Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans
News
Governments urged to attach green strings to long-term coronavirus recovery plans
There is continued coverage of the coronavirus pandemic and its interplay with climate and energy. Climate Home News reports that governments and financial institutions are under growing pressure to include climate action in their long-term coronavirus recovery plans. Last week, the European Central Bank (ECB) announced an €870bn emergency bond-buying programme to stabilise the euro zone economy until the end of the year – the equivalent of 7.3% of the euro area’s GDP, says CHN. The outlet adds: “But short-term measures designed to stabilise the economy are so far doing little for the transition. In Europe, the bond-buying programme announced by the ECB…follows the bank’s current purchasing criteria, which proscribes the bank from preferring one sector over another, instead buying what is available on the market.” Stanislas Jourdan, head of Positive Money Europe, tells CHN: “Though the ECB is rightly aiming at addressing the coronavirus crisis, there is a risk that fossil fuels free-ride on those measures to gain even cheaper financing to maintain their activities.” E&E News reports that the United Nations is also shifting its focus from climate change to the coronavirus. E&E News says: “The novel coronavirus pandemic is now the world’s top priority. Climate change will have to be put on the back burner, for now. That was the message delivered to reporters from UN Secretary-General António Guterres, via an unprecedented online press conference he organised last week.” Guterres made himself available only electronically because he is in isolation, E&E News adds. Guterres said: “We are facing a global health crisis unlike any in the 75-year history of the United Nations, one that is spreading human suffering, infecting the global economy and upending the people’s lives. A global recession, perhaps of record dimensions, is a near certainty.”
The Guardian has produced new interactive maps showing the difference in air pollution levels in 2019 and 2020 in parts of the world including China, South Korea, Italy and the UK. “One expert said the sudden shift represented the ‘largest scale experiment ever’ in terms of the reduction of industrial emissions,” the Guardian says. However, the ENDS report carries comments from a group of 70 aerosol scientists from Italy who have warned that it may be “premature” to infer a direct link between falling air pollution levels and coronavirus. A second Guardian story reports that the virus is likely to halt work on HS2, a major rail project planned by the UK, but that work on the Hinkley Point C nuclear power station is likely to continue. E&E News reports that the pandemic has put a stop to several climate science expeditions, including East Greenland Ice-core Project (EastGRIP).
Elsewhere, the Financial Times reports that oil majors Royal Dutch Shell and Total have suspended their share buyback programmes and announced billions of dollars in capital and operational spending cuts in an effort to buffer themselves against oil market turmoil. The Guardian adds that, for Shell, these spending cuts add up to $9bn. Bloomberg reports that the oil crash means that coal is currently the most expensive fossil fuel in the world. Meanwhile, the Hill reports that a US oil and gas industry group is asking President Donald Trump to ease certain regulations it faces so that it can better distribute fuel amid the coronavirus outbreak. The Hill reports: “American Petroleum Institute (API) executives wrote to both President Trump and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) asking that they temporarily waive ‘non-essential compliance obligations’ such as record-keeping, training and other non-safety requirements.” DeSmog reports that Trump has “opened the floodgates for more offshore drilling” amid the outbreak.
Electric cars produce less CO2 than petrol vehicles, study confirms
Many publications report on a new study confirming that electric cars produce less CO2 than petrol vehicles in almost all world regions. A similar benefit was found for electric heat pumps, the Guardian says. The study, published in Nature Sustainability, carried out a “life cycle assessment” for electric and petrol vehicles. Such as assessment considers all of the emissions involved in the production and running of each type of vehicle, the Guardian says. BBC News adds: “Media reports have questioned if electric cars are really ‘greener’ once emissions from manufacture and electricity generation are counted. The research concludes that in most places electric cars produce fewer emissions overall – even if generation still involves fossil fuels.” There are “black spots” where electric cars are not better for the environment, however, Climate Home News reports. These include India and Poland, where drivers recharge batteries with electricity from high-polluting coal-fired power plants, CHN says. MailOnline, the i newspaper and BusinessGreen also have the story.
Scientists just discovered a massive new vulnerability in the Antarctic ice sheet
Several publications report on a study identifying a new point of major vulnerability in the Antarctic ice sheet. The Washington Post explains: “Denman glacier, in East Antarctica, is a 12-mile-wide stream of ice that flows over the deepest undersea canyon in the entire ice sheet before spilling out into the ocean…That deep canyon is a potential pathway for the ocean to infiltrate deep into Antarctica’s centre – posing a threat of significant sea level rise.” The glacier has begun to respond to climate change, the Washington Post adds: “It is creeping backward down a slope that plunges into these extreme depths…potentially igniting a feedback process that could ultimately unload trillions of tonnes of ice into the ocean.” BBC News adds: “Denman is one to watch for the future. If its ice were hollowed out, it would raise the global sea surface by 1.5 metres.” Bloomberg also covers the study.
Great Barrier Reef hit by third major bleaching event in five years
Australia’s Great Barrier Reef is currently experiencing its most widespread coral bleaching event on record, NBC News reports. “The entire Great Barrier Reef and some of its surrounding areas are facing an unprecedented period of heat stress in what is the third major bleaching event in only the past five years,” NBC News says. Satellite observations suggest that this year’s bleaching is “far more widespread across the reef compared to 2016 and 2017 but not as severe”, NBC News adds. Carbon Brief previously published an interactive feature documenting all of the Great Barrier Reef’s mass bleaching events.
Comment
Climate change is just as real as Covid-19. Now’s the last, best chance for our government to treat it that way
An editorial in the LA Times urges the US government to learn from the coronavirus pandemic to better tackle climate change. It says: “We’re not suggesting that climate change contributed to the coronavirus outbreak; there seems to be no direct link, although experts say a warming world could accelerate pandemics of insect-borne diseases (the coronavirus is spread person to person). But the global response to this pandemic does show that the world can come together to confront a shared threat. That could bode well for addressing climate change – if we treat it as seriously.” Elsewhere, an editorial in the Guardian urges the EU to “stick to the plan” for its green new deal. It says: “Difficult and almost impossibly daunting as it may seem, the world is faced with not one but two existential crises and two races against time: the coronavirus and the climate emergency.” An opinion piece EurActiv by Maria Mendiluce, of the We Mean Business Coalition, also urges Europe to include climate, healthy and economy in its Covid-19 stimulus package. In Bloomberg, Akshat Rathi argues that the issue of green stimulus packages is “a matter of timing”.
In the FT, editor at large Robert Shrimsley argues that once the pandemic is over, the UK public “may be newly attracted to the notion of collective effort”. He says: “Might this make easier the demands that must come to tackle climate change; or might everyone be too focused on getting their lives and the economy back on their feet?” In Axios, reporter Amy Harder counts 10 ways coronavirus is changing energy and climate change. And finally, the climate science blog RealClimate also explores the links between climate change and the pandemic.
Science
Net emission reductions from electric cars and heat pumps in 59 world regions over time
A switch to electric cars and heat pumps would produce fewer greenhouse gas emissions than fossil-fuel-based alternatives in 95% of the world today, a new study says. Using “integrated assessment model simulations with bottom-up life-cycle assessments”, the researchers analyse current and future emissions trade-offs in 59 world regions. The findings show that “even if future end-use electrification is not matched by rapid power-sector decarbonisation, it will probably reduce emissions in almost all world regions”.
The costs of achieving climate targets and the sources of uncertainty
New research aims to estimate the “cumulative abatement costs” of meeting the long-term temperature goals of the Paris Agreement. The authors “construct a metamodel from climate and integrated assessment models that assesses the emissions budget, costs and uncertainty sources of achieving temperature targets”. The findings suggest median abatement costs for the 2C and 1.5C limits of around US$15tn and US$30tn, respectively, but the authors note that the “estimates vary over a wide range” – by US$10–100tn for the 1.5C target, for example.
Coal-exit health and environmental damage reductions outweigh economic impacts
Phasing out coal is “a no-regret strategy for most world regions”, a new study suggests, even when only accounting for domestic benefits such as reducing air pollution and biodiversity loss and “neglecting the global benefits from slowing climate change”. The results suggest that these domestic effects “potentially eliminate much of the free-rider problem caused by the discrepancy between the national burden of decarbonisation costs and the internationally shared benefits of climate change impact mitigation”. A second Nature Climate Change paper finds that global concrete production contributes “approximately 7.8% of nitrogen oxide emissions, 4.8% of sulphur oxide emissions, 5.2% of particulate matter emissions smaller than 10 microns and 6.4% of particulate emissions smaller than 2.5 microns”.
Other stories
- Saudi Arabia’s radical new oil strategy (Project Syndicate)
- Parliament pension fund cuts fossil fuel investments (The Guardian)
- Palm oil demand to remain weak in first-half 2020 due to virus lockdowns (Reuters)
- Fully renewable electricity could destabilise the grid – but old coal plants may have a solution (The Conversation)
- Biodiversity must not be sacrificed to the energy transition (Foresight)
- Australia: Push to get taxpayer funds for Vales Point coal plant upgrade rejected (The Guardian)
- Carbon capture technology will be key in fighting climate change (CityAM)