Radical Carbon Offsetting: A New idea To Finance Climate Action

Last time I wrote about my despair at the idea that global leaders can ever agree to effectively slow or even reverse the growth of greenhouse gas emissions and save their peoples from the catastrophic effects of serious climate change.

I suggested that the only way to avert disaster this would be to pay fossil fuel companies to leave the gas, oil and coal in the ground because as long as it is profitable to remove it, they will do so. Just as countries with valuable rainforests need to be paid not to fell them, so companies whose profits rest upon the extraction of fossil fuels would demand to be compensated for not doing so.

The bottom line is that concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have continued to increase regardless of any international negotiations. The challenge for Paris 2015 is to find an agreeable legal framework that every nation can sign up to that is actually effective. It does not matter what people say; only the measured results count. Given that by 2020, when any legally binding agreement takes force, we will have passed the point at which emissions can be limited to 450 ppm, it will become necessary not only to reduce emissions but also to remove carbon from the atmosphere in order to make the future safe for the majority of the human population. That is why I have come up with this proposal.

The solution I'm proposing I am calling radical carbon offsetting. Conventional carbon offsetting involves paying someone to invest in a renewable energy project. A prime example of this is the Clean Development Mechanism associated with the Kyoto Protocol, a key criteria of which is that any power generation project financed must be additional to those which would have happened anyway. But key areas of doubt have always been about whether any project can truly be additional, and whether the provision of power always leads to a thirst for more power – which may not be renewably supplied.

Radical carbon offsetting, by contrast, involves capturing carbon from the atmosphere and putting it in a place where it cannot escape, at least for the foreseeable future. Radical carbon offsetting schemes would permit the extraction of fossil fuels providing that an adequate and equivalent amount of carbon was removed from the atmosphere to that which will be released by the fossil fuels' combustion.

Fossil fuel companies would finance radical carbon offsetting schemes involving technologies some of which are traditional and some of which are currently in development and expensive but which, when they achieve scale, would be cost competitive. They would help accelerate their route to market.

Removing atmospheric carbon 

Removing atmospheric carbon at scale is the only way that the current rate of increase of concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere can be reduced and perhaps even reversed so that it may reach again the safe limit of 350 ppm which it was around the middle of the last century. Currently it is at 400 ppm and the international negotiations that are ongoing are designed to limit the maximum concentration to 450 ppm, at which it is alleged global average temperature rises would peak at 2°C.

During the Eocene geological period between 56 and 34 million years ago atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide was up to 4000 ppm. There were no ice caps and the sea level was much higher than today. The means by which it reduced to 350ppm, enabling human life to flourish, was, according to paleoceanographer and climatologist Professor Paul Pearson, through the carbonisation of calcium to create limestone. But this took millions of years.

What other, faster, techniques are there for removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere? Below I list a few so that you can see the potential and the wide variety of opportunities that exist:

Techniques for removing atmospheric carbon 

Building with timber

Simply building with timber creates a market for forest products and encourages their plantation. Provided that the trees are harvested when mature and not allowed to decay (emitting methane) then they will have absorbed a significant amount of atmospheric carbon. Using the timber in construction then locks away that carbon in the building fabric for at least the lifetime of the building. If we consider Tudor architecture and how many Tudor buildings survive today, we can see that timber is a durable construction material, so this lifetime can be long. And it's not just timber. Many building materials exist which are made from plants that will have absorbed atmospheric carbon, including forms of insulation, cladding, sheeting, flooring and so on.

Zero or negative carbon concrete

Concrete accounts for around 5-8 % of total CO₂ emissions in the form of greenhouse gases, making it the third highest producer of CO₂ after transport and energy generation. A major disadvantage of concrete is its large carbon footprint, one tonne of Portland cement resulting in the emission of approximately one tonne of CO₂. In conventional cement manufacture the majority of the CO₂ is released from the conversion of limestone (CaCO₃) to lime (CaO).

Whilst there are several low carbon cement alternatives in development, only two actually absorb atmospheric carbon. These are Hemcrete and magnesium silicate cement.

Building with timber and hemcrete. Courtesy Lime Technologies.

Hempcrete, a hemp-lime composite, is sold by Oxfordshire-based Hemcrete Projects. Hemp produces a very strong fibre which is used to bind the breathable lime to create a concrete-like product. The carbon locked up in the hemp compensates for carbon produced during lime manufacture, resulting in a zero-carbon building product which is excellent at regulating temperature and humidity inside buildings. The company has combined it with hemp-based insulation and wooden frames to create two products, Hembuild – used to build the wall of a building - and Hemclad, used for cladding timber frames – that can be manufactured off-site and quickly installed during construction. Both Hembuild and Hemclad products use a layer of Hemcrete on the inside, and a layer of hemp insulation on the outside, combining thermal inertia and insulation in a single product. Together they create a kit that can be used to construct a negative carbon building.

Hemcrete does not have the same tensile or resistive strength as Portland cement, but can be used for small buildings such as houses. It could not be used for the foundations of large buildings, roads, etc., so a different product will be needed. This would instead be cement made from the accelerated carbonation of magnesium silicate (commonly known as talc) under high temperature and pressure. The resulting carbonates are then heated at low temperatures to produce magnesium oxide, with the CO₂ generated being recycled back in the process.

The use of magnesium silicate eliminates the CO₂ emissions from raw materials processing. Also, the low temperatures required allow the use of fuels with low energy content or carbon intensity (i.e. biomass), thus potentially further reducing carbon emissions. Furthermore, production of the carbonates absorbs carbon dioxide by carbonating part of the manufactured magnesium oxide using atmospheric/industrial CO₂. A number of companies are developing this method. Overall, manufacturers claim that making one tonne of cement using this method absorbs up to 100kg more CO₂ than it emits, making it a carbon-negative product.

The only disadvantage of this (besides the current cost) is that magnesium silicate is not as evenly distributed throughout the world as the calcium carbonate in limestone that is used to create Portland cement.

(Aside: other techniques for making low carbon cement such as CeraTech's, which uses a process located at power plants to convert waste fly ash (otherwise landfilled) into a cement-like product, do not sequester atmospheric carbon, although they are laudable. The same is true for the high temperature cement-making process developed at George Washington University which a patent application says could be provided by concentrated solar thermal power, yielding a low-carbon cement at a price of $43/tonne.)

Zero-carbon concrete infographic, courtesy Cemfree: similar math applies to other brands.

Algae

Duke Energy is piloting a system at East Bend Natural Gas Power Station in Northern Kentucky that recycles the carbon dioxide in flue gas to grow algae in photobioreactors. The algae can later be fed into an anaerobic digester to produce methane gas that the power plant can burn for fuel, or it can be dried and processed into fish food or animal feed, or processed into biodiesel or even jet fuel. Ways to use algae as a third generation biofuel are being pioneered by many companies across the world.
Ethylene glycol

Liquid Light of Monmouth Junction, New Jersey is also intending to capture carbon dioxide from power plants' combustion processes using a technology currently being prototyped to produce ethylene glycol. This is a building block of products as diverse as polyester fibre, plastic bottles and antifreeze.

Acrylic acid

Dioxide Materials of champaign, Illinois, has another prototype in development aimed at producing acrylic acid – a constituent of paint and glue – from carbon dioxide. It has partnered with glue maker 3M to bring the product to market.

Carbon capture and storage

The last three examples place carbon capture and storage, the current great white hope of the fossil fuel industry, in perspective. Why go to all the trouble of piping the carbon dioxide to a nearby suitable geological repository when you can turn it into something profitable right on your doorstep, one might ask? The great expectations pinned upon CCS in the past have proved relatively chimeric because of the cost: power produced with add-on CCS is at least 20% more expensive – if not double the price. Yet the algae and glue- or plastic-making chemicals do not sequester the carbon – they turn it into a form which is temporarily out of the atmosphere but to which it can return (with algae almost immediately), so merely displacing fossil fuels. An advantage, true, but not as great as putting it out of reach for a century or more.
My proposal for radical carbon offsetting could provide a way of financing some of these projects and more. It would encourage innovation and new markets. I love the concept becaude it is a win-win-win solution: it has at least three benefits:

1. we tackle global warming,
2. create employment, and
3. produce useful and valuable products that displace the need to burn fossil fuels.

To make the idea work, a global market for carbon with an appropriate price attached would be needed, plus, of course, a legal agreement that all countries in the world must sign up to. It could for example form part of the agreement being progressed for post-2015 by the UNFCCC. A summary of progress of the negotiations is here and the US' ideas for it are here. It's a distant hope for me, but at least it provides a potential route out of despair.

The Government has been nobbled over energy

Why is the British Government’s energy policy not delivering on its climate change targets? Because it has been nobbled by the large, greedy energy companies – yet their arguments can be disproved.

This is a longer version of the piece in yesterday's Guardian website. That piece however has the web links in it - sorry, lack of time.

© David Thorpe

The beautiful resort of Nusa Dua, Bali, is ths week the scene of a battle of world-wide significance. Yes, it's yet another UN climate conference.

We're all used by now to how these things involve the spouting of giga-tonnes of hot air which fail to turn many turbines that might result in effective action on global warming. This one promises to be only slightly different. The IPCC report issued two weeks ago was the last warning salvo fired by the scientific community at heads of government before the talks, and its most extreme warning yet, although by its very nature (the peer-reviewing and debate) it is two to three years behind the latest monitored climatic effects, showing change is happening even faster than previously thought.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon who will host the talks, has singled out the United States and China, the world's top two emitters of greenhouse gases, which have no binding goals for curbs, as key countries in the process. A main opponent to the UN process has been removed in Australia following the election of Labour's Kevin Rudd as PM, and of his appointment of a former protest rock singer as Minister for the Environment and a Malaysian-born woman as Minister for Climate Change and Water, who will both work to ratify the Kyoto Protocol.

But no one expects any big breakthroughs. In the 'Washington Declaration' agreed on February 16 this year, leaders from the developed world agreed in principle on the outline of the Kyoto Protocol's successor: a global cap-and-trade system that would apply to both industrialized nations and developing countries, hoped to be in place by 2009. The British position for Bali is to support this but to expect to wait at least a year for an agreement, and hope that Bush's successor will be more onboard. If, after November 4 next year, it's Hillary Clinton, then it's assumed she will sign up to such a package. After all, almost half of American states, and many big companies, including Google, are working to install renewables and trade carbon. Google co-founder Larry Page said on Tuesday that Google is to invest millons to make green electricity cost less than coal in "years not decades."

Away from the sun-kissed beaches of Indonesia, the action that's more of relevance to us in Britain is happening closer to our rain-drenched shores.

Meanwhile back in Britain

The EU has published its assessment this week of where Europe is on the track towards its 2012 Kyoto target of reducing emissions by 8% - itself a pitiably modest target. The chart below shows the percentage each of the 26 countries and Europe as a whole is along the path. The worst achiever is at the top of the chart, Spain is leading way ahead. The UK is in the bottom half of achievers, 10th from the bottom and 16th from the top.



As a result of our poor progress, the EU says it needs to purchase emission credits from third countries and forestry activities that absorb carbon from the atmosphere and further measures. But another report this week said 20% of these credits were worthless due to double accounting.

What has been happening in Britain over the last ten years, which has caused us to fall behind our European targets on renewable energy and carbon emissions? Why has the Government seemed to say so much yet do so little? Why is the Government expecting to build more nuclear power plants, and rely on carbon capture and storage to capture the rogue gas and bury it underground or at the bottom of the sea? Why is it going to argue in Europe in the next few months that the UK must not have to reach the European target of 20% of renewable electricity by 2020? (Instead it will campaign for a grossly inefficient use of voluntary credit purchases to make up its renewables shortfall. Some say we'll be lucky to reach 10% at the rate we're going.)

The fact is that the paralysis and tardiness are the fruits of a bitter dispute at the heart of UK energy policy development. This battle sees support for new nuclear build, gas and carbon capture pitted against support for renewables, in which a feed-in law should have a rightful place. The lobbying battle has been led by the conventional energy industry giants and the nuclear industry. The UK's energy companies are mostly owned by German and French utilities (such as E-ON, RWE and EDF) — who all oppose feed-in, (some welcome the opportunity for large profits from wind farms).

These companies have successfully nobbled both BERR (the department formerly known as DTI) and the Treasury. They have not nobbled Defra, which has responsibility for climate change but not energy (that's at BERR). Defra, and many back-benchers, support a feed-in tarriff, but whenever such a question is addressed to Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks, as it has been several times this month in Parliament in debates over the Climate Change Bill, he bats it away very smartly, and talks like a robot about the Renewables Obligation, partly because the energy giants (Eurelectric et al) have mobilised a fresh campaign against feed-in tarriffs.

Pay everyone for generating renewable energy

Many and loud have been the clamours for such a tarriff over the years, from the renewables industry - e.g. the Renewable Energy Association and the BWEA - but also recently both the Conservatives and the LibDems have made it their policy. The reason for its popularity is because it works - countries which have such a tarriff have generated robust renewables industries, and it's been highly effective in increasing the amount of renewable electricity generated, combating climate change and helping countries meet EU targets.

What is the feed-in tarriff? It simply guarantees producers a fixed price for electricity generated from PVs. It was introduced in Germany in 2000, and revised in 2004 to cover the full costs involved in producing solar electricity, sparking a boom. Germany will have almost 20 times as much PV by the end of 2007 as in 2000 when there was just 44MW, according to the German Solar Industry Association. It has led to around 800,000 properties having the technology installed and 55 percent of the world's photovoltaic power is generated on solar panels set up between the Baltic Sea and the Black Forest. Just what we need here.

Instead, in the UK we have the Renewables Obligation, which is supposed to compel suppliers to purchase an increasing proportion of electricity from renewable sources. In 2006/07 the proportion is 6.7% (2.6% in Northern Ireland) and should rise to 10.4% by 2011-12, then by 1% annually for the five years following. But actually we are way behind this target. The RO has often been criticised for being ineffective, bureaucratic, slow, and in particular excluding small generators such as householders.

Which is just how the large energy producers like it - they don't want a lot of microgeneration schemes all over the country. Good grief, if everyone is making their own electricity, who is going to buy from them? They'll have to buy the amps you don't want! And the unions agree. It's worth noting that the unions are well represented in the conventional energy industry, with coal and nuclear carrying significant union membership. But the UK renewables industry has no union. Conversely, the big energy companies are all members of the only lobbying bodies the renewables industry has, their trade associations.

There have been any number of well-researched reports showing how Britain can meet and exceed its climate targets, from Zero Carbon Britain to this week's Home Truths report from Oxford University. But instead the Government will be resurrecting civil nuclear power — just as seven of the UK's 16 nuclear power plants are currently off-line for repairs and maintenance. (And they say wind power is intermittent.)

Nuclear power is not low carbon

The comeback of nuclear power is based on the allegation that it is almost carbon-free. The Treasury has accepted evidence that its lifecycle carbon emissions are equivalent to wind power's: between seven and 22g CO2/kWh. However, extensively peer-reviewed and checked empirical analysis of the energy intensity and carbon emissions at each stage of the nuclear cycle (at http://www.stormsmith.nl/feed) has produced much higher figures. In fact, nuclear power produces roughly one quarter to one third as much carbon dioxide as the delivery of the same quantity of electricity from natural gas, i.e., 88-134g CO2/kWh. Gas-fired electricity production involves the emission of around 450g CO2/kWh. Nuclear is still lower than gas, but nowhere near wind.

However, don't expect the Government to listen to this. It has already decided, in a mind-bogglingly cavalier fashion, in advance of the announcement of the result of its consultation on nuclear power next month, that it is fine and dandy to proceed with new power stations. Even when they are so close to the sea that they are in danger in the future of flood-damage from rising sea levels; even though the fuel is free for all renewable energy, and freely delivered on site; even though, unlike nuclear power, there is no carbon-intensive supply chain; and even though the site of a wind turbine can be cleared very quickly when the turbine is decommissioned leaving no residue to take care of for tens of thousands of years.

Why? Because its policy is that the present government will not have to foot the bill for these power stations - unlike renewables, which involve some taxpayers' money. Of course taxpayers will pay, but in a roundabout way. They will pay for the clean-up. The current clean-up bill for existing nuclear waste clear up is £73 billion (says the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority).

Is £73 billion a bargain? I challenge anyone to say that it is. But this is: Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute report, Home Truths, says that Government spending of £12.9 billion a year for approximately ten years would give us 80% cuts in carbon emissions, the elimination of fuel poverty, and permanent energy savings from UK homes worth £12.3 billion a year. That's a net cost of just £6 billion, with many more jobs created that nuclear power would yield. The average household would see their energy bills cut by at least 66%, equivalent to a £425 annual saving at today’s prices. To put this in perspective, a year ago it was reported that the cost of the Iraq war (designed to secure energy supplies) to the British taxpayer thus far had been £7 billion.

So in the Government's armoury of policies against climate change we have discredited the Renewables Obligation, and established that carbon credits are unreliable. What's left? The EU's Emissions Trading System, and carbon capture and storage.

The great emissions credits giveaway

The energy companies have persuaded the Government to persuade Europe to create in the second round of the ETS, a new set of certificates to pretend to save carbon but make them money. For each kWh of green electricity produced, the producer can ask a competent national body to issue a green certificate. This can be traded and will be counted towards the national target in the country into which the certificate is sold - a developing country, most likely. The country from which the certificate originates will not be able to count it under its own national target achievement plan. In this way, the energy cartel vigorously defends a domestic system which blocks out everyone except the biggest investors, themselves — the reverse of what a feed-in system achieves — and lobby in Europe for a system which will undermine everyone else's renewables systems.

The most spectacular success of the Emissions Trading System so far has been to generate profits for the big energy companies. No wonder they love it. A report by Open Europe, in July 2006, found that profits were £10.2m for Esso; £17.9m for BP; and £20.7m for Shell. Conversely, smaller organisations like hospitals and universities, who had been given far fewer credits, were forced to go out and buy them - while the price was still high. So, for example, the University of Manchester spent £92,500 on EUAs.

The permits to burn fossil fuels were given away to 5,000 of the EU's biggest polluters. At one point, the price of permits rose to €27 per tonne, making the whole distribution worth €177 billion. This inflated their profits and enabled them to out-compete cleaner, less energy-hungry firms. It also enabled them to finance further lobbying in the manner described above.

If, instead, the emissions permits had been given to every EU resident, we could each have been better off by up to €280 a year, Irish sustainable development group Feasta has calculated. Some campaigners are currently considering whether to mount a legal objection to this great giveaway, on the grounds that the energy companies operated as a cartel, and that the emissions were part of 'the commons' belonging to all EU citizens, who had effectively paid for it through their higher energy bills. Although it's a case of bolting the stable door after the horse has escaped, the point of the challenge would be to raise awareness of the rip-off and challenge the companies' hegemony.

Burying carbon is not a serious option

As for carbon capture and storage, the big energy companies would love to count tonnes of the gas buried as qualifying for allowances under the European Emissions Trading Scheme. Yet a draft of the European Directive on the topic, published on Thursday, and due to be presented by the Commission in January, says that although it will be included in the ETS, credits won't be allowed, on the grounds that the technology is "immature".

Neither has the European Commission has decided to impose CCS technology on coal or gas-fired power plants from a specific date, for the same reason. Furthermore, "CO2 captured and stored will be credited as not emitted under the Emissions Trading Scheme," says the draft. The energy firms will be gnashing their teeth at the thought of those potential lost Euros, and therefore won't be nearly as willing to invest in the R&D.

One high-ranking Commission official close to the work recently admitted that the Commission "has perhaps been too optimistic" on CCS and that making the technology viable is going to be "more costly and more complicated" than initially thought." says Euractiv, the independent Brussels media portal. "The January package will confirm CCS as a legitimate emission-mitigation technology fully recognised under ETS", said the Commission's energy spokesperson Ferran Tarradellas. But he added that "additional incentives may be necessary to address the currently unfavourable economics of the CCS technologies". The IPCC will be saying in Bali that there are many unknowns regarding CCS, but that it certainly has potential for use at "the high economic end" of the list of mitigation techniques. Our government has meanwhile tendered for a demonstration project and is working with Norway in the North Sea on CCS projects.

So all of the policies lobbied for by the large energy companies are of dubious value in reducing carbon emissions, yet they are about to be enshrined in law in the Energy Bill, while the Climate Change Bill, although it makes many provisions, doesn't actually contain any proper policies. What policies should they contain? In my opinion, only two central policies are required, from which all other policies and implementations could follow.

The policies we need

The first is the feed-in law referred to above. In another development this week (it's been a very busy week for climate policy), the World Future Council and Alan Simpson MP launched PACT (Policy Action on Climate Toolkit) on 28 November at the House of Commons. The Council had commissioned research comparing the RO with the tarriff and decided that feed-in tariff (FIT) laws have proved the most effective approach for accelerating the deployment of renewables in the electricity sector, especially on a small, local basis, and boosting the industry. This toolkit is on a website - www.onlinepact.org - that aims to help users around the world to introduce or improve FIT laws in their country or region.

The second is cap-and-share (or TEQs - Tradeable Energy Quotas). They both involve taking the choice out of consumers' hands. What? I hear you say. We can't do that! But the logic is, that educating consumers to buy energy saving products is not sufficient. As long as the products are on the market - and patio heaters and digital gadgets will be - people will buy them. Especially if they've saved money by saving energy - they're bound to spend it - and all spending involves an energy quotient.

So what do you do? You allocate a cap on the amount of carbon that can be emitted in the country, and reduce it year by year. You apportion that amount to each individual and let them spend it. Two main systems of doing this are competing for adoption. Over in Ireland, cap-and-share is the successful one, and AEA Environmental Consulting has just announced that it has won the job of producing a feasibility study on its implementation over there. Cap-and-share lets individuals choose whether to destroy or sell back to energy producers their allowances. These companies (and there aren't many) can only emit the carbon thus permitted.

Under TEQs, being trialed in several communities in the UK, individuals spend their allowances whenever they purchase energy. If they outspend their quota in a year, they must buy more off those who haven't. This system engenders more consumer awareness of how their activities use energy.

Both policy solutions take power from the energy cartel – literally – not to mention their gravy train. You can see why they don't like them.

Can I claim my £12m please Mr Branson?

The Low Carbon Kid has two ideas for reclaiming carbon from the atmosphere and locking it away - the subject of Richard Branson's technology challenge.

I'm afraid they're both fairly lo-tech, but hey, as long as they work, who cares? It makes them all the more easily implementable.

Here they are:

1. Grow trees, harvest the wood, turn it into charcoal, which is an inert form of carbon and won't decompose, and sell the charcoal as a soil conditioner to farmers and everyone with a garden. This solution is the subject of an article in the Jan/Feb issue of Renew, the publication of the Open University's NATTA, the independent national UK 'Network for Alternative Technology and Technology Assessment' (Though maybe not the online version). The solution is basd on research conducted in the Amazon rainforest where charcoal hundreds of years old has been discovered and analysed, and its usefulness as a soil stabiliser revealed. The charcoal, as I say, is a permanent lock-up for the carbon, and by selling the charcoal the scheme becomes self-financing.
2. Grow hemp and use it as a building material, mixed with lime to form 'hempcrete'. Hemp is fast growing and a very good absorber of atmospheric carbon. Once secure in the lime concrete, it gives the material great strength, and locks the carbon up for as long as the house exists. A conference is being held in April to discuss the technology at the Centre for Alternative Technology.

Can I have my money please Mr Branson?

One day, will it be an offence to exhale CO2?

The EC want to make environmental offences criminal and Gore and Branson want to reward someone for a wheeze for taking carbon out of the atmosphere.

Soon it will be an offence to exhale!

Not to mention fart.

I jest perhaps. But animals breathe and fart, and there are two climate change questions associated with this:

1. Methane from animals for human consumption contributes 5-10% of GHG globally (source: FAO.
2. Land use - it takes about two to four times as much land area to support a meat diet as opposed to a vegetarian diet. [Different sources give different estimates depending on the type of meat, its feed, the alternative possible land uses, not to mention the amount of meat in the diet.]

With increasing pressure on land for biofuels, we should be encouraged to eat less meat, regardless of whether it is organic.

Branson - Green?

Finally, can the man who runs an airline and founded a space tourism company really be green? £10m of his own money is poultry feed (sorry) and, for him, an investment to continue his carbon-profligate Catch-23 lifestyle and businesses.

He thinks if someoone can take the carbon out of the atmosphere that he puts in, it lets him off the eco-hook.

Wil he succeed?

Don't hold your breath. (But on the other hand, if we ALL held our breath...]

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