Notes

Fatih Birol, executive director of the IEA, said: “This year’s record renewable energy additions are yet another sign that a new global energy economy is emerging. The high commodity and energy prices we are seeing today pose new challenges for the renewable industry, but elevated fossil fuel prices also make renewables even more competitive.”

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"Climate chaos certain if oil and gas mega-projects go ahead, warns IEA chief", Fatih Birol says ‘carbon bombs’ will not solve global energy crisis.

The world’s leading energy economist has warned against investing in large new oil and gas developments, which would have little impact on the current energy crisis and soaring fuel prices but spell devastation to the planet.

Fatih Birol, the executive director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), was responding to an investigation in the Guardian that revealed fossil fuel companies were planning huge “carbon bomb” projects that would drive climate catastrophe.

He said countries must seek to replace Russian oil and gas in the near term without damaging their long-term prospects.

“I understand some countries may look at new fossil fuels but they should remember it takes many years to start production,” he said. “[Such projects] are not the solution to our urgent energy security needs and they will lock in fossil fuel use.”

Nearly 200 carbon bomb projects are in planning, or have already started pumping, that will each result in at least 1bn tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over their lifetimes, equivalent to about 18 years of current global emissions.

Companies pursuing such developments could end up with uneconomic stranded assets, Birol warned. “If the world is to succeed in moving to net zero, these projects may fail to recover their upfront development costs.”

Soaring global energy prices have led governments to seek new sources of fossil fuels. “I do understand why countries are reacting like this,” he said. “But there is the issue of the time horizon.”

Big new exploratory projects for oil, gas and coal would take years to produce any fuel and could lock in high greenhouse gas emissions for decades, Birol warned.

“The most suitable projects are those with short lead times and quick payback periods, such as expanding production from existing fields,” he said. Using existing sources more efficiently would also help reduce emissions, Birol noted.

Birol said unlike in previous oil shocks, such as those of the 1970s, the world now had cheap alternatives available in the form of solar and wind power, which had plummeted in price. This should prompt governments and companies to push harder for renewable energy.

“I believe we have the chance to make this a historic turning point to a cleaner and more secure energy system,” he said. “This is the first time I have seen such momentum behind the change to clean energy.

“The world does not need to choose between solving the energy crisis and climate crisis, we can do both.”

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China installed the most new renewable energy capacity this year, and is now expected to reach 1,200GW of wind and solar capacity in 2026, four years earlier than its target of 2030. China is the world’s biggest carbon emitter, but the government was reluctant at Cop26 to commit to the strengthening of its emissions-cutting targets, which many observers had hoped for.

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The CEO of Enel Group is obviously right, the #global climate strategy must be based on what exists, not on distraction from reality. Thanks for these words Francesco Starace.

"The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has described #carboncapture and #storage as a suite of technologies focused on “capturing, transporting, and storing #CO2 emitted from #power plants and #industrial facilities.”

The idea is to stop CO2 “reaching the atmosphere, by storing it in suitable underground geological formations.”

The Commission has said the utilization of carbon capture and storage is “important” when it comes to helping lower greenhouse gas emissions. This view is based on the contention that a substantial proportion of both industry and power generation will still be reliant on fossil fuels in the years ahead.

Enel’s Starace, however, seemed skeptical about carbon capture’s potential.

“The fact is, it doesn’t work, it hasn’t worked for us so far,” he said. “And there is a rule of thumb here: If a technology doesn’t really pick up in five years — and here we’re talking about more than five, we’re talking about 15, at least — you better drop it.”

There are other #climate solutions, Starace said. “Basically, stop emitting carbon,” he said.

“I’m not saying it’s not worth trying again but we’re not going to do it. Maybe other industries can try harder and succeed. For us, it is not a solution.”

Carbon capture technology is often held up as a source of hope in reducing global greenhouse gas emissions, featuring prominently in countries’ climate plans as well as the net-zero strategies of some of the world’s largest #oilandgas companies.

Proponents of these technologies believe they can play an important and diverse role in meeting global #energy and #climategoals.

Climate researchers, campaigners and environmental #advocacy groups, however, have long argued that carbon capture and storage technologies prolong the world’s #fossilfuel dependency and distract from a much-needed pivot to #renewable alternatives."

#climateemergency #climateaction #sustainability #globalgoals

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Major funds turn to Emmi to identify climate risk in equities

James Eyers Senior Reporter

Dec 2, 2021 – 5.00am

Super funds including Hesta, Aware Super and Energy Super, along with fund managers Aurora, Perennial, Hyperion and Melior Investment Management, have turned to software developed by Emmi, a carbon auditing group backed by Catherine Brenner which has just raised seed capital to take it global.

The four-year-old start-up has built a database pulling together six years of carbon-related disclosures on 47,000 listed stocks. It allows investors to monitor carbon risks in particular equities, or whole portfolios up to the fund-of-funds level.

Asset consultant Jana is also introducing it clients to the system, which has used artificial intelligence tools to identify $43 trillion of manageable assets at risk during the energy transition with only 28 per cent of the world’s companies being net-zero compatible.

Emmi will launch a ‘Global Carbon Efficiency Rating’ (GCER) on Thursday, which can show investors where climate risks lurk. The rating is designed to encourage them to drill deeper, using a dozen financial metrics that create a picture of a company’s carbon position. It can project dividend constraints based on assumptions about carbon prices and glidepaths to net zero

Team Emmi, in Sydney this week: from L to R, Tim Samway, chairman; Michael Lebbon, co-founder and CEO; Catherine Brenner, director; Patrick Sieb, director; and Ben McNeil, co-founder and climate scientist. Jessica Hromas

Emmi, in which former AMP chairman Catherine Brenner is an investor and director, has received validation from UK-based venture capital firm Illuminate Financial. Illuminate backed a seed funding round that was up-sized from $1.5 million to $3.5 million and will help the software launch into Europe, the United States and Asia.

Emmi chairman Tim Samway, who has had a 25-year career in funds management and is also chairman of Hyperion Asset Management, said the start-up was influenced by a speech Mark Carney gave when he was governor of the Bank of England in 2015, where he described the “tragedy of the horizon”.

A short-term myopia, the problem is common in environmental economics: future generations are hit with costs that the current generation has no direct incentive to fix.

“The danger of the tragedy of the horizon is managers get focused on punching out the next quarter or year, and miss being positioned for the opportunities, or are positioned in a highly risky area without realising it,” Mr Samway said.

Many mid-sized companies have looming scope 3 emission risks unappreciated by the market, he added.

“Investment managers should be concentrating their capital on businesses that can use carbon most efficiently, and just having one metric is not enough,” he said. “The lack of forecast metrics is restricting decision-making.”

But over the past few years - in a trend that will only accelerate after COP26 - investors have become more aware of the risks from not engaging in debate about decarbonisation of the economy: managers who cannot prove ‘environmental, social and governance’ (ESG) credentials risk losing mandates to the managers who can.

Emmi can help analysts trying to get their head around carbon risk in listed equities, where challenges include greenwashing, superficial data and a lack of standardisation around corporate disclosures. This can make it hard to assess whether companies’ carbon-intensive assets are at risk of being stranded, or whether dividend streams are safe.

It provides a more data rich approach than ratings-based products like the ones provided by Sustainalytics, a Morningstar company, which are largely opinion-based.

In contrast, Emmi is partnering with the climate finance department of the University of Otago in New Zealand, which is applying its machine learning models to disclosures made by the entire global market of equities and deploying neural networks which can predict carbon emissions for any company based on their financial disclosures.

The models are crunching the publicly disclosed data on scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions, an improvement on existing ESG data sets from Institutional Shareholder Services or Refinitiv, which are lagging, incomplete and only cover around one-quarter of the listed universe. Trust scores and uncertainty analysis firms up confidence levels. The next step is developing relationships with individual companies to feed data into the system directly, to create a network effect.

Catherine Brenner backs carbon risk start-up Emmi

ANZ will keep lending to oil and gas

Unlike the ratings tools, Emmi allows asset managers to plug in assumptions about carbon prices or different scenarios for degrees of global warming. It can assist with developing hedging strategies, after COP26 made inroads on Article 6, an agreement to create a standardised voluntary market across countries.

Michael Lebbon, Emmi’s CEO and co-founder, who has worked in carbon markets for 15 years, said the company is “building the foundations of a fully-fledged carbon ecosystem that has the flexibility to solve many problems around carbon transition for investors”.

Because it has been built from the ground up, any changes in regulatory policy - whether from Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) or global prudential regulators - can easily be incorporated.

“Investors want to be able to justify decisions, validate, and have conviction in their assumptions and risk tolerances,” Mr Lebbon said.

“We provide transparent data to help do the heavy lifting for them, so they can start inquiring.”

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Norway is again showing that the all-electric car future is closer than people think, as November car sales in the country see internal combustion engine car sales crumble.

The Scandinavian country has been the leading market for electric vehicles in term of adoption per capita.

As many markets are introducing plans to “ban” gas-powered cars by 2030, 2035, and even later, Norway is aiming for each new car on the road to be all-electric by 2025, and it’s on pace to achieve that early.

The results this year have been nothing short of stunning, with the November numbers released today being no exception.

Norway is reporting 73.8% of sales last month coming from all-electric vehicles, and the number goes up to 94.9% when adding all vehicles with batteries.

Tesla is leading sales with both the best-selling and second best-selling vehicles in the market last month:

Tesla Model Y: 1,013 units

Tesla Model 3: 771 units

Volkswagen ID.4: 725 units

Audi Q4 e-tron: 661 units

Nissan Leaf: 655 units

Tesla is often a difference maker in the market because its volume comes by boat late in the quarter. Therefore, the month of December is expected to show even more EV sales in Norway with a larger Model 3 and Model Y shipment.

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There’s growing evidence that people and the planet are increasingly impacted by extreme events. According to the Fourth National Climate Assessment, published in 2018 by the U.S. Global Change Research Program, “more frequent and intense extreme weather and climate-related events, as well as changes in average climate conditions, are expected to continue to damage infrastructure, ecosystems, and social systems that provide essential benefits to communities.”

As the impacts of extreme events continue to mount, interest has grown in the scientific community to study whether specific extreme events can be partially attributed to human activities. With the help of climate models, scientists have conducted an impressive array of studies, looking for possible links between human activities and extreme events such as heat waves, rainfall and flooding events, droughts, storms, and wildfires.

A dry lake bed. Scientists are seeing an increase in the intensity of droughts. Credit: NOAA

Increasingly, they’re able to draw robust connections. There are reductions in the number of cold waves, increases in the number of heat waves on the ocean and on land, increases in the intensity of rainfall and drought, and increases in the intensity of wildfires. Despite the complications and uniqueness of individual events, scientists are finding significant human contributions to many of them.

An interactive map produced by CarbonBrief in 2020, shown below, provides visible evidence of these studies. On it, red dots represent different extreme events where scientists have found a substantial contribution from human activities – that is, human activities have made these events more frequent or more intense. For some of the blue dots, however (associated with rainfall events), scientists have yet to find a substantial human contribution.

Scientists have conducted hundreds of studies of extreme weather events and trends to date to determine whether they can be attributed to human activities.

In this screenshot of an interactive map produced by CarbonBrief, the various symbols represent different types of extreme weather. Red dots indicate extreme events where scientists found a link to human-caused climate change, while blue dots represent studies that found no link, and grey dots indicate studies where results were inconclusive.

The studies show particularly strong links between human activities and marine and land heat waves, intense precipitation, intense droughts, and wildfires. Credit: CarbonBrief

Events with a big thermodynamic component – that is, those where there’s a big impact because of heat – are being made more intense or more frequent because of human activities. In contrast, for extreme events that are more dependent on the dynamics of the atmosphere, the links to human activities are less clear.

Here are a few examples of extreme events where scientists are finding connections to human activities.

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Heat Waves

Map of air temperature anomalies across the continental United States and Canada on June 27, 2021, when the heat intensified and records started to fall in the Pacific Northwest. The map is derived from the Goddard Earth Observing System (GEOS) model and depicts air temperatures at about 6.5 feet (2 meters) above the ground.

Red areas are where air temperatures climbed more than 27 degrees Fahrenheit (15 degrees Celsius) higher than the 2014-2020 average for the same day. Credit: NASA Earth Observatory image by Joshua Stevens, using GEOS-5 data from the Global Modeling and Assimilation Office at NASA GSFC.

The continued increase in global mean temperatures in response to rising levels of greenhouse gases sets the expectation that we’ll see a corresponding increase in global heat extremes. Indeed, this is being borne out by daily temperature data across the globe. Studies of individual heat waves, such as the devastating event that took place in the Pacific Northwest this summer, suggest such events have become tens to hundreds of times more likely because of human-driven climate change.

A global examination of how often heat waves are occurring, as well as their cumulative intensity (how many days heat waves last above a certain temperature level), published last year by Australian scientists from the Climate Change Research Centre and the University of New South Wales Canberra, reveals a clear increase of more than two days per decade in the number of heat wave days since the 1950s.

Drought

In August 2020, about one-third of the continental United States was experiencing at least moderate levels of drought. This map shows surface soil moisture as measured by the U.S./German Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) satellites on August 10, 2020. The colors depict the wetness percentile; that is, how the levels of soil moisture compare to long-term records for the month.

Blue areas have more abundant water than usual, and orange and red areas have less. The darkest reds represent dry conditions that should occur only two percent of the time (about once every 50 years). In the American Southwest, scientists estimate human-caused climate change is making droughts 30 to 50 percent more intense.

NASA Earth Observatory image by Lauren Dauphin, using GRACE data from the National Drought Mitigation Center and data from the United States Drought Monitor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

The intensity of droughts is increasing. It’s not so much that scientists are seeing less rainfall, though that’s certainly happening in some places. Rather, in places where drought conditions exist, soils are becoming drier due to other factors, such as increased soil evaporation and decreased snowpack, which is reducing the amount of river flow during summer and fall. In the American Southwest, scientists estimate human-caused climate change is making droughts 30 to 50 percent more intense. 1

Precipitation

In August 2017, Hurricane Harvey moved through the Gulf of Mexico and stalled over Texas. This image depicts total rainfall estimates from NASA’s Integrated Multi-satellitE Retrievals for GPM (IMERG) data compiled for the period from August 23 to 31, 2017.

Harvey dropped up to 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain on some areas. IMERG Data are produced at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, using data from the satellites in the Global Precipitation Measurement mission or GPM Constellation, and is calibrated with measurements from the GPM Core Observatory as well as rain gauge networks around the world. Credit: NASA/JAXA, Hal Pierce

When it does rain, we’re also seeing trends in how much rain falls. A prime example is Hurricane Harvey, which caused devasting flooding in parts of Texas in 2017. The storm dropped up to 40 inches (102 centimeters) of rain on some areas.

In locations where scientists have data of sufficient quality, observations are showing an increasing intensity of rainfall. This is coincident with the observed overall increase in atmospheric water vapor (about four percent per degree Fahrenheit of warming). The more water vapor that air contains, the more it can rain out during convection or as air masses collide.

Persistent, heavy rain fell for several days in early autumn in New South Wales, Australia, leading to the region’s worst flooding in six decades.

The Australian Bureau of Meteorology reported that areas around Sydney and in the Hunter and Mid North Coast regions were drenched with 400 to 600 millimeters (16 to 24 inches) of rain across four days, with the most extreme totals approaching one meter.

On March 23, 2021, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on the NASA/USGS Landsat 8 satellite acquired a natural-color image of flooding in the Hawkesbury-Nepean River system along the western edge of Sydney. Credit: NASA/USGS

There have been hurricanes and intense storms throughout history, so what’s changed? Model studies confirm that, for instance, about 20 percent of Harvey’s rainfall was attributable to human-produced warming of the climate and waters in the Gulf of Mexico. 2, 3 More generally, climate simulations confirm that this increased intensity is a robust result.

It’s important to note that impacts from extreme events are mainly a question of thresholds – the amount of flooding needed to overtop a levee, or overwhelm storm drains – so every inch (of additional rain) counts. So, while total rainfall may increase only slightly, it’s the extreme precipitation events that disproportionately cause problems.

A flooded subway line. Impacts from extreme events are mainly a question of thresholds, such as the amount of flooding needed to flood a subway, so every inch of additional rain counts. Credit: Public Domain (CC0 1.0)/Pixabay

The Bottom Line

The combination of models and observations, informed by the unique view that space provides, imply that almost all the current multi-decadal trends we’re seeing in climate are the result of human activities. In addition, there’s increasing confidence that human-induced climate change is making extreme events statistically much more likely.

This doesn’t mean every extreme event has a substantial human contribution. But with extreme events such as heat waves, wildfires and intense precipitation, we’re seeing, in event after event, a very clear human fingerprint.

A strike team from Cal Fire watches as smoke from California’s Dixie Fire billows overhead in July 2021. Credit: CAL FIRE

References

Williams, A.P.; Cook, E.R.; Smerdon, J.E.; Cook, B.I.; Abatzoglou, J.T.; Bolles, K.; Baek, S.H.; Badger, A.M.; Livneh, B. 2020: Large contribution from anthropogenic warming to an emerging North American megadrought. Science. 368 (6488), 314-318, doi:10.1126/science.aaz9600.

van Oldenborgh, G.J.; van der Wiel, K.; Sebastian, A.; Singh, R.; Arrighi, J.; Otto, F.; Haustein, K.; Li, S.; Vecchi, G.; Cullen, H. 2017: Attribution of extreme rainfall from Hurricane Harvey. Environ. Res. Lett. 12. 124009.

Risser M.D.; Wehner M.F. 2017. Attributable human-induced changes in the likelihood and magnitude of the observed extreme precipitation during Hurricane Harvey. Geophys Res Lett. 44:12, 457–12, 464.

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Finding balances, paths of discussion, contributing to building peace and stability: I believe in France's role in the Middle East. Emmanuel Macron

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This article concludes that the size of scientific fields, such as number of papers, impedes the rise of new ideas. Examining 1.8 billion citations among 90 million papers across 241 subjects, it finds a deluge of papers does not lead to turnover of central ideas in a field, but rather to old ideas becoming more widely accepted. New papers containing potentially important contributions cannot garner field-wide attention through gradual processes of diffusion. These findings suggest fundamental progress is being stymied because quantitative growth of scientific endeavors—in number of scientists, institutes, and papers—is not balanced by structures fostering disruptive scholarship and focusing attention on novel ideas.

This is a problem because the current view of scientific progress suggests more is better. The more papers published in a field, the greater the rate of scientific progress; the more #researchers, the more ground covered. Even if not every article is earth shaking in its impact, each can contribute a metaphorical grain of sand to the sandpile, increasing the probability of an avalanche, wherein the scientific landscape is reconfigured and new paradigms arise to structure inquiry. The publication of more papers also increases the probability at least one of them contains an important #innovation. A disruptive new idea can destabilize the status quo, siphoning attention from previous work and garnering the lion’s share of new citations.

Policy reflects this more-is-better view. Scholars are evaluated and rewarded on #productivity. #Publishing many articles within short period of time is surest path to tenure and promotion. Quantity remains the measuring stick at #university and national levels, where comparisons focus on total number of #publications, patents, scientists, and dollars spent.

The article disputes the current thinking. It first lays out a theoretical argument for why too many papers published each year in a field can lead to stagnation rather than advance. The deluge of new papers may deprive reviewers and readers the cognitive slack required to fully recognize and understand novel ideas. Competition among many new ideas may prevent the gradual accumulation of focused attention on a promising new idea.

Second, the article shows data supporting the predictions of this theory. When the number of papers published per year in a #scientific field grows large, #citations flow disproportionately to already well-cited papers; the list of most-cited papers does not change; new papers are unlikely to ever become highly cited, and when they do, it is not through a gradual, cumulative process of attention gathering; and newly published papers become unlikely to #disrupt existing work. These findings suggest that the progress of large #science fields may be slowed, trapped in existing theories by the increasing number of papers.

#technology #technologies #venturecapital #research

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Study says 37 percent of heat-related deaths in summer are linked to climate change

The study is the first to measure globally increased health risks from historical global warming

Tropical nations are among the most vulnerable

By Claudia Caruana

[NEW DELHI] An international team of researchers has quantified how heat-related deaths are attributable to global warming, with Latin America and South-East Asia the worst hit.

Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera, lead author and head of the Climate Change and Health Research Group at the Institute of Social and Preventive Medicine, University of Bern, says across 43 countries an average of 37 percent of warm-season heat-related deaths could be attributed to anthropogenic climate change.

Increased mortality was evident on every continent, the highest being in Central and South America (up to 76 percent in Ecuador and Columbia) and South-East Asia (up to 61 percent).

Using empirical data gathered from 732 locations, researchers estimated the mortality burdens associated with additional heat exposure resulting from human-induced warming from 1991 to 2018.

The two-step study, led by the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Bern, Switzerland, was published in Nature Climate Change.

In the first step, time series regression techniques were used to observe temperature and mortality, with data collected through the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Research Network — a large weather and health data consortium.

In the second step, researchers used estimated exposure-response (response to an environmental condition within a given time) to compute heat-related mortality for each location over the 27-year period.

“We already have performed research on the impacts of heat, both on current times and future projections. However, in this analysis we decided to go further and quantify the percentage of the historical burden that can be directly attributed to human-induced climate change,” Vicedo-Cabrera says.

She adds: “We found larger percentages of the contribution of human-induced climate change in countries in South/Central America and West/South-East Asia – these countries suffered a larger increase in temperature and they also showed to be more vulnerable.”

“We found larger percentages of the contribution of human-induced climate change in countries in South/Central America and West/South-East Asia – these countries suffered a larger increase in temperature and they also showed to be more vulnerable.”

Ana Maria Vicedo-Cabrera, University of Bern

“Our findings support the urgent need for more ambitious mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize the public health impacts of climate change,” she emphasizes.

Antonio Gasparrini, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and senior author of the MCC Network tells SciDev.Net that the negative environmental and ecological signals of climate change are already well evidenced. “The increase in extreme weather events, the melting of the polar ice caps and sea-level rise, or coral bleaching have been frequently reported and linked to global warming,” he says.

In contrast, he adds, “most of the scientific studies assessing effects of climate change on human health focus on future impacts projected in the future. This is one of the few studies — the first with global scope — that measures increased health risks of climate change in the historical period, and the message is clear: climate change will not just have devastating impacts in the future, but every continent is already experiencing the dire consequences of human activities on our planet.”

Aaron Bernstein, interim director of The Center for Climate, Health, and the Global Environment, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, notes that the poorest, especially those in tropical nations, are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change.

“We knew that extreme heat results in early death. This showed us — at a global scale — how much climate change has grown risk of death from heat,” he says. “Where people die of heat has much to do with how much they can afford to protect themselves from it. The results in Asia, Southern Europe, and the global South make clear that health risks from climate are happening in places that historically have had little to do with causing climate change.”

Bernstein says the study suggests that the risk of heat death by climate change has grown by more than one-third in almost 30 years. “To make sure that this trend doesn’t continue, we must meet the scientific targets to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and get fossil fuels out of our economies. We also need to do much more to keep people safe from heat,” he adds.

Vicedo-Cabrera concludes: “Our findings suggest that more ambitious mitigation strategies and efficient adaptation measures are urgently needed to attenuate future impacts of climate change.”

The researchers acknowledged limitations in their work such as the inability to include large parts of Africa and South Asia, due to a lack of empirical data.

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We partnered with Nature Conservancy of Canada/Conservation de la nature Canada to conserve a 43 hectares property adjacent to Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta!

This project was possible thanks to funding from the Canada Nature Fund’s Natural Heritage Conservation Program (NHCP).

The conserved area expands the existing network of conservation lands adjacent to Waterton Lakes National Park, providing connected habitat to populations of wide-ranging mammals, including wolf, cougar, wolverine, Canada lynx and the grizzly bear, designated as a species of special concern under Canada’s Species at Risk Act.

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CLEANTECH

Blackrock CEO Larry Fink: The next 1,000 billion-dollar start-ups will be in climate tech

PUBLISHED MON, OCT 25 20213:29 PM EDTUPDATED MON, OCT 25 20214:35 PM EDT

Catherine Clifford @IN/CATCLIFFORD/@CATCLIFFORD

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KEY POINTS

Blackrock CEO Larry Fink said he thinks the next 1,000 unicorns, or start-ups worth at least $1 billion, will be involved in climate technology.

Organizations like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank “must play a critical role” in helping to ensure capital is invested in green climate technology in developing nations, Fink said.

Also, Fink said BlackRock would not divest from hydrocarbon companies.

Larry Fink, chairman and CEO of BlackRock.

Martin Simon | CNBC

Larry Fink, the CEO and Chairman of Blackrock, sees addressing climate change as a massive potential for new businesses.

“It is my belief that the next 1,000 unicorns — companies that have a market valuation over a billion dollars — won’t be a search engine, won’t be a media company, they’ll be businesses developing green hydrogen, green agriculture, green steel and green cement,” Fink said Monday at the Middle East Green Initiative Summit in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.

Climate change is a business opportunity, Fink said, because addressing it will require that virtually every segment of industry will have to be reinvented.

“Getting to net zero carbon emissions by 2050 is going to require a revolution in the production of everything we produce, and a revolution in everything we consume. The process of creating fuel, food and construction materials, with all the needs that we have as humanity, it all has to be reinvented,” Fink said. “And that’s going to require a large amount of investment, a large amount of ingenuity and a large amount of innovation

Fink has been publicly advocating the importance of considering sustainability when making finance decisions in his highly anticipated annual letters to CEOs.

Fink said Monday he sees demand from investors to put their money in climate technology.

“As an asset manager at the nexus between owners of capital and companies and assets we invest in on behalf of them, we see this playing out every day,” Fink said. “Asset owners are looking for investment opportunities that will come from this historic transition to net zero.”

Recently, Bill Gates publicly articulated his belief that there will be a significant amount of money made in climate tech. Gates, who is best known for co-founding Microsoft, invests in clean tech through his firm Breakthrough Energy Ventures, which also counts Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Ray Dalio as investors.

“There will be eight Teslas, 10 Teslas,” Gates said in an interview that aired Wednesday as part of the virtual SOSV Climate Tech Summit. “There will be, you know, Microsoft, Google, Amazon-type companies that come out of this space.”

In his talk in Saudi Arabia on Monday, Fink discussed the importance of capital being invested in green technology equitably around the globe.

Currently, climate friendly technologies are, generally speaking, more expensive than their carbon emitting counterparts.

“The price differences is sometimes described as a green premium. For example, sustainable aviation fuel costs at least 140% more than kerosene,” Fink said.

“Investments in low carbon projects in emerging markets will need to be more than a trillion dollars a year — more than six times the current rate of investments of about $150 billion a year,” Fink said.

To bring down the “green premium” and make clean technologies more affordable will require significant capital investments, especially and including in the developing world, Fink said.

Also, Fink said BlackRock would not divest from hydrocarbon companies.

“We are supportive of the hydrocarbon companies. And we believe they will be part of the solution of this green revolution of this new green technology,” Fink said.

In particular, hydrocarbon companies are “at the forefront of developing methods of carbon capture, and storage, which will play a major role in removing the carbon emissions we will continue to produce,” Fink said.

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Early this year, the World Bank named Iraq, Libya, Venezuela, Equatorial Guinea, Nigeria, Iran, Guyana, Algeria, Azerbaijan, and Kazakhstan as the most vulnerable oil-producing nations due to their high exposure to the oil and gas sector and relative lack of diversification. Latin American economies are, however, not much better off due to their high reliance on oil and lack of a clear roadmap in the global energy transition.

Venezuela, Ecuador, and Colombia are particularly dependent on oil exports and revenues. Bolivia and Trinidad depend heavily on natural gas. Meanwhile, the small nation of Guyana is poised to become the largest per-capita oil producer in the world, thanks to the swathe of oil discoveries made by ExxonMobil and its partners. Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico are not as fossil fuel dependent, but oil and gas still rank among the largest industries in each country in terms of fiscal revenues, exports, and investments.

With the recent rise in oil prices and the pressing need to rescue economies, many countries in the region are looking to develop their fossil fuels. To date, considerably more funding has been allocated to fossil fuels than renewable energy as part of recovery packages. While some national oil companies are improving their energy efficiency and reducing gas flaring, the region’s energy sector is not aligned with the Paris Agreement’s goals of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050.

A report by the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) shows that in scenarios consistent with the 1.5-degree goal, Latin American oil production needs to fall to less than 4 million barrels per day by 2035--60% below pre-pandemic levels. This would mean that up to 81% of their proven, probable, and possible oil reserves will not be used before 2035. The fiscal impact would be enormous: the region’s oil exporters could lose up to around US$ 3 trillion in royalties by 2035 if strong global climate action materializes. Latin American nations combined emit as much carbon dioxide (CO2) as Russia, the world’s fourth-largest CO2 emitter.

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"In this paper, we theoretically and experimentally examine leakage of H2, NG and H2/NG blends and provide experimental evidence that 100% H2 gas blends leak at the same rate as H2/NG mixtures and 100% NG in typical existing low-pressure NG infrastructure on the customer-side of the meter."

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The pipe is not the only roadblock in a potential switch to hydrogen ... also centrifugal compressors are not compatible when going above 20% blending due to difference in density and because the same power will therefore require different gas flows ... Not worth the effort to waste this money on keeping a gas distribution alive. Better to invest in improving and upgrading elec distribution ...

.....

In a warehouse laboratory in Berkeley, California, Nicholas Flanders stands in front of a shiny metal box about the size of a washing machine. Inside is a stack of metal plates that resemble a club sandwich – only the filling is a black polymer membrane coated with proprietary metal catalyst. “We call the membrane the black leaf,” he says.

Flanders is the co-founder and CEO of Twelve, a startup founded in 2015, which received a $57m funding boost in July. It aims to take air – or, to be more precise, the carbon dioxide (CO2) in it – and transform it into something useful, as plants also do, eliminating damaging emissions in the process. Taking the unwanted gas wreaking havoc on our climate and using only water and renewable electricity, Twelve’s metal box houses a new kind of electrolyser that transforms the CO2 into synthesis gas (syngas), a mix of carbon monoxide and hydrogen that can be made into a range of familiar products usually made from fossil fuels. Oxygen is the only by-product. This August, the pilot scale equipment made the syngas that went into what Flanders claims is the world’s first carbon neutral, fossil-free jet fuel produced by electrolysing CO2. “This is a new way of moving carbon through our economy without pulling it out of the ground,” he says.

.....

Ottawa to hike federal carbon tax to $170 a tonne by 2030 | CBC News Loaded

The price of gas at the pump will increase by at least 37.57 cents a litre as a result

John Paul Tasker · CBC News · Posted: Dec 11, 2020 12:25 PM ET | Last Updated: December 11

Federal government announces new climate change plan

12 months ago

Duration2:02The federal government has announced its new climate change plan which is built on a steep rise in the carbon tax over the next decade. 2:02

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau today released the government's strategy to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2030 — and its centrepiece is a gradual hike in the federal carbon tax on fuels to $170 a tonne by that year.

Beyond the carbon tax hike, the government is promising $15 billion in new spending on climate initiatives over the next 10 years — money earmarked for improvements to the country's electric vehicle charging infrastructure, rebates and tax write-offs for zero-emissions vehicles and funding for home retrofits, among dozens of other proposed policies.

The carbon tax will increase significantly from its current level — the tax is just $30 a tonne this year — as part of a push to meet and surpass Canada's ambitious goal of reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by 30 per cent below 2005 levels by 2030.

In real terms, that would mean lowering GHG emissions from 732 megatonnes to 513 megatonnes by 2030, a target initially pitched by the former Conservative government and agreed to by former environment minister Catherine McKenna at the Paris climate talks in 2015. With the plan announced Friday, the government now forecasts national emissions will hit 503 megatonnes by 2030.

"Simply put, it would be much harder to cut pollution if it was free to pollute. The principle is straightforward: a carbon price establishes how much businesses and households need to pay for their pollution. The higher the price, the greater the incentive to pollute less, conserve energy and invest in low-carbon solutions," says the government's new climate plan, titled, "A Healthy Environment and A Healthy Economy."

The tax already was expected to hit $50 a tonne in 2022. With this new initiative, the tax will now increase by $15 a tonne each year for the next eight years in order to wean consumers off fossil fuels in favour of cleaner energy sources. Pump prices are expected to increase by 37.57 cents a litre by 2030 as the carbon tax rises. (CBC/Radio-Canada)

The tax hike will result in higher costs for consumers when they buy gasoline. The price at the pump will increase by 37.57 cents a litre by 2030 as a result of this new plan, and the cost of light fuel oil for home heating, natural gas and propane will rise as well.

To compensate for the cost-of-living increase, the government said it will continue to return most of the money collected by this program through rebates.

Under the current system, the money is returned to individuals and families annually through the 'Climate Action incentive payment' when they file tax returns. Starting in 2022, the carbon pollution rebate payments will be distributed on a quarterly basis.

The average family of four in Ontario will collect roughly $2,018 a year in climate rebates by 2030.

The cheques will be higher in provinces like Alberta and Saskatchewan — $3,242 for a family of four in Alberta and $3,829 for a similar family in Saskatchewan — because the people in those provinces generate more carbon emissions per capita.

The carbon tax and the court

Ottawa imposed the carbon tax on jurisdictions that have so far refused to implement their own carbon pricing scheme: Alberta, Ontario, Manitoba and Saskatchewan. The constitutionality of the federal carbon tax is still before the Supreme Court of Canada.

Trudeau dodged questions Friday about what might become of his government's climate plan if the court decides Ottawa doesn't have the right to impose such a tax on provinces.

"Unfortunately, there are some jurisdictions that still don't understand that the only way to build an economy for the future is to protect the environment at the same time. There are still some places in this country that want to make pollution free again," Trudeau said at a press briefing Friday.

Supporters of a carbon tax say the threat of climate change demands action and a revenue-neutral plan of this sort is the best way to shift patterns of consumption away from GHG-emitting fossil fuels. All of the money that Ottawa collects from tax is returned to the provinces where it originated through the rebates.

Opponents fear a levy of this sort will be economically damaging and too punitive for consumers and small businesses.

Trudeau said Canada must take this sort of aggressive action now to stave off the worst impacts of global warming.

Global emissions will need to reach "net zero" around mid-century to limit global temperature increases to 1.5 C, according to the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The 1.5 C target was a goal of the Paris climate accord, signed by almost all countries, including Canada.

Reaching "net-zero" by 2050 would mean that emissions produced 30 years from now would be fully absorbed through actions that scrub carbon from the atmosphere — such as planting trees — or technology, such as carbon-capture and storage systems.

Trudeau said that just as Canadians have relied on scientists to help the country out of the COVID-19 pandemic, they must also heed their advice on the threat of climate change. He said science isn't "a pick-and-choose buffet."

"If we trust scientists with our health, as we do, then we must also trust their research and their expertise when it comes to other existential threats and that includes climate change," he said.

"There is no vaccine against a polluted planet. It's up to us to act because there is a real cost to pollution."

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Ontario Premier Doug Ford, an ardent critic of carbon pricing, said today he was deeply concerned by Trudeau's plan to hike the carbon tax, saying such a sizeable increase could be economically devastating.

Ford said there was no mention of the tax hike during the first ministers' meeting yesterday and he did a double-take this morning when he saw reports that the existing tax would more than triple over the next 10 years.

"I can't understand for the life of me why anyone would want to put a burden on the backs of the hard-working people in this province. This carbon tax is going to be the worst thing you'll ever see," he said, predicting price hikes on "everything" as increased transportation costs get passed on to consumers.

"God bless the environment, don't get me wrong ... but I've never, ever been more disappointed in an announcement ever since I've been in politics," he said. "We're competing for jobs up here. We're doing everything we can to create an environment for people to thrive, and all of a sudden a sledgehammer comes and hits you over the head."

Environmental groups, meanwhile, welcomed Trudeau's pledge to aggressively price emissions to help Canada reach its reduction targets.

Greenpeace called the plan "serious and well-thought out," although it still called on Trudeau to commit to completely "decarbonizing" the country. Climate Action Network Canada called the new pricing regime "essential" as it advocated more spending on climate initiatives. Clean Prosperity called the $170 a tonne carbon tax a "bold, brave and wise move will set Canada on the path to decarbonization."

The government also is moving ahead with a new clean fuel standard — a plan to reduce the carbon intensity of fuels and energy use in Canada — but is dropping a push to put similar regulations on gaseous and solid fuels.

The Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers (CAPP), the lobby group that represents oil and gas interests, has warned the new standard will drive significant cost increases for energy products like diesel, gasoline and natural gas, while environmentalists say the new regulations will prompt a switch to low-carbon fuels by setting limits on emissions.

The government says it will spend $2.6 billion over seven years, starting in 2020-21, to help homeowners improve the energy efficiency of their homes through about 700,000 home improvement grants worth up to $5,000 each. The government also says it will pay for one million free EnerGuide energy assessments.

A construction worker shingles the roof of a new home in a housing development in Ottawa on Monday, July 6, 2015. The federal government says it will be offering Canadians access to home retrofitting grants as part of its net-zero strategy. (Sean Kilpatrick/Canadian Press)

"Energy efficient homes support long-term climate objectives and make homes more comfortable, while lowering monthly energy costs for homeowners and renters. Accelerating action on home retrofits will create new demand for jobs," the plan reads.

The government also is promising to invest $287 million over two years to continue an existing program that provides incentives to people who buy zero-emissions vehicles. The program provides a rebate of up to $5,000 to consumers who buy "light duty zero-emissions" vehicles.

Citing Ford's recent investment in the Oakville, Ont. vehicle manufacturing plant, the government said Canada is well-positioned to become a electric vehicle manufacturing hub because of its abundant natural resources.

"Canada is one of the only jurisdictions in the western hemisphere that has reserves of all the minerals required to produce advanced batteries for electric vehicles, and fourteen of the nineteen metals and minerals required to produce solar panels are found or produced in Canada," the plan reads.

Over the next four years, the government also plans to spend $964 million to modernize the country's electricity grid to make it more conducive to renewable energy sources. Ottawa says it wants provinces with "abundant clean hydroelectricity" — B.C., Manitoba and Quebec — to share with parts of the country that are "more dependent on fossil fuels for electricity generation."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

John Paul Tasker

Parliamentary Bureau

J.P. Tasker is a senior writer in the CBC's parliamentary bureau in Ottawa. He can be reached at john.tasker@cbc.ca.

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Jordon Wallace - independent climate researcher Nanaimo, British Columbia M +1 250 714 8451 jordon@climateresearch.net Facebook Linkedin