CCS has been touted as the savior technology for the fossil fuel powered electricity generation industry. It is estimated that 90% of CO2 emissions may potentially be captured with CCS technology, accounting for 28% of global emissions by 2050. The CCS demonstration will be used in conjunction with one coal fired electricity generation plant. A winner of the competition is expected to be announced in mid 2007.

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James Hansen, the head of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, has said that our targets for carbon emissions reductions are not adequate, and should be cut further.

“Hansen says the EU target of 550 parts per million of C02 - the most stringent in the world - should be slashed to 350ppm. He argues the cut is needed if “humanity wishes to preserve a planet similar to that on which civilisation developed”. A final version of the paper Hansen co-authored with eight other climate scientists, is posted today on the Archive website. Instead of using theoretical models to estimate the sensitivity of the climate, his team turned to evidence from the Earth’s history, which they say gives a much more accurate picture.

The team studied core samples taken from the bottom of the ocean, which allow C02 levels to be tracked millions of years ago. They show that when the world began to glaciate at the start of the Ice age about 35m years ago, the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere stood at about 450ppm.

“If you leave us at 450ppm for long enough it will probably melt all the ice - that’s a sea rise of 75 metres. What we have found is that the target we have all been aiming for is a disaster - a guaranteed disaster,” Hansen told the Guardian.

At levels as high as 550ppm, the world would warm by 6C, the paper finds. Previous estimates had suggested warming would be just 3C at that point.

Hansen has long been a prominent figure in climate change science. He was one of the first to bring the crisis to the world’s attention in testimony to Congress in the 1980s.”

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“AUSTRALIANS must accept that emissions trading is designed to make them pay more and lower their standard of living, at least where energy use is concerned, the Reserve Bank governor warns.

Glenn Stevens said yesterday any attempt by workers to demand higher wages as compensation could increase inflation.

There would also be little point in raising the price of energy if it did not result in lower consumption of it, Mr Stevens said.

Responding to his comments, the Rudd Government’s chief climate change adviser, Ross Garnaut, told the Herald the Government could consider a GST-style package of tax cuts to head off calls for higher wages. These tax cuts could be funded by the sale of emission permits.”

Technorati Tags: Australia, energy, carbon emissions, emissions trading, energy, climate change, emission permits

The Commission, which proposed the fund in October 2006, hopes it will act as an incentive for private capital financing by offering “suitable risk sharing and co-funding options for various commercial and non-commercial investors with a global investment mandate”.

The EU will contribute €80 million to the fund by 2010 in order to help developing countries overcome hurdles associated with initial capital costs for renewable energies.

€15 million of EU funds will be used in 2008 as a jump start for the initiative.

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“The federal Energy Minister, Martin Ferguson, said yesterday the plan was vital to making Australia a leading player in clean coal technology.

“Coal will continue to make a major contribution to Australia’s energy needs well into the future and therefore we need to urgently reduce greenhouse gas emissions from coal-fired electricity generation,” he told the Australian Energy Alliance conference in Sydney.

The plan will be pushed through Parliament this year so the Rudd Government can begin releasing acres of offshore sedimentary basins for companies to search for storage sites.

The move would make Australia “one of the first countries in the world to establish a regulated carbon capture and storage regime”, Mr Ferguson said. But he acknowledged that the question of who would accept legal liability for the long-term seabed storage had yet to be worked out.

“Liability is one of the key issues to be resolved,” he said.”

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“Britain’s climate change emissions may be 12% higher than officially stated, according to a National Audit Office investigation which has strongly criticised the government for using two different carbon accounting systems. There is “insufficient consistency and coordination” in the government’s approach, the NAO said.

Using one system, which the government presents to the UN and in public, Britain emitted 656m tonnes of CO2 in 2005, and claims an improvement on 1990 figures. However, the lesser-known but more accurate data in the government’s national environmental accounts show emissions to be in the region of 733m tonnes in 2005, a NAO report says today.”

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The first annual budget statement of British chancellor Alistair Darling is “unlikely to have much impact on emissions”, according to Fiona Harvey, the FT’s environmental correspondent.

“But the measures outlined in his speech fell short of radical change and are unlikely to have much impact on emissions.

According to KPMG, the measures announced on Wednesday would account for a reduction of emissions of about 5 per cent by 2015, which would not put the UK on track to meet its obligations to cut emissions by 20 per cent under the European Commission’s proposals.

The green measures will raise about £1.6bn in extra revenue this year, rising to £1.77bn by 2010-2011, chiefly from increases in fuel duties if they come into force and changes to vehicle excise duty. But the proportion of tax revenue coming from green taxes will fall by 0.1 percentage point to 6.91 per cent in 2008-09.

Frank Sangster, head of KPMG’s environmental tax and incentives group, said: “It is still very unclear from a [consumer] and corporate perspective how the vast majority of carbon reduction will be delivered.”

The main green measures will hit cars, the most polluting of which will be more heavily taxed, and electricity companies, which may face having to buy all of their permits to produce carbon after 2012.

Retailers must curb their use of disposable carrier bags or face legislation next year forcing them to charge a levy on the bags.

The new aircraft duty, charged per jet instead of per passenger, will raise 10 per cent more revenue in its second year of operation, the chancellor promised. The construction industry will have to work out how to make all new office buildings “zero carbon” by 2019.

Next year, the chancellor will also have to present a “carbon budget” alongside the Budget, showing how the government will set the UK on a carbon-cutting trajectory to 2022. The carbon budget will set out how much carbon the country can emit within a four to five-year period.”

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“Our results suggest that the anticipated path of China’s Carbon Dioxide (CO2) emissions has dramatically increased over the last five years. The magnitude of the projected increase in Chinese emissions out to 2015 is several times larger than reductions embodied in the Kyoto Protocol. Our estimates are based on a unique provincial level panel data set from the Chinese Environmental Protection Agency. This dataset contains considerably more information relevant to the path of likely Chinese greenhouse gas emissions than national level time series models currently in use. Model selection criteria clearly reject the popular static environmental Kuznets curve specification in favor of a class of dynamic models with spatial dependence.”

Hat tip: New Scientist Magazine.

Reference:
M. Auffhammer and R. T. Carson [2007]: “Forecasting the Path of China’s CO2 Emissions Using Province Level Information“. (August 7, 2007). Department of Agricultural & Resource Economics, UCB. CUDARE Working Paper 971.

Technorati Tags: greenhouse gas emissions, China, Carbon Dioxide

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