Hill Heat

Greenpeace will release the results of a carbon footprint analysis of the economic recovery package via teleconference this Thursday at 10:30 am ET (details below). The analysis was conducted by ICF International, a leading climate and energy consulting firm for governments, Fortune 500 companies, and non-profits (http://www.icfi.com/).

• ICF International: William Grayson and Dr. Joel Bluestein

• Greenpeace: Kert Davies, Research Director and Steven Biel, Global Warming Campaign Director

According to several recent studies, global warming will create a major drag on the U.S. and world economies – $271 billion in the United States alone by 2025 according to NRDC, and 5 – 20 percent of global GDP by 2100, according to the U.K. government’s Stern Review. An effective economic stimulus must also reduce global warming through spending on energy efficiency, conservation, clean energy, and clean transportation options.

Teleconference participants will discuss how the different provisions of the stimulus package will affect the climate in the short and long run and will discuss the climate and related economic impact of different stimulus proposals and amendments under consideration.

Dial-in number: 1-319-279-1000
Toll free dial-in number: 1-866-399-5852
Participant pin: 1001217#

RSVP to [email protected]; confirmed teleconference attendees will get an advanced look at the report.

05/02/2009 at 10:30AM

From the Wonk Room.

Yesterday, the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Appeals Board ruled today that the EPA has no valid reason for refusing to place limits on the global warming emissions from Desert Power’s proposed 110-megawatt coal-fired power plant in Vernal, Utah.

Deseret Power’s Bonanza Generating Station would have emitted 3.37 million tons of carbon dioxide each year. In July 2007, the EPA issued a permit for the plant, ignoring the Clean Air Act’s stipulation that all such permits must include a “best-available control technology” emissions limit for each pollutant “subject to regulation under the Act.” Before the Sierra Club brought suit, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), chair of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform opened an investigation into the EPA’s decision, saying:

It is reckless to approve a huge coal-fired power plant with no global warming emission controls. This one massive plant will negate the emissions reductions being implemented by the Northeastern states in the first mandatory regional program to cut global warming pollution. The Administration’s shameful decision rewards polluters, flouts the Clean Air Act, and fails the American people.

Joanna Spalding, the Sierra Club attorney who successfully argued the case, delivered this statement:

Today’s decision opens the way for meaningful action to fight global warming and is a major step in bringing about a clean energy economy. This is one more sign that we must begin repowering, refueling and rebuilding America. The EAB rejected every Bush Administration excuse for failing to regulate the largest source of greenhouse gases in the United States. This decision gives the Obama Administration a clean slate to begin building our clean energy economy for the 21st century.

The 69-page decision described the Bush administration’s arguments as “weak,” “questionable,” “not sustainable,” and “not sufficient,” and rebuked EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson for failing to issue CO2 regulations, repeatedly recommending an “action of nationwide scope.”

What is the relationship between economic activity and CO2 growth? What is carbon intensity and how does it relate to economic activity? What are the trends in CO2 growth, carbon intensity, and changes in the efficiency of natural reservoirs to store carbon? How does the growth in CO2 compare to the various estimates of CO2 growth contained in the most recent IPCC assessment of climate change? What is permafrost and what is the extent of permafrost thaw in the Arctic? Is permafrost thaw a response to global warming and if so, what is the future likely to hold? Will permafrost thaw result in the release of additional CO2 into the atmosphere from Arctic soils? If so, what is the impact likely to be on global warming? How much carbon is stored in Arctic soils? Assuming that the Arctic continues to warm well above the global average, what is the likely fate of that soil carbon and how might it influence climate in the future?

Moderator:

• Dr. Anthony Socci, Senior Science Fellow, American Meteorological Society

Speakers:

• Dr. Josep (Pep) Canadell, Executive Director, Global Carbon Project, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization (CSIRO) Marine and Atmospheric Research, Canberra, Australia
• Dr. Vladmir Romanovsky, Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, AK
• Dr. Howard Epstein, Department of Environmental Sciences, University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

26/09/2008 at 10:00AM

06/05/2008 at 02:00PM

On Wednesday, April 2, 2008, Chairman Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming is holding a hearing titled, “From the Wright Brothers to the Right Solutions: Curbing Soaring Aviation Emissions.” The hearing will take place on April 2, 2008 at 1:30 p.m. in Room 1310 of the Longworth House Office Building. Witnesses will be by invitation only.

At this hearing the Committee will also vote to subpoena documents from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) showing what progress that agency has made in response to Supreme Court decision, Massachusetts v. EPA, which was delivered April 2, 2007.

As Congress examines all causes and impacts of heat-trapping emissions, the Select Committee is assessing aviation’s present contribution to greenhouse gasses and the potential to curb such emissions in the future. Aviation emissions generate 12 percent of U.S. transportation carbon dioxide emissions and three percent of the United States’ total carbon dioxide emissions. The FAA estimates that demand for passenger and cargo aviation in the United States will double or triple by 2025. As the European Union is poised to extend its Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) to all airlines, it is imperative for Congress to consider how aviation can contribute to or curb heat-trapping emissions through operations, technology and fuel.

Witnesses

• Dan Elwell, FAA Assistant Administrator for Aviation Policy, Planning, and Environment
• Bob Meyers, Principal Deputy Assistant Administrator for the Office of Air and Radiation, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• Tom Windmuller, Senior Vice President, International Air Transport Association
• James May, President and CEO, Air Transport Association

02/04/2008 at 01:30PM

The Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade bill (S. 2191), which Sen. Boxer said may come to the floor before June, sets a cap of 15% below 2005 emissions levels by 2020 for covered sectors, reducing allowed emissions to the amount last seen in 1990.

Is that near-term target sufficient, in terms of the science?

As Holmes Hummel points out, the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report (AR4) paints a much different picture.

At Bali, all of the Annex I signatories to the Kyoto Protocol (every industrialized country other than the US and Turkey) agreed to this roadmap, which states in convoluted language that the Annex I countries “noted” that the AR4 indicates that global emissions “need to peak in the next 10-15 years” and be reduced “well below half of levels in 2000” by 2050 “in order to stabilize their concentrations in the atmosphere at the lowest levels assessed by the IPCC to date in its scenarios.” The countries also “recognized” that the AR4 indicates that to achieve those levels “would require Annex I Parties as a group to reduce emissions in a range of 25–40 percent below 1990 levels by 2020.”

25-40% below 1990 levels is dramatically below the Lieberman-Warner target. From AR4, these “lowest levels” of concentrations are 350-400ppm CO2.

What’s the value of achieving concentrations “at the lowest levels”? The report says that using the “best estimate” for climate sensitivity (the temperature response to greenhouse gas concentrations), reaching a stable concentration of 350-400ppm CO2 leads to 2.0-2.4 degrees C warming above pre-industrial levels. But Hummel notes that the “best estimate” is just one for which half the estimates are higher and half are lower.

Thus:

To have a 50% chance of making the 2°C stabilization target, global emissions need to peak by 2015 and Annex I countries need to be 25-40% below 1990 by 2020.

As AAAS president John Holdren argued in his speech Meeting the Climate Challenge (at 38:29; see also the slide presentation):

The chance of a tipping point into truly catastrophic change grows rapidly for increases in the global average surface temperature more than about 2°C above the pre-industrial level, and again we’re already committed basically to one and a half. For a better than even chance of not exceeding 2°C above the pre-industrial level, CO2 emissions must peak globally no later than 2025 and they need to be falling steadily after that. That is a great task.

From the UN Scientific Expert Group on Climate Change and Sustainable Development, an international panel of 18 top scientists (including John Holdren):

In our judgment and that of a growing number of other analysts and groups, however, increases beyond 2°C to 2.5°C above the 1750 level will entail sharply rising risks of crossing a climate “tipping point” that could lead to intolerable impacts on human well-being, in spite of all feasible attempts at adaptation.