Weekly ‘Fresh Air Brief’: 16 July 2014

• Greenpeace Energydesk expert Li Shuo analyses the behind the scenes talks between China and the US, suggesting that while they’ve established a powerful institutional framework, they aren’t yet tackling the biggest issue - coal.
• The Sierra Club and Center for American Progress just wrapped a week in India filming a mini-documentary on how rural poor are accessing off-grid solar.
• The World Resources Institute (WRI) released a new greenhouse gas accounting tool in Mumbai.
• Community Environmental Monitors launched a report documenting likely impacts of the proposed 4000MW Cheyyur Ultra Mega Power Project on local water resources in India.

Africa and the Middle East

• Jeremy Leggett looks to Africa for examples that make the economic case against fossil fuels.
• A new study from CDKN focused on Kenya underscores the essential role of poilcy for fostering low carbon technology in emerging economies.

The Americas

• According to a new report by Friends of the Earth, the Canadian and US governments are deliberately weakening European climate legislation in an attempt to carve out a tar sands market share in the EU.
• NRDC reacts to a myriad of new climate policies and initiatives announced by US president Barack Obama on Wednesday.
• A time-lapse map released this week WRI using satellite imagery from Global Forest Watch shows how much forest is being lost in Northern Alberta to make way for major industrial operations, mainly to extract oil from the tar sands, also referred to as the oilsands.
• Hundreds gathered in Washington, DC on Sunday and Monday, demanding US regulators consider the impacts of natural gas extraction and transportation on communities. Twenty-five anti-fracking and climate activists were arrested.
• Twelve leading US-based companies including Mars, Sprint, Walmart, GM and Facebook signed the Renewable Energy Buyers’ Principles this week joining WWF & WRI in urging energy suppliers to offer more renewable energy products that meet their needs.

Europe

• Reacting to a major UK government reshuffle this week, many of our partners urged the country’s new set of environment and energy ministers to show they are serious about “protecting the nation from the growing threat of global climate change.” The departure of climate change minister Greg Barker, a strong advocate for renewables, and Foreign Secretary William Hague, an outspoken supporter of climate action, are seen as blows to the UK’s leadership.
• 350.org published an update on the status of the Fossil Free campaign across Europe, diving into the latest efforts in Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the UK.
• Influential UK columnist Ambrose Evans-Pritchard joined the divestment push with an op-ed warning that the “fossil industry is the subprime danger of this [financial] cycle.”

The Pacific

• Our Australian partners fighting to keep the country’s carbon tax alive lost their long battle this week. The Abbott Government found the votes needed to abolish the carbon tax, making Australia the first country on earth to kill carbon pricing legislation. Our Tree Alert breaks down the details.
• A number of our partners working to protect the Great Barrier Reef from the impacts of coal industry expansion have more facts to aid their effort. A new estimate of the cost of offsetting damage done dredging is a staggering $1 billion.

Global

• The World Council of Churches, a global coalition of 345 churches, announced that it will divest from fossil fuels, making one of the most important divestment commitments yet.
• In related news, Platform campaigner Kevin Smith is calling on cultural industries to follow suit.
• United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon has appointed former president Mary Robinson as his special envoy for climate change. Robinson is charged with engaging heads of state and governments around the world to rally political will and action ahead of the UN Climate Leaders Summit this September.
• Robinson is among 20 women making waves in the climate debate, according to the Road to Paris website.
• Yale Environment360 sat down with Jeffrey Sachs to dig into the Deep Decarbonization Pathways Project, which released a major report to the UN last week.
• Campaigners gearing up for a push to get governments to commit to a net-zero emissions goal might take lessons from the history of the contentious number behind zero deforestation commitments for palm oil.
• The International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED) weighed into the debate over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership currently under negotiation with what it means for sustainability. A number of our partners are ramping up protests against the agreement.
• And IIED researcher Simon Milledge breaks down the latest draft of the UN’s sustainable development goals, with a focus on how the goals overlap and intersect.

Atlas of death and loss shows global climate disasters are on the rise
A global atlas of deaths and economic losses caused by weather, climate and water extremes shows disasters are on the rise worldwide, setting back development by years if not decades, its publishers said. Weather- and climate-related disasters have caused $2.4 trillion in economic losses and nearly 2 million deaths globally since 1971, according to the new report by the World Meteorological Organization.

Climate Central put the report in context: “While the losses are staggering, the report also shows that we have learned from past disasters, lessons the world will need as development continues in hazardous areas and the climate continues to change.” Governments are due to approve a new global framework to reduce disaster risk in March of 2015. The atlas was released ahead of inter-governmental preparatory meetings working toward that framework, which took place in Geneva this week.

German announcement leads green bond boom, headed for $40 billion
Germany has burst onto the global green bond market this week with a huge inaugural offering from development bank KfW (Kredit für Wiederaufbau) with a volume of €1.5 billion – the largest Green Bond ever issued. The move coincides with an announcement on Tuesday from Swiss insurance giant, Zurich, that it would double its commitment to green bonds, to $2 billion. Adding to the momentum, People’s Bank of China’s chief economist Ma Jun recently listed Green Bonds as one of around eight green finance measures he thought China needed to implement. According to predictions from Bloomberg New Energy Finance last month, the global market in debt securities for environmentally- and socially-minded investors is on track to surpass $40 billion in 2014, having soared past last year’s total of $14 billion to a total of green ‘labeled’ bonds issued in 2014 of $19.67 billion at the year’s mid-way point. RenewEconomy has more.

Also on our radar:
Policies and politics

• The Chinese government unveiled a plan requiring requiring that between 2014 and 2016 at least 30% of new vehicle purchases by provincial and local governments, public institutions and government-funded organizations be electric or powered by other “clean, new energy” sources.
• Moving in the same direction, pollution-plagued Manila is also set to spark an electric transport revolution.
• In an absurd but not surprising move, US Congress voted to ban the country’s Department of Energy from acknowledging climate change. The effort is unlikely to gain enough support outside of Congress to become law but stands as illustrative of how climate issues remain politically polarized in the country.
• There was a shift evident at the US’ largest annual conference of climate change deniers, which took place this week. Climate deniers are becoming ‘climate optimists,’ touting a new message that is “real, but it’s nothing to worry about!”
• New figures from the UN highlight the importance of urban climate solutions, showing that 54% (approximately 3.9 billion people) now live in cities. Cities in China, India and Nigeria, the world’s first, second and seventh most populous countries, are expected to grow the most by 2050.
• Costa Rica is another step closer to its goal of being carbon neutral by 2021 after the approval of a major geothermal project by members of the country’s Legislative Assembly last week.
• A new report by the EU Commission’s Joint Research Center provides the most compelling evidence yet on the need for an ambitious 2030 climate and energy package: showing that the EU stands to lose €190 billion - a net welfare loss of 1.8% to current GDP - due to climate related damages, unless it prioritizes effective climate action.
• In related news, newly elected European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker supported a 30% minimum target for energy efficiency across the EU in a speech before the Parliament Wednesday - 10% lower than the target many of our partners are calling for.
• Britain wants deeper reforms to the EU Emissions Trading System than those proposed by the European Commission and Germany, arguing for the cancellation of hundreds of millions of carbon permits to tighten the EU carbon market and push the price of carbon credits up.
• China’s lead climate negotiator added to the speculation that China will introduce an economy-wide emissions cap early next year.
• A solar rooftop policy mastered by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Gujarat during his tenure as Chief Minister is set to be replicated across the country, starting with the national capital Delhi.
• Two new reports examining the impacts of a range of potential scenarios that could emerge from the United Nations Climate Change Summit in Paris at the end of 2015 came to different conclusions. Analysis by Thomson Reuters Point Carbon is pessimistic, while analysis by Ecofys sees a difficult but possible path to limiting global warming to 2º.

Climate impacts & extreme weather

• The Japan Meteorological Agency is reporting that June was the warmest in more than 120 years of record-keeping.
• US researchers are estimating that the effects of extreme drought in California will cost the state $2.2 billion and a loss of more than 17,000 jobs as farmers are forced to fallow some valuable crops by year’s end. To date, the US state has experienced its hottest year on record. National Geographic takes a deep dive into impacts thus far.
• New research shows southern Australia’s long-term decline in rainfall is caused by increases in man-made greenhouse gases; and models predict the decline in winter rainfall will continue throughout the rest of the 21st century.
• If Australians hope to drown their concern in the country’s famous Shiraz wine, it turns out climate change is likely to ruin that too. Even wine corks are seeing impacts.
• The first major typhoon to hit the Philippines since devastating Super Typhoon Haiyan in November 2013 sent thousands fleeing their homes before it made landfall this week, toppling trees and cutting power as it made its way straight towards the capital, Manila.
• A study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences compares how natural disasters and variations in climate influence migration, finding that the latter seems to have a greater effect than the former.
• German researchers have found major changes to ecosystems in Europe’s North sea, which they are attributing to warming water temperatures due to climate change.

Tracking the polluters

• A US oil company announced work on a new 1,100-mile-long pipeline that could be carrying oil from the US Midwest to refineries on the coast as soon as the end of 2016.
• Royal Dutch Shell says it found oil equivalent to a 100 million barrels in the Gulf of Mexico.
• A new independent analysis published this week shows that implementing the US plan to cut coal emissions by 30% will provide more benefits to consumers than costs.
• Also in the US, a court upheld a $3 million jury verdict in favor of a family who claimed oil and gas drilling near their land made them sick.
• In China, the price of coal hit a six year low, according to Bloomberg, due to lower demand. The news comes as China moves to join the US by forcing utilities to burn low-sulphur coal in a bid to tackle air pollution.
• China’s biggest power generation company in the country said it will invest about 10 billion yuan ($1.61 billion) to upgrade emissions-control equipment this year, a move to meet the government’s requirement for air quality improvement.
• The Tanzanian government-owned State Mining Company is seeking a joint venture partner to fund the expansion of the scandal-plagued Kiwira Coal Mine and build a proposed 200 MW coal plant and associated transmission line.
• Indian Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar has told Parliament that approximately 25 coal-fired power stations are exceeding ash pond effluent limits - potentially poisoning surrounding water sources.
• Indonesia’s biggest six coal producers are aiming to increase coal production by more than 11 per cent in 2014 in a bid to offset falling prices. An Indonesian Government official says that in the first half of this year 158 million tonnes of coal was exported, a 6.8 percent increase on the same period in 2013.
• With reports on the future health of the coal industry spread across a wild spectrum of views, Carbon Brief offers a country-by-country analysis.
• Researchers published a comparative analysis of carbon emissions from the production processes of 63 metals, finding that iron, aluminum and calcium are the biggest polluters. All told, metal production uses 9.5 percent of world energy.
• Fires, industrial logging, and the spread of plantations have destroyed more than 30 percent of Borneo’s rainforests over the past forty years, according to a new study that provides the most comprehensive analysis of the island’s forest cover to date.
• New research shows that Sri Lanka is also clearing forests at a rapid rate, and on track to ‘go beyond the critical point’

Business and technology

• Chinese companies are being lured into a labeling scheme that certifies low-carbon products.
• A Chinese company just finished construction on what they’re claiming is the world’s largest solar rooftop in Beijing. Brazil is now home to the biggest rooftop solar farm in Latin America.
• First Solar Inc. won’t be building the world’s largest solar plant in China, after more than four years of negotiations on pricing failed to produce an agreement.
• According to July’s PV Pulse, quarterly global solar module prices an all-time low in Q2 of 2014.
• Researchers from Europe’s largest solar research institute have announced a world record in solar module efficiency of 36.7%.
• Installing tidal lagoon power plants at a half-dozen sites across the UK may add as much as 27 billion pounds to the country’s economy over a 12-year span starting as early as next year.
• Researchers in the UK could be creating a Google Maps for air pollution, mounting specialized air monitoring sensors to a roaming electric cars in order to measure the city pollution levels. Meanwhile, it turns out Google’s actual fleet of Google Maps-making cars are equipped with sensors to sniff out natural gas leaks to the same end.
• An experimental tool, called the Potential Storm Surge Flooding Map, is helping residents and business owners adapt to increases in extreme weather in the US where coastal flooding along the densely populated Eastern Seaboard has tripled in recent years.
• The Finnish capital Helsinki is developing a new “mobility on demand” transport network that it hopes will sharply reduce personal car use and ownership by 2025.
• And lastly, the role of technology in international cooperation and adaptation to climate change is a critical but understudied issue, says a new study.

OPPORTUNITY: Webinar on the future for coal in Europe
On 24 July, Sandbag is hosting a webinar examining the role coal will play in Europe in the coming years, and what policies will help ensure it no longer dominates the continent’s energy mix into the 2020s. The webinar will coincide with the release of Sandbag’s new report ‘the future for coal in Europe’ - which aims to provide a definitive look at coal across the EU under the European Emissions Trading Scheme. More here.

RESOURCE: New tools distil the latest climate science related to Africa and South Asia
The Climate Development and Knowledge Network just released a new resource pack that distils the latest climate science from Africa and South Asia based on the thousands of pages of the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report (AR5). The pack includes easy-to-use guides on the latest science in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)’s Fifth Assessment Report, together with free infographics, images and slide packs for communicators.

Upcoming events: