The European Union is losing its way on climate change

New EU rules agreed on 31 July mean Europe’s 3000 large combustion power plants – coal burning for the most part – will have to cut pollutants such as nitrogen oxide, mercury and particulate matter by 2021. But this is not as good news as it seems.

A version of this article was published on The Fifth Estate last week.

Eighty-two per cent of the EU’s coal-fired plants are estimated to be be non-compliant, emitting excessive levels of pollutants. The cost of compliance is estimated to be over €15 billion (AU$22.4b) according to the European Climate Foundation. This seemingly sounds the death-knell for the coal industry in Europe. But will it?

European climate policy is succeeding in decoupling GDP from energy use, but enthusiasm for climate action is waning.

Christian Schaible, a member of the working group that helped draft the revised standards, explained that “not all plants will have the will, the financing, or even the access to the equipment needed to reduce pollution levels”.

“Investments in plants that are already essentially on life support in order to meet climate commitments simply doesn’t make sense.”

He said that plants committing to close could “under strict conditions and in exchange for reduced operation, be granted exceptions in the short-term”.

This is a nod partly to Eastern European countries still struggling with and committed to the legacy of inefficient Communist-era power systems.

Poland is the biggest polluter of NOx gases from these plants, followed by Germany.

Fossil fuel subsidies

Subsidies for coal continue to abound, as highlighted in a new study, which shows that in Europe, loans of €47.7b (AU$71.1b) have gone to fossil fuel projects since 2013, and many of these projects will continue.

The study, from the Health and Environment Alliance (HEAL), also shows that 89.1 per cent of preventable deaths from air pollution in Bulgaria come from fossil fuel pollution.

“Fellow Eastern European countries Romania and Poland could also cut air pollution-based deaths by 71.3 per cent and 51.3 per cent, respectively,” it says.

The Rise of the Visegrad Factor

The Berlin’s Institute for International Political Economy Cenk Olgun said: “The most vehement opposition to ambitious European climate policies have historically come from the post-Soviet eastern member States,” in particular the Visegrad Group (founded in 1991 by Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia) because the bloc “still struggles with a post-communist economic legacy and conventional power sectors”.

Energy prices and domestic fossil fuel consumption are especially important issues in these countries. They are highly dependent on imported gas and oil.

The Visegrad Group has succeeded in obtaining a high number of free emission allowances from the EU:

Hungary currently holds the presidency of this group and its declared objectives for the coming year are to promote energy infrastructure, security (meaning more gas and LNG, both seen as a way of weaning off coal) and competitiveness, striking its own idea of a “balance between economic growth and meeting climate policy goals”, and expressing anxiety about “carbon leakage” and “investment leakage”.

Permitted emissions

These Eastern European countries are being permitted to increase their greenhouse gas emissions up to 2020 under rules announced on 20 July. These permits to increase are proposed in the Effort Sharing Decision limits released by the European Commission.

These allocate climate targets to each member state within the overall European target in order to decarbonise the non-Emission Trading Scheme sectors – transport (except aviation and maritime shipping), buildings, agriculture and waste.

The overall European emissions target is a 30 per cent reduction on 2005 levels by 2030. The UK’s share of this will be 37 per cent – equivalent to a 45 per cent reduction on 1990 levels. The UK has a domestically agreed Fifth Carbon Budget, which has passed into law and commits it to cutting emissions by 57 per cent on 1990 levels by 2030 – further than the proposed European limits.

Then there’s Brexit

The effect of the UK leaving the European Union has not yet been translated into the effect on Europe’s climate goals. As the UK’s emissions savings compensate for emissions increases in other nations, there will be a knock-on effect. Other nations will have to improve at a faster rate.

But this is not reflected in the above 2030 limits. By 2030 the UK will, on its present path, have been out of the EU for a decade.

This oversight is part of the impression coming out of Europe that its climate policy is in disarray.

We saw this in June with the passing of an ineffectual draft of the revised Energy Efficiency Directive.

In addition, the Energy Performance of Buildings directive – agreed by the national governments and the European Parliament – is not being effectively implemented, according to energy efficiency expert Andrew Warren. He complains in a recent piece that “Article 27 of the Directive requires our government to introduce ‘effective, proportionate and dissuasive penalties’ for non-compliance with the directive. These don’t exist.”

Countries very rarely prosecute building owners for non-compliance. The last study of compliance in 2015 found: “In general, information flows and data collection systems across member states for MEP requirements were not fit for purpose” – amongst many other problems with implementation.

The Energy Union strategy and the Paris Agreement

The Paris Agreement commits to staying “well” below 2°C, while pursuing efforts to limit temperature rise to 1.5°C. Taken with other countries’ pledges the EU’s would lead to global emissions of at least 55 GtCO2-e by 2030. But the absolute maximum level of emissions for staying below 2°C would be 40 GtCO2-e. To close this gap, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has asked all countries to reduce their 2030 emissions by at least another 25 per cent.

The currently proposed EU energy efficiency target of 30 per cent is too low to meet the Paris Agreement goals. Looking at energy savings alone, by totalling the amount of savings reported by member states in 2014 and 2015 the total savings target is currently on track to be below zero.

One of the few good signs is in France’s newly published climate action plan. This states that France will push the EU to increase the ambition of its emission reduction targets. Wendel Trio, director of Climate Action Network (CAN) Europe, said this “sends a clear message to the whole EU that the full implementation of the Paris Agreement means much deeper emission cuts”.

There is now only a five per cent chance that the planet can avoid warming by at least 2°C come the end of the century, according to research published in Nature Climate Change.

The recent deadly heatwaves in southern Europe look likely to be just a taste of what is to come unless far more drastic action is taken by the European bloc. It could mean over 150,000 people a year dying from heat by 2100 if nothing is done, said The Lancet Planetary Health journal.

The European Union used to lead the world on climate change action. This is not the time for it to lose its nerve.

David Thorpe is the author of Energy Management in Buildings, Solar Technology and Sustainable Home Refurbishment.

New European Commission emissions reduction proposals fail to prioritise energy efficiency

[This article originally appeared on 28 July on The Fifth Estate website]

Key new European Commission climate proposals, covering 60 per cent of EU greenhouse gas emissions, fail to match the aspirations of the Paris Agreement to keep global warming well below 2°C, and include astonishing “loopholes”, especially on energy efficiency, analysts say.

This autumn, the European Commission will present an Energy Efficiency Package, including a revision of the Energy Efficiency Directive and Energy Performance of Buildings Directive. The revision aims to implement a non-binding energy efficiency target of 27 per cent by 2030, which the European Commission is considering increasing to 30 per cent.

In addition, the post-2020 reform of the EU Emissions Trading System is being negotiated in the European Parliament, and on 20 July the European Commission published proposals on the Effort Sharing Decision, the idea of which is to distribute climate targets to each Member State in order to decarbonise the sectors not covered by the EU-ETS, which include transport, buildings, agriculture and waste.

The overall target is in keeping with the same 30 per cent reduction on 2005 emissions levels by 2030.

The European Parliament called in October 2014 for a comprehensive cost-benefits analysis of energy efficiency and insisted on a binding energy efficiency target of “at least” 40 per cent by 2030 in order to reach 90-95 per cent reductions by 2050. WWF criticised these targets for being far too weak at the time.

Yet, these new proposals – from the bureaucrats in the Commission – only consider a target of 27 per cent (having in mind an EU level of 30 per cent) for energy efficiency.

They are so weak that six EU member states do not need to cut greenhouse gas emissions from transport, waste, buildings and farming for 15 years. Greece, Hungary, Croatia, Bulgaria, Portugal and Romania were already emitting less than their 2030 allocation in 2014.

The weakness of this ambition has been slammed by the Coalition for Energy Savings.

“Energy efficiency improvements are the key driver of such emission cuts but the link is not made clear,” it says.

The Coalition for Energy Savings secretary general Stefan Scheuer said: “Building national climate targets on the potential for efficiency would secure benefits to all Member States, especially lower-income countries with significant investment gaps.

“The Commission should step up efforts to truly place energy efficiency first in its policymaking, which will benefit citizens directly, through renovating inefficient buildings, replacing wasteful equipment and technologies, updating production facilities and building an efficient and clean mobility system.”

The previous Effort Sharing Decision included an implicit target to reduce greenhouse gas emissions of the building sector. But this was not supported by an EU requirement to set an energy savings target for buildings. This oversight has not been corrected in the new ESR.

Another organisation condemning this oversight is Eurima, which represents insulation manufacturers. It says: “This lack of focus on sectors with high available CO2 potential, namely our existing buildings, is regrettable, especially since there are mature technologies in place to renovate and curb emissions.”

The Commission’s proposals offer Member States the possibility to bank and borrow emission allowances, and loosen the reporting/compliance measures currently in place. A formal compliance check will be organised only every five years, rather than annually.

To meet the Paris Agreement goals, around half of global emissions reduction efforts will have to come from energy efficiency, says Eurima.

“The ESR fails to encourage or provide any incentive to prioritise energy efficiency in facilitating investment in managng energy demand, through a higher energy efficiency target.”

The proposals have been analysed by Sandbag, a UK-based not-for-profit climate policy think tank. Sandbag says” “This proposal … has more loopholes than anyone expected and will not deliver Europe’s contribution to the Paris Agreement.”

Sandbag believes that 50 per cent cuts are achievable and can be delivered cost-effectively. The 30 per cent target implies just a four per cent cut in emissions beyond BAU between 2021-2030 and the sharing proposals “would allow a flood of emission credits from elsewhere to dilute the EU’s climate ambition”.

It has published its own report showing how effort could be shared in a more balanced way. “Wealthier states with higher targets but smaller cost-efficient reduction opportunities could pay countries with lower GDP/capita to cut their ESD emissions exactly where cost is lowest,” it suggests.

The Commission is proposing that the number of carbon emission allowances will decline by 2.2 per cent every year starting from 2021. (Currently there’s a 1.74 per cent annual reduction; Green MPs in the European Parliament demanded a 2.6 per cent decline).

In order to prevent “carbon leakage” – where factories move abroad to escape the restrictions – the Commission wants to see 57 per cent of allowances auctioned and allocate the remaining 43 per cent given away free.

Eastern European countries like high coal-burning Poland had demanded this in return for agreeing to the EU’s climate targets in the first place.

Germany’s target is a cut of 38 percent and France’s and Britain’s is 37 per cent. Brexit could affect the other countries’ targets, but not by that much by 2030. Poland’s target is just a seven per cent cut.

Poland objected to its target straightaway.

“Poland cannot afford such a big reduction effort,” Pawel Salek, Poland’s deputy environment minister in charge of climate policy, said in an email.

But European Commission Vice-President Maros Sefcovic told Reuters that “all member states understand very well that if you want to alleviate the burden on one country, then someone else will have to carry it”.

Imke Lübbeke, head of climate and energy at the WWF European Policy Office, said: “It seems baffling that the Commission can so quickly ignore the Paris Agreement and its temperature goals, especially since Climate Commissioner Arias Cañete has been openly endorsing 1.5°C as the temperature threshold to aim for.”

Yet this bickering about responsibility amongst nations is the reason for the low ambition of these proposals.

“Europeans want climate action: it is now up to their political representatives, MEPs and Member States to put the “effort” back into Effort Sharing Decision by closing the loopholes and introducing a five-yearly review that increases ambition over time, in line with Paris,”, Lübbeke said.

Europeans may want climate action, but clearly those lobbying the EC do not.

You can watch Cañete announce the proposals here:



David Thorpe is the author of:

• Best Practices and Case Studies for Industrial Energy Efficiency Improvement (with Oung, K. and Fawkes, S. UNEP, 2016)
• A London Conversation: Business Briefing on Green Bonds (The Fifth Estate, 2015)
• The One Planet Life (Introduction: Jane Davidson. Routledge, 2015)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Buildings (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Energy Management in Industry (Earthscan, 2013)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Solar Technology (Earthscan, 2011)
• Earthscan Expert Guide to Sustainable Home Refurbishment (Earthscan, 2010)

Who should pay the most to fix the climate?

Despite what many climate sceptics in the UK would like to be the case, the country still does have a Climate Change Act. Under this, the arms length body the Committee on Climate Change (CCC) sets carbon budgets for the country and publishes regular reports on progress report cards. (The Committee is chaired by John Gummer, now known as Lord Deben, once Conservative Prime Minister John Major's Environment Secretary.)

A new report has just been published, which is about the UK's fifth carbon budget. This will set the limit on greenhouse gases emissions from the whole of the country between 2028 and 2032, and marks the halfway point from the first budget (2008-12) to the UK’s 2050.

The report analyses the pledges made by governments around the world in advance of the UN conference in Paris in six weeks where the world will adopt a new, legally binding, agreement that will supplement the existing objective to limit global temperature rise to 2°C.

As usual, the report has been greeted by complaints from some quarters that the brakes the Act allegedly compels the UK to put on industrial activity are unfair.

But are they? But what is fair? How can we decide?

But what is fair?

At every climate conference it always boils down to countries complaining that other countries are not playing fair. This time around the Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska has urged governments not to sign the Paris accord because China and India are not doing enough. Like, we should really listen to a billionaire, especially a Russian one.

There have been many attempts to figure out what would be a fair way of dividing up the tasks and costs. Below is a summary of seven of them. Each of them addresses a different idea of fairness or combines several ideas. Talk at Paris this year will be around agreeing which model will work best, combining domestic action, trading and other forms of co-operation.

These come from the GLOCAF model using methods described in Averchenkova et al (2014):

1. Equal cumulative emissions: nations are allocated an emissions budget over 1990-2050 on the basis of their share of global population.
2. Brazilian proposal (or “index-based approach”): the share of emissions reduction (relative to a path of no climate action) is determined by contributions to historical emissions during 1990-2020.
3. Contraction and convergence: all nations converge towards equal per capita emissions by 2050.
4. Common but differentiated (CBD) convergence: as above, but using a staged approach in which low emitters can continue to increase emissions until they reach global average per-capita emissions.
5. Equal fraction of GDP: each nation faces the same mitigation cost as a fraction of their national GDP.
6. Income grouping: the amount paid by nations on mitigation is indexed by their GDP so that wealthier countries pay a greater fraction than poorer ones. 'High income” nations' (as decided by the World Bank) are allocated double the fraction of their GDP compared to others.
7. Equal marginal cost: the marginal cost of mitigation (i.e. the carbon price) is set to be the same for all nations.

Analysis of these models has shown that the ones with the chance of creating the greatest reduction by 2030 for the EU and the UK are 'Equal marginal cost' and 'Contraction and convergence', followed by 'Equal fraction of GDP' and 'CBD convergence'.

Anyone fancy taking bets on which one will come out the winner at the talks?

Who's really to blame?

Maybe we should be looking at who is ready to blame for global warming and get them to pay the most. But this is not as simple as it seems either. It depends and what criteria you use. Check out these figures on total final energy consumption per capita of the G7 and BRIC countries from 2012. You can see that under this criteria Canada is by far the worst performer.

Country	toe = tonne of oil equivalent/capita
Canada	6.0
United States	4.6
Russian Federation	3.2
Germany	2.7
France	2.4
Japan	2.4
Italy	2.0
United Kingdom	2.0
South Africa	1.4
China	1.3
Brazil	1.1
India	0.4

Source: Federal Statistical Office, G7 in Figures, 2015

But if you use energy intensity as a criteria, which is a measure of how efficiently energy is used, particularly by industry (including power generation), the Russian Federation comes out worst by far:

This is supported by this graph comparing energy intensity, GDP and population:

Yet again, the G20 ranked by percentage of global emissions, puts China worst (though not per capita).  (But look at the last column – who is the most vulnerable to sea level rise amongst these countries – perhaps this should be another way of viewing fairness?):

	Carbon dioxide emissions				Average annual deforestation (+) / afforestation (–)	Population living in areas where elevation is below 5 metres
	% of global emissions	tonnes per capita	kg per 1,000 int. US$ GDP	% change on 1990	% of total forest area	% of total population
G20	2013	2013	2013	2013	2000–2011	2000
China	29.1	7.4	229	315.7	−1.57	8.1
United States	15	16.6	334	6.2	−0.13	4.1
European Union (EU28)	10.5	7.3	222	−14.1	.	7.4
India	5.9	1.7	139	214.2	−0.46	3.8
Russian Federation	5.1	12.6	508	−26.1	0	2.9
Japan	3.9	10.7	279	17	−0.05	16.2
Germany	2.4	10.2	277	−17.3	0	4.4
Republic of Korea	1.8	12.7	261	148.2	0.11	5
Canada	1.6	15.7	335	23	0	4
Brazil	1.5	2.6	99	134.2	0.5	4.9
Indonesia	1.4	2	100	207.6	0.51	11.2
Saudi Arabia	1.4	16.6	151	189.3	0	1
United Kingdom	1.3	7.5	254	−19.2	−0.31	8.6
Mexico	1.3	3.9	168	52.8	0.3	2.7
Italy	1.1	6.4	215	−8.4	−0.90	7.5
Australia	1.1	16.9	314	43.9	0.37	7.2
France	1	5.7	169	–6.3	–0.39	4
South Africa	0.9	6.2	464	22.6	0	0.5
Turkey	0.9	4.4	138	121.5	−1.11	2.4
Argentina	0.5	4.5	213	74	0.81	4.5
Source:	EDGAR/JRC	EDGAR/JRC	EDGAR/JRC	EDGAR/JRC	World Bank	World Bank

                                               

Cumulative emissions

But what about cumulative, historical emissions, the ones that got us into this mess? Would it be fair for the countries responsible for that to pay the most?

The United States is responsible for 20 per cent of global warming experienced over the industrial period, more than twice the emissions of China in second place. But when you look at emissions per person, the UK beats the US into first place. The biggest emitters – US, China, Russia, Brazil, India, Germany and the UK – are together responsible for 63 per cent of total cumulative emissions. The researchers say highlights the huge disparity between rich and poor countries with respect to per person emissions.

This approach must not just examine countries' greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuel burning and land use change, methane, nitrous oxide and sulphate aerosol emissions. A study published in Environmental Research Letters by researchers from Canada's Concordia University does this, for emissions between 1750 and 2005.

Historical contribution to climate warming by country. US leads the table with 0.15 degrees warming by 2005, with the UK coming in seventh. Source: Matthews et al., ( 2013)

Some less developed countries like Brazil sit quite high up in this scale because they have been turning large amounts of forest into cropland. 

Countries’ climate contributions relative to geographic area. Red indicates countries with very high relative climate contributions, green indicates countries with very small relative climate contribution. UK comes top here. Source: Matthews et al., ( 2013)

Carbon pricing anyone?

Regardless of who is to blame, where is the money going to come from? Who is going to pay the price of the changes in infrastructure that are required, especially in developing countries?

This is known as the north-south finance gap – the money that should flow from developed countries, who are the most to blame, to developing ones, who need it to get their lifestyles up to the same as ours, which, after all, is only fair.

Many business leaders, for example Shell, are calling for a global price on carbon as a way of providing this cash. Environmental NGOs like Greenpeace suggest that this is a delaying tactic that would permit business as usual to continue for longer.

In 2013 (latest figures) 18% of global emissions are already covered by carbon pricing schemes.

Also, 76% of global surface transport emissions are covered by emission/fuel efficiency standards (2015 figures). These are constantly improving, but, as we have seen with the Volkswagen diesel emissions scandal, compliance is not always guaranteed.

So, if carbon pricing doesn't work, I repeat:

Who's going to pay?

Recent research on bridging this finance gap puts the cost of fixing the climate at between US$400 billion and $2 trillion by 2050. That doesn't seem an awful lot compared to what has been paid out as a result of the banking crisis over the last eight years.

In fact, it seems like a bargain given that much money is already needing to be spent our new infrastructure in developing countries.

Still, it needs to come from somewhere. So where?

The researchers say that most of the currently deployed means of attempting to bridge this gap – public aid, private investment, development banks, and special climate-related facilities – are insufficient and the barriers "appear particularly hard to overcome".

The researchers conclude that "expanding private finance, either in the form of Foreign Direct Investment or through the issuance of ‘green bonds’, appears to be a more promising direction".

Maybe that's the answer.

This year, so far (9 months) there have been around $21 billion worth of green bonds issued, according to Climate Bonds. Over 14.3 years at the same rate it would in fact be US$400 billion, the bottom estimate figure above, and that just takes us to 2030.

So dare we think that we could do it?

The chief lenders are: Bank of America Merrill Lynch, JP Morgan, CITI, Morgan Stanley, Credite Agricole, CIB, HSBC and MEB. But there are many more smaller ones.

If these people at the heart of capitalism see a profit to be made from climate change, who am I to argue?

I suppose the question is: is it going to the right place? I don't know the answer yet.

So, what do you think would be the fairest way to spread the cost and challenges?

And what is the progress so far? Should we be hopeful or despairing?

Europe's position

EU’s Member States are generally agreed to be leading the world in tackling climate change with an agreed 2030 target for EU emissions of at least 40% below 1990 levels. Some say they shouldn't be taking a lead if other countries don't pull their weight.

EU emissions are already on the road to beat the EU’s 2020 target of a 20% reduction below 1990 levels, ending up between 24% and 30%. This raises the 43-52% possibility of a cost-effective attainment by 2030 of 48% below 1990 levels.

The CCC estimates that within this agreement, the UK will contribute emissions reductions between 51% and 57%. The EU and UK together have target of at least an 80% reduction compared to 1990 by 2050.  By the way, this excludes international shipping and aviation emissions.

The world's position

The CCC also estimates that current pledges by nations globally are not sufficient to set us on a cost-effective path to the agreed 2°C limitation. However they believe that it might be reduced by "remaining pledges, increasing ambition in pledges and further commitments to reduce emissions beyond 2030".

As has always been said, the longer action is delayed, the more expensive it gets. It also forces us to become reliant on technologies that are not yet proven, for example carbon capture.

Median estimates of business-as-usual global emissions in 2030 are 68 GtCO₂e. Analysis of nations' submitted proposals in advance of Paris talks suggests that global emissions would reach 53-55 GtCO₂e in 2030. These would limit warming to around 2.7°C instead of 4°C by 2010. We need to be at around 40 GtCO₂e by that year.

There is therefore a 6-13GtCO₂e gap that needs filling. Around 50 countries still have to submit their pledges so there is a slim chance that this can be met that way. There's also a chance that negotiations leading up to and including Paris will make an attempt.

What are the Best Indicators for Measuring the Sustainability of Cities?

All over the world, individuals, groups, towns and cities are struggling with the knowledge that in total, humanity's activities breach the ability of the planet to support them. There is a wide variety of initiatives and programs which are being developed to try to address this and in my last post I asked if we could define a universal standard for the environmental aspects of sustainable towns and cities.

This post builds upon some responses I have received to that post.

I have just begun a project to encourage towns in Wales and hopefully later the UK to declare themselves as One Planet Towns in the same way that Bioregional is encouraging cities like Brighton and Bristol to become one planet cities. We in the One Planet Council believe that One Planet Town status is what transition towns might be or could be transitioning to.

The advantage of this is that there can be measurement, goals and verification. The advantage of having an objective and universal standard is that it enables comparisons to be made. One can compare one town's performance against another, just as one can compare the energy performance of a building or the health of its occupants against that of another building.

These comparisons need to be made against baselines, which should be established for each town at the beginning, but while it is useful to deal with percentage reductions or increases of particular indicators against those baselines, these are not absolute measurements. Absolute measures enable one area to be compared with another.

Carbon accounting is a form of absolute measurement. It is now relatively easy to both state the annual carbon emissions of a country or a city (absolute) and the percentage improvement on previous years (relative). A measurement of the overall sustainability of a town or city would incorporate this indicator amongst others.

The European Union's sustainable towns and cities program built around the Aalborg process is predicated upon monitoring. It uses:

• The Integrated Urban Monitoring in Europe (IUME) initiative by the European Environment Agency (EEA) – which hasn't been updated for four years; and
• The Reference Framework for Sustainable Cities (RFSC), a still-active online toolkit for European local authorities working towards an integrated management approach. It includes a broad collection of indicators in order for cities to compile their individual set. This uses 28 indicators of which five are environmental:

15 Greenhouse gas emissions – in tons per capita
16 Share of renewable in energy consumption
17 (Percentage of) Areas designated for nature protection and biodiversity under either municipal, communal, national or local schemes
18 The number of times that the limit PM10 permitted by the European directives on air quality is exceeded
19 Soil sealing (m²) per capita.

These are all absolute indicators, enabling proper comparisons to be made between cities of different sizes.

ISO 37120

Objective indicators are also the intention behind ISO 37120 Sustainable Development of Communities: Indicators for City Services and Quality of Life. It includes 46 indicators covered under these headings:

• Economy
• Education
• Energy
• Environment
• Finance
• Fire and emergency response
• Governance
• Health
• Recreation
• Safety
• Shelter
• Solid waste
• Telecommunications and innovation
• Transportation
• Urban planning
• Wastewater
• Water and sanitation.

Of the 46 indicators, these are explicitly about environmental matters:

1. Total residential electrical use per capita (kWh/year)
2. Energy consumption of public buildings per year (kWh/m
²)
3. Percentage of total energy derived from renewable sources, as a share of the city’s total energy consumption
4. Fine particulate matter (
PM2.5) concentration
5. Particulate matter (
PM10) concentration
6. Greenhouse gas emissions measured in tonnes per capita
7. Percentage of city population with regular solid waste collection (residential)
8. Total collected municipal solid waste per capita
9. Percentage of city’s solid waste that is recycled
10. Percentage of city population served by wastewater collection
11. Percentage of the city’s wastewater that has received no treatment
12. Percentage of the city’s wastewater receiving primary treatment
13. Percentage of the city’s wastewater receiving secondary treatment
14. Percentage of the city’s wastewater receiving tertiary treatment
15. Percentage of city population with potable water supply service
16. Percentage of city population with sustainable access to an improved water source
17. Percentage of population with access to improved sanitation
18. Total domestic water consumption per capita (litres/day).

Few of these are absolute measures that relate to planetary limits, the point of the ecological footprint method. Only numbers 6 and 8 are: greenhouse gas emissions measured in tonnes per capita and collected municipal solid waste per capita. 18 is also an absolute measure but not related to ecological footprinting since the amount of water available to a population for consumption will vary by location; what is perhaps interesting from an environmental sustainability angle is the water's life-cycle impact or energy intensity.

It is claimed that ISO 37120:2014 can be used by any city, municipality or local government wishing to measure its performance in a comparable and verifiable manner, irrespective of size and location or level of development. It is being developed as part of an integrated suite of standards for sustainable development in communities by the Global City Indicators Facility, a program of the Global Cities Institute.

It is early days for the standard since it was only published in May 2014 following a development period using input from international organizations, corporate partners, and international experts from over 20 countries. Nine pilot cities, including Bogotá, Toronto, São Paulo and Belo Horizonte originally helped to devise a list of some 115 initial indicators; eventually there were 258 participating cities across 82 countries.

ISO 31720 is meant to provide a comprehensive set of indicators and a methodology that will enable any sized city in a developed or a developing economy to measure its social, economic, and environmental performance in relation to other cities. The standard includes 54 other supporting indicators.

New additional indicators on sustainable development and resilience are currently being developed within the ISO, led by the GCIF. As of December 2014 the standard is being piloted by just one city: Mexico City.

Ecological footprinting

I also mentioned ecological footprinting in my last post, because this seems to be fundamental, and I compared it to life-cycle analysis. In response to this, Mathis Wackernagel, president  of the Global Footprint Network (GFN), got in touch to say that the GFN is "trying to make the Footprint more relevant to cities" and welcoming any suggestions.

He said that far from being professional or commercial secrets, the method and calculations behind the footprinting method which they use are publicly available. For example here: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/index.php/GFN/page/methodology/.

"And we make the templates available for free to academics. (we only charge for commercial use)," he says. "

The underlying concept is quite simple: add up all demands on nature that compete for space".

"Life cycle assessment is not a competitor of Footprint.," he continued, "Footprint is an aggregator, an interpretation lens. To calculate the Ecological Footprint of a product, you need a life cycle assessment first. With those LCA data points then you can calculate Footprint."

It is also worth pointing out, of course, that the Footprint is a measure of ‘unsustainability’, not a measure of sustainability.

I have also heard from the British Standard Institue's John Delaney who has alerted me to this and to more issue-specific standards like PAS 2070 for city GHG footprint; process standards like BS 8904 (referred to in the prrevious post), a management system ISO that is in development; or some combination of both, like the European Reference Framework above.

He writes:

"What option cities choose depends on what suits them and/or what they are most comfortable with. Process standards can be more powerful, and help develop strategy, vision, objectives and targets, but they take commitment and resources. Reporting standards give a quick indication of how your city is doing against a raft of issues that are commonly agreed to be important, and they allow ranking of city performance.

"There is also a split between [new] development standards [systems] like One Planet Development, BREEAM Communities, etc. and standards for sustainable development of existing communities and cities. 

"We have talked for some time about developing a general footprinting standard, but it has never gained enough momentum/interest to get going. I’d be very happy to have a chat about how you could get involved in standards development and/or how we could re-boot the footprinting idea. Maybe cities and communities would be a good sector to focus on first."

Anyone who would you like to be involved in this process is welcome to contact me.

David Thorpe is the author of:

• Solar Technology: The Earthscan Expert Guide to Using Solar Energy for Heating, Cooling and Electricity 
• Energy Management in Buildings: The Earthscan Expert Guide
• The 'One Planet' Life: A Blueprint for Low Impact Development
• Sustainable Home Refurbishment: The Earthscan Expert Guide to Retrofitting Homes for Efficiency, and
• Energy Management in Industry: The Earthscan Expert Guide.

Obama must win for the world to have a chance of beating climate change

Here's the logic of this post:

1. The latest science says we're heading for over 6 degrees C warming.
2.  Romney will do nothing but make this worse
3.  Obama must win
4. Then go to Doha and help broker a global pact on limiting emissions.

Following Hurricane Sandy, and more bad news on climate change today , there has never been so much at stake in an American election for the rest of the world.

If this is not a wake-up call, I don't know what is.

Hurricane Sandy was the worst storm to hit the eastern seaboard of the United States in living memory.

In one dramatic moment, that will end up costing American taxpayers billions of dollars, it has succeeded in doing something by powerful demonstration that no other amount of evidence or eloquence has succeeded in doing: it has brought climate change, at the last moment, into the presidential election agenda.

In its wake, the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, has thrown his support behind Barack Obama. The latest issue of Bloomberg BusinessWeek carries on its cover the slogan: “It's climate change, stupid!"

In an editorial, it says: "Climate deniers exploit scientific complexity to avoid any discussion at all. Clarity, however, is not beyond reach. Hurricane Sandy demands it: At least 40 U.S. deaths. Economic losses expected to climb as high as $50 billion. Eight million homes without power. Hundreds of thousands of people evacuated. More than 15,000 flights grounded. Factories, stores, and hospitals shut. Lower Manhattan dark, silent, and underwater."

The latest scientific climate change research, arriving with chilling timing in my e-mail box today, points to disaster for the planet unless something drastic is done. Current rates of decarbonisation mean that global average temperatures are heading to a disastrous 6oC of warming. This would render much of the planet uninhabitable.

The news comes from fresh analysis by financial consultants PwC. Their Low Carbon Economy Index measures the progress of developed and emerging economies towards reducing emissions linked to economic output. Its latest issue says "To limit global warming to 2oC would now mean reducing global carbon intensity by an average of 5.1% a year – a performance never achieved since 1950, when these records began". [For a copy of the report contact Rowena Mearley, Tel: +44 207 213 4247 or e-mail rowena.mearley@uk.pwc.com.]

It adds that any investments in long term assets or infrastructure, particularly in coastal or low-lying regions need to address far more pessimistic scenarios.

This message seems almost pointedly directed at the East Coast of the United States this week.

On October 31, the New York Times published an article which explicitly linked Hurricane Sandy to climate change.

It said “the storm surge along the Atlantic coast was almost certainly intensified by decades of sea-level rise linked to human emissions of greenhouse gases. And [scientists have] emphasized that Hurricane Sandy, whatever its causes, should be seen as a foretaste of trouble to come as the seas rise faster, the risks of climate change accumulate and the political system fails to respond". It quotes in support Thomas R. Knutson, a research meteorologist with the government’s Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J.

Hurricane Sandy came hot on the heels of the intense summer drought, which also powerfully affected much of the United States.

Americans now know first-hand some of the effects of climate chaos. It's not happening in some remote atoll of the Pacific Ocean, or in the estuarine delta of a poor, developing country. It's happening right in their homes. It is affecting their power supply, the price of their food, their livelihoods. It's costing lives. It's going to put up insurance premiums.

Most Europeans have not been subject to the same ideologically-driven debate over climate change as Americans have in the last decade. They have not been deprived of the true facts of the situation, or misled by compromised politicians.

Facts have a great way of cutting through ideology. During the Cultural Revolution in China, millions died as a result of ideologically-driven policies on agriculture. The authorities responded with denial and cover-up, because the alternative was to admit that their leaders were wrong. But now we know the truth, sadly too late for those peasants who suffered death by starvation.

Americans need to know that their leaders have been wrong, before it is too late.

There is no doubt that Obama's policies on climate change are better than Romney's, who said in his acceptance speech for the GOP nomination: “President Obama promised to slow the rise of the oceans and to heal the planet. My promise ... is to help you and your family”. That phrase should return to haunt him now.

But for Obama to have spoken out loudly on climate change before now would have, paradoxically, worked against his best interests. Instead, he has during his campaign repeatedly shown support for oil, natural gas, shale gas and coal as well as renewables.

That has not been an obstacle for Bill Clinton, who is on the campaign trail himself. On Tuesday he said: “All up and down the East Coast, there are mayors, many of them Republicans, who are being told, ‘You’ve got to move these houses back away from the ocean. You’ve got to lift them up. Climate change is going to raise the water levels on a permanent basis. If you want your town insured, you have to do this.’ In the real world, Barack Obama’s policies work better”.

The president of the World Resources Institute, a former special envoy for climate change at the World Bank, who also happens to be British, has commented on the fact that both presidential candidates have largely avoided mention of climate change by saying: “Political discourse here is massively out of step with the rest of the world, but also with the citizens of this country. Polls show very clearly that two-thirds of Americans think this is a real problem and needs to be addressed.”

We have to hope that Obama wins the poll this week. Romney has opposed Democratic initiatives to regulate emissions from power plants and vehicles. He has promised to reverse Obama’s air quality regulations. He has said he will renegotiate the auto efficiency standard of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025 that automakers agreed to this year.

Obama, speaking last week in Iowa, has promised to continue support for wind power projects and federal tax breaks for them, which Romney wants to end. “My plan will keep these investments, and we’ll keep reducing the carbon pollution that’s also heating the planet, because climate change isn’t a hoax. The droughts we’ve seen, the floods, the wildfires, those aren’t a joke. They’re a threat to our children’s future. And we can do something about it.”

He is right. Romney is wrong. It's as simple as that.

Obama must not just win a second term. He must then lead the world in the COP 18 climate change negotiations this December in Doha to a proper, legally binding agreement.

America, the world's greatest polluter, has avoided this responsibility for over a decade, and the PwC report reveals the consequence of this.

There has never been so much at stake for the rest of the world in an American election.

The world is heading for a ”carbon cliff” - PwC

PwC's Jonathan Grant says "we are heading for a carbon cliff" unless habits are changed.

PwC is warning today that the world is heading for 6°C warming unless emissions of greenhouse gases go into reverse.

The annual rate of reduction of carbon emissions per unit of GDP needed to limit global warming to 2°C has passed a critical threshold according to new analysis in the PwC Low Carbon Economy Index, published today. This measures developed and emerging economies' progress towards reducing emissions linked to economic output.

It demonstrates that at current rates of emissions growth, at least 6°C degrees of warming could be possible by the end of the century, which would result in large parts of the world becoming uninhabitable.

While last month, Britain topped a European league table for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions, it is by no means clear that this reversal will continue, as Government policy is to maximise oil, gas and coal extraction, and to build a new generation of gas-fired power plants.

The PwC report

The PwC report shows that to limit global warming to 2oC would now mean reducing global carbon intensity by an average of 5.1% a year, a performance never achieved since 1950, when these records began.

PwC's director of sustainability and climate change, Jonathan Grant, says that "we are heading for a carbon cliff" unless habits are changed. "Even doubling our current annual rates of decarbonisation globally every year to 2050, would still lead to 6oC, making governments’ ambitions to limit warming to 2oC appear highly unrealistic.”

Andrew Sentance, PwC's senior economic advisor, says that "Government policies must radically change", and that for business this "represents an opportunity as well as a risk".

“The challenge now is to implement gigatonne scale reductions across the economy, in power generation, energy efficiency, transport and industry, as well as REDD+ in forested nations,” added Grant.

With less than four weeks to the UN Climate Summit in Doha, the analysis illustrates the scale of the challenge facing negotiations. The issue is further complicated by a slow market recovery in developed nations, but sustained growth in E7 economies which could lock economic growth into high carbon assets.

Emerging markets’ previous trends on carbon emissions reductions linked to growth and productivity have stalled, and their total emissions grew by 7.4%.

By contrast, the UK, France and Germany achieved record levels of annual carbon emissions intensity reductions, but were helped on by milder winters.

Examining the role of shale gas, PwC’s report suggests that at current rates of consumption, replacing 10% of global oil and coal consumption with gas could deliver emissions savings of around 3% a year (1gt C02e per annum).

However the report warns that while it may “buy some time”, it reduces the incentive for investment in lower carbon technologies such as nuclear and renewables, and could lock in emerging economies with high energy demand to a dependence on fossil fuels.

America has been exporting the coal it would have burnt had shale gas not displaced its domestic use, so, globally, a shift to shale gas in one country alone makes little difference to overall emissions.

This underlines the importance of reaching a global deal at Doha, PwC says.

UK oil, gas and coal extraction

At home, British policy on reducing carbon emissions no longer appears as consistent as it did until recently.

On 25 October, Energy Minister John Hayes announced 167 new North Sea oil and gas licences, saying that every last economic drop of oil and gas from the North Sea will be extracted.

In answer to a question from Green MP Caroline Lucas last Friday, about whether the effect of this on achievement of the UK's domestic carbon budgets had been calculated, he gave no indication that it had, instead repeating that the Government “aims to secure over time the maximum economic recovery" of the "20 billion barrels of oil equivalent left on the Continental Shelf".

If all this were to be burnt, it would lead to the emission of 872 trillion kgCO2.

Meanwhile, despite a decline in the demand for coal caused by six British power stations having to close by 2016, the coal industry, through CoalPro, their producer’s association, hopes that the industry will be able to maintain a total of approximately 36 working surface mines across the UK, according to the Loose Anti Opencast Network (LAON).

LAON’s latest review of the stage at which 22 current and possible opencast planning applications across the UK have reached, has just come out.

LAON is calling on the Government to align its planning policy with its energy policy. Steve Leary, its coordinator, says: “It is the Government's intention to phase out the use of coal for power generation purposes, leading to a 75% decline in the use of coal for such a purpose over the next 10 years, whilst at the same time, through provisions in the Growth and Infrastructure Bill, it is possibly making it easier to dig the coal out".

He says this coal would probably be exported if not burnt at home.

This morning, activists from the No Dash for Gas campaign who have been protesting at the Government's policy to build a new generation of 20 gas-fired power stations, are ending a seven day occupation of the 300 foot high chimneys of EDF's West Burton 1,300MW Combined Cycle Gas Turbine (CCGT) plant, currently under construction in Nottinghamshire.

Energy and Climate Change Secretary, Ed Davey, has guaranteed that if built, these stations will be exempted from emissions regulations and can continue emitting CO2 unabated until 2045.

Call to decarbonise
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In a timely move, the Carbon Capture and Storage Association, the Nuclear Industry Association and RenewableUK have today issued a joint call to Energy Secretary Ed Davey to largely decarbonise the power sector by 2030.

The three associations, representing over 1,000 corporate members, make the request  in a letter  copied to the Chancellor, Prime Minister, Business Secretary and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of State at the Cabinet Office.

The letter states that including a reference to the objective to largely decarbonise the power sector by 2030 in the Bill would reassure potential investors by lowering political risk and bring the cost of capital down for lower carbon generation.

The organisations stress, however, that any target set in legislation should serve a specific and necessary purpose and not contribute to so-called "target fatigue" in the energy sector; and it