Daily Briefing |
TODAY'S CLIMATE AND ENERGY HEADLINES
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Every weekday morning, in time for your morning coffee, Carbon Brief sends out a free email known as the “Daily Briefing” to thousands of subscribers around the world. The email is a digest of the past 24 hours of media coverage related to climate change and energy, as well as our pick of the key studies published in peer-reviewed journals.
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Today's climate and energy headlines:
- Emergency winter electricity scheme cancelled
- Study: Countries that support nuclear energy lag on climate targets
- Oil rig towed off rocks in Outer Hebrides
- Australian scientists break world record for solar thermal efficiency
- New membrane could save $2 billion a year for U.S. industries
- EPA links oil and gas drilling to Texas quakes
- Ice loss labelled as 'extreme' 10 years ago is now considered commonplace
- America’s first offshore wind farm may power up a new industry
- Theresa May can reduce carbon emissions or protect British jobs – not both
- Climate change will create new ecosystems, so let's help plants move
- A widening 80 mile crack is threatening one of Antarctica’s biggest ice shelves
- Methane emissions proportional to permafrost carbon thawed in Arctic lakes since the 1950s
- Climate-driven ground-level ozone extreme in the fall over the Southeast United States
- Permafrost carbon as a missing link to explain CO2 changes during the last deglaciation
News.
Britain’s flagship scheme for keeping the lights on this winter has been scrapped after failing to find a enough participants. National Grid planned to pay big businesses to turn off or down their equipment if there was a spike in demand or a drop in supply. It proved vital last when several power plants unexpectedly shut down, but too few users were willing to put themselves on standby this year. This illustrates “the difficulties policymakers are having in balancing the UK’s electricity supplies”, the Financial Times writes. However, a spokesman said that the failure of the scheme would not result in blackouts this winter, the Telegraph reports.
Pro-nuclear countries have been slower to embrace renewable energy and tackle emissions than their nuclear-free counterparts, according to new research from the University of Sussex, looking at the progress of European countries towards meeting their 2020 climate targets. They found that nuclear-free countries such as Norway and Denmark had made the most progress. The researchers caution against assuming a causal link, but say their results create “significant doubts” over the role of nuclear energy in decarbonising the energy mix. “By suppressing better ways to meet climate goals, evidence suggests entrenched commitments to nuclear power may actually be counterproductive”, said Andy Stirling, professor of science and technology policy at the University of Sussex.
A 17,000-tonne drilling rig has been safely towed out to sea after it ran aground on some rocks in the Outer Hebrides earlier this month. It resulted in the loss of up to 53,000 litres of fuel, most of which is thought to have evaporated, the Guardian reports. The remaining 200 tonnes of hydrocarbons were transferred from the rig to the supply vessel at the weekend.
Scientists have created the world’s most efficient solar thermal installation, achieving conversion rates of 97%, BusinessGreen reports. Researchers at the Australian National University “smashed” the previous world record of 93.6% conversion efficiency. They say the breakthrough could cut the cost of solar by 10%.
A synthetic membrane designed by ExxonMobil that provides a new way to separate chemicals could “drastically” cut the energy required to make fuels or synthetic polymers, and also avert 45 million tons of carbon dioxide emissions, Scientific American reports. The findings were published last week in the journal Science. Between 40-60% of the energy used to make clean water, fuels and industrial chemicals goes toward separation.
The US Environmental Protection Agency has tied a string of earthquakes in north Texas to oil and gas drilling operations in the area. A report found that the frequency of earthquakes in Texas correlates to the number and location of injection or disposal wells for fracking, in the latest investigation to find a link between wastewater injection and earthquakes, following findings in Oklahoma last year. The EPA is concerned about the “potential impact on public health and the environment, including underground drinking water”, the Hill reports.
Low levels of sea ice should be considered the “new normal” says NASA, after the Arctic Ocean and surrounding seas recorded a low maximum extent in March, with rapid ice loss continuing through May. If this year’s sea ice extent had occurred 10 years ago, it would have set a new record low, the Daily Mail reports. “Now, we’re kind of used to these low levels of sea ice”, said Dr Walt Meier, a sea ice scientist at NASA. NASA is designing a laser system to measure the thickness of sea ice from space.
Comment.
Offshore wind “may be on the verge of rapid growth” in the US, writes a feature in the New York Times, looking at a newly completed project off the coast of Rhode Island, which is the first offshore windfarm in the country. With nearly two dozen offshore wind projects on the drawing board, the completion of the new windfarm should encourage others to follow, the piece says: “[it] sends a simple message to governments, investors and citizens: It can be done”.
Carbon reduction “destroys jobs”, claims David Green in the Telegraph: “raising productivity and encouraging higher wages are not compatible with carbon reduction”. Since 2008 the government’s policies have “added to the cost of electricity”, led to the closure of two aluminium smelters, and threatened the steel industry, he argues. Last year, a Carbon Brief factcheck found that the steel crisis was triggered “first and foremost” by plunging global steel prices, and that only around 1% of UK steel production costs could be put down to government policy.
Protecting Australia’s national parks and reserves is “impossible” when the environment is massively changing, argues geneticist Ary Hoffman in the Conversation. Instead, adaption “becomes more important”. With rapid climate change, it is likely that ecosystems will fail to keep up, as the distribution of plants might only shift by a few metres a year. But humans can give these ecosystems a helping hand, he says, by starting “the process of deliberately moving species (and their genes) around the landscape in a careful and contained manner”.
For some time now, scientists have been watching a large crack progressing in Larsen C, a major ice shelf on the northern Antarctic peninsula. Now they report that the rift has grown another 22km since it was last observed in March 2016, before the start of the polar winter. This means that it may only be a matter of time before we see the loss of a chunk of this shelf, Chris Mooney writes, following on from the break-up of Larsen B in 2002, and Larsen A in 1995. Carbon Brief recently spoke to one of the lead researchers about his time spent on the ice.
Science.
A new study estimates the CO2 and methane emissions from lakes that form on thawing Arctic permafrost, known as “thermokarst”. The researchers used historical aerial photos, soil and methane sampling and radiocarbon dating of lakes in Alaska, Canada, Sweden and Siberia. Their findings suggest that up to 2.5bn tonnes of carbon has been released from the lakes over the last 60 years.
High levels of ground-level ozone, which is hazardous to human health, usually only occur in the summer in the US. However, in extreme cases, such as October 2010 in the southeast US, ozone can reach summer levels during autumn. A new study finds that the extreme levels in 2010 were caused, in part, by very warm and dry conditions. A large contribution came from water-stressed plants releasing larger amounts of a gas called “isoprene”, the researchers say, which reacts with nitrogen oxides in the atmosphere to form ozone.
Carbon emissions from thawing permafrost explain a rise in atmospheric CO2 between 17,500 and 15,000 years ago – a period sometimes known as the “Mystery Interval”, a new study suggests. The findings help solve why atmospheric concentration of CO2 increased from 190 to 280 parts per million between the last ice age and the pre-industrial era. The cause of the thawing permafrost was natural fluctuations in the Earth’s orbit, the study notes.