Climate renewables can power the world

Renewable energy could account for almost 80% of the world’s energy supply within four decades — but only if governments pursue the policies needed to promote green power, according to a landmark report published on Monday.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(IPCC) , the body of the world’s leading climate scientists convened by the United Nations, said that if the full range of renewable technologies were deployed, the world could keep greenhouse gas concentrations to less than 450 parts per million, the level scientists have predicted will be the limit of safety beyond which climate change becomes catastrophic and irreversible.

Investing in renewables to the extent needed would cost only about 1% of global GDP annually, said Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC.

Renewable energy is already growing fast — of the 300 gigawatts of new electricity generation capacity added globally between 2008 and 2009, about 140GW came from renewable sources, such as wind and solar power, according to the report.

The investment that will be needed to meet the greenhouse gas emissions targets demanded by scientists is likely to amount to about $5trn in the next decade, rising to $7trn from 2021 to 2030.

Although the authors are optimistic about the future of renewable energy, they note that many forms of the technology are still more expensive than fossil fuels, and find that the production of renewable energy will have to increase by as much as 20 times in order to avoid dangerous levels of global warming. Renewables will play a greater role than either nuclear or carbon capture and storage by 2050, the scientists predict.

Investing in renewables can also help poor countries to develop, particularly where large numbers of people lack access to an electricity grid.

About 13% of the world’s energy came from renewable sources in 2008, a proportion likely to have risen as countries have built up their capacity since then, with China leading the investment surge, particularly in wind energy. But by far the greatest source of renewable energy used globally at present is burning biomass (about 10% of the total global energy supply), which is problematic because it can cause deforestation, leads to deposits of soot that accelerate global warming, and cooking fires cause indoor air pollution that harms health.

There was disappointment for enthusiasts of marine energy, however, as the report found that wave and tidal power were “unlikely to significantly contribute to global energy supply before 2020”. Wind power, by contrast, met about 2% of global electricity demand in 2009, and could increase to more than 20% by 2050.

8 million tonnes of methane seeping out from Arctic annually: Study

Methane, the second most common greenhouse gas from human activities after carbon dioxide, is bubbling out from the frozen Arctic much faster than expected and could stoke global warming, scientists have warned.

A study by researchers from the University of Fairbanks in Alaska showed that methane, trapped in the permafrost — soil at or below the freezing point of water for two or more years — over time and now 8 million tonnes of it is seeping out every year due to rising temperatures.

According to co-author of the study Natalia Shakhova, “Release of just a small fraction of the methane held in East Siberian Arctic Shelf sediments could trigger abrupt climate warming”.

“Subsea permafrost is losing its ability to be an impermeable cap.”

“The amount of methane currently coming out of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf is comparable to the amount coming out of the entire world’s oceans,” she wrote in journal Science.

Shakhova said there was an ‘urgent need’ to monitor the region for possible future changes since permafrost traps vast amounts of methane, the Daily Mail reported.

According to Martin Heimann from the Max Planck Institute there is, however, no proof they are increasing. “These leaks could have been occurring all the time since the last Ice Age 10,000 years ago.”

The release of eight million tonnes of methane a year was “negligible” compared to global emissions of about 440 million tonnes, he said.

Can I be green and surf the net?

Every time you go online you increase your carbon footprint.

Is it possible to be a green surfer?

• 
• • Lucy Siegle
  • The Observer, Sunday 28 February 2010

Somewhere in California (and soon to be in India and possibly Iceland) there are vast tracts of hulking warehouses containing thousands of energy-guzzling web servers – it’s farming, but not as depicted in The Archers.

Server farms provide the network to transmit websites. They are powered by electricity, predominantly from coal-fired power stations. Add in the energy required to make your PC in the first place and computing is responsible for 1bn tonnes of CO₂ each year – more emissions than aviation. In pollution terms, using t’internet could be your equivalent of an Arkwright mill at full throttle during the Industrial Revolution.

Last month some headlines suggested that a Google search generated 7g of CO₂ – the same as making a cup of tea. This left the eco-minded home worker in a real quandary: I chose the cup of tea. Later Google corrected this to 0.2g per search. But still, it all adds up.

The latest research suggests that you create 20mg of CO₂ per second per visit to a website. The more whistles and bells on the site the higher this gets – up to 300mg of CO₂ per second for one with video content. Running an avatar in Second Life uses more electricity than a live person in Brazil. Ask yourself: is this watt necessary?

Employ a spam filter, too. In 2008 an estimated 62 trillion spam emails were sent globally, creating the same greenhouse gas emissions as 3.1m passenger cars.

I know what you’re thinking: what’s wrong with a reference book? Well, US academics remind us that driving a mile and back to the library produces 100 times more greenhouse gas emissions than a web search. Remaining ignorant is carbon free.

Urban green spaces may actually contribute to global warming

WASHINGTON: In a new research, scientists have found that urban green spaces may actually contribute to global warming, than curb it down.
Turfgrass lawns help remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis and store it as organic carbon in soil, making them important “carbon sinks.” 

However, greenhouse gas emissions from fertilizer production, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices are four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by ornamental grass in parks, the study from UC Irvine researchers has shown. These emissions include nitrous oxide released from soil after fertilization. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that’s 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, the Earth’s most problematic climate warmer. 

“Lawns look great – they’re nice and green and healthy, and they’re photosynthesizing a lot of organic carbon. But the carbon-storing benefits of lawns are counteracted by fuel consumption,”said Amy Townsend-Small, Earth system science postdoctoral researcher and lead author of the study. Turfgrass is increasingly widespread in urban areas and covers 1.9 percent of land in the continental US, making it the most common irrigated crop. In the study, Townsend-Small and colleague Claudia Czimczik analyzed grass in four parks near Irvine, California. 

Each park contained two types of turf: ornamental lawns (picnic areas) that are largely undisturbed, and athletic fields (soccer and baseball) that are trampled and replanted and aerated frequently. 
The researchers evaluated soil samples over time to ascertain carbon storage, or sequestration, and they determined nitrous oxide emissions by sampling air above the turf. 
Then, they calculated carbon dioxide emissions resulting from fuel consumption, irrigation and fertilizer production using information about lawn upkeep from park officials and contractors.

The study showed that nitrous oxide emissions from lawns were comparable to those found in agricultural farms, which are among the largest emitters of nitrous oxide globally. In ornamental lawns, nitrous oxide emissions from fertilization offset just 10 percent to 30 percent of carbon sequestration. But, fossil fuel consumption for management, the researchers calculated, released about four times more carbon dioxide than the plots could take up. “It’s impossible for these lawns to be net greenhouse gas sinks because too much fuel is used to maintain them,” Townsend-Small concluded. 

The research results are important to greenhouse gas legislation being negotiated. “We need this kind of carbon accounting to help reduce global warming,” Townsend-Small said. “The current trend is to count the carbon sinks and forget about the greenhouse gas emissions, but it clearly isn’t enough,” she added.