Posts Tagged ‘Climate Change’
The Environmental Institute of Australia and New Zealand (EIANZ) are running a climate change leadership forum on November 23rd, on tools, techniques and leadership lessons on climate change adaptation and mitigation. Greensense Managing Director, Derek Gerrard, will be presenting on smart technologies and behavioural change, reviewing the Subiaco Oval case study, as well as our carbon emission’s reporting solution for Local Government in partnership with WALGA.
If you haven’t registered and would like to you can find out more information here.
The Labour party has been pushing for a vote on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme, not because they think it will pass, but because they know it will be defeated.
As Tim Colbert said in The Age: “The Government supports its emissions trading scheme, but would like to see it defeated when it comes before the Senate this week. The Opposition opposes the scheme, but will be doing its utmost to ensure that it is not defeated. The Greens support emissions trading, but want to vote to defeat this version of it. As for the Senate independents, no newspaper article could adequately summarise their positions.”
The one chance the government had to provide some certainty before the Copenhagen Climate Summit was try and trigger an early election, which it can do if its legislation is defeated twice by the Senate. This now seems unlikely.
Earlier this week Senator Stephen Parry was successful in getting debate on the legislation delayed. Liberal Senator Nick Minchin justified their position by saying that “the government should defer consideration of this bill on the triple grounds that it does not have a start date for two years, that for Australia to legislate in advance of Copenhagen is utterly irresponsible and reckless, and that to advance this legislation prior to the United States legislating, the world’s biggest emitter of anthropogenic CO2, is ridiculous and reckless.”
Greens Senator Bob Brown tried to call out the Coalition for their filibustering, saying: “One way or another, the government is on a mission to get to Copenhagen with a determination from Australia, which it should expect out of the Senate. There should be a result. […] What we are getting to here is boring procedural cat-and-mouse play for a political interest which is all to do with the next election and not with the future of this nation, and that is not good enough.”
National Party Senator Barnaby Joyce was much clearer about the Coalition’s strategy saying “I want this debate to go for as long as possible. Call that a filibuster, call it what you want, call it your aunt Mary, I will debate this thing until there is not a breath left in me.”
The vote hinged on the support of the two independent senators. Senator Steve Fielding supported the delay, which is unsurprising given he is Australia’s latest and most famous climate change skeptic.
Senator Nick Xenephon, who is a climate change believer, also supported the delay asking for more time to model alternatives and the impacts on Australia’s economy of deeper cuts.
This is also being commented on in the International media. Meanwhile the US Climate Bill is set to be voted on. Barrack Obama expressed his support for their Climate Bill saying it “will finally spark a clean energy transformation that will reduce our dependence on foreign oil and confront the carbon pollution that threatens our planet.”
It doesn’t look like our own clean energy transformation is coming any time soon.
While the Coalition is trying to filibuster away the CPRS, one parliamentarian is trying to call into question very basic climate science. This is a pretty depressing turn in the mainstream public debate on climate change.
Independent Senator Steve Fielding claims to be open minded on climate change and “not a sceptic”. It’s hard to see how he can sustain this claim after attending a climate change denialists conference in the US earlier this year and bringing four well known climate change denalists to his recent discussions with the government.
Steve Fielding and his advisors put three questions to the government:
1. Is it the case that CO2 increased by 5% since 1998 whilst global temperature cooled over the same period? If so, why did the temperature not increase; how can human emissions be to blame for dangerous levels of warming?
2. Is it the case that the rate and magnitude of warming between 1979 and 1998 (the late 20th century phase of global warming) was not unusual in either rate or magnitude as compared with warmings that have occurred earlier in the Earth’s history?
3. Is it the case that all GCM computer models projected a steady increase in temperature for the period 1990–2008, whereas in fact there were only 8 years of warming were(sic) followed by 10 years of stasis and cooling. If so, why is it assumed that long-term climate projections by the same models are suitable as a basis for public policy making?
Tim Lambert’s pithy answer — ‘No’ — and his more detailed response and critique of the coverage of climate change by The Australian is well worth reading. The Government has also published its own detailed response to Fielding’s questions.
The meeting with the government didn’t change Fielding’s view, the crux of which is that there has been a “lack of warming since 1998″.
The arguments of climate skeptics tend to follow some well worn paths and Fielding’s are no different. If you aren’t a climate scientist, then Grist’s series on How to talk to a Climate Skeptic is a great resource.
In response to the argument that ‘global warming stopped in 1998′, Grist says:
At the time, 1998 was a record high year in both the CRU and the NASA GISS analyses. In fact, it blew away the previous record by .2 degrees C. (That previous record went all the way back to 1997, by the way!)
According to NASA, it was elevated far above the trend line because 1998 was the year of the strongest El Nino of the century. Choosing that year as a starting point is a classic cherry pick and demonstrates why it is necessary to remove chaotic year-to year-variability (aka: weather) by smoothing out the data. Looking at CRU’s graph below, you can see the result of that smoothing in black.
What’s disturbing is that Fielding isn’t just an ordinary climate change skeptic, he is a parliamentarian whose vote is likely be crucial to the passing of emissions trading scheme legislation.
The Council Of Australian Governments (COAG) met in Perth on the second of October. This is the premier meeting of Australian state and territory leaders with the Federal Government. Its role is to achieve policy reform on areas of national significance that require cooperative action by Australian governments. While their discussions are wide ranging, covering everything from the economy to indigenous health, of particular interest to us are the agreements relating to climate change. These discussions centred on improving energy efficiency and the new Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute.
Energy Efficiency
COAG has agreed to develop a National Strategy for Energy Efficiency to accelerate energy efficiency efforts across all governments. The strategy should also help households and businesses prepare for the introduction of the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS). The strategy is expected to be ready around June 2009.
Meanwhile, COAG has agreed to develop national legislation for appliance energy performance standards and labelling. Work done here here will be fed into the energy efficiency strategy. A national framework should simplify enforcement and improve consistency across Australia.
This is a very positive step because improving energy efficiency is the most important strategy for reducing carbon emissions.
Carbon Capture and Storage
Carbon Capture and Storage has been identified by some as one of the major pathways to lower carbon emissions. In July 2008, the Group of Eight economies set the goal to commit by 2010 to at least 20 industrial scale demonstration projects to enable the broad deployment of carbon capture and storage technology by 2020.
In September the Prime Minister announced the Global Carbon Capture and Storage Institute. The institute’s role is to accelerate the development and deployment of carbon capture and storage technology. It will also assist supporting areas such as regulatory frameworks.
COAG agreed that the Commonwealth would work with State and Territory governments to finalise the design of the Global Carbon Capture Storage Institute. And they agreed with the principles of supporting CCS research and eventual commercial deployment.
Around 80% of Australia’s electricity production currently comes from coal, and coal exports will earn about $43 billion in 2008-09. Given our heavy reliance on coal and coal exports, it is understandable that the Australian government is keen to fast-track research into this area.
To date although small scale projects have been built, no industrial scale integrated CCS power plant has been built. However as Garnaut points out if carbon capture and storage fails Australia may still be be a country of low-cost and low-emission energy because of abundant geothermal, solar, wind, wave and biomass renewable resources and reserves of natural gas and uranium.
So while COAG’s interest in climate change is positive we should hope that we’re not putting too many eggs in too few baskets. The full COAG communique can be found here.
Ross Garnaut began his presentation on the recently released draft supplementary report to the Garnaut Review on Targets and Trajectories, which recommends reduction targets for Australia, with these words:
“There are moments in the history of humanity when fateful choices are made. The
decision over the next few years on whether to take strong action to mitigate human–
induced climate change is one such moment. ”
Much of the media chose to focus on the response of the conservation movement to the report with headlines such as Green groups at war with Garnaut, a simple story that misses the complexity of the issues and, as Garnaut reminds us, the significance of the decisions we face as a nation.
It is perhaps tempting to try and analyse the issues of climate change through the lens of simple stereotypes and simplistic positions.
- The Greenie wants radical reductions now — the risks of climate change require urgent reduction now, not Garnaut’s tiny 10% reduction by 2020, and damn the consequences for the economy.
- Big Business wants to wait for a global agreement before any reductions. Australia is only responsible for 1.5% of global emissions so why risk the economy when we can’t address climate change by ourselves.
- The Politician wants to wait a little longer to test the mood of the electorate and is very worried about figures coming out of treasury about the impact on household budgets.
It may be amusing to Garnaut that he is now being characterised as being on the side of Big Business. Earlier this year when he released the original report he was attacked for being alarmist regarding the impacts of climate change for Australia.
So what fateful choice should Australia make now and what is Garnaut advocating?
The first thing to understand is that Garnaut is trying to find a position that will support a global agreement on reductions. If developing countries, notably China, do not accept significant constraints on their carbon emissions, then it won’t be possible to reduce concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere to safe levels (around 400–450 ppm by 2050).
The reduction target of 10% of 2000 levels by 2020 that Garnaut recommends will require that Australia makes abatement efforts that are comparable with other developed and developing nations. This is important for us to be a strong participant in global negotiations and to prepare Australia for the more significant reductions that will be needed in the period from 2020 to 2050.
The modelling done to date indicates that mitigations required to achieve this reduction level are about 1.1 per cent of GDP. This will require action from business and will impact household budgets, however, as Garnaut says in his report:
“The costs of well-designed mitigation, substantial as they are, do not threaten to derail the long-term growth path of Australia, its developing country neighbours or the global economy. Unmitigated climate change probably would.”
Earlier this year the government released its Greenpaper. Later this year, after receiving Garnaut’s final reports and additional treasury modelling and reviewing submissions on the Greenpaper, the Government will be making the first of many fateful choices on Australia’s response to climate change.
These are choices that as citizens we should take a keen interest in and that businesses should closely review and consider in their own climate change strategies.
Hans Rosling is a Swedish professor of health who is interested in the links between economic development, agriculture, poverty and health. He is also the director of the Gapminder institute which promotes sustainable global development.
As we’ve discussed before, we think that having the capability to see and understand your business’ carbon inventory is the key to enabling meaningful actions to be taken and new strategies to be developed. The Gapminder institute takes a similar view in relation to sustainable development.
They developed software they called Trendalyzer to translate freely available international statistics into interactive data visualizations to improve understanding and help motivate action. In the following video Hans Rosling discusses carbon emissions and the relationship with economic development using this software.
There is also a high-resolution quicktime version of the video available for download from Gapminder.
This video demonstrates how the right data presented in a compelling way can tell a powerful story.
Google has acquired the Trendalyzer software and makes it available as a hosted service to interact with and explore relationships in data. For example, we’ve created a graph using the software following the graph Hans Rosling demonstates above for you to play with (click on image below to launch):
Greensense provides a range of services but we’re particularly passionate about data capture and data visualization. Please feel free to contact us to discuss your climate change strategy.
There were two contrasting stories on the front page of today’s West Australian.
There was a report on the local state elections that the state ALP was under fire over ‘green power’ claims. While the premier Alan Carpenter was claiming a vote for his party was a vote for renewable energy, the West Australian gleefully pointed out that the government has signed contracts to provide an additional 1100MW of power generation to the South West grid that will come from coal and gas and only 100MW from renewable sources. A good example of the risks of “green washing”.
The second report was on Hurricane Gustav and the impact it was having on Louisiana. While fortunately the hurricane’s impact hasn’t been as bad as feared — although damage predictions are estimated to be between $4 and $10 billion — it is still a sobering reminder that an increase in severity of natural disasters is one of the impacts of climate change.
Hurricane Gustav: Coastguard Response
I think there were two lessons for business in today’s front page.
Firstly is the lesson that you must match your rhetoric with action. It is easy to play lip service to sustainability and the risks of climate change but increasingly customers and shareholders — and voters if you are a politician — are genuinely concerned about climate change and are looking for genuine action. Efforts you do make to promote any positive actions you are taking will be undone if they are revealed to be superficial.
Secondly is the lesson that we need to prepare our businesses for the impacts of climate change. Your climate change strategy needs to look beyond accounting for emissions, improving efficiency and engaging with stakeholders and look at the potential impacts on your business from the environmental impacts of climate change.
Climate change is real and the impacts are real and your business’ operations are likely to be affected.
In relation to tropical cyclones, the IPCC said in their Summary for Policymakers:
“Based on a range of models, it is likely that future tropical cyclones (typhoons and hurricanes) will become more intense, with larger peak wind speeds and more heavy precipitation associated with ongoing increases of tropical SSTs. There is less confidence in projections of a global decrease in numbers of tropical cyclones. The apparent increase in the proportion of very intense storms since 1970 in some regions is much larger than simulated by current models for that period.”
So, the likelihood for oil producers in the US Gulf Coast, for example, is an increasing number of storms each year with increasing severity. The need for these companies to adapt to the impacts of climate change is clear.
While it may not be as clear yet for your business or industry you should still consider the potential impacts and ensure there is more to your climate change strategy than lip service and rhetoric.
The majority of global executives regard climate change as being strategically important but fewer act on these opinions according to a survey conducted by McKinsey Consulting. The survey also found that many executives are actually positive about the opportunity for climate change to boost the bottom line.
Standard approach
There are relatively good standards and guidance available on how business should account for their greenhouse gas emissions and so we see a lot of consistency between businesses in this area. Similarly as regulations regarding reporting or pollution cap-and-trade systems, or carbon taxation emerge in different regions then businesses have a clear prescription to follow.
However, there is no authoritative guidance or established best practices guiding business on how they should consider climate change in other aspects of their strategy and operations: corporate reputation, brand and customer engagement; planning for the environmental risks associated with climate change; procurement and supply chain management; development of products and services; employee engagement; and so on.
So it is not surprising that the survey found there were mixed views about where responsibility for ensuring their companies take climate change into consideration actually lie. Roughly equal percentages of respondents apportioned responsibility to C-level executives, corporate-level strategists, and business unit or functional unit managers. It won’t be surprising to you that even in a low carbon-intensity business Greensense believes that climate change should be a C-level executive responsibility.
Carbon Management Office
So what is the right organizational model to act on this responsibility? Greensense recommends that it’s customers establish a Carbon Management Office. There are a two basic models for a Carbon Management Office.
Firstly where the Carbon Management Office is a centre for excellence that acts in a consulting capacity setting standards; selecting tools such as carbon management software; providing support to business area managers with training, guidance and best practices; and, providing strategic advice to the executive. In this case responsibility for carbon emissions, energy production and use, maintenance of a carbon inventory and of meeting regulatory requirements is distributed within individual business areas.
Secondly where the Carbon Management Office also has a centralized governance role with ownership of the corporate carbon inventory; responsibility for reporting on business performance related to climate change; responsibility for compliance and regulatory reporting; and responsibility for enforcing processes and policies related to climate change. For example, the process where by all new corporate initiatives must prepare a Greenhouse Management Plan and the conditions by which this plan must be submitted to an executive committee for review and approval.
While establishing a Carbon Management Office is a clear best practice there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. The Carbon Management Office must be aligned to the companies culture, structure and strategy. So, for example, we also see cases where there may be multiple Carbon Management Offices: a centralized corporate office and a separate office attached to a business area with high carbon-intensity operations and specialized monitoring and compliance requirements.
Internal carbon markets
As maturity and understanding of carbon management increases within companies we also see the Carbon Management Office providing an internal carbon registry enabling business areas to exchange carbon credits and pollution permits to meet individual emissions targets. This will enable the business to more efficiently meet its overall external emission targets. This kind of opportunity is a good example of the benefit of having the right organizational model in place.
Making sense of climate change
Please contact us if you’d like to establish a Carbon Management Office in your company.
The Vulcan Project is inspiring climate science with important lessons for business.
This project has mapped carbon dioxide emissions in the United States in 2002 at the level of individual factories, power plants and roads. As well as making the research data available online the project has developed some amazing visualizations such as those shown in the following video.
The same team is now building on these results with the Hestia Project, which aims to provide “detailed space-time information on fossil/industrial CO2 emissions via an intuitive, interactive, photorealistic, three-dimensional visualization of the Earth.”
This work is inspiring and clearly demonstrates the value in having detailed and verified data and having the ability to visualize the data to aid in education, planning and decision making.
At Greensense we think data capture and data visualization should be part of all businesses climate change strategy. We think having the capability to see and understand your business’s carbon inventory — at a sufficient level of detail — is the key to enabling meaningful actions to be taken and new strategies to be developed. This detail should extend across your supply chain and down into individual business areas and business activities.
Many businesses are already developing carbon inventories but are doing so only to meet regulatory requirements, such as those under the National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting System in Australia.
While initiatives to develop corporate carbon inventories are important, without the capability to capture data at the right level of detail and visualize that data these inventories won’t be the strategic tools they could be.
