored by ourselves and some great partners, thoughtfully examined whether the Green Capital project had really engaged all of our citizens, from all perspectives and all walks of life. The answer to that was complex and we will be exploring that more during 2016 as the conversation continues.  But there was an overall consensus that much had been achieved but much more could have been achieved.  It seems a common opinion as 2015 races towards its conclusion in Paris.

I’ve seen this tension between satisfaction and ambition exemplified on a large scale by Andrew Garrad, co-founder of Garrad Hassan now part of DNV-GL, Chair of the Bristol 2015 Company and member of the Cabot Institute’s Advisory Board. He has spent 35 years in the wind industry; in one sentence he can celebrate the success of UK renewables, which in 20 years have become central to the UK’s energy mix, and then pivot to regret that he has not been able to push even further.

This is something that sometimes frustrates me about my adopted city but that ultimately I love – and is perhaps what I love most about it. No matter how much we achieve, we argue about how we could have done better.  Or more.  Or faster.

Bristol is the least complacent place I have ever lived, sometimes exhausting but always exhilarating.

I am concluding this first blog on Sunday night, having just returned from the Climate March, which drew thousands of people on a cold, wet and windy day.  And at which people sang songs, chanted, cheered – but also debated and argued and demanded more innovation and more action.  My abiding memory of the Climate March will be listening to the smart, informed and passionate debates among members of the Bristol Youth Council about the future of their party. 

That edginess and ambition is exactly what the whole planet needs as we tackle the profound challenges not just of climate change but the sustainable use of the resources on which we depend. No matter what happens in Paris, complacency must not be accepted and it will not be accepted in Bristol.

Bristol was awarded the European Green Capital in part because we are ‘the City with a sense of fun’.  And Bristol is fun – and quirky and odd and artistic and brilliant. But it is also edgy and passionate and often proudly unsatisfied. We do not have all of the solutions, but we will never stop looking. That is the Bristol I will be taking with me to Paris.

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This blog is by Prof Rich Pancost, Director of the Cabot Institute at the University of Bristol.  For more information about the University of Bristol at COP21, please visit bristol.ac.uk/green-capital
Prof Rich Pancost

This blog is part of a COP21 daily report series. View other blogs in the series below:

The Alps and the atmosphere

Posted on by janet.crompton
Grenoble.  Image credit Rebecca Brownlow.

In it’s 23rd year, the European Research Course on Atmospheres (ERCA) is notorious amongst atmospheric scientists. PhD and Masters students made their way to Grenoble, France from as far afield as Australia, Bolivia, Russia and India to spend five intensive weeks learning about everything to do with the atmosphere. Grenoble seemed to be the perfect place to hold this kind of course; an alpine city surrounded by mountains we felt very close to the physical interactions of the earth system.

The first four weeks were packed full of lectures with topics ranging from city air pollution to the changing climate mechanisms, from the formation of clouds to the environmental impacts of hydropower. Every day brought a new perspective or entirely different subject to focus on. My own PhD research is about estimating the greenhouse gas emissions of the UK so I really got a great sense of how my work fits in with the wider field of atmospheric science. Luckily all of these hours of lectures were interspersed with copious amounts of food from the university canteen and delicious pastries at break-time. We were in France, we were never going to go hungry!

Getting the bigger picture

One of the most interesting aspects of these first four weeks was the emphasis on the social science side of the work that we do. It is really impossible to separate atmospheric science from an understanding of the politics of climate change and the attitude of the general public towards ecological behaviour. The opening speech of ERCA was by Michel Colombier, from the IDDRI. Michel has taken part in many international climate negotiations and he summarised the current situation leading up to the Paris climate debates in December 2015. He had a warning for us scientists: we were likely to be very disappointed with the seemingly unambitious climate targets of international governments. However, Michel was adamant that we should still see the outcome of the Paris Conference of Parties (COP 21) as a very important step in the right direction.

A couple of weeks later we tried to simulate our own version of the Paris 2015 debates, each person on the course chose a country to represent, and it was a complete disaster! We definitely didn’t come to any agreement and a lot of the time allocated was taken up with Chile suggesting it wouldn’t matter if Tuvalu ended up under water – so, not a very serious discussion! However, this exercise was designed to put us in the shoes of politicians, to recreate their dilemmas, and in fact we weren’t far off. We realised that it is impossible to focus the discussion when every government has its own agenda. We realised that the concerns of the most and least developed countries are worlds apart. And most importantly, we realised that any global climate agreement will be enormously difficult to obtain.

My role in the debate was the UK and it was very interesting researching the UK’s position for Paris 2015. The government has produced a great document that outlines all aspects of their expectations from a climate deal. I have to say, I was fairly impressed with what they are proposing. For example, the UK is prepared to push for an existing EU emissions reduction target to increase from 40% to 50% reduction by 2030 (from 1990 base levels). The UK is also proposing an agreement that really understands the needs of the least developed countries and is creating projects such as BRACED to improve the resilience of developing countries against climate change.

Snow, stars and science

The final week of the course was a weeklong visit to the Observatoire d’Haute Provence. This is really a magical place, a haven for scientists with dozens of little astronomical observatories poking out of a forest of oak trees, made even more magical when the whole place was covered in snow a few days after we arrived. As well as making space observations here they also have a tall tower for making greenhouse gas measurements, several LiDARs (giant green laser beams) that measure various geophysical properties of the atmosphere and an ecological research centre that looks at the impact of climatic changes on oak trees. We were able to catch the comet Lovejoy on an 80cm telescope while we were there, a once in a lifetime opportunity, as this blurry ball of light won’t be seen for another 8,000 years.

 

Observatoire d’Haute Provence. Image credit: Rebecca Brownlow

Having just started my PhD in September 2014, this winter school experience has been a wonderful introduction to the ins and outs of the field of science that I now work in. It’s given me an international network of friends and fellow atmospheric PhD students, as well as having been a fantastic opportunity to learn from some leading researchers. It’s left me with lots to think about and lots of ideas about science in general, ready to get stuck back in to my project.
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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member Emily White, a PhD student in the School of Chemistry at the University of Bristol.

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