Tag: Policy

Economic growth vs. Environmental policies?

by Maria Restrepoin More news

This week we have a thought provoking discussion: environmental policy vs. economic growth. This has been at the heart of decisions in the last year with regards to the Paris Agreement, for sure the excuse of many developing nations to delay adoption of environmental policies. In fact, we are constantly debating about the apparent conflict between economic development and environmental protection policies.

The last 50 years have seen rapid urbanization process in many countries, with cities offering more economic opportunities and rural areas being left for the environmentalists and hard labour. Cities grow, innovation happens and with that pollution levels rise, car convenience increases emissions, electricity needs increased emissions and consumerism increases emissions even further. In this picture, cities as centers for growth and innovation should be discouraged if we want to control air pollution.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon  published a research on the link between economic development, urbanization and pollution.

Interestingly enough, the research found that urbanization is the result of a higher quality of life, and cities are more efficient at delivering services such as electricity. The study found that cities have more pollution but pollution per capita is lower in cities than out of them, and environmental policy does mitigate how emissions increase when the population of a city increases. The study in US counties showed that metropolitan GDP and personal income scaled with population size and this was regardless of environmental policies. So, environmental policies did not have a negative effect in economic development in cities, they in fact reduced drastically the environmental damage and pushed for cleaner production practices hence fueling green innovation.

Environmental protection can only make things better for all! Let’s take action and push innovation to cleaner ways of achieving economic growth!

Monitor air quality, Act to breathe cleaner, Enjoy the benefits!

Better Air Quality is the Smart City Challenge

by Maria Restrepoin More news

Cities across the globe are facing increasing levels of air pollution. Particles so small that we cannot see and gases at ground level, penetrate our bodies affecting us in many ways: cardiovascular diseases, chronic respiratory illnesses, strokes, heart attacks, asthma and many more are all common effects of air pollution.

What can cities do?

WHO’s initiative ‘Breathe Life 2030’ calls for cities to take action in the following areas to reduce air pollution:

  • TRANSPORT: does your city have a solid transport system? Are car emissions controlled? Think about…
  • Walking and Cycling paths
  • Efficient mass transport
  • Controlled emission standards
  • Soot-free vehicles

Cities that transform into pedestrian & cycle-friendly and with efficient mass transit systems and controlled emissions generate less pollution and are more liveable.

  • ENERGY SUPPLY: Cities are big energy consumers, striving for cleaner energy production is key. Think about…
    • Renewable power supply
    • Diesel replacement

Cleaner energy production will impact positively the air quality in that given city.

  • WASTE: proper landfill management can decrease the emission of gases.
  • INDUSTRY: industries in and around cities should be strictly controlled for their emissions.
  • AGRICULTURE: agricultural areas around cities should be careful with irrigation, reduce open burning and manure management to control emission of gases and particulate matter affecting nearby cities.
  • HOUSEHOLD: households should be helped to make sure they use low-emission stoves and fuels, improved lighting and passive building design.

However, the first step is always to understand local air pollution, how does it build up in a city, when and how does it clear up. Each city has different patterns of producing air pollution and different natural ways of dispersing it. Understanding how this interaction happens is essential for any city to take steps to improve air quality.

Monitor, monitor, monitor!

Nowadays cities have a handful of high-end air quality monitoring stations that provide a broad view of air quality in any given city. This information may also be compared or complemented with satellite images. But both options provide general information. In real time, most cities cannot precisely say the pollution levels at block level or intersection level. This is a limitation to understanding local air pollution and to taking precise local measures to improve air quality or to measuring the effectiveness of any given measure.

Be a smart city, track outdoor air quality with meo air analytics: have multiple data points, understand local air pollution and find data oriented solutions!

Source:
BREATHELIFE – A global campaign for clean air

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

Air Quality Policy in HK

by Maria Restrepoin More news

Beyond the constant air pollution news and our daily experience with pollution, how much do we know about air quality in our Asian cities? And do we know what the local governments are doing to improve air quality?

Today we will take a look at the situation in Hong Kong. Pollution in HK comes from local street-level pollution caused by vehicles and regional smog caused by motor vehicles, marine vessels, industry and power plants both in Hong Kong and the Pearl River Delta region.

What is the Government doing?

The Government has an Air Pollution Control Ordinance and a Clean Air Plan where the objective is to achieve ‘reasonable and practicable air quality to safeguard the health of the population’. Strategies include controlling emissions from motor vehicles, marine vessels, power plants and industry and coordination with the Guangdong Provincial Authorities to implement a joint plan. Strategies are based on the Air Quality Objectives (AQO) set in 2014 and are a combination of WHO’s ultimate Air Quality Guideline (AQG)  and interim targets. In the table below we can see a comparison between WHO AQG and HK AQO with regards to PM10 and PM2.5.

The Actions

What is the current situation like?

The Clean Air Network HK has recently released a report based on 2016 data where they found that HK AQO haven’t been met in the past 3 years and in fact is usually twice the WHO recommended level. Moreover, on a daily basis there is a variation of readings in which peak times air quality is 2.6 times worse than off-peak times, suggesting vehicles are having a higher role in damaging local air quality.

 “The growth of vehicles number has gone uncontrollable and offset some of the effort made by the government, especially to reduce NO2.” The CEO of Clean Air Network, Patrick Fung, said.  “The next term of government should look at this imminent issue as top of the agenda. Traffic has been a daily headache to all Hong Kong people, and is an impediment to the improvement of air quality, public health and other living qualities.”

According to the Hedley Environmental Index of HKU School of Public Health, the air pollution in 2016 caused 1,686 premature deaths, 21.6 billion direct economic loss and 2.65 million additional doctor visits.

Overall, we need to have more information on air quality and a broader coverage of monitoring stations in order to better understand the situation in the city and have targeted local policies!

Sources:
Clean Air Network – How bad is Hong Kong air now
HKSAR Environment Bureau – A Clean Air Plan
Environmental Protection Department – Air Quality Objectives Website
Environmental Protection Department – Compliance Status of Air Quality Objectives

Cities and Their Share in Air Quality Policies

by Maria Restrepoin More news

Urban population is growing in all continents as people are attracted by the convenience of cities. However, it’s in the cities that people are most exposed to air pollution on a daily basis: the World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80% of world citizens are breathing an air that exceeds WHO air safety threshlods. During COP21 in Paris, 1000 mayors from across the world made a firm commitment to reduce pollution in towns and cities. These mayors have committed to put ‘the health of citizens over that of industrial lobbies’.

C40 -the network of megacities committed to address climate change, has highlighted 5 key interventions to reduce pollution that are in the hands of city governments and are currently being implemented by many cities:

  1.  Restrictions on private motor vehicles
  2. Low-emission public transport
  3. Measurement and management to reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions

Asian cities are also taking measures to various degrees:

Hong Kong, for example, faces two major air pollution sources: local street-level pollution and regional smog from power plants, marine vessels and industry both in the city and the Pearl River Delta. To tackle air pollution Hong Kong focuses on reducing emissions from vehicles via incentives to retrofit old diesel vehicles with particulate reduction devices, helping owners replace their old vehicles, controlling smoky vehicles, and subsidizing a trial of electric double-decker buses. HK government has also capped the locally supplied marine diesel to 0.05% sulphur [lower levels of sulphur content translate o lower levels of particulate matter being released into the air], all the government marine vessels use EuroV diesel, and all vessels are required to switch to 0.05% sulphur content while berthing. Finally, power plants, which have been restricted from opening new coal-fired plants since 1997 and instead are encouraged to use natural gas.

In Singapore the plan focuses mainly on urban planning and reduction of vehicle and industry emissions.

And Beijing, which started in the 1970’s to control coal-fired air pollution, and then in the 1990’s moved to control vehicles emissions through an integrated emission control system. This includes control of new vehicles, fuel quality improvement, promotion of new energy vehicles, driving restrictions, incentives to phase out older vehicles and shifting more public transport to rail mode. However, PM2.5 and O3 continue to grow especially due to regional characteristics and the influence of regional transport.

NGOs in Europe such as Clean Air London and in Asia such as Clean Air Network or Greenpeace call for more and bolder measures to reduce air pollution. Greenpeace advocates in China have called for a drastic reduction of coal-fired plants, Clean Air Network in Hong Kong advocates for more vehicle restrictions, low emission zones and stricter regulations for marine vessels at berth. It is clear that despite the introduction of air quality control policies, air pollution continues to be a problem, so there is more work to be done in this area.

A good starting point is giving citizens and governments better access to information on air pollution to push for stronger policies and to understand which policies have a greater impact on the air we all breathe!

Sources:

C40 – Mayors from around the world won’t breathe easily until urban air pollution is tackled

C40 – Five ways C40 cities are taking action to curb air pollution