24 March 2016, EurekAlert, Insurance for an uncertain climate. In December, negotiators at the Paris climate meeting adopted insurance as an instrument to aid climate adaptation. Earlier in the year, the leaders of the G7 pledged to bring climate insurance to 400 million uninsured individuals in poor countries by 2020. In a new article in the journal Nature Climate Change, experts from the London School of Economics and Political Science, Deltares and International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis welcome these developments, but also lay out the difficulties that policymakers will face in turning the ideas into action. They warn that ill-designed and poorly implemented insurance instruments could fail to reach the goals of negotiators, or worse, prove detrimental to the very people they are intended to protect. Swenja Surminski, Senior Research Fellow the Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the London School of Economics and Political Science led the article. She says, “Poor communities are much more impacted by extreme weather such as floods, droughts, and heatwaves. Rather than ad-hoc and unpredictable payments after these events, insurance approaches can be set up in advance of these impacts, and be more efficient and provide better support to these vulnerable people.” Bayer was one of the first to propose insurance as a mechanism to reimburse people for the impacts of climate change, and to examine the potential benefits and trade-offs of such policies. She says, “With the new momentum we have for these policies, we now have the opportunity to put the right insurance systems in place.” While insurance could provide funding to help people in need, the researchers point out several ways that such mechanisms could fail: Read More here
Yearly Archives: 2016
24 March 2016, Climate News Network, Humans tilt climate books out of balance. Greenhouse gases from cattle, fertilisers, manure and agriculture mean that human activities have turned the land and soil into part of the global warming machine. In the great book-keeping of climate change, scientists have just discovered a big mistake. They have been wrong, they now think, to count on the mountains, the plains, the forests and the grasslands as an agency that slows climate change by absorbing carbon dioxide. It does absorb carbon dioxide. But the chilling news is that the soil itself may be making the world warmer. That is because humans have changed the way the landscape and its living things works, and now – thanks to those other greenhouse gases, methane and nitrous oxides, from cattle, fertilisers, manure and agriculture – the terrestrial biosphere is actually accelerating climate change. Twenty-three scientists from 16 laboratories and institutions report in Nature journal that they re-examined the sums on which climate forecasts depend. They concluded: “We find that the cumulative warming capacity of concurrent biogenic methane and nitrous oxide emissions is a factor of about two larger than the cooling effect resulting from the global land carbon dioxide uptake from 2001 to 2010.” Read More here
24 March 2016, Renew Economy, Five things we learned about Malcolm’s attempts not to be Tony. Plus ça change. The more it changes, the more it stays the same. And that ageless expression seems to apply with Malcolm Turnbull’s desperate efforts to convince people that he is not Tony Abbott, that he is not the sword carrier for Abbott’s policies as his predecessor suggests, and that he is not a slave to the conservative rump of his party. This week, Turnbull turned to clean energy to show that his spots are not the same as Abbott’s. If publicity and headlines are the main indicators, it has been a smashing success. Mainstream media has lapped it up: “PM’s climate of change,” hoorayed Fairfax. “Coalition saves two clean energy funds,” chorused the ABC. “PM tilts at green windmills,” booed the Murdoch media. (That editorial is probably worth a complete dissection on its own, so many errors, misconceptions and prejudices in such a few short paragraphs, but time is not infinite). But what really happened this week? In the face of opposition in the Senate, Turnbull bowed to the inevitable and decided to keep the Clean Energy Finance Corporation. That is good. And that is change. The CEFC – once decried by its newest biggest supporter, environment minister Greg Hunt as a great big green hedge fund – has been behind many of the most important new clean energy projects and initiatives in the country, underwriting finance for large-scale solar projects, innovative solar thermal installations, battery storage trials, and any amount of energy efficiency and rooftop solar support. And in doing this it has also delivered a significant return to the government. Hunt should now feel free to turn up at one of its project openings. Turnbull then took $1 billion out of the CEFC kitty and rebadged it with his favourite buzzword, “innovation” and claimed the creation of a “new” thing called the “Clean Energy Innovation Fund”. But it does not represent new funding. Read More here
23 March 2016, Energy Post, Dispelling the nuclear baseload myth: nothing renewables can’t do better. The main claim used to justify nuclear is that it’s the only low carbon power source that can supply ‘reliable, base load electricity. But not only can renewables supply baseload power, they can do something far more valuable: supply power flexibly according to demand, writes Mark Diesendorf, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at UNSW Australia. That, says Diesendorf, makes nuclear power really redundant. We have all heard the claim. We need nuclear power because, along with big hydropower, it’s the only low carbon generation technology that can supply ‘reliable baseload power’ on a large scale. For example, the UK Energy Secretary Amber Rudd, attempted to justify the decision to build the proposed Hinkley Point C nuclear power station on the grounds that “we have to secure baseload electricity.” Similarly, former Australian Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane recently claimed at a uranium industry conference: “Baseload, zero emission, the only way it can be produced is by hydro and nuclear.” Underlying this claim are three key assumptions. First, that baseload power is actually a good and necessary thing. In fact, what it really means is too much power when you don’t want it, and not enough when you do. What we need is flexible power (and flexible demand too) so that supply and demand can be matched instant by instant. Read More here