The environment in the news thursday, 30 August 2012
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- Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ AFP: Thawing permafrost frees millions of tons of carbon: study
- Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ AFP: In Arctic, Greenpeace picks new fight with old foe
- Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ Bloomberg (US): Australia EU Link Makes Carbon-Market Theory Real, Marcu Says
- Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ Reuters: Chevron says all U.S. Gulf production shut on Isaac
- Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ New York Times (US): Japan Strives to Go Nuclear-Free
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============================================================= Other Environment News Reuters: Arctic melt will impact climate before policy 29 August 2012 Dwindling Arctic summer sea ice is unlikely to spur new policies to curb fossil fuels without more evidence of environmental impact, given stalled U.N. climate talks and political attitudes to mineral resources. The area of Arctic sea ice reached a record minimum on Sunday, in a 33-year satellite record, according to the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC), following a progressive melt and thinning which could see an ice-free North Pole in summer within a decade or two. That throws a spotlight on Arctic oil and gas, as explorers gain access, and the global sector as melting ice highlights the impact of carbon emissions through global warming. The US Geological Survey estimated four years ago that the Arctic region “may constitute the geographically largest unexplored prospective area for petroleum remaining on Earth,” in the only publicly available estimate of the fossil fuel resource. It calculated that the area north of the Arctic Circle contained about 13 percent of the world’s undiscovered oil, 30 percent of the undiscovered natural gas, and 20 percent of undiscovered natural gas liquids, excluding unconventional resources such as gas hydrate and shale gas and oil. The Arctic has warmed faster than the rest of the planet in part because of an effect where open water absorbs more heat than reflective ice, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of warming. Surface temperatures last year over the Arctic Ocean were an average 1.5 degrees Celsius warmer compared with the 1981-2010 period, ten times 0.15 degrees warming globally, according to data from the US-based National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Local impacts include threats to wildlife and coastal erosion from a larger expanse of open water. Wider risks could include disruption of weather patterns in the northern hemisphere, and even release of the powerful greenhouse gas methane from vast ice-like deposits on the Arctic seabed and from melting onshore permafrost. Impact
One such impact would be disruption to northern hemisphere weather, as posed by two studies published in the past six months in the journals Geophysical Research Letters and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Each considered a direct connection between Arctic ice melt and heavier-than-average snowfall in western Europe and the eastern United States in the winters of 2009/10 and 2010/11. One proposed that warmer, open water in the Arctic was responsible for an observed slowing of the northern jet stream, leading to more persistent, “stuck” weather patterns at mid-latitude. High latitude jet streams are speeded by a temperature gradient between less cold and extremely cold air at the north and south poles, much as a river flows faster down a steeper slope. Both papers found that, for unclear reasons, less Arctic sea ice was correlated with an atmospheric circulation similar to that well known for bringing cold air and heavier snowfall to mid latitudes, meteorologically known as the negative phase of the winter North Atlantic Oscillation. The papers were a first attempt at unravelling the inevitable impact of a warmer Arctic Ocean on atmospheric circulation, but in the context of a short data record and the chaotic multitude of factors which drive the weather. Contradicting the theory, the 2011 summer saw the third biggest Arctic sea ice melt on record, but was followed by a relatively mild winter in western Europe. Response
U.N.-backed talks are the international forum for cutting global carbon emissions and curbing fossil fuels and have been a victim of consensus voting, where decisions must be agreed unanimously by 194 participating countries including oil exporters, which stand to lose out from CO2 cuts. It seems there is little chance of a melting Arctic adding impetus to talks which have all but stalled since the latest round kicked off in 2007, the same year as the previous record ice melt, and which have since produced non-binding resolutions and no global deal. Meanwhile, attempts to drive local action, such as Greenpeace’s “Save the Arctic” campaign, appear optimistic despite a worthy aim to prevent spills in a unique place. Greenpeace is campaigning for a moratorium along the lines of the 1991 Antarctic Protocol on Environmental Protection. Some of the world’s biggest energy producers including the United States, Norway and Russia ratified the Antarctic agreement, whose article 7 states that “any activity relating to mineral resources, other than scientific research, shall be prohibited.” But none of these countries border Antarctica, and a better signal may be their approach to the Brussels-based Energy Charter, the world’s most internationally ratified energy treaty which 51 countries have signed. It binds members to rules on energy access and arbitration in the case of disputes, for example to protect investors in oil pipeline projects while recognising national sovereignty. European Union countries have ratified the treaty, alongside central Asian producers and consuming nations like Japan, but the United States, Canada, Russia and Norway have not. The biggest Arctic natural gas resource is off the north coast of Russia, while the largest Arctic crude oil resource is off the northern coasts of US Alaska and Canada. These countries have exclusive rights to much of these resources, under the U.N. Convention on the law of the sea up to 350 nautical miles out, and it may require an unlikely, unilateral restraint not to exploit them. Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ AFP: Thawing permafrost frees millions of tons of carbon: study 29 August 2012 A vast outcrop of the Arctic Siberian coast that had been frozen for tens of thousands of years is releasing huge carbon deposits as rising temperatures thaw parts of its coastline, a study warned Wednesday. The carbon, a potential source of Earth-warming CO2, has lain frozen along the 7,000-kilometre (4,400-mile) northeast Siberian coastline since the last Ice Age. But atmospheric warming and coastal erosion are gnawing at the icy seal, releasing about 40 million tonnes of carbon a year -- 10 times more than previously thought, said a study in the journal Nature. About two-thirds of the carbon escapes into the atmosphere as carbon dioxide (CO2) and the rest becomes trapped in higher layers of ocean sediment. About half the carbon pool in soil globally is held in permafrost in the Arctic, a region that is experiencing twice the global average of climate warming, said the study led by researchers at Stockholm University. Earlier this week, US scientists said the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean had melted to its smallest point ever. The region covered by the Nature study, called Yedoma, is twice the size of Sweden but has been poorly researched because it is so remote. The finding touches on a vicious circle, or positive feedback in climate parlance. Under this, man-made warming caused by the burning of fossil fuels releases naturally-occurring stocks of CO2 that have been stored in permafrost since the last Ice Age, called the Pleistocene. The released gases in turn add to global warming, which frees even more locked-up carbon, and so on. "Thermal collapse and erosion of these carbon-rich Pleistocene coastline and seafloor deposits may accelerate the Arctic amplification of climate warming," the paper warned. The atmospheric leakage from Yedoma is equivalent to the annual emissions of around five million passenger cars, on the basis of average carbon output (five tonnes per year) of vehicles in the United States. In a separate study also in Nature, researchers in Britain, the Netherlands and the United States used computer models to estimate there could be as much as four billion tonnes of methane under Antarctica's icesheet. Methane is 25 times more efficient at trapping solar heat than carbon dioxide. Before it froze over, the region teemed with life whose organic remains became trapped in sediment later covered by ice sheets. "Our modelling shows that over millions of years, microbes may have turned this old organic carbon into methane," which could boost climate warming if released by icesheet collapse, the researchers said in a statement. The collapse of the Antarctic icesheet is considered an extremely remote scenario by most climatologists, and some studies have suggested that parts of it could be thickening, due to localised increases in snowfall. Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ AFP: In Arctic, Greenpeace picks new fight with old foe 29 August 2012 Global warming has ignited a rush to exploit Arctic resources — and Greenpeace is determined to thwart that stampede. Employing the same daredevil tactics it has used against nuclear testing or commercial whaling, the environmental group is now dead-set on preventing oil companies from profiting from global warming by drilling for oil near the Arctic's shrinking ice cap. The campaign took off in May 2010, when oil was still gushing from a ruptured well in the Gulf of Mexico. At the time, Greenpeace was startled by reports that a small Scottish energy firm was proceeding with plans to drill for oil and gas in iceberg-laden waters off western Greenland. "It felt slightly surreal," recalled Ben Ayliffe, now the head of Greenpeace's campaign against oil drilling the Arctic. "After what happened in the Gulf of Mexico, how can anyone respond to that by going to drill in similar depths in a place called Iceberg Alley?" Greenpeace quickly arranged to get a ship to Greenland, where four activists attached themselves to a drilling rig for two days until a storm forced them to abandon the protest. That stunt, a similar one in 2011 off Greenland and protests this month at an oil rig off northwest Russia are at the core of what Greenpeace calls "one of the defining environmental battles of our age." "Polar work feels like it's going back to the early campaigns: simple message, people get it and the lines are very clearly drawn," Ayliffe said. From a publicity standpoint, the campaign has been successful: Greenpeace officials say since June, 1.6 million people have signed the group's online petition urging world leaders to declare the Arctic a global sanctuary, off limits to oil exploration and industrial fishing. Dozens of celebrities, including Robert Redford, Paul McCartney and Penelope Cruz have announced their support, according to Greenpeace activist Sarah North. "I have never experienced engaging famous people at this kind of rate and with such ease in a campaign issue," said North, a 15-year veteran at Greenpeace. The impact on the oil industry, however, is unclear. The Arctic is believed to hold up to a quarter of the world's undiscovered oil and gas reserves. Despite difficult operating conditions and high costs, the payback for Shell, Gazprom, Statoil and other companies searching for commercial quantities of hydrocarbons could be huge. "It probably sounds a bit cynical, but if they invest billions of dollars it's not likely they will give it up just because somebody is attacking their oil rig," said Mikhail Babenko, an oil and gas expert at the World Wildlife Fund's Global Arctic Program. Unlike Greenpeace, WWF isn't seeking a complete ban on drilling in the Arctic but wants to make sure the most vulnerable areas are protected. "We want to be part of this discussion," Babenko said. "We don't want to stimulate oil and gas development, but if we follow (Greenpeace's) approach we will be simply out of the game." Greenpeace and other environmental groups say an oil spill in the Arctic could cause irreparable damage to wildlife and marine ecosystems. Fears that the oil industry is ill-prepared to operate in the hostile conditions of the high north were reinforced last December when a floating oil rig capsized off eastern Russia, killing more than 50 workers. While that accident happened outside the Arctic region, it underscored the challenges of drilling further north, where ice ridges are meters (yards) deep and storms are frequent. Oil industry officials say they are taking the necessary precautions to conduct safe operations in the Arctic. Cairn Energy, the Scottish company whose platforms off Greenland were targeted by Greenpeace protests in 2010 and 2011, isn't drilling there this year. By all accounts, that has nothing to do with Greenpeace but to the fact that the initial drilling was unsuccessful. Asked what, if any, impact the Greenpeace actions had on the company's future plans for Greenland, Cairn spokeswoman Linda Bain referred to its second-quarter report, which doesn't say anything about Greenpeace. Shell, which has also come into Greenpeace's cross-hairs for plans to drill off Alaska, also refused to discuss the group. Still, there's no doubt that Shell takes Greenpeace's Arctic campaign seriously. In March, Shell won an injunction by a U.S. judge ordering Greenpeace to stay 1 kilometer (.6 miles) away from its drilling rigs in U.S. territorial waters. A month earlier, New Zealand actress Lucy Lawless of the TV series "Xena: Warrior Princess" and six other Greenpeace activists had climbed aboard one of the drilling rigs before it left for Alaska. They later pleaded guilty to trespass charges and are awaiting sentencing. Greenpeace activists also climbed aboard icebreakers contracted by Shell as they left the Baltic Sea. And the Greenpeace ship "Esperanza" is now shadowing Shell's drilling vessels as they head north to bore exploratory wells in Alaska's Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. "We will follow the oil industry into the Arctic," Ayliffe said. "This is such an important campaign. We're not going to let them off the hook that easily." Founded in 1971, Greenpeace initially focused on nuclear testing. Its first Rainbow Warrior ship was sunk in New Zealand's Auckland harbor before it set out to protest French nuclear testing at Muroroa Atoll. Greenpeace photographer Fernando Pereira drowned. The group claims its actions helped bring about the nuclear test ban treaty as well as a ban on dumping toxic chemicals into the ocean. It also takes credit for forcing Apple and other major companies to become more ecologically responsible. In the 1990s, Greenpeace campaigned for years to persuade oil companies to bring disused offshore installations to land for recycling, instead of dumping them in the ocean. The Arctic campaign is part of the group's overarching focus on climate change. On Friday, six Greenpeace activists, including executive director Kumi Naidoo, spent several hours hanging off the side of the Prirazlomnaya platform in Russia's Pechora Sea, attached to the rig's mooring lines. Three days later, more than a dozen activists intercepted a ship carrying Russian oil workers to the platform and chained themselves to its anchor. While Greenpeace is sometimes accused of being "alarmist," environment and climate activists in general applaud the group for calling attention to global warming issues. Their activities don't always resonate well, however, with some of the indigenous communities in the Arctic. The Inuit seal hunters of Greenland, for example, blame Greenpeace campaigns against seal hunting for nearly wiping out the demand for seal skins, a key part of their income. Ove Karl Berthelsen, Greenland's minister for oil and minerals, said he was skeptical of Greenpeace's claims to be acting in defense of indigenous communities. "People here see through it," Berthelsen said. "Their star is not very high up here." Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ Bloomberg (US): Australia EU Link Makes Carbon-Market Theory Real, Marcu Says 29 August 2012 The proposed linking of the European Union and Australian greenhouse-gas-reduction programs will demonstrate to policy makers across the world that carbon markets can help address climate change, said Andrei Marcu. “Those who say there is no urgency are being contradicted on the ground,” Marcu, head of the Centre for European Policy Studies’ Carbon Market Forum in Brussels, said today in an interview from United Nations climate talks in Bangkok. “This is a very good signal. This is not theory any more.” Australia said yesterday it will allow its emitters to use international credits including EU permits and United Nations Certified Emission Reductions for as much as half of their compliance needs, tightening the specific limit on UN offsets to 12.5 percent from 50 percent. The nation would scrap a floor price of A$15 ($15.57) a metric ton set to take effect in 2015. The two regions will start a partial link of their carbon markets by July 2015, allowing Australian companies to purchase European allowances immediately for future compliance, hedging the risk that carbon permits will rise, Martijn Wilder, a partner at the law firm Baker & McKenzie LLP in Sydney, said yesterday by phone. “The timing of the government’s announcement is particularly opportunistic,” given low EU carbon prices and the high Australian dollar, Wilder said. EU allowances for December have dropped 43 percent in the past year on surging supply and muted demand. They declined 0.9 percent today to 7.91 euros ($9.92) a metric ton on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London as of 12:23 p.m. United Nations Rules Australia may link with carbon programs in China, South Korea and New Zealand, which could also provide the nation with supply, Wilder said. The EU-Australia linkage is being proposed as the UN considers establishing rules that seek to oversee carbon markets around the world, where at least 29 programs have started or are being considered, according to World Bank figures from May. The UN framework will attempt to prevent countries from counting emission reductions for themselves while selling credits in international markets, for instance, according to a technical paper published Aug. 24 on the website of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. Such so-called double counting could exceed 1 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide by 2020 unless new rules are introduced, according to the paper, which cited the UN Environment Programme. The EU market’s cap this year will be 2.4 billion tons, according to an estimate by Bloomberg New Energy Finance. ‘Cookie Crumble’ Risk The UN rules, alongside the linking proposed by Australia and the EU are needed to help keep carbon markets from becoming too disconnected from each other, Marcu said. “Once the cookie crumbles, it’s very hard to put it back together,” he said. “Given the recent turmoil around markets, you want to reassure that it will function well,” he said. The 1997 Kyoto Protocol, the world’s biggest cap-and-trade market measured by emissions covered, has targets for 37 developed nations for the five years through this year. That market, which the U.S. didn’t ratify, is oversupplied by more than 10 billion tons, the World Bank estimated in May. Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ Reuters: Chevron says all U.S. Gulf production shut on Isaac 29 August 2012 Chevron Corp, the second-largest oil producer in the U.S. Gulf of Mexico, said on Wednesday that all production at its four platforms was shut down and its Mississippi refinery was operating after Hurricane Isaac came ashore Tuesday evening. Chevron did not specify whether its 330,000-barrel-per-day refinery in Pascagoula, Mississippi, was operating at reduced rates. However, the U.S. Department of Energy said on Wednesday that the refinery was running at reduced rates. The company operates four oil and gas platforms in the Gulf. They are Tahiti, which can produce up to 125,000 bpd of oil and 70 million cubic feet per day of natural gas; Blind Faith, 65,000 bpd of oil and 55 mmcf per day of gas; Genesis, 55,000 bpd of oil and 72 mmcf per day of gas; and Petronius, 40,000 bpd of oil and 35 mmcf per day of gas. Back to Menu _________________________________________________________________ New York Times (US): Japan Strives to Go Nuclear-Free 29 August 2012 As Japan moves to cut back on nuclear power after last year’s disaster in Fukushima, it is running into a harsh economic reality: the cost of immediately abandoning its nuclear reactors may be too high for some big utilities to shoulder. If the country’s 50 nuclear reactors were permanently closed this year, power companies would be hit with losses totaling 4.4 trillion yen ($55.9 billion), rendering at least four of them insolvent, according to calculations this summer by the government’s Agency for Natural Resources and Energy. The extraordinary costs of an immediate shutdown have emerged as a major concern for the Japanese government, which has struggled to balance the desire for improved nuclear safety with the bottom-line realities of the big utilities. Nuclear plants generated about one-third of Japan’s electricity before the Fukushima accident, but most remain at least temporarily offline. “People talk easily about shutting down Japan’s nuclear power plants, but the economic and financial consequences are severe,” said Reiji Takeishi, professor in environmental economics at Tokyo International University. The government is now considering at least three options to reduce the country’s dependence on nuclear power — and all of them would give the power companies until 2030 to shut their reactors permanently, allowing them to largely recoup their plant investments. By 2030 the majority of reactors would be older than 40 years and would face decommissioning anyway under Japanese guidelines. But a series of fresh safety concerns, including possibly active fault lines beneath nuclear sites, have raised doubts about whether the nuclear reactors should be restarted at all. And the proposed 18-year timetable has angered the country’s growing antinuclear movement, which complained that the government had its priorities wrong. “How can you put the economy above safety, above human life?” Masanori Oda, a contemporary artist and a representative of the movement, said after a meeting with Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda last week. One option being considered by the government would reduce the country’s dependence on nuclear power to 20 to 25 percent of electrical needs by 2030. A second option would cut the segment to 15 percent, and a third would eliminate nuclear power entirely. Though the 15 percent proposal initially gained traction, public hearings and opinion polls have shown overwhelming support for a complete phaseout. All of the proposals could involve progressively restarting the country’s reactors. In recent days, a string of governing party lawmakers and government ministers have also expressed support for the so-called zero option, with an eye on nationwide elections that could be called within months. The fate of the nuclear reactors is part of a larger and highly charged discussion over the costs and benefits of nuclear energy and its alternatives. Much of the argument has tended to focus on the wider economic costs of turning away from nuclear power. Japan’s biggest and most influential business lobby, the Keidanren, warns of disaster. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost, the group says, and energy alternatives would be hampered by problems. Already Japan’s fuel imports have surged since the Fukushima disaster, driving the country’s trade deficit to record highs. Though Japan has so far avoided blackouts this summer, power shortages are weighing on businesses. Japan’s greenhouse gas emissions are also surging, and renewable energies such as wind and solar power remain small-scale, expensive and unreliable, the lobbying group says. “If we do not have a stable supply of energy at economically viable prices, Japan’s economy cannot grow,” the group said earlier this month. The economic stakes for the utilities could be even higher in the shorter term. A government-appointed panel of experts warned this year that there is a possibly active fault line under the Shika Nuclear Power Plant, 170 miles north of Kyoto, raising the possibility that the location could be declared unfit for a nuclear facility. The plant’s operator, the Hokuriku Electric Power Company, would be pushed to near-insolvency with losses of at least 313 billion yen ($3.97 billion) if it were forced to shut the two reactors, the government calculations show. The losses would stem from extra costs of early decommissioning, write-downs on other nuclear assets, as well as the costs of offloading the plant’s nuclear waste and fuel, according to those calculations. Another troubled utility is Chubu Electric, which is desperate to save the No. 5 reactor at its Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant, the newest unit at the site and the country’s largest. The unit opened in 2005 but has been offline since last May, when Naoto Kan, then prime minister, effectively ordered it closed on fears that it lies on a particularly tsunami-prone coastline. During the shutdown, however, about 1,300 gallons of seawater entered the reactor because of a burst pipe, and it is thought to be corroding the reactor core. Two smaller utilities, Hokkaido Electric and Tohoku Electric, would fare even worse: the cost of writing off their reactors would drive them into insolvency, the government estimates. Both utilities face concerns that their reactors also face bigger quake risks than previously thought. And Tokyo Electric — Japan’s largest utility, and the operator of the ravaged Fukushima Daiichi plant — would be forced to take additional write-downs of 1.15 trillion yen ($14.6 billion) if it were unable to reopen its 13 remaining reactors, including two at the tsunami-ravaged Fukushima Daiichi site, and four more at a sister site just 10 miles away. The local Fukushima government is calling for all of the utility’s reactors to remain permanently closed. But that would be disastrous for a company effectively nationalized last month because of the exorbitant costs of the accident and compensation payments. “I really don’t see a scenario that the power companies will be made to go to zero in the near term,” said Penn Bowers, a research analyst who covers Japan’s power companies at CLSA Japanese Equities. “You would go into negative equity for some of those companies,” he said. “I don’t think that’s a choice, because there are not alternative suppliers. You need these companies to remain going concerns.” Those who favor phasing out nuclear power argue that the costs of another disaster would easily outweigh other considerations. They are optimistic about developing renewable energy, especially with heavy public investment, and say new technologies in that field could cut down on emissions and create new jobs. “The assumptions underlying the economics of nuclear power no longer hold up,” said Terumitsu Honma, a professor in economics and insurance at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo. “The biggest assumption was that accidents don’t happen.” The utility companies have a strong incentive to push the government for permission to restart their reactors, even with the risks. Because the cost of another disaster would most likely be greater than the value of the companies, private insurers have been unwilling to insure the utilities — putting the government on the hook for any damages. As such, the risks of restarting Japan’s reactors, both financially and in terms of safety, would be borne by the Japanese taxpayers, while any benefits would go to the utilities and their shareholders, said J. Mark Ramseyer, a professor at Harvard Law School who wrote an article about the Japanese nuclear industry this month in an academic journal, Theoretical Inquiries in Law. “They capture all the returns, but bear less than all of the costs,” he said in an e-mail. Back to Menu Directory: cpi -> briefs briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news briefs -> The environment in the news Download 427.18 Kb. Share with your friends:
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