Tag: renewables

Bats are avoiding solar farms and scientists aren’t sure why

Posted on by amanda.woodman-hardy
The common pipistrelle. Rudmer Zwerver/Shutterstock

As our planet continues to warm, the need for renewable energy is becoming increasingly urgent. Almost half of the UK’s electricity now comes from renewable sources. And solar accounts for one-fifth of the energy capacity installed since 2019.

Solar farms are now a striking feature of the British landscape. But despite their growth, we’re still largely in the dark about how solar farms impact biodiversity.

This was the focus of a recent study that I co-authored alongside colleagues from the University of Bristol. We found that bat activity is reduced at solar farms compared to neighbouring sites without solar panels.

This discovery is concerning. Bats are top predators of nighttime insects and are sensitive to changes in their habitats, so they are important indicators of ecosystem health. Bats also provide valuable services such as suppressing populations of insect pests.

Nonetheless, our results should not hinder the transition to renewable energy. Instead, they should help to craft strategies that not only encourage bat activity but also support the necessary expansion of clean energy sources.

An aerial shot of a solar farm in south Wales.
Solar farms are now a striking feature of the British landscape. steved_np3/Shutterstock

Reduced activity

We measured bat activity by recording their ultrasonic echolocation calls on bat detectors. Many bat species have distinctive echolocation calls, so we could identify call sequences for each species in many cases. Some species show similar calls, so we lumped them together in species groups.

We placed bat detectors in a solar farm field and a similar neighbouring field without solar panels (called the control site). The fields were matched in size, land use and boundary features (such as having similar hedges) as far as possible. The only major difference was whether they contained solar panels.

We monitored 19 pairs of these sites, each for a week, observing bat activity within the fields’ centre and along their boundaries. Field boundaries are used by bats for navigation and feeding.

Six of the eight bat species or groups studied were less active in the fields with solar panels compared to the fields without them. Common pipistrelles, which made up almost half of all bat activity, showed a decrease of 40% at the edges of solar panel fields and 86% in their centre. Other bat species or groups like soprano pipistrelles, noctules, serotines, myotis bats and long-eared bats also saw their activity drop.

Total bat activity was almost halved at the boundaries of solar panel fields compared to that of control sites. And at the centre of solar panel fields, bat activity dropped by two-thirds.

Why are bats avoiding solar farms?

Conflict between clean energy production and biodiversity isn’t just limited to solar farms; it’s an issue at wind farms too. Large numbers of bats are killed by colliding with the blades of wind turbines. In 2012, for example, one academic estimated that around 888,000 bats may have been killed at wind energy facilities in the United States.

The way solar farms affect bats is probably more indirect than this. Solar panels could, in theory, inadvertently reduce the abundance of insects by lowering the availability of the plants they feed on. We’re currently investigating whether there’s a difference in insect numbers at the solar farm sites compared to the control sites.

Solar panels may also reflect a bats’ echolocation calls, making insect detection more difficult. Reduced feeding success around the panels may result in fewer bats using the surrounding hedgerows for commuting, potentially explaining our findings.

However, bats are also known to collide with smooth vertical flat surfaces because they reflect echolocation calls away from bats and hence appear as empty space. Research has also found that bats sometimes attempt to drink from horizontal smooth surfaces because they interpret the perpendicular echoes as coming from still water. But, given the sloped orientation of solar panels, these potential direct effects may not be of primary concern.

Improving habitats

An important lesson from the development of wind energy is that win-win solutions exist. Ultrasonic acoustic deterrents can keep bats away from wind turbines, while slightly reducing the wind speed that turbines become operational at (known as “cut-in speeds”) has reduced bat fatality rates with minimal losses to energy production. Research suggests that increasing turbine cut-in speeds by 1.5 metres per second can reduce bat fatalities by at least 50%, with an annual loss to power output below 1%.

A slightly different approach could be applied to solar farms. Improving habitats by planting native trees along the boundaries of solar farm fields could potentially increase the availability of insects for bats to feed on.

Research that I have co-authored in recent years supports this theory. We found that the presence of landscape features such as tall hedgerows and even isolated trees on farmland has a positive effect on bat activity.

Carefully selecting solar sites is also important. Prior to construction, conducting environmental impact assessments could indicate the value of proposed sites to bat populations.

More radically, rethinking the siting of these sites so that most are placed on buildings or in areas that are rarely visited by bats, could limit their impact on bat populations.

Solar power is the fastest-growing source of renewable energy worldwide. Its capacity is projected to overtake natural gas by 2026 and coal by 2027. Ensuring that its ecological footprint remains minimal is now particularly important.

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This blog is written by Gareth Jones, Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Bristol. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Limiting global warming to 2℃ is not enough – why the world must keep temperature rise below 1℃

Posted on by amanda.woodman-hardy
Warming of more than 1℃ risks unsafe and harmful outcomes for humanity.
Ink Drop/Shutterstock

The Paris Climate agreement represented a historic step towards a safer future for humanity on Earth when it was adopted in 2015. The agreement strove to keep global heating below 2℃ above pre-industrial levels with the aim of limiting the increase to 1.5℃ if possible. It was signed by 196 parties around the world, representing the overwhelming majority of humanity.

But in the intervening eight years, the Arctic region has experienced record-breaking temperatures, heatwaves have gripped many parts of Asia and Australia has faced unprecedented floods and wildfires. These events remind us of the dangers associated with climate breakdown. Our newly published research argues instead that humanity is only safe at 1℃ of global warming or below.

While one extreme event cannot be solely attributed to global heating, scientific studies have shown that such events are much more likely in a warmer world. Since the Paris agreement, our understanding of the impacts of global heating have also improved.

A fishing boat surrounded by icebergs that have come off a glacier.
Fishing boat dwarfed by icebergs that came off Greenland’s largest glacier, Jakobshavn Isbrae.
Jonathan Bamber, Author provided

Rising sea levels are an inevitable consequence of global warming. This is due to the combination of increased land ice melting and warmer oceans, which cause the volume of ocean water to increase. Recent research shows that in order to eliminate the human-induced component of sea-level rise, we need to return to temperatures last seen in the pre-industrial era (usually taken to be around 1850).

Perhaps more worrying are tipping points in the climate system that are effectively irreversible on human timescales if passed. Two of these tipping points relate to the melting of the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets. Together, these sheets contain enough ice to raise the global sea level by more than ten metres.

The temperature threshold for these ice sheets is uncertain, but we know that it lies close to 1.5℃ of global heating above pre-industrial era levels. There’s even evidence that suggests the threshold may already have been passed in one part of west Antarctica.

Critical boundaries

A temperature change of 1.5℃ might sound quite small. But it’s worth noting that the rise of modern civilisation and the agricultural revolution some 12,000 years ago took place during a period of exceptionally stable temperatures.

Our food production, global infrastructure and ecosystem services (the goods and services provided by ecosystems to humans) are all intimately tied to that stable climate. For example, historical evidence shows that a period called the little ice age (1400-1850), when glaciers grew extensively in the northern hemisphere and frost fairs were held annually on the River Thames, was caused by a much smaller temperature change of only about 0.3℃.

A sign marking the retreat of a glacier since 1908.
Jasper National Park, Canada. Glaciers used to grow extensively in the Northern Hemisphere.
Matty Symons/Shutterstock

A recent review of the current research in this area introduces a concept called “Earth system boundaries”, which defines various thresholds beyond which life on our planet would suffer substantial harm. To avoid passing multiple critical boundaries, the authors stress the need to limit temperature rise to 1℃ or less.

In our new research, we also argue that warming of more than 1℃ risks unsafe and harmful outcomes. This potentially includes sea level rise of multiple metres, more intense hurricanes and more frequent weather extremes.

More affordable renewable energy

Although we are already at 1.2℃ above pre-industrial temperatures, reducing global temperatures is not an impossible task. Our research presents a roadmap based on current technologies that can help us work towards achieving the 1℃ warming goal. We do not need to pull a technological “rabbit out of the hat”, but instead we need to invest and implement existing approaches, such as renewable energy, at scale.

Renewable energy sources have become increasingly affordable over time. Between 2010 and 2021, the cost of producing electricity from solar energy reduced by 88%, while wind power saw a reduction of 67% over the same period. The cost of power storage in batteries (for when the availability of wind and sunlight is low) has also decreased, by 70% between 2014 and 2020.

An aerial photograph of a photovoltaic power plant on a lush hillside.
A photovoltaic power plant in Yunnan, China.
Captain Wang/Shutterstock

The cost disparity between renewable energy and alternative sources like nuclear and fossil fuels is now huge – there is a three to four-fold difference.

In addition to being affordable, renewable energy sources are abundantly available and could swiftly meet society’s energy demands. Massive capacity expansions are also currently underway across the globe, which will only further bolster the renewable energy sector. Global solar energy manufacturing capacity, for example, is expected to double in 2023 and 2024.

Removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere

Low-cost renewable energy will enable our energy systems to transition away from fossil fuels. But it also provides the means of directly removing CO₂ from the atmosphere at a large scale.

CO₂ removal is crucial for keeping warming to 1℃ or less, even though it requires a significant amount of energy. According to research, achieving a safe climate would require dedicating between 5% and 10% of total power generation demand to effective CO₂ removal. This represents a realistic and attainable policy option.

Various measures are used to remove CO₂ from the atmosphere. These include nature-based solutions like reforestation, as well as direct air carbon capture and storage. Trees absorb CO₂ from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and then lock it up for centuries.

A group of people planting a mangrove forest next to the sea.
A mangrove forest being planted in Klong Khone Samut Songkhram Province, Thailand.
vinai chunkhajorn/Shutterstock

Direct air capture technology was originally developed in the 1960s for air purification on submarines and spacecrafts. But it has since been further adapted for use on land. When combined with underground storage methods, such as the process of converting CO₂ into stone, this technology provides a safe and permanent method of removing CO₂ from the atmosphere.

Our paper demonstrates that the tools and technology exist to achieve a safer, healthier and more prosperous future – and that it’s economically viable to do so. What appears to be lacking is the societal will and, as a consequence, the political conviction and commitment to achieve it.

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This blog is written Cabot Institute for the Environment member Jonathan Bamber, Professor of Glaciology and Earth Observation, University of Bristol and Christian Breyer, Professor of Solar Economy, Lappeenranta University of Technology. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Jonathan Bamber
Jonathan Bamber

Are you a journalist looking for climate experts? We’ve got you covered

Posted on by janet.crompton

We’ve got lots of media trained climate change experts. If you need an expert for an interview, here is a list of Caboteers you can approach. All media enquiries should be made via Victoria Tagg, our dedicated Media and PR Manager at the University of Bristol. Email victoria.tagg@bristol.ac.uk or call +44 (0)117 428 2489.

Climate change / climate emergency / climate science / climate-induced disasters

Dr Eunice Lo – expert in changes in extreme weather events such as heatwaves and cold spells, and how these changes translate to negative health outcomes including illnesses and deaths. Follow on Twitter @EuniceLoClimate.

Professor Daniela Schmidt – expert in the causes and effects of climate change on marine systems. Dani is also a Lead Author on the IPCC reports.

Dr Vikki Thompson – expert on climate extremes, particularly heat extremes. Follow on Twitter @ClimateVikki

Dr Katerina Michalides – expert in drylands, drought and desertification and helping East African rural communities to adapt to droughts and future climate change. Follow on Twitter @_kmichaelides.

Professor Dann Mitchell – expert in how climate change alters the atmospheric circulation, extreme events, and impacts on human health. Dann is also a Met Office Chair. Follow on Twitter @ClimateDann.

Professor Dan Lunt – expert on past climate change, with a focus on understanding how and why climate has changed in the past and what we can learn about the future from the past. Dan is also a Lead Author on IPCC AR6. Follow on Twitter @ClimateSamwell.

Professor Jonathan Bamber – expert on the impact of melting land ice on sea level rise (SLR) and the response of the ocean to changes in freshwater forcing. Follow on Twitter @jlbamber

Professor Paul Bates CBE – expert in the science of flooding, risk and reducing threats to life and economic losses worldwide. Follow on Twitter @paul_d_bates

Professor Tony Payne – expert in the effects of climate change on earth systems and glaciers.

Dr Matt Palmer – expert in sea level and ocean heat content research at the Met Office Hadley Centre and University of Bristol. Follow on Twitter @mpclimate.

Net Zero / Energy / Renewables

Professor Valeska Ting – Engineer and expert in net zero, low carbon technologies, low carbon energy and flying. Also an accomplished STEM communicator, is an BAME Expert Voice for the BBC Academy. Follow on Twitter @ProfValeskaTing.

Professor Philip Taylor – Expert in net zero, energy systems, energy storage, utilities, electric power distribution. Also Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Bristol. Follow on Twitter @rolyatlihp.

Dr Colin Nolden – expert in sustainable energy policy, regulation and business models and interactions with secondary markets such as carbon markets and other sectors such as mobility. Colin will be at COP27. Colin will be in attendance in the Blue Zone at COP27.

Professor Charl Faul – expert in novel functional materials for sustainable energy applications e.g. in CO2 capture and conversion and energy storage devices.  Follow on Twitter @Charl_FJ_Faul.

Climate finance

Dr Rachel James – Expert in climate finance, damage, loss and decision making. Also has expertise in African climate systems and contemporary and future climate change. Follow on Twitter @_RachelJames. Rachel will be in attendance in the Blue Zone at COP27.

Climate justice

Dr Alix Dietzel – climate justice and climate policy expert. Focusing on the global and local scale and interested in how just the response to climate change is and how we can ensure a just transition. Alix will be at COP27. Follow on Twitter @alixdietzel. Alix will be in attendance in the Blue Zone at COP27.

Dr Ed Atkins – expert on environmental and energy policy, politics and governance and how they must be equitable and inclusive. Also interested in local politics of climate change policies and energy generation and consumption. Follow on Twitter @edatkins_.

Climate activism / Extinction Rebellion

Dr Oscar Berglund – expert on climate change activism and particularly Extinction Rebellion (XR) and the use of civil disobedience. Follow on Twitter @berglund_oscar.

Air pollution / Greenhouse gases

Dr Aoife Grant – expert in greenhouse gases and methane. Set up a monitoring station at Glasgow for COP26 to record emissions.

Professor Matt Rigby – expert on sources and sinks of greenhouse gases and ozone depleting substances. Follow on Twitter @TheOtherMRigby.

Land, nature and food

Viola Heinrich – expert in emissions and climate mitiagion potential within the land use sector in the tropics, especially the Brazilian Amazon. IPCC author. Follow on Twitter @vh_trees.
Dr Jo House – expert on land and climate interactions, including emissions of carbon dioxide from land use change (e.g. deforestation), climate mitigation potential from the land (e.g. afforestation, bioenergy), and implications of science for policy. Previously Government Office for Science’s Head of Climate Advice. Follow on Twitter @Drjohouse.
Dr Taro Takahashi – expert on farming, livestock production systems as well as progamme evaluation and general equilibrium modelling of pasture and livestock-based economies.
Dr Maria Paula Escobar-Tello – expert on tensions and intersections between livestock farming and the environment.

Climate change and infrastructure

Dr Maria Pregnolato – expert on effects of climate change and flooding on infrastructure. Follow on Twitter @MariaPregnolat1.

Plastic and the environment

Dr Charlotte Lloyd – expert on the fate of chemicals in the terrestrial environment, including plastics, bioplastics and agricultural wastes. Follow on Twitter @DrCharlLloyd.

Climate change and health

Dr Dan O’Hare – expert in climate anxiety and educational psychologist. Follow on Twitter @edpsydan.

Cabot Institute for the Environment at COP27

We will have three academics in attendance at the Blue Zone at COP27. These are:
Dr Alix Dietzel, Dr Rachel James and Dr Colin Nolden. All are media-trained and feature in the list above.

Read more about COP on our website at https://bristol.ac.uk/cabot/what-we-do/projects/cop/

Watch our Cabot Conversations – 10 conversations between 2 experts on a climate change issue, all whilst an artist listens in the background and interprets the conversation into a beautiful piece of art in real time. Find out more at bristol.ac.uk/cabot/conversations.
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This blog was written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Communications and Engagement Officer at the Cabot Institute for the Environment. Follow on Twitter @Enviro_Mand and @cabotinstitute.

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 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:

Energy use and demand in a (post) COVID-19 world

Posted on by janet.crompton
Keeping tabs on energy use is crucial for any individual, organisation or energy network. Energy usage affects our bills, what we choose to power (or not) and how we think about saving energy for a more sustainable future for our planet. We no longer want to rely on polluting fossil fuels for energy, we need cleaner and more sustainable solutions, and both technologies and behaviours need to be in the mix.

It seems the COVID-19 crisis may be a good time to evaluate our energy usage, especially since we assume that we are using less energy because we’re not all doing/consuming as much. We brought together a bunch of our researchers from different disciplines across the University of Bristol to have a group think about how we might change our energy usage and demand during and post COVID-19. Here’s a summary of what was discussed.

Has COVID-19 reduced our energy supply and demand?

You may have noticed in the previous paragraph that I mentioned that we assume that we are using less energy during this COVID-19 crisis. We’re not travelling or commuting as much; we’re not in our work buildings using lots of energy for heating, cooling, lighting, making cups of coffee; and for those of us who work in offices, we’re not all sat around computers all day, especially those that have been furloughed. So what actually is the collective impact of our reduced transport, cessation of business and working from home, doing to our energy supply and demand?

John Brenton, the University of Bristol’s Sustainability Manager spoke on the University’s experience during lockdown. During this COVID-19 crisis so far, UK electricity consumption has fallen by 19% and this percentage reduction has also been seen at the University of Bristol too. Thing is, when there is reduced demand for electricity, fossil fuels become cheaper. It makes us ask the question, could this be a disincentive to investing in renewables? John also pointed out that COVID-19 has shrunk further an already shrinking energy market (which was already shrinking due to energy saving).

Even though electricity consumption has gone down by almost 20%, we are still emitting greenhouse gases, though not so much from our commute to school and work, but with the data we are using, now that a lot of us are home all day. Professor Chris Preist, Professor of Sustainability & Computer Systems, Department of Computer Science, said if we continue to embrace these new ways of working, we are going to replace the traffic jam with the data centre. Of global emissions today, 2% to 3% are made up through input of digital technology. Though the direct emissions of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) are an issue and need to be addressed, they have a different impact than aviation. Digital tech is more egalitarian and a little technology is used by more people, than the much fewer privileged people who fly for example.

The systemic changes in society to homeworking can also increase our emissions far more than the digital tech itself, for example, people tend to live further away from work if they are allowed to work from home. Who needs to live in the city when you don’t have an office any more or you don’t have to come in to work very often? You may as well live where you want. You could even live abroad, but those few times you may need to come into the office, you would be travelling further and if abroad you may still have to fly in which would mean that your emissions would be huge, even though you are no longer commuting all year.

Are there positive changes and how might these be continued post-COVID-19?

Chris shared that most people and companies are now considering remote working as standard post-lockdown, which will reduce commuting and potentially improve emissions. Two thirds of UK adults will work from home more often and the benefits of this are that when people do go into work, they will likely be hot desking, this means companies will require less space and can reduce carbon emissions. Working from home will lead to a reduction of traffic on the roads.

We are video conferencing so much more, in fact Netflix agreed to reduce the resolution of their programmes in order to provide more capacity for home working and the ensuing video calls. But how does videoconferencing compare to our cars? One hour of video conferencing is equivalent to driving 500 metres in your car.

COVID-19 has also shown that a dramatic change in policy can be rapidly put in place, so this can be relevant in replicating for rolling out sustainability and energy initiatives.

What are the implications for social justice?

Dr Ed Atkins, who works on environmental and energy policy, politics and governance in the School of Geographical Sciences, spoke on the politics of a just transition. Changes to energy grids have been driven by collapsing demand and a lack of profitability in fossil fuels. Any investment post-COVID-19 will shape the infrastructure of the future, whether it will be clean or fossil intensive. Unfortunately many economic actors are using the COVID-19 crisis to roll back environmental regulations and stimulate investment by the taxpayer into fossil-intensive industry and economic policies.

Although many politicians are calling for a green recovery, which is positive, none of the current policies incorporate a just transition. A just transition would include job guarantee schemes and a rapid investment into green infrastructure as well as social justice and equity. A just transition would also account for the fact that not everyone can work from home, not everyone has a comfortable home to work in or the technology required to do so.

So what do we need to consider? Caroline Bird, who studies the cross-sectoral issues of environmental sustainability and energy in the Department of Computer Science, said that homeworking doesn’t work for everyone and often doesn’t work for the poorly paid. It doesn’t work well for the most vulnerable or least resilient in our society and community support is often needed here. We need to consider how we will educate everyone for a low carbon future. The government needs to take up the mantle and lead and pay for this. Policy change is possible, but we need to consider loss of interest and changing messages from the government that can lead to confusion.

We also need to consider rapid action to reduce the impact of COVID-19 and rapid action to reduce economic harm. But this is where the justice side of things is not well considered.

Can we imagine radical transformations as we emerge from lockdown?

Professor Dale Southerton, Professor in Sociology of Consumption and Organisation, in the Department of Management, initially raised some provocative questions: what has changed and what has remained and/or endured during COVID-19? And respectively, what will endure post-COVID-19? What has become the ‘new normal’ with regards to energy usage and consumption? Our routines and habits underpin our new normality and these routines and habits constitute demand – which is in opposition to how economists define demand. But how do the norms/normality come to be?

For example, how did the fridge freezer in our kitchen become normal? Because of the fridge freezer, it changed the design of our kitchens, we changed how we shopped, moving from small and regular local shopping trips to big weekly shops at supermarkets, all because we could store more fresh food. This drove us to embrace cars much more, as we needed the boot space to transport our fresh goods home and supermarkets were placed outside of local shopping areas so cars were needed to access them. All this together moves to the ‘normality’.

So then, what radical transformations have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic? We’ve seen more of us move to homeworking, with face to face interactions taking place via video call. Our food distribution systems have changed somewhat away from going regularly to the supermarket or dining out to buying produce online and receiving deliveries, and embracing takeaway culture much more. In a relatively short period of time we have re-imagined how to work and made it happen. However, the material infrastructure and cultural and social elements still need to evolve and change (which includes how the changes might affect our mental health, how we discipline our time at home, etc).

Caroline said that there are lots of other things we could be doing to decarbonise our energy use during and post-COVID-19, such as:

  • Creating good staff with good knowledge. To do that we need to support their mental health, give them education and development opportunities, and strengthen the fragility of the supply chain they might work in.
  • Educating everyone about low carbon and energy efficiency. To do this we need to consider what skills are needed, which of those are transferable, which skills will take more time to develop and what training programmes are needed for individuals.
  • Developing policies which don’t allow resistance from developers, or poor workmanship of properties, which can have co-benefits to health and social justice. A better planned housing estate, home and national infrastructure will improve social justice and energy savings enormously.
The only thing stopping us is bureaucracy and policy. It’s up to us to challenge the pre-COVID-19 status quo and demand fairer and cleaner energy. You can do this by writing to your local MP, share information on social media and with your friends and take part in activism. We could have a positive new future if we get it right.


Follow the speakers on Twitter:
Dr Ed Atkins @edatkins_ 
Caroline Bird @CarolineB293
Professor Chris Preist @ChrisPreist
John Brenton @UoBris_Sust
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This blog was written by Amanda Woodman-Hardy, Cabot Institute Coordinator @Enviro_Mand. With thanks to Ruzanna Chitchyan for chairing the discussion panel and taking the notes.
Amanda Woodman-Hardy

Challenges of generating solar power in the Atacama Desert

Posted on by janet.crompton

My name is Jack Atkinson-Willes and I am a recent graduate from the University of Bristol’s Engineering Design course. In 2016 I was given the unique opportunity to work in Chile with the renewable energy consultancy 350renewables on a Solar PV research project. In this blog I am going to discuss how this came about and share some of the experiences I have had since arriving!

First of all, how did this come about? Due to the uniquely flexible nature of the Engineering Design course I was able to develop my understanding of the renewable energy industry, a sector I had always had a keen interest in, by selecting modules that related to this topic and furthering this through industry work experience. In 2013, the university helped me secure a 12 month placement with Atkins Energy based near Filton, and while this largely centred around the nuclear industry it was an excellent introduction into how an engineering consultancy works and what goes into development of a utility-scale energy project.

In 2015 I built on this experience with a 3 month placement as a research assistant in Swansea University’s Marine Energy Research Group (MERG). I spent this time working on the EU-funded MARIBE project, which aimed to bring down the costs of emerging offshore industries (such as tidal and wave power) by combining them with established industries (such as shipping). This built on the experience I had gained through research projects I had done as part of my course at Bristol, and allowed me to familiarise myself further with renewable energy technology.

Keen to use my first years after graduation to learn other languages and travel, but also start building a career in renewables, I realised that the best way to combine the two was to start looking at countries overseas that had the greatest renewable energy potential. Given that I had just started taking an open unit in Spanish, Latin America was, naturally, the first place I looked; and I quickly found that I needn’t look much further! Latin American was the fastest growing region in the world for renewable energy in 2015, and this was during a year when global investment in renewables soared to record levels, adding an extra 147GW of capacity. (That’s more than double the UK demand!)

So, eager to find out more about the opportunities to work there, I discussed my interest with Dr. Paul Harper. He very kindly put me in touch with Patricia Darez, general manager of 350renewables, a renewable energy consultancy based in Santiago. As luck would have it, they were looking to expand their new business and take someone on for an upcoming research project. Given my previous experience in both an engineering consultancy and research projects I was fortunate enough to be offered a chance to join them out in Chile. Of course I jumped at the opportunity!

 

1 – Santiago, Chile (the smog in this photo being at an unusually low level)

Fast-forward by 8 months and I am tentatively stepping off the plane into a new country and a new life, eager to get started with my new job. Santiago was certainly a big change to Bristol, being about 10 times the size, but to wake up every day with the Andes mountains looming over the skyline was simply incredible. The greatest personal challenge by far has been learning Spanish, largely because the Chilean version of Spanish is the approximate equivalent to a thick Glaswegian accent in English. So for my (at best) GSCE level Spanish it was quite a while before I felt I could converse with any of the locals (and even now I spend almost all my time nodding and smiling politely whilst my mind tries to rapidly think of a response that would allow the conversation to continue without the other person realising I haven’t a clue what they’re saying!) But it has taught me to be patient with my progress, and little by little I can see myself improving.

Fortunately for me though, I was able to work in English, and before long I was getting to grips with the research project that I had travelled all this way for! But before I go into the details of the project, first a little background on why Chile has been such a success story for Solar.

2 – There’s a lot of empty space in the Atacama

The Atacama desert ranges from the pacific ocean to the high plains of the Andes, reaching heights of more than 6000m in places. It is the driest location on the planet (outside of the poles) where in some places there hasn’t been a single drop of rain since records began. This combined with the high altitude results in an unparalleled solar resource that often exceeds 2800 kWh/m2 (Below are two maps comparing South America to the UK, and one can see that even the places of highest solar insolation in the UK wouldn’t even appear on the scale for South America!)

3 – Two maps comparing the solar resource of Latin America to the UK. If you think about the number of solar parks in the UK that exist, and are profitable, just imagine the potential in Latin America!

The majority of the Atacama lies within Chile’s northern regions, and because of this there has been a huge rush over the past 3 years to install utility-scale Solar PV projects there. Additionally, Chile has seen an unprecedented period of economic growth and political stability since the 1990’s, in part due to the very same Atacama regions which are mineral-rich. The mines used to extract this wealth are energy-hungry, and as Chile has a lack of natural fossil fuel resources, making use of the plentiful solar resource beating down on the desert planes surrounding these remote sites made perfect economic sense. This is added to the need for energy in the rapidly-growing cities further south, in particular the capital Santiago, where almost a third of the Chilean population live. From 2010 to 2015, the total installed capacity of PV worldwide went from 40GW to 227GW, a rapid increase largely due to decreasing PV module manufacture costs. As the cost of installation dropped, investors began to search for locations with the greatest resources, and so Chile became a natural place to invest for energy developers.

However, as large scale projects began generating power, new challenges began to emerge. New plants were underperforming and thus not taking full advantage of the powerful solar resource. This underperformance could be down to a whole range of factors; faulty installation, PV panels experiencing a drop in performance due to the extremely high UV radiation (known as degradation). But the main culprits are likely to be two factors; curtailment and soiling.

Firstly, curtailment. Chile is a deceptively large country, which from top to bottom is more than 4000km long (roughly the distance from London to Baghdad). Because of this, instead on having one large national grid, it is split into four smaller ones. The central grid (in blue, which is connected to the power-hungry capital of Santiago) offered a better price of energy than the northern grid (in green) supplying the more sparsely populated Atacama regions. This lead to a large number of plants being installed as far into the Atacama desert as possible, and therefore as far north as possible, whilst still being connected to the more profitable central grid.

4
– A map of the central (blue) and northern (green) grids in Northern Chile.
Major PV plants are shown with red dots

This lead to a situation where the low number of cables and connections that existed connecting these areas with the cities further south suddenly became overloaded with huge quantities of power. When these cables reach capacity, the grid operators (CDEC-SIC – http://www.cdecsic.cl/), with no-where to store this energy, simply have no other option but to limit (or curtail) the clean, emission-free energy coming out of these PV plants. This is bad news for the plant operators as it limits their income, and bad news for the environment as fossil fuels still need to be burned further south to make up for the energy lost.

The solution to this is to simply build more cables, a task easier said than done in a country of this size and in an area so hostile. This takes a long time, and so until the start of 2018 when a new connection between the northern and central grids will be made, operators have little choice but to busy themselves by improving plant performance as much as possible in preparation for a time when generation is once again unlimited.

This leads me onto soiling. Soiling is a phenomenon that occurs when wind kicks up sand and dust from the surrounding environment and this lands on the PV panels. This may seem relatively harmless but in Saudi Arabia is has been found to be responsible for as much as a 30% loss in plant performance. Chile, however, is still a very new market and so the effects of soiling here are not as well understood. What we do know for sure is that it affects some sites much more than others – the image below being taken by the 350renewables team at an existing Chilean site.

5 – The extent of soiling in the Atacama. One can appreaciate the need for an occasional clean!

These panels can be cleaned, but this becomes somewhat more complicated when you consider that some of these plants have more than 200,000 panels on one site. Cleaning then becomes a balance between the cost of cleaning, the means of cleaning (water being a scarce commodity in the desert) and the added energy that will be gained by removing the effects of soiling.

This is what the research project that I am taking part in hopes to establish. Sponsored by CORFO, a government corporation that promotes economic growth in Chile, and working with the University of Santiago, 350renewables hopes to establish how soiling effects vary across the Atacama and which cleaning schedules are best suited to maximising generation. There are 10 utility scale projects currently taking part, providing generation data and cleaning schedules. My role within this project has thus far been to inspect, clean and process all the incoming data and transfer this to our in-house tools for analysis. In the future (as my spanish improves) this will move onto liaising with the individual maintenance teams at each site to ensure that cleaning schedules are adhered to.

My most notable challenge thus far was presenting some of our initial findings at the Solar Asset Management Latin America (SAM LATAM – http://www.samlatam.com/#solar-asset-management-latam) conference in September. Considering I had only been in the country for just over a month, it was a lot to learn in not very much time! My presentation discussed the underperformance of Chilean PV plants and the potential causes for this, examining some of the publicly available generation data over the past few years. It was certainly terrifying, but getting the opportunity to share a stage with a plethora of CEOs, managers and directors from the Chilean solar energy industry was a fantastic opportunity.

6 – I felt like an impostor amongst all the Directors and Managers

A few weeks prior to this we had also gone to the Intersolar South America conference (https://www.intersolar.net.br/en/home.html) in São Paulo, Brasil, where Patricia was speaking. This was another fantastic opportunity to meet other people from the industry (although somewhat limited by my non-existent Portuguese abilities) and I was lucky enough to have some time to explore the city for a few days thereafter.

7 – São Paulo, Brazil

In addition to São Paulo, I have been able to find the time to travel elsewhere in Chile during my time here, including down to Puerto Varas in the south with its peaceful lakes nestled at the feet of imposing active volcanoes (including the Calbuco volcano, which erupted in spectacular fashion in early 2015: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faacTZ5zeP0). Being further south the countryside is much more green, and with a significant German influence from several waves of immigration in the 1800s.

8 – Me in front of the incredible Osorno Volcano near Puerto Varas
9 – Puerto Varas

By far my favourite though was the astounding Atacama desert. As beautiful as it is vast. The high altitude making for astounding blue skies contrast against the red rocks of the surrounding volcanic plains. It is also one of the best stargazing spots on the planet, and the location of the famous A.L.M.A. observatory, which hopes to provide insight on star birth during the early universe and detailed images of local star and planet formations (http://www.almaobservatory.org/).

 

10
– Me in the Atacama. The second photo being what can only be described as a
dust tornado. To call the Atacama inhospitable would be taking it lightly
11 -Valle de la luna, an incredible formation of jagged peaks jutting out of the desert plains. Certainly a highlight.

In the new year the soiling project really gets underway, and by the end of 2017 we hope to have some findings that will provide some insights into the phenomenon that is soiling. Personally, it has been a great adventure so far, the language skills I have developed and the experience of living in another culture, as opposed to merely passing through as a tourist, has been very rewarding. I still have a long way to go, and hope to post an update to this blog in the future, but for now a Happy New Year from Chile!

What does Trump mean for the environment?

Posted on by janet.crompton
President Trump. Image: Gage Skidmore CCBYSA 2.0

Several weeks ago, I was walking along Avenida Paulista in São Paulo. Through the noise of the traffic, the familiar shout of one man’s name could be heard. ‘Trump, Trump, Trump’ echoed across the street.  Somehow I had stumbled upon a ‘Brazilians for Trump’ rally. A group of 40 people stood on the pavement, clutching signs that read ‘Women for Trump’, ‘Jews for Trump’, ‘Gays for Trump’. This struck me; such demographics holding such signage represented for me a similar message to ‘trees for deforestation’.
 
Yet, the votes are in. The electoral tally has been made and one fact is obvious: Donald Trump’s popularity transcended demography. As, House Speaker, Paul Ryan has said, Trump “heard a voice out in this country that no one else heard. He connected in ways with people that no one else did. He turned politics on its head.”
 
Key here is not only Trump’s victory, but also how the Republican Party has been able to ride his coattails to majorities across both the Senate and the House of Representatives. In doing so, the Grand Old Party (GOP), working with Trump, will likely have the freedom to pursue their political agenda. As a result, the Republican platform, published at the 2016 National Convention, provides a number of clues of what we can expect from this new administration.
 
From this document, it is possible to profile what a Trump administration would mean for US environmental policy. I have previously written blogs of a similar vein for the UK 2015 election and the recent transfer of power in Brazil and it seems only fair that I cast my eye to the United States. In its platform, the GOP pledge a return to coal as an energy resource, with it described as “abundant, clean, affordable, [and] reliable.” It is likely that the extraction and use of this resource will increase, with federal lands opened up for coal mining, as well as oil and gas drilling. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan will be withdrawn and restriction on the development of nuclear energy likely be lifted. The anxiety of this turn from renewables can be found in the falling stocks of wind and solar companies since Trump’s win.
 
Furthermore, the President-Elect has already vowed to cancel the recent Paris Climate Agreement. For Trump, climate change is manufactured by the Chinese government and/or an expensive hoax. This rhetoric is matched by many in the Republican Party (who can
forget Senator James Inhofe’s snowball routine?) A solid majority in the House will allow for the continued harassment of climate science by individual politicians, such as Representative Lamar Smith, who has previously argued that climate scientists manipulate data to show that the planet is warming.
 
As has been argued elsewhere, the United States cannot officially leave the Paris agreement until November 2020 (conveniently coinciding with a potential Trump re-election bid.) However, there is another way: to leave the UNFCCC entirely, immediately after taking office. In doing so, a Trump administration could – hypothetically – leave both agreements by January 2018. The political message of such action would be clear: policies of climate change mitigation restrict the opportunities for further American development and must be removed if the Trump administration is to meet its oft-repeated target of 4% GDP growth.
 
This tension between sustainability and growth is also evident in the likely elimination of a number of regulations related to environmental health. The Environmental Protection Agency will be restricted to an advisory role, with its responsibility for regulation of CO2 removed.
Trump has previously mentioned Myron Ebell, a prominent climate denier, as a potential head of this organisation.
 
Regardless of who is in charge, air and water regulations will likely be kerbed, with Vox reporting that regulations at risk include those related to mercury pollution, smog, and coal ash. Such policies are perceived as a hindrance to ultimate goals of job creation and economic growth. Yet, as the Sierra Club have argued, this restriction of regulation will likely “imperil clean air and clean water for all Americans.”
 
Such actions will also open up questions of environmental racism. In the United States, people of colour face the effects of pollution disproportionately. As a result, an attack on environmental regulation promises consequences that will migrate into different policy sectors. Furthermore, this is occurring in the shadow of the Flint water crisis: an episode which exposed issues of environmental racism in the country. With the restriction of regulation, it is likely that Flint will cease to be an outlier.
 
The Washington Post has argued that, these plans will “reverse decades of U.S. energy and climate policy” and recent analysis has shown that such policies will raise US greenhouse gas emissions by 16% by the end of Trump’s (potential) eight year term.
 
However, the language of the GOP platform cautions against such assertions. Within this document, environmental campaigners become ‘environmental extremists’. The document seeks to depoliticise environmental issues, with, in their words, environmental regulation being “too important to be left to radical environmentalists. They are using yesterday’s tools to control a future they do not comprehend.” Remember, these words have been written at the time of the militarized action against the water protectors of Standing Rock. Such a language suggests that we can expect more aggression against environmental defenders in the future.
 
The victory of Trump, and of the GOP, not only represents a change in the political landscape but also a likely transformation of the physical one too. It, as some argue, may come to represent a serious challenge to the environmental health of the planet itself.
 
Writing this, my mind has been drawn back to those campaign signs in São Paulo. ‘Women for Trump’, ‘Gays for Trump’, Jews for Trump’. Yet one thing is certain under this new President: the trees are most definitely for deforestation.
 
 
This blog was written by Cabot Institute member, Ed Atkins, A PhD student in the School of Sociology, Politics and International Studies.

 

Hydrogen and fuel cells: Innovative solutions for low carbon heat

Posted on by janet.crompton

On 29 February 2016, I attended a meeting in Westminster that was jointly organised by the UK Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (UKFCA) and Carbon Connect with the aim of discussing current challenges in the decarbonisation of heat generation in the UK. The panel included David Joffe (Committee on Climate Change), Dr. Marcus Newborough (ITM Power), Ian Chisholm (Doosan Babcock), Klaus Ullrich (Fuel Cell Energy Solutions), Phil Caldwell (Ceres Power) and was chaired by Dr Alan Whitehead MP and Shadow Energy Minister. The attendees included a number of key players in the field of hydrogen production, fuel cell and renewable energy industries, as well as organisations such as the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

To set the scene, I would like to quote some facts and figures from the 2015 Carbon Connect report on the Future of Heat (part II).

  1. The 2025 carbon reduction target is 404.4 MtCO2e (million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalent), but the reduction levels as of 2014 have only been 288.9 MtCO2e. The current Government’s low carbon policy framework is woefully inadequate to bridge this gap.
  2. The government introduced the Renewable Heat Incentive in 2011, with the ambition of increasing the contribution of renewable energy source to 12% of the heat demand by 2020. Some of the initiatives include biomass, “energy from waste” and geothermal. However, clear policies and financial incentives are nowhere to be seen.
  3. What is the current situation of renewable heat and how good is the 12% target? The good news is that there is a slight increase in the renewable share from 2004. The really bad news is that the contribution as of 2013 is just 2.6%. The UK is further behind any other EU state with regards to its renewable heat target. Sweden has a whopping 67.2% contribution and Finland 50.9%.

Towards a decarbonised energy sector, two important networks should be considered, electrical and gas. Electrification of heat is very well suited for low carbon heat generation, however, the electricity demands at peak time could be extremely costly. The UK’s gas network is a major infrastructure which is vital for providing gas during peak heat demand. However, it needs to be re-purposed in order to carry low carbon gas such as bio-methane, hydrogen or synthetic natural gas.

It was clear from the debate that hydrogen can play an important role in decreasing carbon emissions even within the current gas network. The introduction of up to 10% of hydrogen into gas feed can still be compatible with current gas networks and modern appliances, while generating a significant carbon emission reduction. However, where is the hydrogen coming from? For heat production at the national scale, steam reforming is the only player. However, with the government pulling away from carbon capture and storage (CCS), this option cannot provide a significant reduction in carbon emissions.  Capital costs associated with electrolysers would not be able to deliver the amount of hydrogen required at peak demands. The frustration in this community with regards to the future of CCS was palpable during the networking session.

We need hydrogen, generated from renewable energy sources… but the question is how?

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This blog is written by Cabot Institute member David J. Fermin, Professor of Electrochemistry in the University of Bristol’s School of Chemistry.  His research group are currently looking at the direct conversion of solar energy to chemical fuels, in particular hydrogen; the conversion of CO2 to fuels; and electrocatalysts for energy vectors (e.g. what you put in fuel cells and electrolysers).

David Fermin

David will be giving a free talk on the challenges of solar energy conversion and storage on Tuesday 12 April 2016 at 6.15 pm at the University of Bristol.  To find out more and to book your ticket, visit the University of Bristol’s Public and Ceremonial Events web page.

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