Strøtanker om bæredygtighed

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson has argued the US should stay in the Paris climate agreement. But for the rest of the world, a US exit is better than staying reluctantly. Carlos Barria/Reuters.

Luke Kemp fra Australian National University argumenterer i denne artikel offentliggjort på The Conversation for det umiddelbart overraskende synspunkt, Trumps muligheder for at afspore den globale klimaindsats er mindre med et trumpsk USA holdt uden for Paris-aftalen hvorfor det ville være bedre for alle, hvis Trump trak USA ud af Paris-aftalen.

Jeg føler mig langt fra overbevist om, at Kemp har ret. Men han har ret i, at det ikke kun er forbliven eller jeg, men den klimaindsats, som USA under Trump kommer til at føre, som må være målestokken. Og det er nok en god øvelse at se det gode ved en situation, som Trump meget vel kan ende med at gøre til virkelighed. 

The world would be better off if Trump withdraws from the Paris climate deal

The conventional wisdom that the United States should remain under the Paris Agreement is wrong. A US withdrawal would be the best outcome for international climate action.

With Trump set to decide on the matter after this week’s G7 meeting, his aides are split on the issue. Chief strategist Steve Bannon heads the faction pushing for an exit. Secretary of State and former ExxonMobil chief executive Rex Tillerson has argued for the US to retain a “seat at the table”.

It is within the president’s power to withdraw from the Paris Agreement and perhaps even the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which has overseen global climate diplomacy for some 25 years.

In a commentary published in Nature Climate Change today, I argue that a US withdrawal would minimise risks and maximise opportunities for the climate community. Simply put: the US and the Trump administration can do more damage inside the agreement than outside it.

There are four key, interconnected risks related to US participation in the Paris Agreement: that the US will miss its emissions target; that it will cut climate finance; that it will cause a “domino” effect among other nations; and that it will impede the UN negotiations.

Money and emissions are all that matter

The first two risks are unaffected by withdrawal. The Paris Agreement doesn’t require the US to meet its current emissions reduction pledge, or to provide further climate finance to developing countries. The agreement is procedural, rather than binding; it requires a new, tougher climate pledge every five years, but actually hitting these targets isn’t mandatory.

The US will probably miss its climate target regardless. It would need more than just Obama’s Clean Power Plan to hit its goal of reducing emissions by 26-28% on 2005 levels by 2025. And now that Trump has decided to roll back those policies too, US emissions are set to increase through to 2025, rather than decrease.

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I forbindelse med det netop overståede COP22 i Marrakech har klimaforskerne Bill Hare og Niklas Höhne fremlagt et tankevækkende arbejde, hvori de ser på, hvilke indsatser der skal til i de enkelte sektorer inden for de førstkommende ti år, hvis vi skal være i stand til at holde Paris-aftalens bestræbelse på en gennemsnitlig global temperaturstigning på maksimalt 1,5°C.  

I blog-indlægget Hvad skal der til på kort sigt for at holde 1,5°C-målsætningen? kan man se mine noter fra deres fremlæggelse på COP22, nederst i dette indlæg er der link til rapporten i sin helhed, og herunder følger Bill Hare og Niklas Höhnes introducerende artikel, som oprindeligt er offentliggjort på The Conversation. Artiklen er her gengivet ifølge en Creative Commons-aftale.

We can limit global warming to 1.5°C if we do these things in the next ten years

By Bill Hare and Niklas Höhne.

After the climate talks in Marrakech, our climate mission remains the same as what was set out in the 2015 Paris Agreeement: to eliminate all carbon dioxide emissions by the middle of this century.

While the long-term focus is on 2050 or 2100, what matters now is the next ten years. If we miss bending the rising emissions curve downward by around 2020, we may well miss the chance to avoid the worst climate damage.

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I de fortsatte globale klimaforhandlinger er der midtvejs mellem de årlige COP-konferencer fast indbygget en to ugers samling i klimakalenderen. Den ligger typisk i maj, og i de næste to uger vil klimadelegationer fra fra hele verden være samlet i FNs klimasekretariat UNFCCCs hovedkvarter i Bonn. Næste ‘store’ konference vil være COP22 i Marrakech i november.

Der er umiddelbart meget at fejre oven på vedtagelsen af Paris-aftalen i december. Men der er samtidig en lang række områder, som i de kommende år kræver yderligere afklaring for at Paris-aftalen kan mutere fra principbeslutning og overordnet vision til konkret ramme for klimaindsatsen for verdens lande.  

Hugh Breakey, som er Moral philosopher ved Institute for Ethics, Governance and Law, Griffith University, har på The Conversation skrevet en introduktion til et centralt tema for de kommende to ugers forhandlinger: Fairness. Med en aftale, som i udgangspunktet er frivillig, bliver en størrelse som det retfærdige central i sikringen af, at alle lande gør deres del af den nødvendige indsats for, at Paris-aftalens målsætning kan nås. Artiklen er her gengivet ifølge en Creative Commons-aftale.

Fairness on the agenda as UN begins job of strengthening the Paris climate deal

By Hugh Breakey

The dust has long settled from December’s Paris climate summit, which hammered out the first truly global deal to reduce emissions. But the negotiations ended with widespread acknowledgement that the deal needs significant strengthening if its overall goal of keeping warming well below 2℃ is to be met.

The Paris Agreement therefore requires countries to ramp up their efforts significantly over the coming years and decades.

That job arguably begins today, with the opening of an 11-day meeting in Bonn, Germany, featuring the first session of the Ad Hoc Working Group on the Paris Agreement (APA).

The APA functions rather like a much more modest version of the Paris conference. Parties to the Paris Agreement send delegations, and small groups can be tasked with resolving specific issues before reporting back to the larger group for decision-making.

Among the most important items on the meeting’s agenda is the Global Stocktake to assess overall progress towards fulfilling the Paris Agreement’s goals. This stocktake will kickstart the process of five-yearly reviews to strengthen the Paris Agreement, the first of which will happen in 2023.

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Forud for den forestående Paris-konference får vi i morgen får fremlagt en syntesrapport af de indleverede INDC. Det står allerede nu klart, at summen af de indberettede nationale klimaplaner ikke kommer til at leve op til den 2°C-målsætning. Og selvom vi via IPCC store klimastatusrapport AR5 sidste år fik defineret et carbon budget for en 2°C-løsning, har FNs klimaforhandlinger valgt i første omgang ikke at håndtere det heraf følgende kernespørgsmål, hvem som så må udlede hvor meget, og hvem som skal reducere hvor meget hvor hurtigt for at holde 2°C-målsætningen. I den anledning har jeg hentet nedenstående artikel af Anita Talberg og Malte Meinshausen fra University of Melbourne fra The Conversation. Her præsenterer de en artikel, som de netop har publiceret i Nature Climate Science, som ser på forskellige fordelingsnøgler for det globale carbon budget, hvis vi samlet set skal kunne holde 2°C-målsætningen. Den manglende diskussion af denne fordelingsnøgle er stærkt medvirkende til, at de fleste lande har indleveret klimaplaner, som anerkender 2°C-målsætningen samtidig med at de er helt utilstrækkelige til opnåelsen af 2°C-målsætningen.

For EU, som ikke behandles særskilt i artiklen, vil der ved en metrisk lige fordeling skulle reduceres med 41% i 2030, og hvis man tager udgangspunkt i en korrigeret nøgle, hvor udviklingslande har ret en forholdsvis større del af carbon budgettet end de industrialiserede lande, står EU til at skulle reducere med 49% i 2030 – begge tal i forhold til 2010. EUs nuværende reduktionsmål er 40% i forhold til 1990, så uanset hvilken fordelingsnøgle, man benytter, er også EUs reduktionsmål helt utilstrækkelige i forhold til 2°C-målsætningen. 

Talberg & Meinshausens artikel, Most countries need to at least double their efforts on climate: study, er gengivet her ifølge The Conversations vilkår for common licence.  

Most countries need to at least double their efforts on climate: study

Developed nations would need to double or triple their current efforts to limit global warming to a “safe” level of 2⁰C. That’s the finding of a study published today in Nature Climate Change assessing countries’ post-2020 climate pledges ahead of December’s international climate summit in Paris.

As an example, Australia would need to reduce emissions 50-66% below 2010 levels to be considered to be doing its fair share (its current target, when converted to 2010, is a 23-25% reduction).

Countries have agreed to limit warming to 2⁰C above pre-industrial levels. But how do we divide up the necessary reductions in emissions fairly?

Developing nations often argue that developed nations need to do more, because they are responsible for more greenhouse gas emissions historically.

This new paper shows that these debates about fairness will inevitably cause us to go beyond 2⁰C, however it also shows a way to fix the problem.

You can read more in a Briefing Note, and all the underlying data is available on a new website.

Are we on track for 2⁰C?

How much the world warms is determined by the total amount of greenhouse gases that go into the atmosphere, what’s known as the “carbon budget”. To have a 66% chance of limiting warming to 2⁰C the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change shows that after 2011 we can only emit 1,010 billion tonnes of greenhouse gases.

Converting the budget to yearly emissions is not easy. However, by analysing hundreds of emissions scenarios, the new study found that to meet the carbon budget, global emissions need to be reduced to 1990 levels by 2030.

We are not on track for this.

The same conclusion was reached by a paper published in 2010, and more recently by Climate Action Tracker that projects 2.7⁰C of warming by 2100.

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Nedenstående artikel er skrevet af Mark Diesendorf, som er Associate Professor og Deputy Director ved Institute of Environmental Studies, University of New South Wales i Australien. Den belyser et synspunkt, som på det seneste også har været fremdraget i forhold til den danske energiomlægning, at vi ‘behøver’ såkaldt base load fra store enheder for ikke at få huller i energiforsyningen fra sol og vind. De konventionelle kraftværker har brugt det for at fastholde deres nødvendighed, og på det seneste har ikke mindst A-kraft-tilhængere brugt base load-nødvendighedsargumentet som en anledning til at fastslå A-kraftens nødvendighed i håndteringen af klimaudfordringen. 

Heroverfor konkluderer Diesendorf på baggrund for energimodeller for New South Wales, at store base load-enheder ikke er nødvendige, at de store atomreaktorer og kulkraftværker ikke spiller særlig godt sammen med den vedvarende energi, og at en 100% forsyning med den rette blanding af vedvarende kilder i sammenligning med A-kraften er ligeså stabil, mindre farlig, billigere, samlet set udleder mindre CO₂, har bredere palet af sundheds- beskæftigelsesfordele, kan implementeres langt hurtigere og vil være lettere at opnå accept af fra borgernes side.  

New South Wales er en provins i det sydøstlige Australien med 4,7 mio. indbyggere, hvoraf de fleste bor i Sydney-området. Skalaen minder således meget om den danske, mens det solrige klima på årsbasis er bedre for solenergi end det danske. 

Artiklen, som oprindeligt er offentliggjort på The Conversation, er her gengivet ifølge en Creative Commons-aftale.

Coal closures give South Australia the chance to go 100% renewable

By Mark Diesendorf

South Australia is facing the closure of its Northern and Playford B power stations and Leigh Creek coal mine, after Alinta Energy yesterday announced plans to shut them ahead of schedule. It will cost 438 jobs in the coal-mining and coal-fired electricity industries. But this threat to employment could be transformed into an opportunity for creating many new jobs in renewable energy.

The South Australian electricity system could be operated entirely on scaled-up, commercially available, renewable energy sources. This is the conclusion of my forthcoming report (to be published next week) to the Conservation Council of South Australia.

Our modelling at UNSW Australia shows that the SA system could be supplied mainly by a mix of wind power; solar photovoltaic (PV) panels, both on rooftops and in large solar farms; and concentrated solar thermal (CST) power with thermal storage. Gas-fired turbines and demand management via “smart” meters and switches would manage the infrequent small lulls in wind and solar supply.

I estimate this transition would take 15–25 years, during which time the natural gas fuel for the gas turbines would be gradually replaced by biofuels from agricultural residues – thus making the system fully renewable. There would be increased trading of electricity with Victoria and possibly over a new transmission link to New South Wales.

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