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Category Archives: Fossil Fuel Reduction

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24 June 2015, Reuters, Dutch government ordered to speed up greenhouse gas cuts: A district court ordered the Dutch government on Wednesday to cut greenhouse gas emissions faster than currently planned in a rare use of the legal system to curb global warming. A judge in The Hague said the state must “ensure that the Dutch emissions in the year 2020 will be at least 25 percent lower than those in 1990” as the Netherlands’ fair share to avert more heat waves, floods and rising sea levels.

Based on current government policy, the Netherlands will achieve a reduction of 17 percent at most in 2020, which is below a norm of 25-40 percent for developed countries, a summary of the ruling said. The decision was a victory for environmental group Urgenda Foundation, which filed the lawsuit on behalf of nearly 900 Dutch citizens. “The parties agree that the severity and scope of the climate problem make it necessary to take measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” the summary said. Some saw the ruling as a landmark, if it ends up being binding. “This could be the first judicial warning shot to governments around the world,” said Bill Hare, of independent research group Climate Analytics. Read More here

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21 June 2015, The guardian, Catch them if you can: the pragmatic ways to cut carbon emissions: Within five years Britain could have three power stations that capture around 90% of their carbon before it reaches the atmosphere. And in the US, a synthetic resin could absorb CO 2 far more efficiently than trees. We examine the technologies involved in the battle against climate change. With an immense scientific consensus that manmade greenhouse gases cause climate change, there is pressure to reduce carbon emissions, but little sign that governments can reach a binding agreement to cut back sufficiently. The answer may be a new material that is a thousand times more efficient at capturing carbon dioxide than trees.

This substance, a synthetic resin, is a part of diverse attempts to make carbon capture and storage (CCS) practical. Mercedes Maroto-Valer, professor of sustainable energy engineering at Heriot-Watt University, defines CCS as “a portfolio of technologies that aim to separate carbon dioxide from other gases, then capture and store them in a permanent situation”. CCS is a pragmatic solution, recognising that we will continue to emit CO2, and so need to remove the gas from the atmosphere and store it away where it can do no harm. There are two primary strategies for capturing carbon dioxide. The natural mechanism is absorption by plants, which use CO2 to build their carbon-based structures, emitting oxygen as waste. Trees absorb a considerable amount of carbon and lock it away for much longer than smaller plants. However, trees take decades to reach a state when they absorb significant quantities of carbon. Read More here

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19 June 2015, Renew Economy, Queensland pushes through massive rises in fixed electricity charges. A victory for McMansions? Fixed charges to households surge, while small business may pay two-thirds of their bill on fixed charges, as government owned utilities move against solar and energy efficiency. The Queensland government managed to get some sympathetic coverage on the ABC and in the local mainstream media – and even some specialist websites who should know better – about the supposed “fall” in electricity bills in the upcoming year. But what they did not mention – presumably because it wasn’t in the Queensland Competition Authority press release – was a huge jump in fixed charges that will penalise households and small business, and reduce the incentive to install rooftop solar.

Fixed charges for households will jump more than 20 per cent to $1.07 a day, meaning that with GST, households will pay a minimum $428 a year on fixed charges, no matter how little electricity they consume. The consumption rate has been cut to 22c/kWh but this means nothing for households that consume around 7kWh a day – pensioners and single person households for instance, and others who pay attention to energy efficiency. Their annual bill will now be more than $1,050 – which equates to a rate of 42c/kWh, probably the highest in the world. And their ability to offset that with solar is greatly reduced because so much of the cost is unavoidable. But small businesses – butchers, restaurants, takeaway food installations, or anyone using refrigeration and cooking – face an even greater proportion of fixed charges under the new scheme. Read More here

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15 June 2015, Climate News Network, Long-lived CO2 warms world for many millennia. The heat given off by burning fossil fuels warms the Earth far less than the carbon dioxide emitted, which research shows traps the heat in the atmosphere for thousands of years.  Gun the engine, and the ignition of fossil fuel produces not just working energy but heat that dissipates quickly into the atmosphere. But it also produces carbon dioxide that dissipates into the atmosphere. And in less than two months, according to new research, that pulse of carbon dioxide will have engendered more heat for the planet than the original touch of the accelerator. Xiaochun Zhang and Ken Caldeira of the Carnegie Institution at Stanford, California, in the United States report in Geophysical Research Letters that the carbon dioxide warming exceeds the heat released by a single act of oil combustion in just 45 days. Light the gas in the cooking stove and the heating cost to the planet is exceeded in 59 days. Burn a lump of coal, and the atmosphere feels the greater heat in just 34 days. And in all three cases, the pulses of carbon dioxide will go on heating the planet – and on, and on. “Ultimately, the warming induced by carbon dioxide over the many thousands of years it remains in the atmosphere would exceed warming from combustion by a factor of 100,000 or more,” said Professor Caldeira. Read More here

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