James Hansen holdt nylig et foredrag i Oslo med tema “The climate threat: Tipping point. How do we mobilize for the future?”
I tillegg til Hansen, var innledere Erik Solheim, Alexandra Bech Gjørv fra Statoilhydro og Fredric Hauge.
Kongen var blant publikum så opptaket starter med å dokumentere det.
Opptaket finner du i sin helhet her.
Inntil videre er fremdeles kull og gass billigere enn solkraft, og for folk flest er solkraft synonymt med solcelleteknologi. Men termisk solkraft, som konsentrerer solstråler ved hjelp av speil og bruker dem til å varme opp en væske som fordamper og driver en turbin, er en mindre “high-tech” løsning der selve elektrisitetsgenereringen bruker turbiner og teknologi som er utprøvd og ganske lik den som brukes i andre kraftverk.
Et prosjekt som kaller seg EUMENA-DESERTEC har jobbet i en del år med å promotere termisk kraftproduksjon for Europas gjennom store slike installasjoner i Sahara. I den nylig avholdte klimakonferansen i København ble dette gjennomgått, og det ble hevdet at hovedflaskehalsen er manglende kraftledninger. Resultatene skal være fra en rapport som skal presenteres for europeiske myndigheter senere i år.
Dr Anthony Patt of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Africa said some £50bn of government investment was needed over the next decade to make the scheme a reality. That would convince private companies that power from the Sahara was both feasible and an attractive investment, he said.
[…]
The results are the first findings of a major research effort, together with experts at the European Climate Forum and the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, to judge whether such a Sahara solar plan is realistic.
Patt said the team was looking at questions of security and governance, as well as ways to pay for the technology. The full results will be presented to governments later this year.
Økonomisk sett hevder en amerikansk “søskenside” at kullkraft med $40 i karbonavgift gir en strømpris rundt 6-9 cents per kilowatt-time, mens dagens termiske solkraftpris er på rundt 10-15 og i raskt fall. Trendene de mener er i solkraftens favør:
Ifølge et working paper referert til av Guardian som ser på Europeisk kraftproduksjon gjennom Nord-Afrikansk termisk solkraft:
We estimate that implementation will require international clean technology subsidies of about
$20 billion over ten years. By the end of the program, the expected profitability of unsubsidized
CSP projects is competitive with that of coal and gas power generation in Europe. Over the full
life of the program, the present value cost of CO2 averted is as low as $14 per ton. This is a very
modest carbon shadow price, even by conservative standards.
I en ny artikkel hos Economist uttrykkes skepsis overfor karbonfangst og lagring:
Despite all this enthusiasm, however, there is not a single big power plant using CCS anywhere in the world. Utilities refuse to build any, since the technology is expensive and unproven. Advocates insist that the price will come down with time and experience, but it is hard to say by how much, or who should bear the extra cost in the meantime. Green pressure groups worry that captured carbon will eventually leak. In short, the world’s leaders are counting on a fix for climate change that is at best uncertain and at worst unworkable.
[…]
Estimates of the total cost vary widely. America’s government, which had vowed to build a prototype plant called FutureGen in partnership with several big resources firms, scrapped the project last year after the projected cost rose to $1.8 billion. Philippe Paelinck, of Alstom, an engineering firm that hopes to build CCS plants, thinks a full-scale one would cost about €1 billion ($1.3 billion).
In 2005 the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a group of scientists that advises the United Nations on global warming, came up with a range of $14-91 for each tonne of emissions avoided through CCS. Last year, the IEA suggested that the price for the first big plants would be $40-90. McKinsey, a consultancy, has arrived at an estimate of €60-90, or $75-115.
Either way, that is more than the price of emissions in the European Union: about €10 a tonne. America does not have a carbon price at all yet. A bill defeated last year in the Senate would have yielded a carbon price as low as $30 in 2020, according to an official analysis. So CCS might not be financially worthwhile for years to come.
But these estimates entail some generous assumptions. McKinsey, for example, imagines that CCS plants will break down no more often than normal coal plants, despite their more complicated machinery. It assumes that the average cost of capital for CCS plants will be no more than 8%. And it projects that costs will fall by 12% for every doubling in capacity. That is roughly the same rate as for wind power, even though most of the processes in CCS are already widely used in other industries, suggesting that the scope for improvement is slender.
Analysts assume that the price of emissions will rise, as governments impose tighter restrictions, and that the price of CCS will fall, as engineers learn how to do it more cheaply. The IEA, for example, predicts CCS will cost just $35-60 per tonne of emissions reductions by 2030. McKinsey foresees a price of €30-45 when the technology is mature, some time after 2030.
Fra bloggen worldchanging.com – om amerikanske medier, men resultatene som ikke er så godt kjent der er neppe så godt kjent her heller…
In the last two years, our scientific understanding of business-as-usual projections for global warming has changed dramatically (see "M.I.T. doubles its projection of global warming by 2100 to 5.1°C" and "Hadley Center projects 5-7°C warming by 2100"). Yet, much of the U.S. public -- especially conservatives -- remain in the dark about just how dire the situation is (see "Gallup poll shows catastrophic failure of media, conservatives still easily duped by deniers").
Why? Because the U.S. media is largely ignoring the story. Case in point: Where was the coverage of the Copenhagen Climate Science Congress, attended by 2000 scientists, which concluded with this Key Message #1:
Recent observations confirm that, given high rates of observed emissions, the worst-case IPCC scenario trajectories (or even worse) are being realized. For many key parameters, the climate system is already moving beyond the patterns of natural variability within which our society and economy have developed and thrived. These parameters include global mean surface temperature, sea-level rise, ocean and ice sheet dynamics, ocean acidification, and extreme climatic events. There is a significant risk that many of the trends will accelerate, leading to an increasing risk of abrupt or irreversible climatic shifts.
Se mer her.
Den ofte interessante bloggen climateprogress.org skriver om Kinas hovedforhandler i klimasaker som nå kjører argumentet om at klimautslipp i u-land knyttet til varer som skal importeres av i-land, må havne på klimaregnskapene til de importerende i-landene. Samtidig kritiserer han i-lands forslag om å unngå “lekkasje” av produksjon over mot land med dårlige klimareguleringer ved å pålegge slike varer en “klimatariff” som straffer klimagassutslippene som ikke har blitt avgiftsbelagt i produsentlandet. Stemmer denne beskrivelsen mener altså Kina at i-land skal godta forurensende u-land, fortsette å kjøpe varene deres, ta ansvar på egne klimaregnskap for utslippene produksjonen medførte, men ikke bruke noen instrumenter for å prøve å kontrollere eller redusere disse utslippene.
National Geographics hjemmeside har bilder og info om en sak fra Proceedings of the National Academy of Science. Det har blitt gjennomført en spørreundersøkelse blant klimaforskere i forhold til såkalte tipping points, røft forklart naturlige prosesser som utløses av menneskeskapte klimaendringer men som deretter blir en selvstendig pådriver for videre forverring.
Tipping points occur when a small change in one factor, a "driver," can cause a disproportionately large response in an overall system.
[…]
Between 2005 and 2006, 43 international climate experts volunteered to evaluate each of five tipping points, presented here--specifically, judging the likelihood that achieving a tipping point would lead to potentially dangerous global warming.
"Even though there's a lot of uncertainty and ambiguity in the results, our analysis shows these are not low-probability events," lead study author Elmar Kriegler, of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, told National Geographic News.
Experts judged the likelihood of these tipping points to strongly increase with scenarios of potentially low, medium, and high levels of future global warming, according to the study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science this week.
De fem som diskuteres:
Utifra National Geographic sin side er det litt uklart om punkt 2 er “katastrofe” eller “tipping point” – som burde være to separate begrep. Tørke, ørkendannelse og bortråtning av store “karbonlager” i nåværende skog kan gi negative forverringer av klimagassproblemet, mindre is på landområder i Grønland og på Sydpolen gir redusert refleksjon av sollys og mer varme bevart i atmosfæren, men punkt 2 er mer uklar i så måte.
