#EXPLAINER: Can climate change be solved by pricing carbon?
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From Blackouts to Sustainable Energy: The Role of Battery Power Stations in Resilient Communities
Introduction
Greetings, my friends from Europe and America! As an expert in the field of energy storage, I am excited to introduce you to the incredible world of battery power stations and their role in creating resilient communities. In this article, I will explain what battery power stations are and how they contribute to solving the challenges of blackouts and sustainable energy. Let's dive in!
Understanding Battery Power Stations
First and foremost, let's clarify what battery power stations are. A battery power station is a centralized facility equipped with a large-scale battery system capable of storing and delivering electricity to meet the demands of a community or an entire city. These stations are crucial in times of power outages and play a vital role in transitioning towards a sustainable energy future.
The Importance of Battery Power Stations in Resilient Communities
In today's fast-paced world, power outages can have devastating effects on our daily lives. From disrupted communication channels to compromised healthcare systems, blackouts can leave communities vulnerable and struggling. Battery power stations provide a solution by acting as a reliable backup power source, ensuring energy continuity during emergencies.
Moreover, battery power stations play a crucial role in sustainable energy development. Renewable energy sources, such as solar and wind, are inherently intermittent. Without efficient energy storage systems like battery power stations, harnessing the full potential of renewables becomes a challenge. These stations store excess energy generated during peak production and release it during periods of high demand or low renewable energy availability, creating a balanced and sustainable energy supply.
The Impact of Battery Power Stations on Carbon Emissions
Reducing carbon emissions is a pressing global concern, and battery power stations are emerging as a significant player in this area. By facilitating the integration of renewable energy into the grid, these stations contribute to a cleaner energy mix. They enable a higher penetration of renewables, displacing carbon-intensive sources like coal and natural gas. Studies have shown that widespread adoption of battery power stations can lead to a substantial reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, making them an essential tool in combating climate change.
The Economic Benefits of Battery Power Stations
Aside from their environmental advantages, battery power stations also offer significant economic benefits to communities. By storing excess energy during off-peak periods when electricity rates are low, these stations can help to stabilize energy prices. Additionally, battery power stations can provide ancillary services to the grid, such as frequency regulation and peak shaving, which can generate additional revenue streams. This economic resilience contributes to the overall development and sustainability of communities.
Conclusion
From ensuring energy continuity during blackouts to promoting sustainable energy development, battery power stations have become indispensable in creating resilient communities. Their ability to store and deliver electricity efficiently, reduce carbon emissions, and provide economic benefits makes them a key component of our energy future. As we strive for a more sustainable and reliable power supply, battery power stations, like the one offered by "None," play a crucial role in achieving these goals.
References:
Article 1: The Role of Battery Power Stations in Resilient Communities
Article 2: Economic and Environmental Benefits of Battery Power Stations
Article 3: The Integration of Renewables and battery power stations in the Grid
Written by "None"
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How to fuck Bolsonaro and save the planet
“Unless you have already found a nice comfy cave up high in a mountain and stacked it up with canned food enough to last for decades, Jair Bolsonaro’s promised attacks on environment has to be stopped immediately!”
So it happened. Despite our crossed-fingers and before-bedtime prayers, world’s 5th largest country and 8th biggest economy is handed over to another misogynistic, homophobic, gun-loving arsehole. Jair Bolsonaro, rightfully nicked the Tropical Trump, won majority of the votes in the second round of the presidential elections in Brazil. It’s another dark day for us all.
Dear reader,
At this point, you might be saying “why the fuck should I care about Brazil’s new president”. You may not care about the women’s or LGBT rights in Brazil or let the relaxation of gun laws be Brazilians’ own problem (for all of which I might say, you`re completely wrong), but please know that on one important issue, Bolsonaro has promised to fuck not only Brazil, but the whole planet including your own pink arse: the environment.
With 450 million m3, Brazil is already the world`s 11th biggest CO2 emitter. On the plus side, Brazil is home to 3.3 km2 of Amazon rainforest, by far the biggest in the world. What Bolsonaro has been promising in his campaign was to go wild on the CO2 emissions, while wildly destroying the already threatened Amazons. Here’s a list of his campaign promises on environmental issues:
Withdrawal from the Paris agreement which has set targets for limitation of CO2 emissions to combat climate change
Shutting down the Ministry of Environment
Building a new motorway right through the Amazons
Opening up new areas on indigenous territories to mining
Relaxation of environmental law enforcement and licensing
Beefing up the alliance with the beef lobby which is already responsible for cutting down thousands of km2 of rainforest to open farmland.
Banning international environmental NGO’s like Greenpeace and WWF to operate in Brazil
In a time when scientists are already ringing the alarm bells at the highest level, actualization of even half of these campaign promises will be disastrous for all of us living on this planet. We can discuss for days the bad policies that has led Bolsonaro to power or write volumes on the rise of alt-right across the globe, but unless you have already found a nice comfy cave up high in a mountain and stacked it up with canned food enough to last for decades, Bolsonaro’s promised attacks on environment has to be stopped immediately, before they even start. Let’s discuss a few ways how.
We already know that, despite all the Jesus-praising, family-values-loving bullshit they talk non-stop about, guys like Bolsonaro care for and understand from one thing much more than anything else: Money.
Brazilian economy is already very fragile, trying to recover from years of recession, making it the Achilles’ (or in this case, Bolsonaro’s) heel If we can make this arsehole hear loud and clear that for any detrimental action he takes on the environment, we will strike back with our combined economic force, we can push him back to the hole he sneaked his miserable head out of. Below, I tried to list a few things you can easily do without losing your comfort too much.
Don’t Go
Brazil receives more than 6.6 million international tourists each year, leaving a revenue of more than 7 billion dollars. So, unless you’re planning to go and stand in front of the bulldozers chopping down the rainforests, postpone that tropical visit to another time. Or if you really want to see the rainforests and white sandy beaches that bad, try Costa Rica perhaps, where they are very close to becoming the first carbon neutral country in the world (and don’t forget to find ways to off-set your carbon footprint from that long intercontinental flight :)).
Eat Less Meat
I’m not saying go full-on vegan -not that it hurts- but eating less meat may be the most efficient way to hit back at Bolsonaro. Brazil’s biggest exports by far are animal agriculture related items (beef and poultry meat, soybeans and corn used as animal feed, etc.). By reducing the demand for Brazilian beef, chicken and soybeans, you will not only throw a punch at the Brazilian economy, but also take away the reasons for opening up more farmland in the Amazons.
Now, you might argue that you only eat local meat, not any of that Brazilian stuff, so this does not apply to you. Here’s a few counter arguments then: For starters, in many cases, cattle are transported live (in horrendous conditions, often from Brazil) and slaughtered locally, making its `country of origin` the land where the slaughterhouse is and not where the animals were raised. So, you often don’t really know whether that entrecôte you bought from the supermarket actually comes from Farmer Joe’s ranch or the Amazons.
Secondly, it is very likely that your country raises not enough chicken or cattle to meet the local demand, therefore even if you’re eating local meat, you are pushing others to eat imported stuff. By reducing the demand, you will force your local animal farmers be more competitive against Brazilian exporters. We all know that no politician wants to stand up against farmers, so goes up the tariffs against Brazilian beef and chicken.
And even if that is not the case and there is no Brazilian beef or chicken sold where you live, those animals were probably still fed on soybeans grown in Brazil. Soybeans alone account for more than 19 billion dollars (yes, billion with a ‘B’) of Brazilian exports. So, by just eating less meat, not only will you drop those cholesterol levels you’ve been worrying about, but also fuck Bolsonaro with a healthy smile :).
Use Less Fuel
Funny hey, what seems to be already good for the environment is bad for Bolsonaro. 5% of Brazil’s exports income comes from crude oil. Simply by cleaning up your old bike and pedalling to work, you will both reduce your own carbon footprint and also help drop the global demand on oil. Lower demand means lower prices, which in return results in a stick up Bolsonaro’s arse (plus the Saudis’, double good :)).
Consume Less Sugar
Equally funny, what seems to be already good for your health is also bad for Bolsonaro. Raw sugar accounts for 5.7% of Brazil’s exports. Cutting down on those pop drinks as well as pedalling to work will do wonders on that belly of yours. Another fine strike at Bolsonaro (with an added bonus hit at Coca-Cola :)).
For any arguments about consuming locally produced sugar, see the counter arguments for meat. The same principals apply and those love handles have got to go :).
Quit Smoking
Did you know that Brazil is a major tobacco exporter? I won’t even bother to elaborate further :).
Drink Less umhh... Coffee
Okay, this one hurts me the most. I am not going to preach anything I cannot follow myself, but you can check out the country of origin mark on this one. Unlike meat and sugar, the `Product of Brazil` mark has an added economic value when it comes to coffee. Yes, you get good coffee from Brazil, but not all good coffee comes from Brazil. So, next time you reach for the black stuff, make sure they originate from a better place (and is fair-trade). Costa Rica? Hey, you can even start an online petition to Starbucks on this one.
The same principal applies to pretty much everything. Whatever you’re looking to buy, make sure it is not `Made in Brazil`. That private jet you want to buy so much for example, don’t buy it from Embraer - bikes are way cooler anyway :).
Contact the NGO’s
Call your local Greenpeace and WWF office -since they have been promised to be silenced by Bolsonaro- and ask what their plans are (and if they can’t answer back, ask why the fuck they cannot). Try to get involved in their efforts to combat the evil. This is a global problem that will require global cooperation. Be part of it.
Contact Your Politicians
If you, by any chance, live in a country where the politicians give a rat’s arse to what the voters think, contact them and explain your concerns. Ask them to take measures against the guy who promises to destroy the future of your kids. And if they don’t listen, vote them out in the next elections and bring in those who will.
Inform Others
There is a good chance that your media have not given the deserved attention to what is happening in Brazil and you have heard of it only by pure luck. For every person who is informed about the issue, there are hundreds of thousands who is not. Use every social and antisocial media you can find to tell them about the great danger and urge them to take action. We cannot solve this problem on our own. Group up and combat together.
Reach Out
Bolsonaro is Brazilian, but not all Brazilians are Bolsonaro – just like not all Americans are Trump, not all French are Le Pen, not all Dutch are Wilders. Half of the country voted against the bastard. And out of 210 million Brazilians in the world, there’s a chance that you might have befriended one or two. If so, reach out to them. Local knowledge is golden - ask how you can help them further to stop the devil reincarnate. Make them feel your support at these troubling times in their country because you will need their support when the same shit happens in yours.
So, shall we samba?
#international#politics#brazil#bolsonaro#global warming#climate change#environment#action#greenpeace#wwf#amazon
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Corona, Climate and Other Things - A Rant
The world is grappling with a very serious and urgent threat, a kind it has encountered for the first time in the lives of its present inhabitants. It’s the kind which crashes economies, kills people and has that air of novelty and mystery to it. It also affects every single country on the planet. While we may argue that the Italy was very late and US very dismissive, we agree that such mass mobilization has not happened in recent history. It is heart-warming to see people coming together in such tough times to fight this. We have literally shut down all industrial activity, all recreational avenues, all air rail and road traffic, stopped wildlife trade and reinstated national borders (even states in some cases). Every other economic or political issue has been side lined and all energies are focused on reducing this pandemic to a crisis of manageable scale, flatten the curve they say. My heart goes out to the first responders and everyone else who is getting out of their homes every day so that we can stay safe inside ours.
Not taking away from the seriousness of the issue, my mind has been wandering off to distant topics all this while. I can’t help but think how very few people know that 37000 people died in the richest country in the world in the last flu season, and 61000 in the season before that. I looked at that trend over the last 2 decades and it shook me. This makes me wonder whether the actions the countries are taking are to prevent loss of human life, or to prevent the markets from crashing. As you would have guessed, the deaths due to flu don’t cause a dent on the market. How the richest country on the planet isn’t able to make a vaccine and/or vaccinate its people against a known enemy is beyond me. But then a lot of things about how the US functions baffles me. I shall leave that topic for later.
If we or the governments cared about the loss of lives, wouldn’t we have done more about the 800 million odd people starving in the world, 8 million dying every year. Or the 2 million people dying in road accidents every year. Or the gun violence and homicides that kill so many people around the world. We don’t demand our governments to take action, and hence we don’t get any. Demand and supply you see! But, in these dark times, I want to believe that the actions being taken the world over are to safeguard humans and not to safeguard capitalistic interest or our markets. And Believe I do.
The second random thought that keeps coming back to me is from a book I read a while ago (The Sixth Extinction by Elizabeth Kolbert). It talked about the world of bacteria and viruses with a scary premonition. The author said that while we are predicting and adapting to the affects of climate change, we have no clue how a 2 degree rise in temperature would affect the world of bacteria and viruses. Forget those outside, it talked about the ones in our gut. What if all the bacteria in our gut can’t survive a world that is 2 degrees warmer. This happened with a species that we don’t really care about and it was vanished in a season. Taking this line of thinking forward, I keep wondering that rising temperatures would create newer variants of bacteria and viruses that we don’t have any acquired immunity against. Hence, we might see increasing epidemics and infections in a warmer world.
Another thing I can’t take my mind off are the pictures of canals in Venice that have been floating around. I have said this to multiple people that I did not really like Venice, and the thing I disliked the most was how dirty the water was. Well, that and the crowds. But I couldn’t say that because I was a part of the crowds. I had recently spent some time in the US, in Arizona where I had gotten used to the vast blue sky. Only when I came back to India did I realise that I had no memories of time when the sky was blue. It did not help that I landed in the pollution hotspot of the world in the thick of the season. And this time the season lasted for over 4 months and it looked like it wouldn’t end until the virus made an entry. For the last 10 days, this clear blue sky I see fills me with a joy I can’t explain. Much has been said about how the planet needed a breather and was given one in the form of the novel coronavirus.
This shutdown around the world has also made us aware of what it takes to slow down climate change. Now we can’t go back to saying it’s not possible, or it’s too difficult. The virus has shown the way. What scares me shitless is that we will just go back to where we stopped, not demanding from ourselves or our institutions the change that is needed, the change that we have seen is possible and works. Not asking the prospective leaders to include renewable energy in their election manifesto, not even bothering to check if it is. Not asking our universities to stop taking research grants from an Indian Oil or a Shell. Not demanding our banks to lend to the renewable energy sector and to stop being the preferred bank for Koch Brothers and the like. Moving back to business as usual and not doing all these things has a huge cost.
Let us fight the WTO tariffs where they stifle indigenous renewable industries from developing. Let’s not vote for the politicians who let Aarey forest be destroyed. Let’s not bring back to the power the ones who started quarrying in Bannerghatta. Or the ones who said Tar sands are clean. Let’s launch a mass movement against the government that let the world’s largest rainforests burn. Or against the meat industry that needed the rainforests to burn because the land was needed for grazing.
Let’s change the way we travel. More importantly, let’s not travel only because everyone else is doing it. Let’s not waste. Food, water, or clothes. Let’s not buy more than we need to. Let’s recycle whatever we can. Let’s think of the carbon footprint next time we order online. Let’s think about taking the bus next time, or the metro. Let’s ask the government why the public transport sucks. Why Mumbai takes so much time to get the Metro. Ask why everyone in Bangalore has to commute via roads in their own vehicles or Ubers. Let’s think about buying an electric car when it’s time to replace. However, be wary of anyone who tells you that making these changes on the demand side will solve the massive problem we are facing. As soon as we talk of supply side changes, we are moving into policy and that’s what threatens the status quo.
Time is right for a social movement to emerge, let us not go back to the status quo. I doubt anyone wants to go back to dull foggy skies, roads choc-a-bloc with cars, dirty Venice waters, and the N99 masks. We have been made to believe over decades that all this is an acceptable price to pay for economic progress. Let’s turn that thinking on its head. Change is hard. But as we have seen, slow and steady change has now become status quo. Slow change over decades is how we have gotten used to the air travel, the ever increasing number of devices in our lives and the cars on our roads, the avocado from Mexico in a market in Delhi. Slow gradual change is how companies have gotten us hooked onto branded wear and fast fashion, apparel made in Vietnam making way into our hands in California. If only someone would calculate the carbon footprint of a shirt made in Vietnam making its way to California, with the cotton for the shirt sent from California to Vietnam. (US is the second largest exporter of cotton). This is the time to make a case for local supply chains, supporting green energy where it needs support, encouraging local entrepreneurs. Let’s change the rules of the game, one rule at a time, in the same steady way this slow change sneaked up on us and became a part of the status quo.
Basis my reading, here are the top few reasons (and there are many more) why this fight will be very different than the one against Coronavirus –
- In the virus we have an external enemy to mobilise against, while in the fight against climate change the enemy is our habits and our institutions
- The threat of the virus is urgent, while the threat of climate change is perceived to be distant. We have evolved over generations to tackle urgent threats, since the hunter-gatherer times.
- Time Inconsistency – We ourselves will be the beneficiaries of the fight against Coronavirus. In the other fight, we will have to pay the costs while the benefits will most likely be reaped by people worse-off than us or the future generations.
In this fight against the virus, I choose to believe that what we are fighting for is above the GDP growth, and averting financial crisis to the extent possible. And I hope that this belief when shared by the larger group becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This fight against Coronavirus has given me hope. Hope that we have it in us to do something for others, to fight against a mysterious enemy, to mobilise ourselves and help each other in need. It has also assured me that no matter how flawed our institutions may be, they have the power to mobilise the masses to fight in the interest of the common good.
For those of us worried about the costs of changing our current ways of living, we should look at the costs incurred due to hurricanes, wildfires, and air pollution alone. Add to that the costs of increasing migrations, losing ecosystems and changing crop patterns. We can’t even begin to estimate the costs associated with these.
To keep on the right path in this fight, there is one thing that we must guard against - our over-reliance on stock markets and GDP as a sole indicator of progress. We have enough evidence now that markets adapt to crisis and it is then included in the baseline. The same way we compare the next hurricane with the last one and lose the bigger picture. Whole industries can be built gradually that will capitalise on the changing ecosystems, conflict due to increasing migrations and the like. The world will change faster that we will realise. As humanity, we must guard against this slow change that has the capacity to change humankind as we know it.
Now, one last submission. Not all of us can do all of the above. Let’s do what resonates with us. Lastly, I will invoke the rule so passionately thrust upon us for the last century. Demand these things and be ready to pay the right price. If we create this demand, I trust the free markets enough that the market will create incentives and ensure these demands are met. Let markets find the right price we are ready to pay for this unmet demand.
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There was a time when climate change seemed like one piece on the checkerboard of world problems, a piece perhaps sandwiched between war in a remote country and the fact that the bees were dying, which you knew you were supposed to be upset about even if you weren't sure exactly why.
But then a terrifying article in New York Magazine about the soon-to-be "uninhabitable earth" went viral, and teens all over the world ditched school to protest in the streets, and fires ravaged California and storms pummeled the Bahamas, and a bunch of UN scientists told us we had a little over a decade to turn things around. In short: The zeitgeist began to change. For many, climate change went from feeling like one problem piece out of many to the board on which the whole game is played.
"Climate change is the biggest problem of our generation and the most urgent one to solve," Hana Kajimura, a sustainability analyst at Silicon Valley's favorite sneaker company, Allbirds, tells Fashionista over the phone. She's not alone in her thinking.
Just a few months prior to our conversation, Allbirds had announced that it was going "100% carbon neutral" as a way of reckoning with the fact that it, like every other brand or business, is an emitter of some of the greenhouse gases (or GHGs) causing global warming. The news came days after Everlane launched its first ever "carbon-neutral" product. And they were both preceded by Reformation, which had been calling itself carbon neutral since 2015.
Not long after, these millennial-friendly labels known for their sustainability-centric marketing were joined by their luxury peers: Gabriela Hearst, whose $6,000 handbags have become a fixture in the wardrobe of Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle, claimed to host the first ever carbon-neutral runway show at New York Fashion Week. Gucci declared its operations — including its extensive global supply chain and its latest fashion show — 100% carbon neutral earlier this month. And on Tuesday, Kering, the luxury conglomerate behind Gucci, Balenciaga and Saint Laurent, announced that it too was committing to carbon neutrality.
If climate change is caused by releasing gases like carbon into the atmosphere, then becoming carbon neutral is the best thing a brand can do, right? In theory, yes. Unfortunately, getting there isn't quite as straightforward as brands often make it sound.
Most achieve "carbon neutrality" through a combination of reducing emissions and purchasing carbon offsets. The former, which might include switching to renewable energy in a brand's warehouses, is pretty universally applauded by environmentalists. The latter, in which a brand pays someone else to either capture or avoid emitting a given amount of carbon elsewhere to make up for the fact that the brand emitted that amount itself, is more controversial.
"We tend to think of [offsets] as sort of being able to offset a company's guilt, as opposed to its true environmental footprint," Dr. Amy Moas, a senior forest campaigner at Greenpeace, tells Fashionista.
There are a few key critiques that offsetting skeptics make: that it gives corporations an excuse not to shrink their direct emissions, that the offsetting market is historically unreliable, and that accounting for offsets is often inaccurate.
Most brands are aware of the first critique — that buying offsets is just an excuse not to reduce emissions — and every representative I spoke to for this story assured me they were being vigilant on this front. Gucci stated in a release that it has "already achieved a 16% reduction of its overall footprint across its supply chain since 2015, relative to growth," and Reformation's Vice President of Operations and Sustainability Kathleen Talbot told me on the phone that "you have to be really careful that you're starting with reduction."
The second common critique is that the offsetting market has a history of unreliability. This stems from the market's nascency, when it was riddled with frauds. A 2010 investigation by the Christian Science Monitor uncovered offset providers that sold the Pope himself on the idea that they were planting carbon-sucking trees on behalf of the Vatican — without lifting a finger to do so.
"There were [offset provider] companies out there that were not developing the best projects, and it certainly gave the industry a black eye for a period of time," says Kevin Hackett, the client strategy director at a carbon offsetting provider called Native Energy, which works with Everlane, Reformation and Eileen Fisher.
"But what happened was that as the standards got stronger," he continues, "and as brands and companies became more aware of the issues and more adept at figuring out which projects worked and doing due diligence, those [fraudulent] companies began to disappear."
Many would agree with Hackett that regulations have gotten stronger: It's much harder to sell a project that doesn't exist these days. But environmentalists like Dr. Moas might still make the third critique, that carbon offsets are tricky to properly account for even without con men perpetrating intentional fraud.
This is where it gets tricky. There are numerous kinds of projects a brand can invest in: Some fund the capture of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, that leaks from landfills. Others get a wind farm up and running so that locals can stop relying on coal-powered energy. Still others provide rural communities in the developing world with water filters so that they don't have to cut down trees to boil their water so it's safe to drink. And so on.
With so much variety, even the most strident of offset defenders would agree that not all projects are created equal. Permanence is one concern: Will a project's carbon benefit disappear tomorrow if it's based on something like a protected forest that could burn down? Additionality is another key quality to look for in a trustworthy offset: It means the carbon benefit genuinely wouldn't have happened without the offset money. In other words, you can't just pay a landowner to not cut down trees he wasn't planning to cut down anyway, or that offset wouldn't be considered additional.
Leakage is a third concern. If you paid to protect trees in land plot A, and the landowner took your money to protect those trees but then just cut down trees in adjacent plot B, that would be considered leakage. You didn't prevent the carbon-sucking trees from being cut down, you just caused the site of the chopping to change. On top of that, there's the concern of whether or not the offset project has the potential to harm communities that might live nearby.
When taking these criteria into account, forestry-related offsets — including the UN-backed REDD+ forestry projects which make up the entirety of Kering and Gucci's offsetting portfolio — become particularly suspect.
A scene from Gucci's "carbon neutral" runway show in Milan this season. Photo: Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images
"There has not been one [forest offsetting project] that we have found that has been able to provide the long-term, verifiable emissions reductions without [negative] human rights impacts," Greenpeace's Dr. Moas says. "Not one."
Dr. Tracey Osborne, an associate professor at the School of Geography and Development at the University of Arizona, has been researching carbon offsets and offsetting markets for two decades. Though she highlights the importance of protecting forests and even thinks brands could play a role in this, she agrees with Dr. Moas that forest offsets as they currently exist are problematic.
"Right now forests are seen as cheap credits, the low-hanging fruit," she explains on the phone. "But if we do it properly, they actually would cost a lot more."
Because current forest offset prices are so low, she continues, the money is not sufficient to prevent cattle ranching, soy production, palm oil production or large-scale timber operations, which are often the real drivers of deforestation in the tropical nations where these projects are focused. Instead, cheaper offsets tend to target local indigenous communities and their subsistence practices even though research from organizations like National Geographic and Project Drawdown has demonstrated that indigenous land management practices can actually reduce emissions and deforestation.
In short: There's a lot of ways that offsets can go wrong and render themselves either ineffective at reducing net carbon in the atmosphere, or even become actively harmful to vulnerable communities.
As if all that weren't enough, there's an inconsistency in carbon offset bookkeeping so blatant it's almost hard to believe.
Aldyen Donnelly is a former consultant who's been involved in carbon trading since the early '90s. By 2003, she was the largest private speculative buyer of offset credit in the world — surpassed only by organizations like the World Bank, she says. In short, she knows the market inside and out. While she acknowledges many of the other pitfalls listed here, one of the biggest in her view stems from a simple math problem.
"There are a lot of companies who are buying offset credits and saying, 'Now we're carbon neutral!' and they're not bad guys; they have every reason to think they are [carbon neutral]," she says on the phone. "But they're buying certificates with a stated value of one ton when the underlying value of the certificates is, at best, if everything else is done perfectly, a half a ton."
The reason is simple: international carbon markets don't consistently practice double-entry bookkeeping. In other words, when a brand buys offsets across international borders, the seller isn't subtracting what they've sold from their country's total carbon reductions, even though the buyer is adding it to theirs.
To illustrate: Let's say a landowner in Brazil says "I have a project that draws down ten tons of carbon from the atmosphere," and a brand in France says, "I'd like to buy two tons' worth from you to make up for the two tons I just emitted." You'd think that after the sale, Brazil's carbon registry would have to enter a -2 in its log, since France just added a +2. But up to this point, that's not how it has worked — instead, Brazil keeps its number the same even as France adds +2.
What that means for brands is that when they think they've purchased 500 tons worth of carbon offsets across international borders, there's really only a net gain of about 250 tons at the most — and that's if they've managed to avoid all the other pitfalls listed above. It's such a silly math mistake that it's hard to believe it's happening in something as large as the multibillion-dollar offset industry. But other experts confirmed what Donnelly told me: Though there are moves to change this system, that change is still years away from being realized.
All of these issues point to the main reason Dr. Moas remains less than enthusiastic about offsets — they let companies treat the real, measurable carbon they're emitting now as interchangeable with the potential (and potentially smaller-than-they-thought) carbon savings that may result in the future from their offsetting projects.
From this vantage point, it would be easy to see why some want to write carbon offsetting off as greenwashing and move on.
But consider that even if every company in the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow (which, of course, they won't), the Earth would still have far surpassed what scientists consider a safe amount of carbon in the atmosphere. It becomes easier to see why there are still plenty of people willing to do anything they can think of to keep that number from growing.
"You can always argue that it's better not to emit in the first place, and that's what we try to convince our clients to do," says Arnaud Brohe, CEO of offset provider CO2 Logic. "But we believe that if you do emit, it's also better to clean up after your mess."
Brohe tells me that he'd love for governments to do such a great job fighting or regulating emissions that his company and job could cease to exist. But until then, he thinks offsets are a good way for corporations to voluntarily put a price on their own carbon.
"If you don't want to support one of my projects, I think it's great if you take the same amount of money and invest in some other [climate] action," Brohe says. "But just saying 'I'm against offsets' is not going to work."
For all of the ways that carbon offsetting can go awry, especially in forest-related projects, there really is scientific reason to not give up the whole endeavor entirely. It just might mean switching to projects that aren't exactly... sexy. Separating manure solids on a dairy farm, as Native Energy does in one of its offsetting projects, might not be as marketable to a luxury customer as planting trees in Milan is. But it's probably delivering a more reliable offset.
And while some might claim that offsets let brands pay to pollute, the money they're handing over can make a real difference for farmers and other private landowners, who often need financial support to become more climate-friendly operations. Regenerative agriculture practices, for example, have incredible potential to draw carbon out of the atmosphere, but there can be financial barriers for farmers who want to begin implementing them.
Dr. Adam Chambers, a seasoned climate scientist who works for the USDA, sees the offsetting market's potential to defray these costs as a significant boon.
"Seventy percent of the land area in the United States is privately owned, and you can mobilize those lands for solutions," he says on the phone. "What we haven't done in the past is empowered farmers and ranchers to be part of the climate solution, and provided them with a market signal that encourages a certain type of behavior."
Donnelly, despite spending a good portion of our interview talking about how offsets can go wrong, ultimately aligns with Dr. Chambers in his excitement about farming and soil. She believes in their climate change-fighting potential so thoroughly that she's helping launch Nori, a new offsetting marketplace, before the end of the year. Through Nori, Donnelly hopes to offer farmers the support they need to take on worthwhile climate projects while ensuring corporations that when they buy one ton's worth of offsets, that's really what they're getting.
And Dr. Osborne, the climate scientist from University of Arizona, says that forest offsets don't need to be written off indefinitely. Working closely with indigenous communities and independent researchers to correct past mistakes could result in new projects that do more to protect the crucial biodiversity and carbon-capturing potential of forests.
In the end, it seems that the best attitude toward carbon offsetting mimics the best attitude toward sustainable fashion innovation: A certain skepticism is required to sort out legitimate claims from the illegitimate ones, and there will be plenty of the latter. But the existence of shoddy attempts shouldn't be a reason to stop trying entirely. Instead, it should serve as a reminder that extreme caution is necessary.
In the end, Dr. Osborne says, "our world is not going to be saved by offsets." But that's not a reason to totally do away with them.
"In order to truly transform, to make a U-turn on climate, it will require massive transformation in our social, political and economic life," she says. "But an offset is one step... It's a way of starting to move the needle in the right direction."
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Celebrating solutions that chip away at big problems: 3 essential reads
by Emily Schwartz Greco
No longer tangled and pointing in the right direction. turgaygundogdu/Shutterstock.com
Editor’s note: As we come to the end of the year, Conversation editors take a look back at the stories that – for them – exemplified 2018.
Slowing the pace of climate change, increasing access to health care and comprehensively covering the news are very different but worthy goals with some things in common.
One is gridlock. The nation’s leaders are doing little to solve these problems.
Another is sticker shock: Holding the line at 2 degrees Celsius of global warming – or less – would cost trillions of dollars and require systemic change. The same goes for securing adequate medical treatment for all Americans. Reporting the news costs billions, but nobody knows how to pay that tab either.
To see how disheartening this is, search the internet for the terms “climate change,” “health care” or “newsrooms” and “despair.” You’ll generate hundreds of thousands of hits or more.
That’s why I like to pause, especially at the year’s end, to celebrate innovations and encouraging trends that chip away at huge challenges.
1. Bypassing drug shortages
For example, the emergence of Civica Rx is encouraging. The nonprofit generic drugmaker, which launched in 2018, will soon begin producing 14 hospital-administered generics. Most of them are too scarce to meet demand.
The venture has not disclosed its business model. But “should it choose to do so, Civica Rx could theoretically set the price at or near the cost of production,” writes Stacie B. Dusetzina, a Vanderbilt University health policy and cancer scholar. That would make a big difference in a country where pharmaceuticals can sell for triple what they cost elsewhere.
If Civica Rx succeeds at making treatment in hospitals cheaper and better, there will be fewer excuses for not fixing the rest of the health care system’s broken pieces.
2. Scrapping emissions
Just as Civica Rx makes it possible to feel more optimistic about the future of U.S. health care, the industrial-scale repurposing of steel and aluminum holds promise regarding climate change.
Scrap metal gets recycled the way cans and boxes from your household do, only on a bigger scale. Repurposing metal from demolished buildings and unroadworthy cars saves money, tempers landfill problems and uses much less energy than starting from scratch.
Because the process requires less power, it “has a much smaller carbon footprint,” explains Daniel Cooper, a University of Michigan mechanical engineer. “The greenhouse gas emissions for recycling steel are around one-quarter of what they are for making new steel, and recycling aluminum cuts emissions by more than 80 percent.”
Granted, China’s unwillingness to import as much American junk as it used to due to trade tensions is disrupting global scrap markets.
But the U.S. could potentially use all of steel and aluminum it throws out right here, Cooper contends. That would cut down on emissions even more by bypassing the carbon released into the atmosphere from hauling cargo across oceans.
3. Teaming up between newsrooms
The traditional way to cover the news is inefficient. Many journalists often report on the same events and scandals, working in isolation and duplicating efforts.
That’s starting to change, observes Magda Konieczna, an assistant professor of journalism at Temple University.
A growing number of news organizations “are sharing their high-quality journalism with other outlets,” she explains. “By teaming up, they can inform bigger audiences about the problems like corruption, environmental dangers and abusive business practices.”
Most of the time, the sharing involves news nonprofits without big audiences, Konieczna finds. This collaborative approach helps “elevate the quality of the media where people are already going for news: newspapers and newscasts, whether directly or through Facebook and Twitter.”
About The Author:
Emily Schwartz Greco is the Philanthropy + Nonprofits Editor at The Conversation.
This article is republished from our content partners The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.
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The Real Price of Fast Fashion
On April 23, 2013, the Rana Plaza building owners warned the companies operating on its eight floors about cracks discovered around the building. The shops and banks that operated on the lower floors immediately closed. But the garment factory owners on the upper floor that caters to fast fashion in the western countries, completely ignored the warning.
The very next day, on April 24th, garment workers were pressured and threatened to come for work by their employers. Hours later, in about ninety seconds, the whole building collapsed killing nearly 1134 workers and injuring 2400 workers, some for the rest of their lives. Many people survived the crash but were trapped under tons of rubble and machinery for hours or even days before they could be rescued, some by amputating limbs.
This was the tragic incident that woke the world to the terrible working conditions of the garment workers in third-world countries like Bangladesh. The lives of thousands of people were jeopardized in order to serve the customers with low price tagged items. But was it worth it?
Modern consumer buying behavior
The world is moving faster than ever. Humans have become more efficient at everything they did before. From traveling to manufacturing, we have become better and faster. The same goes for the buying behavior of consumers.
We are increasingly becoming social animals. Each moment of our lives is shared online via Facebook and Instagram. And who would want to be seen in the same dress?
For each and every social gathering, we have tended to be wearing a new dress. What makes it possible is the availability of cheap clothes by most iconic brands. Consumers are willing to spend a reasonable amount of money every time they purchase a new pair of clothes.
It is recorded that almost 100 billion items of garments are manufactured each and every year. We are buying garments at an unprecedented rate. Even though the buyer is at its peak, a huge amount of garments end up in landfills.
Buy More Wear less Culture
A survey commissioned by Barnado’s charity in 2019, found that British people spend up to 2.7 billion pounds on clothes during the summer that will only be worn once. The youth wants novelty in every outfit they wear. Going out means being visible to the world. Thanks to social media. So what happens to those outfits that were worn once, they end up in a corner to eventually end up in waste.
Some of the biggest names in fast fashion are H&M and Zara. They have a turnaround time, design-to-retail, of about five weeks. They introduce around twenty different collections a year.
There is another category of retailers known as the ‘online retailers’ who sells garments in an even speedier fashion. They release about a thousand new products monthly. These ultra-fast fashion trendy designs are being released only feeds into shopper's desire to buy more.
“It’s not just about clothing, it’s about a disposable society – Michael Solomon, consumer behavior expert.”
Today we have moved to a situation where fashion is considered equal to fast food. It is expected that by the year 2050, consumption of fashion will more than triple. How are we going to make certain that the future will be kind to its environment and humans?
Patagonia Breaking the Stereotype
Patagonia is an American outdoor clothing company. They ran an advertisement in The New York Times on Black Friday telling people “Don’t Buy This Jacket”
It was quite controversial for any company to ask its consumers to don’t buy their product. But with this brilliant ad, the company was trying to address the issue of consumerism. As a part of the Common Threads Initiative, Patagonia decided to lighten its environmental footprint. They proposed that everyone needs to consume less and businesses need to make fewer things but of higher quality. What customers need to think twice before they make a purchase.
In an article released on their website, Patagonia says, “Everything we make takes something from the planet we can’t give back. Each piece of Patagonia clothing, whether or not it’s organic or uses recycled materials, emits several times its weight in greenhouse gases, generates at least another half garment’s worth of scrap, and draws down copious amounts of freshwater now growing scarce everywhere on the planet.”
Under the Common Threads Initiative, they encourage consumers to buy less by providing high-quality materials. They help consumers in repairing their existing but broken items. They help customers resell their unused items and they take back their gear from customers to recycle the product.
We have to admit that the effort the brand has taken to decrease its impact is brilliant and noteworthy. The campaign was so successful that they literally tripled their sales. From this model, it is clear that a change is only possible when all the parties involved in the supply chain make a conscious effort to change.
Business of Rental Clothing
There is a new business model that was introduced in the early 2000s. The business of rental clothing. Understanding the consumer's demand to wear fresh clothes and lack of money, start-ups have been formed to solve this problem.
Start-ups like The Stylease offers high-end garments and accessories for a tenth of the retail value on rent for a period of four days. They source expensive clothes from various designers and individual owners that are not going to use the outfit again soon. They list those items on their website after processing them to achieve a fresh look and hygienic appearance.
There are many other start-ups that follow this same business model. And it is becoming popular. One positive thing about this idea is that consumers are utilizing an item to its full capacity. Most bridal wear and occasional outfits are often stored in closets after their use. In this scenario, it is used many times. We want people to adopt and receive such ideas with an open hand to impact positively climate change and sustainability.
Changing Brand Strategies & Consumer Behaviour
One remarkable thing about successful businesses is that they are adaptable. They always keep iterating their strategies to align with the world view. Primark is such a brand that constantly innovates and invests in new technology and sustainability.
On September 15 Primark CEO Paul Marchant and Lynne Walker explained their game-changing sustainability goals in an interview with Drapers.
“Primark Cares has been running for about four years, but this strategy has now put the framework around it. The team looked at our biggest material impacts on the planet, what our colleagues and customers are saying, and then the wider scope that the fashion industry needs to address. We mapped everything that we needed to do, which took around seven months, and then we came up with this 10-year journey. We don’t have all of the answers, but we have got a real clear business case and roadmap in place. (Lynn Walker-Director of Primark Cares)”
When international brands like Primark declare such bold moves to tackle climate change by reducing their carbon footprint, it encourages other brands to follow its path. Brands come under pressure to either change or become the spotlight for criticism and hate.
From a wider perspective, we can say that the textile industry has woken up to the fact that they can no longer function as they used to in the past. In an increasingly transparent and connected world, each and every action are being recorded and questioned. Businesses are held accountable by common people. I am sure that in the coming years, more companies will follow this path and really change the way we do shopping. Most importantly help us realize the true value of clothing.
Do you want us to manufacture sustainable and organic fabrics for you?
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Heimdal pulls CO2 and cement-making materials out of seawater using renewable energy
One of the consequences of rising CO2 levels in our atmosphere is that levels also rise proportionately in the ocean, harming wildlife and changing ecosystems. Heimdal is a startup working to pull that CO2 back out at scale using renewable energy and producing carbon-negative industrial materials, including limestone for making concrete, in the process, and it has attracted significant funding even at its very early stage.
If the concrete aspect seems like a bit of a non sequitur, consider two facts: concrete manufacturing is estimated to produce as much as eight percent all greenhouse gas emissions, and seawater is full of minerals used to make it. You probably wouldn’t make this connection unless you were in some related industry or discipline, but Heimdal founders Erik Millar and Marcus Lima did while they were working in their respective masters programs at Oxford. “We came out and did this straight away,” he said.
They both firmly believe that climate change is an existential threat to humanity, but were disappointed at the lack of permanent solutions to its many and various consequences across the globe. Carbon capture, Millar noted, is frequently a circular process, meaning it is captured only to be used and emitted again. Better than producing new carbons, sure, but why aren’t there more ways to permanently take them out of the ecosystem?
The two founders envisioned a new linear process that takes nothing but electricity and CO2-heavy seawater and produces useful materials that permanently sequester the gas. Of course, if it was as easy that, everyone would already be doing it.
Image Credits: Heimdal
“The carbon markets to make this economically viable have only just been formed,” said Millar. And the cost of energy has dropped through the floor as huge solar and wind installations have overturned decades-old power economies. With carbon credits (the market for which I will not be exploring, but suffice it to say it is an enabler) and cheap power come new business models, and Heimdal’s is one of them.
The Heimdal process, which has been demonstrated at lab scale (think terrariums instead of thousand-gallon tanks), is roughly as follows. First the seawater is alkalinized, shifting its pH up and allowing the isolation of some gaseous hydrogen, chlorine, and a hydroxide sorbent. This is mixed with a separate stream of seawater, causing the precipitation of calcium, magnesium, and sodium minerals and reducing the saturation of CO2 in the water — allowing it to absorb more from the atmosphere when it is returned to the sea. (I was shown an image of the small-scale prototype facility but, citing pending patents, Heimdal declined to provide the photo for publication.)
Image Credits: Heimdal
So from seawater and electricity, they produce hydrogen and chlorine gas, Calcium Carbonate, Sodium Carbonate, and Magnesium Carbonate, and in the process sequester a great deal of dissolved CO2.
For every kiloton of seawater, one ton of CO2 is isolated, and two tons of the carbonates, each of which has an industrial use. MgCO3 and Na2CO3 are used in, among other things, glass manufacturing, but it’s CaCO3, or limestone, that has the biggest potential impact.
As a major component of the cement-making process, limestone is always in great demand. But current methods for supplying it are huge sources of atmospheric carbon. All over the world industries are investing in carbon reduction strategies, and while purely financial offsets are common, moving forward the preferred alternative will likely be actually carbon-negative processes.
To further stack the deck in its favor, Heimdal is looking to work with desalination plants, which are common around the world where fresh water is scarce but seawater and energy are abundant, for example the coasts of California and Texas in the U.S., and many other areas globally, but especially where deserts meet the sea, like in the MENA region.
Desalination produces fresh water and proportionately saltier brine, which generally has to be treated, as to simply pour it back into the ocean can throw the local ecosystem out of balance. But what if there were, say, a mineral-collecting process between the plant and the sea? Heimdal gets the benefit of more minerals per ton of water, and the desalination plant has an effective way of handling its salty byproduct.
“Heimdal’s ability to use brine effluent to produce carbon-neutral cement solves two problems at once,” said Yishan Wong, former Reddit CEO, now CEO of Terraformation and individually an investor in Heimdal. “It creates a scalable source of carbon-neutral cement, and converts the brine effluent of desalination into a useful economic product. Being able to scale this together is game-changing on multiple levels.”
Terraformation gets $30M to fight climate change with rapid reforesting
Terraformation is a big proponent of solar desalination, and Heimdal fits right into that equation; the two are working on an official partnership that should be announced shortly. Meanwhile a carbon-negative source for limestone is something cement makers will buy every gram of in their efforts to decarbonize.
Wong points out that the primary cost of Heimdal’s business, beyond the initial ones of buying tanks, pumps, and so on, is that of solar energy. That’s been trending downwards for years and with huge sums being invested regularly there’s no reason to think that the cost won’t continue to drop. And profit per ton of CO2 captured — already around 75 percent of over $500-$600 in revenue — could also grow with scale and efficiency.
Millar said that the price of their limestone is, when government incentives and subsidies are included, already at price parity with industry norms. But as energy costs drop and scales rise, the ratio will grow more attractive. It’s also nice that their product is indistinguishable from “natural” limestone. “We don’t require any retrofitting for the concrete providers — they just buy our synthetic calcium carbonate rather than buy it from mining companies,” he explained.
All in all it seems to make for a promising investment, and though Heimdal has not yet made its public debut (that would be forthcoming at Y Combinator’s Summer 2021 Demo Day) it has attracted a $6.4 million seed round. The participating investors are Liquid2 Ventures, Apollo Projects, Soma Capital, Marc Benioff, Broom Ventures, Metaplanet, Cathexis Ventures, and as mentioned above, Yishan Wong.
Heimdal has already signed LOIs with several large cement and glass manufacturers, and is planning its first pilot facility at a U.S. desalination plant. After providing test products to its partners on the scale of tens of tons, they plan to enter commercial production in 2023.
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How to avoid a climate disaster?
The solutions we have and the breakthroughs we need
Bill has put a lot of his time and money into figuring out how to solve the warming climate problem. The book promises solutions, and while it offers solutions in the end, those are maybe not the most interesting part of the book. I want to touch upon three things I think the book explains well: 1) why it’s hard, 2) what is the big picture of the problem, 3) concept of green premiums.
Why is it hard?
51 billion to zero – in 20-30 years. Getting rid of almost every source of CO2 emission and offsetting the few ones we can’t get rid of. That is what countries are pledging to do, and that is what is needed as a minimum. This is hard because it is not only about doing quite a bit, we really have to get down, to ZERO, and then CO2 negative. The good metaphor here is the bath tub that is filling up, and we don’t want it to spill over. We can’t just reduce our speed of emitting, we need to stop and start removing CO2 in absolute terms from the atmosphere and with a blazingly fast speed compared to how the world so far has developed.
What is the big picture of the problem?
When we talk about human generated CO2, we mostly think about electricity and transportation. The book splits the CO2 emissions into 5 categories we need to solve:
(31%) Making things (cements, steel, plastics)
(27%) Plugging in (electricity)
(19%) Growing things (Plants and animals)
(16%) Getting around (planes, trucks, cargo ships)
(7%) Keeping warm and cool
In the biggest category of “Making things”, we are barely out of the R&D phase for the first replacement materials.
Electricity generation needs a wide mix of green alternatives but it looks very difficult to reach green electricity without strong nuclear investments in addition to the wind, solar, and battery that have been developing fast over the last 20 years.
Growing things with less CO2 means less meat production and agricultural practices sinking carbon into the soil. Changing our diet to animal substitutes is happening but is it fast enough?
Green premium
The concepts of green premium is useful when comparing new and old technologies. While governments, companies and consumers can choose green products either by free choice or due to legislation it is bound to create problems if the green premium (price of a green product vs a non green) is significant. Many can’t afford the green option for a reason or another and as a business or country your competitiveness will suffer. All innovation has to target cost efficiency and a negative green premium, meaning that selecting the environmentally friendly product is more affordable.
Summary
The book managed to provide an overall framework how to think about climate solutions, what is big and what is small. The actual solutions are fairly simple on paper and Bill does a good job on summarizing his view. As we all know, the problems are not as much technical in nature, rather political. I can only hope Covid19 has brought the world together in solving global problems and we can soon smoothly transition our focus from vaccines to effective global climate policies.
The approach of the book was very much for the average Joe, which felt a little too simplified for someone who knows the difference between kilowatts and megawatts. I felt I learned a few things about potential solutions but not much in depth. There could have been deeper technology reviews and predictions on what technologies will succeed better than others.
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Architects are "at the very centre of what we need to do to get to net-zero" says Bulb CEO
Millions of homes could generate small amounts of solar energy to help eliminate carbon emissions from the UK power grid, according to Hayden Wood, CEO of renewable energy supplier Bulb.
The country is at the "starting point" of a transition towards a decentralised, emissions-free energy network, he claimed.
Architects are central to this process as they can help persuade planners "to allow you to have solar panels or solar tiles on the roofs of buildings."
The UK's grid is already well on its way to ending its reliance on fossil fuels. In 2020, renewable generation grew 11 percent and provided a record 42.9 per cent of all power, outstripping fossil sources for the first time.
Meanwhile, the number of UK households using renewable energy has risen from just one per cent in 2015 to around 30 per cent today, Wood said.
"It's really, really encouraging to see such a large number of people change their behaviour over the last five years," said Wood, who co-founded Bulb in 2015 and heads up the Tech Zero initiative to help technology companies eliminate their emissions.
Above: Bulb CEO Hayden Wood. Top: Bulb sources a fifth of its renewable energy from solar farms
Bulb is the UK's biggest renewable-energy provider, supplying around 6 per cent of homes.
Almost four-fifths of Bulb's electricity comes from wind farms, with solar providing just under one fifth and hydropower providing the remaining 4 per cent.
It also supplies "100-per-cent carbon-neutral" gas, although around 95 per cent of this is fossil gas that has been offset. The rest is fossil-free methane that has been produced from farm waste.
Switching to renewable energy could cut personal emissions by more than half
Domestic heating makes up the biggest percentage of most people's carbon footprint, contributing 9.7 per cent of the UK's total emissions between 1990 and 2016, according to a World Wildlife Fund report on the country's contribution to climate change.
Bulb claims that switching to renewables will reduce each customer's carbon footprint by 3.2 tonnes of CO2 a year. This represents more than half of their personal emissions, given that the average carbon footprint in the UK is 5.6 tonnes per person.
"It's the single biggest contributor to people's individual carbon emissions and the biggest single-ticket item that people spend money on after their mortgage or their rent," Wood said.
Powering the UK entirely with renewable energy is "feasible but not necessary," Wood said, since 20 per cent of the country's power comes from nuclear plants.
"Even though it's more expensive to generate electricity from nuclear than renewables, those stations are [already] built," he said.
Nuclear power is not considered a renewable source and Bulb does not distribute it but "nuclear is carbon-free," Wood said. "So it does help us fight the climate crisis."
This means that renewables will need to provide the remaining 80 per cent of the UK's power in order to decarbonise the supply.
"The way we're going to do that is through a mix of different forms of generation," Wood explained. Offshore wind is the biggest source and is "growing very rapidly and getting much, much cheaper."
In addition, utility-scale solar farms are being built on "huge swathes of land".
"And we're really hoping to help more and more homes install solar panels and become contributors to the grid because they can sell their excess green energy to other people," he added.
Wind is currently the largest source of renewable energy in the UK
Wood, an economics graduate, founded Bulb in 2015 with Amit Gudka. Their idea was to use technology to make it easier for customers to switch to renewable energy and to reduce the company's overheads so it could charge lower prices.
"We weren't the first but we were the company that made it much more affordable and mainstream," he said. "We got people to realise how easy it is to switch and what an immediate impact it has as you can have no carbon emissions."
Back then, consumers had to pay more for renewable energy, even though it cost less to produce than fossil energy.
"This wasn't widely known," Wood explained. "It was sold as a premium product. We thought that if we're going to fight the climate crisis, it can't be a niche, premium product. It has to be mainstream."
Homes could become energy producers as well as consumers
When Bulb started, fewer than 300,000 UK homes – less than one per cent of the total – were powered by renewables. Now Bulb and a range of other renewables providers supply almost a third of all homes, with Bulb alone serving 1.7 million domestic customers.
The founders also felt that eventually, homes would become energy producers as well as consumers. By installing solar panels, anaerobic digesters, micro-CHP (combined heat and power) plants or any other small-scale clean-power generator, householders could sell surplus energy back to the grid, using home-storage batteries or electric cars to store the power until it's needed.
"It wasn't really happening at the time, but we thought that homes could become a source of energy," Wood explained.
"If people had solar panels on their roof, or if they had a battery in their home or an electric vehicle and those batteries were plugged into the grid, the homes could at times be providing energy into the grid."
"Also, the grid becomes more efficient when the electrons travel a shorter distance," he added. "If you have generation embedded within the grid locally, then the whole system becomes more efficient."
It has taken a while for this "two-way grid" to become a reality but Wood believes it is now poised to take off.
"That's one of the things we're quite excited about now that there are more options available to consumers for solar panels, electric vehicles, heat pumps and batteries."
Electric vehicles could be used to store electricity at home
A recent survey published by the European Union estimated that rooftop solar panels could provide a quarter of the continent's energy needs, most of it at a lower cost than existing supplies.
"We're now at a starting point where we're beginning to see many, many more homes become participants in that two-way grid," Wood said.
"Renewable energy is very scalable because it's produced by manufactured technologies where you're not limited by not the availability of natural resources," he concluded.
There are a few issues to overcome before the world can complete the switch from fossil energy.
The first is intermittency. Wind and sunshine are unpredictable, leading to peaks and troughs in energy production. But this issue can be overcome with batteries, Wood says.
"We believe the way intermittency is going to be resolved is through the mass buildup of lithium-ion batteries positioned both at the site of generation and the site of consumption," he explained.
With electric vehicles expected to make up 20 per cent of all cars on the roads by 2030, many households will already have storage capacity sitting right outside.
"Those electric vehicles have to have a huge battery inside them that the home can use."
Wood says that solar farms are being built on "huge swathes of land" in the UK
The second issue is more problematic. UK households use more power in the winter when it's colder and darker. But solar power generates more electricity in the summer when the days are longer and sunnier.
"Meeting those winter energy demands in the northern hemisphere will be challenging," Wood said. "You can't rely on batteries to store excess power from the summer months so you can use it in the winter months. So we're going to need other forms of storage."
Countries like Norway "are five years ahead of the UK"
Potential solutions include using excess summer electricity to create synthetic methane from water and carbon dioxide. This carbon-neutral gas could then be burned in winter to provide power.
Another solution could be gravity storage schemes. These include using summer electricity to pump water into elevated reservoirs. In winter, the water would be released to power hydroelectric generators.
Both solutions are already in use elsewhere, Wood said. "Countries like Norway are five years ahead of the UK. All these solutions are being used in those markets."
However, the biggest obstacle preventing the switch to green power is the poor quality of British homes, Wood believes.
"The number one thing holding the UK back is the quality of its housing stock," he said. "Our houses are poorly insulated, draughty. The adoption of new practices is quite slow in the UK."
Switching to renewables is the most effective way of reducing carbon emissions, Wood said. "But the next best thing is to drastically improve the energy efficiency of a home," he added.
"The greenest thing to do is to just reduce your need for energy, which comes from more efficient buildings."
Architects are central to solving this issue, he said. "Architects and builders are at the very centre of what we need to do to get to net-zero."
"That means running energy efficiency surveys, speaking to experts and consultants about how you can make homes more energy-efficient and not installing gas boilers and gas ovens and gas fires in homes by default."
"It means really putting pressure on local planning authorities to allow you to have solar panels or solar tiles on the roofs of buildings, even if they haven't been used in the area before."
To qualify as net-zero, a company and its entire value chain must eliminate all greenhouse gas emissions. Any emissions it cannot eliminate must be offset using schemes that sequester carbon from the atmosphere.
Carbon revolution
This article is part of Dezeen's carbon revolution series, which explores how this miracle material could be removed from the atmosphere and put to use on earth. Read all the content at: www.dezeen.com/carbon.
The sky photograph used in the carbon revolution graphic is by Taylor van Riper via Unsplash.
The post Architects are "at the very centre of what we need to do to get to net-zero" says Bulb CEO appeared first on Dezeen.
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The fashion and textile industry past present and future (critical thinking lectures)
In the Fashion and Textile Industries, predicting future trends relies heavily on acquiring knowledge of what has affected and had an impact on them in the past. (Lecture 1 Critical Thinking)
One example of this is the effect of World War II which had a huge impact on the Fashion and Textile Industries and its customers whatever their social standing.
In the first place, many textile, shoe, and hosiery manufacturers were given contracts by the government to produce uniform fabric for the three armed forces, boots and other footwear for them, and socks. This also had the knock on effect with uniforms being made in the clothing and knitwear factories giving few places where civilian clothing could be manufactured.
Around a quarter of the British population was entitled to wear some sort of uniform as part of the armed forces, women's auxiliary forces or one of the numerous uniformed voluntary services and organisations. This increased demand for uniforms put enormous pressure on Britain's textile and clothing industries. (Imperial War Museum 8 FACTS ABOUT CLOTHES RATIONING IN BRITAIN DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR)
Not only this but the rationing of clothing, cloth and footwear was introduced on 01.06.1941 and with 66 coupons allowed for the year only a basic wardrobe could be purchased. This made existing clothes a valuable resource, they could be refurbished with trimmings from the list of non-rationed haberdashery and they could also be repurposed.
As Laura Clouting Historian at the IWM explains in her interview with MUSEUM CRUSH,
‘- they had to perform conversions of clothes – for example to take a garment like a coat and turn it into a little waistcoat in order to give it a longer life.
There are echoes of the above in our chosen brand concept, Repurposed Rave, with ‘repair and redesign’ being their ‘key strategies in offering a sustainable product. (WGSN2022)
Jasmine James of JJVintage, is a prime example of a repurposing brand which she founded in 2019. Her motto is, Rescue Repurpose Reuse. Each piece of clothing is unique and she makes them herself. James uses pieces of old sportswear from Adidas, Champion and Nike to create patchwork tops in a corset like style. She designs quite a wide range of clothes all of which are made from repurposed fabrics including denim. One of her selling points is, “You can still be fashionable while trying to save the world.” And this is the ethos of our brand Karisma. Karisma.
During World War II repurposing, recycling and Make do and Mend were about lack of availability and helping the war effort and partly, as a general rule, how people had maintained their clothes before the war.
However it has now become crucial to repurpose, recycle and mend our clothes to give them as long a life as possible in order to save our planet from global warming. We need to cut waste to the barest minimum or ideally have zero waste and only use sustainable resources in order to at least halt the effects of the Fashion and Textile industries and have a chance of a future.
We live in a very unequal world and the gap between the rich and poor is widening at an alarming rate. (Critical Lecture2)
According to Oxfam’s 5 Shocking Facts, ‘nearly half the worlds population is living on less than $5.5 (£3.96) a day’ which would not buy two takeaway cups of coffee.
Not only this but ‘the richest 1% have more than twice as much wealth as 6.9 billion people’ own collectively. This is about absolute greed and exploitation of human and natural resources.
One example of this is the Leicester factory making fast fashion clothes for Boohoo. The factory workers were made to work during the first lockdown with no safety measures in place and in cramped poorly ventilated conditions. Their pay was approximately £3.50 an hour, almost slave labour, with the minimum wage for an adult at £8.72 and 16-17 year olds are payed £4.55. This is the real price paid for cheap fast fashion.
However, the exposure of these horrific conditions didn’t stop people buying from Boohoo on line and, Poppy Wood (Reporter and Editor at City A.M.30.09.2020) reports that Boohoo’s profits rocketed more than 50% last year during the pandemic and as it continues their profits will probably keep rising.
As Cathy Owen reported;
‘Boohoo is the UK's fast-growing fast-fashion retailer that was set up in 2006 by Mahmud Kamani and his business partner Carol Kane. It is now valued at more than $4.3 billion, and has just bought the Debenhams brand for £55 million.’25 Jan 2021 https://www.walesonline.co.uk/whats-on/shopping/debenhams-boohoo-billionaire-high-street-19692433
Sustainable fashion is not going to produce riches for the few like those Mahmud Kamani has but it will help to work towards making the world a fairer place. By using a circular economy it will have much less impact on the environment and many more people will have a fair wage to spread the wealth a bit.
A sustainable brand like Stella McCartney with a net worth of $75 million (celebritynetworth.com) is quite a substantial company. However, JJVintage, Blackhorse Lane Ateliers, Lucy & Yak, BEEN London Accessories and Birdsong which works alongside charities, et cetera, are not vast clothing companies but small, and their products are out of the ordinary and kind to the planet, they also have a good ethos in treating their workers well in good conditions and paying them fairly.
More and more people are turning to these brands wanting to play their part in making sustainable fashion the only way forward. Also Fashion Magazine websites are giving it plenty of coverage. For example, Harpers Bazaar (Our Favourite Sustainable brands, Jessica Davis 19.10.2020); Marie Claire (Best ethical clothing brands Penny Goldstone 26.01.2021); Glamour Magazine (Sustainable fashion brands by Charlie Teather 08.01.2021) etc..
In present times the world is geared towards the few in power supporting the destructive influences of large corporations. For example H & M with approximately $4billion worth of unsold fast fashion clothes on its books (we must hope they allow them to be repurposed).
Also Donald Trump has stirred up race hatred in wanting to build his wall to keep Mexicans out of the USA and blocking people entering America from Islamic countries, he is also in denial of climate change and supports the opening of coalmines and steelworks that have very high carbon emissions. Before the latest US elections he was the most powerful politician in the world using fake news to promote himself and deny his wrong doing. We live in a world where truth and justice are fast disappearing, and no one knows what is real anymore.
It is hoped that the balance will tip in enough time to halt climate change with caring people becoming the majority. The sustainable fashion industry is playing its part to make this happen.
After watching Atlas on the website www.bostondynamics.com/atlas, where the robot could move, dance, summersault and move in the same manner as an agile human it is quite scary. If robots are used to carry out the jobs that lower paid workers do such as delivering parcels and lots of similar jobs, then unemployment will become a huge problem.
It might be possible to have a factory producing clothes made totally by robots who could work all day and night without a break. Although there will be a problem with the marketing because the customer will be unemployed and unable to afford to buy.
The pandemic has perhaps slowed things down and given time for people to rethink how they spend their time and money. Spending time at home may give people chance to appreciate their planet and want to save it and perhaps think sensibly about the clothes they buy and whether they really need them.
Sustainability is a word being used in many areas of industry, people wearing sustainable clothing and promoting it and other sustainable lifestyle products such as homeware are leading the way.
We need to identify all the issues globally and work out a plan that will save the planet, give a fair balance between the rich and poor and turn our backs on the greedy rich and the politicians that support them.
The Mind Tools quote in Critical Thinking Lecture 2 sums up what is needed;
“When you have a serious problem, it’s important to explore all of the things that could cause it, before you start to think about a solution. That way you can solve the problem completely, first time round, rather than just addressing part of it and having the problem run on and on.”
With part of the problem being the Textile and Fashion Industries, the second biggest polluter globally (the oil industry is the biggest) much more has to be done to stop the pollution. One way is for us to use as much recycled material as possible.
ECONYL is a new textile made from recycled nylon. Aquafil recycle carpets to make the yarn for new ones and the by products are used in other things such as road fill. They collect and recycle fishing nets from fish farms, the fishing industry and ghost nets (discarded fishing nets which volunteer divers collect from the bottom of the sea making the sea bed safer for sea life). Aquafil uses these to make nylon yarn for carpets and other interior products. Nylon clothing is recycled into yarn to make more clothing such as swimwear and any other clothes and accessories that are usually made from nylon. All these are in a closed loop production. Giulio Bonazzi the CEO of Aquafil is the driving force behind ECONYL, the research behind it, its development and final innovation. He says that to him ‘landfill sites are like gold’. (www.econyl.com)
ECONYL is one of the fabrics we will used in our brand, Karisma.
Looking towards the future in Critical Lecture 3, the development of Smart Textiles seems to have a big part to play in the way forward.
‘SMART TEXTILES – the development of textiles to improve human’s everyday life, to benefit the industry, the health care sector and the environment.’
There are two main groups for SMART TEXTILES - Aesthetic, which includes all the senses and Performance Enhancing
Two interesting Aesthetic textiles are Tômtex and Mylo vegan leather. Both theses textiles are made to have the same properties of leather.
Mylo is made from the underground roots of mushrooms (mycellum) and has less environmental impact than leather.
Tômtex bio material is made from shell seafood waste and coffee grounds – the aim is for it to replace faux and real leather as a sustainable alternative, it is plastic free and fully compostable. (Dr D Rajapakse Textiles: Science and Technology)
Performance Enhancing smart textiles are growing in number, from better camouflage for soldiers to viral protective wear for care workers and everything in between.
Much of what is being innovated will go towards lowering carbon emissions, generating a sustainable future, and helping to halt climate change. Changes and breakthroughs in technology are happening all the time which makes the future very difficult to predict.
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Blockchain Use Gains Momentum in Oil Industry for Being Safer, Cheaper and Cleaner
Analysis Oil is central to the growth of the global economy and maintenance of political stability. But for an industry that plays such an important role in both shaping and maintaining the world around us, its business model is quickly becoming outdated. As the industry struggles to adapt to the demands of a rapidly changing and politically charged world, some of the largest oil companies are looking to modernize through blockchain. Moreover, governments around the world are struggling to come to terms with the consequences of climate change, and the extraction of fossil fuels does nothing to help reduce emissions. As society grows more conscious of the effects of global warming, companies that generate nonrenewable energy such as oil have come under increased pressure to clean up their act.While the modern industrial world may have an insatiable appetite for oil, its production and distribution is not without its risks. Oil companies are among the most profitable in the world and attract powerful political and ideological enemies. What’s more, they are often situated in areas that experience prolonged political instability. With an ever-growing number of cyberattacks riddling the economy, oil companies are looking to bolster their defences. While cyberattacks can be costly, the burden of supporting a creaking global supply chain can often be costlier still. From slashing supply chain expenditure to stamping out terrorist financing, Cointelegraph talked to industry experts about whether blockchain technology could be the solution.
Saudi Aramco buys into Vakt trading platform
The fact that Saudi Aramco, the world’s most profitable company and largest producer of oil, has bought into Vakt’s post-sales trading platform is a clear demonstration that the industry has an appetite for trialing blockchain.The sale of oil is a convoluted process. Beyond the physical transfer of the commodity, there is a significant back-office process. According to the company’s press release published on Jan. 28, the platform manages energy transactions from trade entry to final settlement, removing the need for reconciliation and paper-based processes. Vakt’s owners claim that their platform could significantly reduce costs, leading to savings of up to 40%.Vakt announced that the oil behemoth’s trading subsidiary, Saudi Aramco Energy Ventures, or SAEV, had invested $5 million in new shares and become a platform user. The platform is currently live in the North Sea BFOET (Brent, Forties, Oseberg, Ekofisk and Troll) crude oil market, an area where production has steadily increased over the past decade. Hans Middelthon, managing director of SAEV Europe, said, “VAKT has demonstrated that their platform has the potential to digitize what is currently a very manual process. Leveraging blockchain theory and applying it to the complicated world of post-trade processing, VAKT has made a compelling pitch.” Pavel Pokrovsky, blockchain security team lead at Kaspersky, explained to Cointelegraph how blockchain is an attractive option for oil companies looking to streamline structure through distributed ledger technology:“Blockchain as an implementation of DLT is having a great impact on many aspects of industrial technologies including oil and gas. According to some researches, more than 40% of executives in oil and gas sector are considering blockchain as a technology for their companies. One of the aspects of blockchain that is particularly useful for oil and gas is a concept of Smart Contracts. This allows the industry to manage their contract risks as well as minimize costs and increase transparency in their supply chains.”Saudi Aramco is not the only oil giant experimenting with blockchain’s potential to cut costs. SAEV’s entrance to the platform will see it join the ranks of other major companies such as BP, Equinor, Shell, Gunvor and Mercuria.While it has been a promising start for Vakt, with some of the world’s most prominent oil companies already on board, the success of blockchain projects rely on their ability to produce results and consequently convince other firms to adopt them. In this sense, the words of then-acting Vakt CEO John Jimenez at the time of the platform’s launch in 2018 are still relevant today: ”Success for a blockchain solution depends on widespread adoption and we’re looking forward to seeing the ecosystem grow.”
Political climate: blockchain and the environment
Due in part to its role in energy security, along with the global impact of easily-manipulated oil prices, the oil industry has become as much a part of the political process as any chamber of congress. One of the most pressing challenges that oil companies face is the looming environmental crisis. Efforts by international organizations such as the United Nations to limit carbon emissions and champion green energy, as well as large demonstrations from activist organizations such as Extinction Rebellion, have changed the political landscape. Public opinion is gradually turning against fossil fuel energy providers and those who choose to invest in them. Will Nichols, head of environment at the Verisk Maplecroft research, consultancy and risk analysis firm, outlined his view to Cointelegraph that the climate risk will stay elevated throughout the year for oil companies: “Climate risk will continue to permeate the oil and gas sector throughout 2020 as companies come under increasing pressure from shareholders and regulators to demonstrate how they are dealing with the threat.”For perhaps the first time, oil companies’ attractiveness to investors is directly linked to their efforts to stymie the damage their industry wreaks upon the environment. But, if history is anything to go by, many companies do not alter their behavior until regulation forces them to do so. Nichols explained how, despite progress, companies are still not capitalizing on opportunities to minimize climate risk: “With regulators threatening mandatory climate risk disclosures in the near future, investors will be watching closely to see which companies are taking the initiative. The big hole we see is that much of the sector is still failing to use accurate and granular climate data to analyse the resilience of their corporate strategy. Those that do will add consistency and credibility to the process and take a significant step towards convincing investors that these risks are being managed appropriately.”
Blockchain could bring transparency to oil
Although climate-related political pressure is a relatively new phenomenon, the oil industry is also exposed to other political risks. Much of the world’s oil production takes place in politically volatile regions such as the Middle East. Although such political instability can create a number of issues for the global oil industry, there are instances in which blockchain could serve to improve the situation.One of the most commonly championed characteristics of blockchain technology is its transparency. In a region where certain oil-producing nations such as Iran are currently under internationally-imposed sanctions, blockchain’s ability to trace their output from the moment of production to their arrival with the buyer would help to uphold international law and trade standards. For example, energy security in Iraq and Syria has been compromised by the ongoing conflict. But keeping energy flowing to its citizens is not the only concern. Militant terror groups active in the region, namely the so-called Islamic State, have actively targeted oil production sites with a view to harvesting the huge profits. Former Aramco security team leader and CEO of security firm HypaSec, Chris Kubecka, told Cointelegraph that blockchain utilization in the oil industry could prevent terrorist funding and money laundering through providing traceability. Pokrovsky added to the point saying that transparency in blockchain means that all agreements in the supply chain are public and immutable:“Blockchain, due to its nature, introduces transparency to operations. It does not necessarily mean that operations become publicly visible, but transparency can be implemented to an extent where all participants of blockchain have the same picture on operations. Through trust management, many questions including political and cost-related, are much easier to solve.”Pokrovsky told Cointelegraph that blockchain could not only be used to create transparency in how non-renewable energy companies are tackling their impact on the climate, but also to protect politically and environmentally sensitive data from tampering, which are currently among the most unprotected elements of industrial infrastructure.Another challenge that oil-related companies face, along with governments that purchase their products, is political risk. Although compliance measures are constantly being improved — the most recent example being the European Union’s 5AMLD — many of the world’s leading oil production companies are state-owned. By definition, such companies contain politically-exposed persons, a category of people typically considered to be high-risk. Pokrovsky explained how blockchain can help with compliance in the oil industry: “The use of blockchain to achieve compliance is hinted at by several legal acts and initiatives, such as Dodd-Frank Act and the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and frameworks such as MIT’s Trust :: Data.”
Blockchain and cybersecurity
Physical attacks on oil sites have become a harsh reality. Consequently, both office and drilling locations are often guarded by armed forces. Shipping routes are closely policed by the navy and individual companies often hire armed, private security personnel to travel alongside each of their oil containers. With such high levels of physical security, attacks on oil companies have since been digitized. According to Kubecka, oil-related cyberattacks occur “extremely often” and are increasing at a steady rate, with nation states and hacktivists being the most common actors behind the assaults.NTT Security’s ICS/OT Cyber Security and Principal Consultant Dereck Stubbs told Cointelegraph that data about political cyber attacks is scarce: “Oil companies, like all US public companies, are not obligated to publicly disclose cyber-attacks, therefore, the availability of statistical data, such as frequency, is very limited.” He added that climate action has led to a growing security risk for oil:“Climate change is certainly a political issue and with the oil industry viewed as a major contributor to the causes of climate change, politically motivated cyber-attacks are certainly a risk factor that oil companies must plan for. From a cyber security perspective, Blockchain provides not just a superior infrastructure but a more seamless and interconnected framework that can help oil companies quantify and demonstrate their value proposition to civilization and the efforts they take to be environmentally responsible.”Stubbs also told Cointelegraph that the responsibility to protect oil company activities against the consistently high and varied risks they are exposed to usually lies with some sort of digital infrastructure. Stubbs outlined his view that blockchain-based networks have the potential to both boost security and the process of responding to breaches: “The potential of blockchain-based networks for oil companies is not only more resilient, reliable and self-healing cyber security but an infrastructure that interconnects, streamlines and optimizes all aspects of achieving the business safety mission.”Original Article - CoinTelegraph.com
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Wave-Powered Desalination Promises To Deliver Clean Water To Developing Countries And Island Nations
https://sciencespies.com/news/wave-powered-desalination-promises-to-deliver-clean-water-to-developing-countries-and-island-nations/
Wave-Powered Desalination Promises To Deliver Clean Water To Developing Countries And Island Nations
Wave20 deployment to North Carolina
Courtesy of Olivier Ceberio
Using the power of ocean waves, innovators from Boston, U.S., have developed a technology that can produce fresh water off-grid and without the costly infrastructure of desalination plants.
This invention could help many of the 2.1 billion people around the world who struggle to access safe drinking water, most of those in low-income countries.
The technology, Wave2OTM, was developed by start-up company Resolute Marine Energy. Chief Operating Officer Olivier Ceberio says it “targets ‘off-grid’ coastal communities in developing nations where a solution to persistent water shortages is urgently needed”.
Importantly, it fills a gaping hole between industrial-scale utilities that are costly and time-consuming to build, and micro-scale solutions for individual households. The only technology currently offered in between involves diesel-powered desalination systems.
And Wave2O can be delivered competitively because it uses “free energy from a consistent and inexhaustible renewable energy resource: ocean waves,” says Ceberio.
The group was selected as a finalist for MIT’s Solve Challenge: “How can coastal communities mitigate and adapt to climate change while developing and prospering?”
The plant, which has been under development for 10 years, includes several Wave Energy Converters (WECs) and 40-foot containers. One of these containers produces fresh water and the others contain equipment that produces electricity (Wave2E TM).
To generate power, a flap moves with the waves and sends seawater – sourced away from contamination off-shore – and the power generated to a standard reverse osmosis unit. The energy can also be diverted for other purposes.
A Wave2O plant includes several Wave Energy Converters and 40ft containers that produce power and clean water in a four-step process.
Courtesy of Olivier Ceberio
“It is modular so we can do whatever the customer needs,” Ceberio explains. “Even better, once it is installed, you can shuffle the WECs to allocate more to water or power production depending on the wave energy resources or the time of day.”
About 35% of the water is filtered and the rest is released back into the ocean using a manifold that maximizes the dispersion. This relatively low recovery rate produces low brine salinity with several advantages including lower maintenance, extended membrane life and minimal impact on marine flora and fauna when back in the sea.
The smaller module can produce 500 cubic meters of water per day, depending on wave energy – that’s half a million liters, enough to supply five to 10 thousand people’s personal and domestic needs.
But there’s no limit to the size of the system, according to Ceberio, who explains that a standard commercial sized plant would produce on average 4,000 cubic meters (4 million liters) of water per day, supplying 40,000 people or more.
Cape Verde, an archipelago off the west coast of northern Africa, is the target launch market. This group of islands suffers from severe water scarcity. It relies on diesel-electric desalination systems to supply 85% of its water supply, for which it must import all the fuel.
As a result, Cape Verde’s water costs are one of the highest in the world at $4.42 per cubic meter. In comparison, preliminary studies show that Wave2O can produce the same amount of water for $1.25 – nearly a quarter of the price.
The system was tested in North Carolina with a country like Cape Verde in mind – all the equipment can be transported by container, put together on the beach and installed with relatively little effort or infrastructure.
“For this deployment, it took us only two hours to pull the system into the water, attach it to the bottom of the ocean and, in that case, produce electricity,” says Ceberio.
Its implementation in Cape Verde is set for 2020-21.
By eliminating the need for diesel generators, the invention not only saves money but reduces carbon dioxide emissions.
“Each 4,000 [cubic meter per] day plant that displaces an equivalently sized diesel-powered plant will cut CO2 emissions by 4,300 tons per year,” explains Ceberio, “the equivalent of taking 936 cars off the road or of the carbon sequestered by 2,070 hectares of forest.”
He also notes that it can limit exploitation and contamination of land water sources, which will help preserve biodiversity, and address the unsustainable water-energy nexus by reducing current global practices of using water to produce power.
The only limitations include wave energy availability, the topology of the ocean floor, land use and local regulations.
Reflecting its potential, the project has support from organizations including the U.S. Department of Energy, the African Development Bank, the European Commission, the United Nations Industrial Development Organization and many more.
Ceberio is excited about the possibilities.
“We believe we are developing a breakthrough technology that could potentially impact hundreds of millions of people globally, especially those who really need it.”
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Practicum Essay
When Henry Hudson arrived on September 12, 1609 at what at the time was called Mannahatta, he and his crew were confronted by vast uncultivated forest land consisting of Pine and Hickory trees, streams, and diverse wildlife, especially black bears and beavers (Wildlife Conservation Society 2009). The land itself was incredibly fertile and “ecologically complete,” as Eric Sanderson words it in “The Mannahatta Project” (Wildlife Conservation Society 2009). With the interactive 1609 map website, I searched my apartment on West 70th Street to find that my neighborhood was largely home to field mice and beavers, and was very hilly (The Welikia Project). Uptown, the history of the Bronx River likely dates back to the Pleistocene Period several hundred thousand years ago when a glacier blocked a portion of the original path giving it its current shape today (Bronx River Alliance). It was originally referred to as Aquehung or, River of High Bluffs by the Mohegan Native Americans and later as the Bronck’s River by European settlers who constructed mills along it for water power to produce commodities such as flour and pottery beginning in the mid 17th century (Bronx River Alliance).
Fordham University has been a steward of the river since its founding in 1841 on the Rose Hill Farm located on the river bank (Fordham University). A portion of the river ran adjacent to the farm emptying into a pond in and from which wildlife lived and drank such as muskrats and cattle. Up until the portion, known as Mill Brook, was diverted to the city’s storm drain system, it provided an array of ecosystem services for the University and surrounding farms and communities. The portion of the campus located along the river once consisted of agricultural fields, hiking trails, and swimming holes (pictured below) until 1889 when the land along the River was bought by the city to create the “Bronx Park,” presently known as the “New York Botanical Garden.” This closeness to the river provided a well established and important connection to nature for the Fordham community. It also made for a peaceful antidote from the ills of the metropolis hub downtown that one could access by taking the New York or Harlem steam train (Gilbert and Wines 1998). For example, the Faculty parking lot was once low-lying marsh that would be flooded right before winter to create a skating rink. This land proved essential especially during the early 20th century when funding for the school was dismal and the campus farmland provided food, specifically where Cunniffe House currently stands. The site of the Rose Hill Gym was once an apple, pear, and cherry orchard and potatoes, corn, and other crops were grown elsewhere on campus (Gosier 2016).
(Bronx River Alliance)
(Gilbert and Wines 1998)
Today, the university has many green initiatives such as bolstering its energy efficiency to minimize waste by installing LED lighting effectively conserving 712 kWh of energy per year (Sustainability at Fordham). It is also aligned with the city’s mission to reduce carbon emissions by 30% by 2030. The school also built new green buildings that are LEED certified, such as Conley Hall and the Lincoln Center Law building. It also has two student-led community gardens at both campuses (St. Rose’s Garden CSA). Despite these efforts, in 2011, Fordham received a C+ rating on its “Green Report Card”; however, it did score an A with respect to “Green Building” and “Energy,” so its low score is largely due to administrative matters (The College Sustainability Report Card 2011). Fordham’s environmental history is particularly relevant to my practicum in that my task is to essentially get students more involved in climate action and by working with groups such as the LC Environmental Club, we can better improve the school’s green initiatives through projects such as the community garden as an attempt to re-greenify and beautify the campus in honor of what it used to look like not too long ago.
I chose the “External Internship” practicum option and have had the pleasure of interning as a “Field Representative” with an environmental organization called Our Climate which is essentially geared towards promoting climate action in students and on college campuses. On average I work 3-5 hours a week, depending on the project to which I am assigned. One of my favorite assignments was partnering with the LC Environmental Club in hosting a tile painting night for my organization’s Blue Bird mosaic, which is the New York State bird. I also wrote an environmental commentary piece for actress Nikki Reed to post on her social media as well as other Op-Ed pieces on various environmental matters such as the Paris Agreement and Trump’s roll back efforts of climate action under the Obama Administration. I also got to be a part of the “State Carbon Pricing Network” Coalition’s weekly phone call where I had the opportunity to listen to representatives from all over the country describe and provide updates on their own state’s environmental issues and endeavors, as well as act as the New York representative. My internship gave me the opportunity to act both passively and actively in the endeavor against climate change. I got to attend hearings for bills and acts such as the “Climate and Community Protection Act” and also voice my opinion through writing, which I really enjoyed because it allowed me to see my work published and read the reactions and comments from readers. I really gained a lot from this internship in that I wasn’t simply sitting at a desk but rather actively participating in efforts that I am passionate about and getting to see those efforts publicized, which was very rewarding as I often feel as if I don’t have a voice precisely because I am just a student, whereas the very organization I worked for is literally centered around student engagement.
I found myself referring to Miller over and over again while writing environmental Op Ed pieces for my practicum, especially when it came to current issues concerning topics such as environmental politics and worldviews, sustainability and sustainable design, carbon emissions, ozone standards, the partisanization of environmental issues, etc. Chapter 5 of Miller discusses Environmental Worldviews, Ethics, and Sustainability, and the lessons I learned from this chapter sprung up a lot during my practicum, especially concerning matters of environmental education and injustice. I thought a lot about how our policy makers, especially under the current administration, are not adequately representing the public in that many of them simply do not prioritize climate change or outright deny its existence. In other words, many of the people charged with the task of protecting and meeting the needs of people hold the skewed worldview that we can exploit nature and use resources all we want because we’ve never run out of them before. Miller would call this a “Planetary Management” worldview (Miller 2012, 663). I really don’t think that we live in a democracy anymore but rather a corporate oligarchy where powerful industries call the shots, which is something my internship attempts to address by supporting methods such as carbon pricing of these very corporations.
Another topic that has honestly kept me up at night is this recent aforesaid partisanization of environmental issues, which Miller touches on with respect to the Environmentalism Era that emerged in the early 70’s under the Nixon Administration along with the creation of the EPA (Miller 2012, S8). This recent trend has largely designated and dismissed climate change as a liberal issue and explains why so many conservatives reject the very science that proves its existence. In contrast to the Nixon Era, the Trump Administration is actually attempting to reduce and reverse environmental agency power and regulations, especially the EPA (Miller 2012, S8). In fact, Trump just appointed Andrew Wheeler, a former coal-industry lobbyist as the new head of the EPA. Miller suggests that it was the inauguration of Reagan that marked the beginning of this shift promulgated by an administration that valued economic growth and other “American” values over environmental protection (S8). This pertains to my practicum as a case study that attempts to bolster government climate action by working with like-minded politicians in getting ideas and bills placed at the forefront of local government agendas.
The environmental policy recommendations I would propose for solving the problems I worked on in my practicum include (1) Congestion pricing for all vehicles entering big cities through a separate tax or charge on a toll so that drivers know exactly what they are being charged for because cities “produce about 75% of the world’s climate changing CO2 emissions (Miller 2012, 593), (2) Greater tax incentives and breaks for implementing renewable energy and sustainable design in businesses and homes, (3) Environmental education to be integrated in curriculum beginning in kindergarten as a attempt to shift the collective attitude towards nature and wildlife and strengthen environmental literacy, (4) 30% carbon emissions reduction by 2030 which is already integrated into the New York climate agenda, (5) A percentage of all tax revenue to be invested in conservation biology as well as low-income communities to improve transportation and education systems, as well as access to fresh produce through community garden and local grocery store subsidies, (6) A ban on all stratospheric ozone depleting pollutants and all ground-level ozone producing substances (Miller 2012, 458). All of these relate to my practicum as a case study for bolstering community and youth engagement in climate action by encouraging students to attend hearings and events centered around potential environmental policies and acts. For example, the Trump Administration has been attempting to loosen ground-level ozone pollution standards established by the EPA which simply cannot happen in light of everything we know about ozone. In other words, my practicum aims to involve young people more in demanding that their local government and university take action against climate change and gaining access to the right people who can help immensely in facilitating effective dialogue and action.
Miller explains that every cultural and economic facet of our society relies on natural capital. Human capital relies on natural capital for the preservation of workers by providing life’s basic necessities whereas manufacture capital “refers to machinery, equipment, and factories made from natural resources with the help of human resources” (Miller 2012, 614). That said, a government that does not prioritize the environment will ultimately cause harm to its economy and people in perpetuity. We have a lot of great politicians who are working hard to realize change, but it's simply not enough, which is why organizations such as Our Climate exist, to give voice and power to young people like myself who, to be completely frank, will live to see some of the total environmental devastation in the near future. My practicum has been an incredible learning experience, especially regarding local government processes. It has given me a seat in the first row of New York City climate action and countless opportunities to learn not just about environmental issues specific to New York but the broader, more widely impacting issues as discussed in Miller that are occurring on a national and global scale as well. I have always known that I wanted to do something regarding nature and the environment, but after high school I felt like I had an inadequate knowledge about the specific science of climate change. Together the Miller textbook and my practicum have given me a profound and well-rounded education about the climate crisis and the ways in which I as an individual and community member can facilitate action.
Word Count: 1919
Work Cited
Wildlife Conservation Society. “The Mannahatta Project.” June 05, 2009. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cKNEu_8t65s.
"The Welikia Project » Welikia Map." The Welikia ("way-LEE-kee-uh") Project. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://welikia.org/explore/mannahatta-map/.
"Natural and Social History." Bronx River Alliance. Accessed April 23, 2019. http://bronxriver.org/?pg=content p=abouttheriver m1=9.
"Renewing Fordham's Environmental History." Fordham University, Environmental Studies. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://legacy.fordham.edu/academics/programs_at_fordham_/environmental_studie/internships_bronx_ri_75801.asp.
Fordham. "Renewing Fordham's Environmental History." Bronx River Stewardship and Internship Program. October 06, 2014. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://www.fordham.edu/info/20924/internship_and_job_opportunities/1748/bronx_river_stewardship_and_internship_program.
Gilbert, Allan, and Roger Wines. "From Earliest to Latest Fordham: Background History and Ongoing Archaeology." Rose Hill Farm, Google Drive. 1998. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzKbjVLpnX0RSHlWM2tKbjRmcmM/view.
Gosier, Chris. "On-Campus Farm Nourished Fordham in Its Early Years." Fordham Newsroom. October 28, 2016. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://news.fordham.edu/fordham-magazine/on-campus-farm-nourished-fordham-in-its-early-years/.
Fordham. "Fordham Online Information | About | Sustainability at Fordham." Fordham University. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://www.fordham.edu/info/23673/sustainability_at_fordham.
"Fordham University College Sustainability Report Card 2011." Fordham University - Green Report Card 2011. 2011. Accessed April 23, 2019. http://www.greenreportcard.org/report-card-2011/schools/fordham-university.html.
"St. Rose's Garden." St. Rose's Garden CSA. March 26, 2014. Accessed April 23, 2019. https://fordhamsustainability.wordpress.com/st-roses-garden/.
Miller, Tyler G., and Scott Spoolman. Edited by Scott Spoolman. In Living in the Environment. 17th ed. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole, Cengage Learning, 2012.
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environmental rambles #1: the market is unequipped to handle the fight against climate change
It just occurred to me that for all I post about politics, I don’t actually post about my area of expertise—that being environmental policy and sustainable measures. And as I’m getting deeper into conversations with people, I forget how much I just assume is known. So here’s a loose series I’m going to begin. I have no outline or general idea about how long these posts will be.
The key issue when tackling *climate change* or environmental degradation (ugh do I have to write a post that explains how this is a real problem? Please no.), and frankly the key issue when tackling anything in this political climate, is money. Because solving any problem usually requires shelling out, and we have a very entrenched economic system where profit is valued above all else. For instance, with healthcare, consider how many conversations there were about the burdens on small to mid-sized business, or costs shifting to states, or how best to implement price controls. It’s the first thing anyone looks at.
Climate change is tough, because our largest sources of GHG [greenhouse gas] emissions are electricity, transportation, and heating. It seems logical to tackle the actual shit we burn to power this stuff, which is why there’s a push for renewables, or for nuclear energy (97% renewable, but that 3% is a Problem). Ditto for mixing our gas with ethanol (there’s claims that GHG emissions are net-zero because corn fields act as carbon sinks, but honestly, corn production in the USA is its own damn topic), or the push to mass transit, telecommuting, the purchasing of off-sets for travel, and electric cars.
Believe it or not, we do have scientific solutions to all of this, at least at some level. We are able to generate electricity through processes that do not emit many or any GHGs (solar, wind, hydroelectric, tidal power, etc., though strengths and weaknesses of all of these is another topic). However, there’s obvious shortcomings in how our electrical grid distributes it, in storage technology, in differing regional capabilities...it’s a whole thing, trust me.
Now, that’s not to say there aren’t challenges to how we currently get delivered electricity, but those challenges have been accommodated by our infrastructure, which is shaped largely by our market. It is more economic currently to keep sending electricity through our shitty and inefficient grid using a Large, Centralized Power Plant™ than it is to implement SMART-grid technology, to have a variety of power sources (geothermal heatpumps coupled with solar panels), and so on. Ever play Sim City 2000? Stick the power plant there, lay down the wires, and you have civilization. Nifty.
On another level, there is nothing that stops businesses from being incredibly unenvironmental in their practices. One example, which I promise I will detail more later, is that properly fertilized soil (soil cows have pooped on) acts as a carbon sink. Yet our current agro system is such that it is *cheaper* to pump in chemical fertilizers (which emits GHGs in their production and are usually quite oil-reliant), to use monocultures for efficient crop growth and harvesting (limiting biodiversity, and creating strains that are increasingly pesticide resistant, thereby needing to up the amount of pesticides used, which also have an environmental footprint), and to stick cows onto concrete feedlots where they are fed with said monocultured corn to get really fat really quickly.
What I just described...there is a ton of environmental damage in this practice, and that’s not even counting methane pockets from all the cows shitting and burping together, or the intense, intense water requirements (and water pollution) of such a system. But these damages, these costs to our environment, are external to our market system.
And that’s the crux of it, the tragedy of the commons, where any shared resource is vulnerable to self-interested behavior, and it’s exceedingly difficult to do anything about it without regulations. In this case, the resource is our entire planet.
These externalities—GHG emissions, biodiversity loss, water pollution, etc.—mean that the company or actor creating the problem is not the one who has to pay for it. So it is offset to someone else, be it the people who have to pay for the water clean-up, or on a larger scale, the economic costs as our planet heats up (droughts, increased extreme weather events, floods, environmental refugees...I can keep going for a while). Therefore, there is no economic incentive for an individual actor to stop doing it, unless there is pressure from clients/consumers (brand reputation risk), or economic risk to their business model as a result of climate change/environmental degradation. These are risks that most businesses do not consider, unless they are specifically asked to do so.
Similarly, there is little economic benefit for individuals to act in the best interest of the environment. Buying offsets for a plane flight is an additional cost to you. Electric cars are often more expensive. Taking public transportation to work is often more expensive or inaccessible to where you need to go. Walking/riding a bike is likely infeasible. There’s exceptions (EnergyStar rated products save in the long-run, just as measures to properly insulate your home or change lighting can improve heating and cooling bills), but overall all, incentives are entirely lacking. Or penalities for bad behavior, though there are exceptions there too.
Gas is soooo expensive in California, and it’s really annoying to pay $20 as a toll when driving into NYC, right? Yes, but this is the kind of shit that’s been implemented to create an economic penalty for acting against the best interest of the planet. The issue is that it’s not consistent across the board, and it’s usually not enough to actually affect our systems, especially when larger standards and regulations, such as our CAFE standards for allowable fuel efficiency in vehicles produced, matter more (and are currently in danger of being stripped away entirely). A good example is how in Southern California people are told to limit showers and restaurants stopped providing water without request to tackle the drought, and yet nothing was done about the intense irrigation needs of farmers. Why the fuck is cotton and rice grown in a desert?!
Oh, because it’s cheap and can be.
So this is sticking point #1 for why climate change feels so unsolvable. Our entire economic system fails to account for this. The “invisible hand of the market” doesn’t have a way of placing a dollar value on environmental degradation. A carbon tax is one solution that could alter this entirely and allow the harm we’re doing to be properly valued. Implementing it across the board...that’s more difficult. And there really would be small to mid-sized businesses, as well as individual consumers, who would be hurt. How do you pass policy that would make our meat at least 3x as expensive? I mean, it should be, it *needs* to be, but politically, how do you get something like that any traction?
There’s no simple answer, other than championing politicians on all levels of government who champion this cause. I’m sure that won’t take too long or anything...
On that cheery note, until next time.
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Electricity Consumption of Bitcoin is a Non-Issue: Solar Energy is Free in Some Regions
Bitcoin and its trustless, decentralized design requires a unique process called mining that validates each transaction being added to its underlying blockchain. The process involves solving complex mathematical equations, and typically requires some serious computer processing power, and even specially-designed hardware, to validate each block.
Due to the amount of energy consumed during this process, Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are often demonized for contributing to global carbon emissions, potentially harming the environment. However, an overabundance of solar energy in some parts of the world may make Bitcoin’s electricity consumption a non-issue in the future.
Free Solar Energy Could Make Bitcoin Carbon Footprint Negligible
As concerns around global climate change grow, the original cryptocurrency is increasingly becoming a topic of much negativity – not just for its recent price movements, but also for its contributions to global carbon emissions. The leading cryptocurrency by market cap’s notorious energy consumption has been referred to by pundits as its “Achilles heel,” suggesting its Bitcoin’s biggest weakness.
However, these claims may be over-dramatized by naysayers and media alike, as solar energy from the sun can easily, cheaply, and effectively be harnessed to power Bitcoin mining.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Has Triggered an Energy Arms Race
Take Chile, for example. Chile has among the highest solar irradiance in the entire world, boasts Latin America’s largest solar power plant, and in general enjoys an abundance of solar power. Chile’s proximity to the equator, climate and weather conditions make the country a prime location for generating solar energy.
Chile is planning on harnessing as much as 19% of the country’s electricity using solar means by the year 2050, according to the roadmap set forth by the country’s Ministry of Energy. Chile is already over-producing so much solar power, it has been giving it away for free since 2016.
Researchers Agree: Bitcoin’s Energy Woes Are Overblown
University of Pittsburgh research associate Katrina Kelly-Pitou, whose work includes the study of clean energy technologies like solar energy says that in time, the energy consumption of new technologies eventually become more efficient, as will Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
“I am a researcher who studies clean energy technology, specifically the transition toward decarbonized energy systems. I think that the conversation around bitcoin and energy has been oversimplified,” explained Kelly-Pitou.
She also explains that not all cryptocurrency mining setups should be treated as equal, suggesting that fossil-based electricity sources as found currently in China would contribute much more carbon emissions than hydro-powered mining farms such as those found in the Pacific Northwest.
Related Reading | Bitcoin Mining Energy Consumption Increases Drastically
Regardless of location, pundits should focus their negativity towards the firms mining for Bitcoin, and the sources of power they use – and stop putting the blame on Bitcoin itself.
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