Tag: Carbon Emissions

When global problems affect your local air

by Maria Restrepoin More news

In our day-to-day life we have all noticed that the morning after heavy rain it’s usually a clear and fresh morning with low levels of airborne pollution. Wind conditions usually blow pollution out of the cities and those peaks of harmful air are mostly in days with no air flow or precipitation.  Empirically we have experienced the fact that weather patterns have an effect on dissipating air pollution or not.

This past week, researchers from the Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology –Atlanta, published a paper in Science Advances on the effects of arctic meltdown on air pollution in China. The research clearly shows the challenges faced by China to address its air quality problems. Until now, most critics have focused on the need for China to control its emissions and to strike a healthier balance between development and environment degradation. Authorities in China have an increasing interest in controlling air quality, have implemented emission caps and most importantly are now the country with the largest production of clean energy. However, air quality is far from improved and pollution has not decreased as was hoped. The relevance of this research is that it affirms, following weather modelling analysis, that in the Eastern Plains of China, emissions’ control is important but is not enough to improve air quality. In fact, major global climate change problems are playing a significant role in promoting the accumulation of air pollution in this region.

“The ventilation is getting worse,” said study author Yuhang Wang, an atmospheric scientist at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta to The Guardian “We think climate change, as it is driving rapid warming of the Arctic, is having a large effect on pollution in China.” “The very rapid change in polar warming is really having a large impact on China, emissions in China have been decreasing over the last four years, but the severe winter haze is not getting better. Mostly that’s because of a very rapid change in the high polar regions where sea ice is melting and snowfall is increasing,” he said. “This keeps cold air from getting into the eastern parts of China, where it would flush out air pollution.”

This is a scientific example of how weather conditions affect the build-up of air pollution in a certain place. This helps us further connect the dots between the bad air quality that harms our health and global problems such as green-house gas emissions, climate change and melting of the Arctic sea ice.Emissions of greenhouse gases from human activity cause between half to two-thirds of the fall in summer ice. Scientists predict that if the Arctic sea ice melting continues along with a correspondent increase in Eurasian snowfall, extremely poor ventilation conditions will occur and air quality control will prove increasingly challenging to implement unless greenhouse gas emissions are reduced not only in China but globally. The National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) reported in February 2017 that: “Antarctic sea ice is nearing its annual minimum extent and continues to track at record low levels for this time of year. On February 13, Antarctic sea ice extent dropped to 2.29 million square kilometers (884,000 square miles), setting a record lowest extent in the satellite era.”  

Air pollution affects us ALL and is one more environmental problem that is made worse by climate change!

Sources:
The Guardian – ‘Airpocalypse’ smog events in China linked to melting ice cap, research reveals
Science advances – Arctic sea ice, Eurasia snow, and extreme winter haze in China
Science – Why is China’s smog so bad? Researchers point far away to a melting Arctic

Humans causing up to two-thirds of Arctic summer sea ice loss, study confirms

 

Crop Burning and Air Pollution

by Maria Restrepoin More news

From the haze suffered by Singapore every year to the increasing air pollution in rural Asia and Africa and the recent spike of pollution in New Delhi, crop burning is the main culprit in the former and a key contributor in the latter.

Recent research in Europe has shown that smoke from wildfires, agricultural management and prescribed burns raises PM2.5 concentrations and other pollutants even in areas hundreds and thousands of miles from the physical fire. Researchers from Finland estimated that fires between 2005 and 2008 in Europe alone caused more than 2500 premature deaths. The main concern with these landscape fires is that they affect the immediate community but the air quality is detrimentally affected even thousands of miles away, depending on the atmospheric conditions.

This is exactly the case in Singapore, which is regularly affected by smoke haze due to regional forest fires,  from agricultural management in Indonesia. Made particularly bad due to the peat soils in the palm plantations which release massive amounts of carbon into the atmosphere. The haze is aggravated by poor precipitation and changes in wind direction. Similarly,  New Delhi sees spikes in air pollution due to a mix of crop burning from the adjacent region, excessive firecracker usage during Diwali celebration and specific atmospheric conditions.

According to the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), in 2000 it was estimated that 350 million hectares of land were affected by fire. Generally, most fires are caused by people for various agricultural and industrial purposes. FAO considers that greater awareness is needed on the economic and social consequences of crop burning and how to effectively manage it for both individuals and governments.

Although, according to FAO, the region most affected by fires is Africa, Asia has its fair share. The Association of South-East Asian countries (ASEAN) agreed in 2003 on a ‘zero burning policy’ for large scale agricultural businesses. The agreement, which was not signed by Indonesia, included sharing of ‘zero burning’ agricultural techniques and practices, management tools and other mechanisms to ensure ‘zero burning’ practices by large companies. However, the agreement acknowledged that small farmers could not cope with the costs associated with undertaking ‘zero burning’ practices. More than ten years from that agreement, we now know that little has been done for its successful implementation.

“The lack of government transparency makes it very hard for independent monitoring: concession maps are incomplete, data is lacking and we clearly have weak enforcement of laws,” said Greenpeace South East Asia forest campaigner Yuyun Andrade.

Indonesia has almost 15m hectares of peatland today, between 2000 and 2010 peatland declined by 41% in Sumatra, 90% of that deforestation is believed to have been carried out by palm-oil firms in a region with no monitoring system. Burning peat forests can have a very damaging effect, up to 200 times more than burning any other vegetation.

More precise data and more analysis of data is required to better understand how countries can effectively control crop burning in Asia.

Sources:

Environment Health Perspectives – Fallout from European Fires: An Estimate of Premature Deaths Attributable to Vegetation Smoke
DownToEarth – Crop Burning: Punjab and Haryana’s killer fields
NASA – NASA Sees India’s Punjab State’s Agricultural Fires
National Bureau of Economic Research – Agricultural Fires and Infant Health
Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations – Fire management
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) – Guidelines for the Implementation of the ASEAN Policy on Zero Burning
BBC – South East Asia haze: What is slash-and-burn?
The Economist – Despite tough talk, Indonesia’s government is struggling to stem deforestation

Policies: the debated carbon tax

by Maria Restrepoin More news

Following COP21 and the Paris Agreement governments representing 96% of global greenhouse emissions (GHG) and 98% of the world’s population committed to reduce their emissions. They now need to ensure businesses and individuals use energy with less GHG emissions.  

Currently there are two market-based options to encourage lower emissions based on higher costs for polluting industries: the carbon tax and cap-and-trade schemes (ETS). The carbon tax is a levy on the production, distribution and use of fossil fuels based on the amount of carbon emitted in that specific process, which is then translated into a tax on electricity, natural gas or oil. This system is built to encourage businesses and individuals to consume less energy or do it more efficiently, the more electricity they use the higher its cost. Therefore, the carbon tax policy encourages the use of less electricity by improving efficiency and at the same time it also makes green energy more price-competitive.

How do governments price carbon?

They put together all the costs caused by carbon emissions, such as healthcare costs, agricultural costs and others; and they tie them to the carbon used per year. It makes those responsible for the emission, responsible for the external costs of that emission too, and signals the need to reduce emissions or pay for it.

Technically, we have advanced considerably in carbon tax policies. The Paris Agreement has been a stepping stone to increase carbon pricing initiatives across the globe, in its Article 6 the Agreement provides a basis to facilitate carbon pricing. And according to the World Bank, 40 countries and more than 20 cities, states and provinces use carbon pricing –they account for 13% of annual global greenhouse emissions. Now 100 countries additional –accounting for 58% of global GHG- are planning or considering carbon pricing policies. Many of these initiatives are at a very early stage, but nonetheless they have taken that positive step which can then be the beginning of a more aggressive pricing strategy. The most promising advance for this coming year is that China is expected to implement its ETS. This would be the largest increase of GHG covered by carbon pricing.

Summary map of existing, emerging and potential regional, national and subnational carbon pricing initiatives (ETS and tax) from World Bank. State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2016 (October)

However, the reality of many regions of the world and notably of Asia shows just how challenging this can be and why these policy efforts are sometimes not felt in the actual air we breathe.

In Asia, change could translate to significantly lower global carbon emissions. Because Asia is the largest emitter – 33% of the global emissions are generated in Asia where China alone uses more coal than the rest of the world combined, any successful implementation of policies can have a huge impact globally. However, the challenge is big. India, Indonesia, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other Asian countries have a growing demand for electricity to meet their developmental needs -expected to double by 2030- and plans for this expansion rely heavily on coal fueled electricity. Nonetheless, China has a great interest to change their carbon emission trends and has set the target to peak carbon emissions by 2030 and increasing the non-fossil fuel to 20% by 2030. Similarly, India, Vietnam and Bangladesh are actively working to increase the use of renewables in the energy mix. The question is how can the solar energy or wind energy projects in all these countries be scaled-up to represent a larger portion of the national energy mix.

What can businesses and individuals do?

A quote by an American Author seems relevant at this point.

“I am only one, but I am one. I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” 
― Edward Everett Hale

Strive for energy efficiency because you can!

Sources:

HowStuffWorks – How Carbon Tax Works
The World Bank – Pricing Carbon
The World Bank – Asia Can Help Lead the Way to Climate Change
The World Bank – State and Trends of Carbon Pricing 2016
Ministry for the Environment – Ministerial Declaration on Carbon Markets
Climate Central – The West’s Largest Coal Plant May Close.It’s a Big Deal.

Asia’s latest eclectic response to carbon emissions

by Maria Restrepoin More news

Asia is at a crossroads between economic development and environmental protection on many fronts. Today we would like to highlight the two extreme positions that coexist in Asia, from a new South Korean president that has ensured the closure of coal fired plants to a plan to open 10 new such plants in Myanmar, already one of the most polluted countries in the world!

The Asian continent accounts for approximately 41% of carbon emissions, even if a per capita basis, carbon emissions are still low due to its large population size. What is evident from this is the potential for the current percentage of carbon emissions to increase dramatically with the expected economic development in the Region.

While some actions are being taken to clean the air…

Only in the last month we’ve seen news showing the disparity in carbon policies in the region. On one hand, China is rolling out the largest investment in solar and wind power in order to reduce coal powered electricity and has vowed to reduce the steel production capacity (a highly polluting industry) by 50 million tonnes. Furthermore, in March, China announced the closure of 103 coal power plants. This will have a major impact on improving regional air quality.

In this same line, Moon Jae-in – South Korea’s new president, started on the front foot fighting air pollution and ordered the shutdown of ten old coal power plants to address public protests. They will be temporarily shut down and by the end of his term, they are expected to be permanently shut down.

…other actions are being taken to increase power generation

On the other side, there are countries like Myanmar which have made public their plans to open 10 new coal-fired plants. The air quality in Myanmar is among the dirtiest in the world with six cities with higher counts of PM10 than Beijing! It is true that the country is currently only providing energy to less than 30% of the population and increased power is required to attract foreign investment, but it is also true that there are plans to build a hydroelectric dam to harness Irrawady’s river power, power which will be sold almost entirely to China (90%).

Another example of this situation is Bangladesh, which is constructing a power plant on the edge of the world’s largest mangrove: the Sundarbans. This project threatens the UNESCO-protected mangroves that are a barrier against storms and cyclones and has the potential to severely affect human health from air pollution, water pollution and storm emergencies. Campaigners have protested heavily to halt the construction.

Regional solutions?

Participants in the recent Belt&Road initiative have called on the need to implement in full the Paris Agreement. However, Asia faces enormous challenges and opportunities that would most benefit from increased regional co-operation in this initiative.

Increased knowledge about air pollution and its health consequences have sparked actions in the region to reduce the number of existing coal-fired plants. The more we talk about this, the more we can put pressure on governments to improve air quality in Asia.

Sources:
The Nation – Myanmar coal plant growth could kill 280,000
IOPscience – Regional carbon fluxes from land use and land cover change in Asia, 1980–2009
The Citizen – Bangladesh coal plant could cause 6,000 early deaths
Our World (by United Nations University – Carbon Governance in Asia: Bridging Scales and Disciplines
Greenpeace – Belt and Road participants call for full implementation of Paris Agreement
FINANCIAL TIMES – South Korea’s new president cracks down on air pollution
National Geographic – China’s Surprising Solutions to Clear Killer Air

Air’volution: cities improving air quality!

by Maria Restrepoin More news

We know for sure that city dwellers are highly affected by worsening air quality across the world and the majority of deaths caused by air pollution occur in cities. In the past ten years, cities have been working together as part of the group C40Cities to find solutions to protect their citizens. The Mayors of the cities that are part of this group have come up with some innovative proposals to push an Air’Volution that stems pollution in the cities. The end of March saw the announcement of bold plans to address locally created air pollution.

The C40Cities, launched in 2005, is a group created and led by cities that connects 90+ cities across 50+countries, representing 650+ million people and one quarter of the global economy. The group recognizes that cities generate most of the world’s carbon emissions and house almost 60% of the global population, hence the importance of their stance in transforming the systems that create the most carbon emissions: transport, building and waste.

What is the Air’volution?

It’s the collection of actions taken by cities to address air pollution and control vehicle emissions. Remember what started as a VW (Volkswagen) scandal? There is now a list of car manufacturers that have been found to manipulate the tests of car emissions. Not to mention that we now know the real polluting nature of diesel cars, even the EURO 6 diesel engines releases more fine particulate matter than heavy duty trucks. Such as:

  • Emissions on the road have been proven to be 15 times greater than emissions in laboratory conditions. Paris and London are working on creating a scheme to score new cars based on their real-world emissions and air quality impact, rather than a laboratory measure. All data is expected to be released by end 2017 so that consumers will be able to know the score for each car model. Seoul, Madrid, Mexico City, Milan, Moscow, Oslo and Tokyo and other cities have committed to work in the development of a global scoring system.

“For too long, some vehicle manufacturers have been able to hide behind inconsistent regulation and consumer uncertainty about the damage their cars are causing,” said Mayor of Paris and C40 Chair, Anne Hidalgo. “This announcement is a wake-up call to car companies that they need to act now. Citizens of Paris and cities around the world demand clean air to breathe and this new scoring scheme will be key to helping achieve that.  I am pleased that Paris, the city of the Climate Agreement, is working with London and Seoul to support this project.”

“This scheme is also a fantastic example of how big cities around the world can pool their expertise and their influence to encourage big industry to clean up its act. The toxicity of the air in London and many other big cities is an outrage, and schemes of the type we are introducing in London and Paris have the potential to make a massive difference to the quality of the air we all breathe.”

Other measures include:

Cities implementing low-emission zones: London has proposed to introduce an Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in central London, where cars will have to meet the minimum emission requirements or pay a daily fine (£10). In Paris, vehicles are restricted access for the most polluting vehicles, through the use of Crit’Air stickers. And Seoul has recently designated a Green Transport Promotion Zone that restricts old diesel vehicles and construction equipment, the objective is to cut carbon emissions from vehicles by 40% and vehicle demand by 30%.

A number of Asian cities are part of the C40Cities: Auckland, Bangaluru, Bangkok, Beijing, Chengdu, Chennai, Delhi, Dalian, Dhaka, Guangzhou, Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh, Hong Kong, Jaipur, Jakarta, Kolkata, Mumbi, Nanjing, Singapore, Shenzen, Shanghai, Seoul, Sydney, Yokohama, Chennai, Mumbai, Tokyo and Wuhan.  Most of these cities need to learn from experiences from other cities in reducing vehicles emissions.

We need to better understand air pollution patterns in our cities to make the most of these policies. Deployment of air quality monitors across the cities is the first step!

Sources:
C40 CITIES – Air’volution
C40 CITIES – Press Release: Mayors of Paris and London Announce Car Scoring System to Slash Air Pollution on City Streets
The International Council on Clean Transportation – First look: Results of the German transport ministry’s post-VW vehicle testing