Time for Japan to stop funding Bangladeshi coal

 From Asia Times

Non-governmental organizations have filed a formal complaint against the Japan International Cooperation Agency – the first of its kind – to the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The complaint addresses JICA’s false assertion that its bond issued on US markets was free from involvement in coal-fueled power generation, when in fact its plans involve continuing to fund coal-fired power plants in Bangladesh.

While climate impacts are already ravaging that country (in May 2020, Cyclone Amphan caused widespread damage and forced the relocation of 2 million people), JICA has announced plans to fund Phase 2 of the 1,200-megawatt Matarbari coal plant, highlighting the economic development outcomes that will come with the project. 

Located on a densely populated island in Cox’s Bazar district that is home to 100,000 people, the Matarbari coal plant will bring devastation to the community instead of the development that JICA has promised.

It is estimated that air pollution from the Matarbari Phase 1 coal plant will cause up to 14,000 premature deaths during its operational years, according to Greenpeace. Air quality in parts of Bangladesh is already ranked as among the worst in the world. 

The project fails to meet JICA’s own Guidelines for Environmental and Social Considerations, which state that communities affected by its projects must be compensated at full replacement cost. The guidelines also state that countries hosting JICA projects must make efforts to enable people affected to improve their standard of living and their income opportunities to be restored to pre-project levels. 

Two turbines of the Phase 1 plant were built on land meant for shrimp farming, crops, and salt production, the disturbance of which have destroyed the livelihoods of people in Matarbari. Those displaced by the project were not given prior notice as required by the Land Acquisition Act of 1982, nor given any fair compensation for damages. 

Japan has some of the strongest emission standards at home, but the overseas coal plants funded by its public agencies apply lenient emission limits on air pollutants. They rely on outdated technology for reducing pollution, emitting many times the amount of sulfur dioxide and other toxins than an average new coal plant in Japan. 

At the recent COP26 climate talks in Glasgow, newly elected Prime Minister Fumio Kishida spoke of Japan’s “determination” to address the “shared human challenge of climate change with all our strength.” He committed the equivalent of an additional US$10 billion in public and private assistance over five years toward Asia’s decarbonization with the aim of advancing zero-emissions goals, taking the country’s total financial pledge to $70 billion. 

But in contradiction to this statement, Kishida emphasized the role of thermal energy as a reliable power source in Asia and expressed support for dubious technological “fixes,” including the burning of coal combined with ammonia and hydrogen to reduce carbon-dioxide emissions from coal-fired power plants.

Japan’s reluctance explicitly to rule out coal-fired power sees the country trailing behind other large economies on climate action. 

Bangladesh’s energy future lies in renewables, not in coal or natural gas. After 50 years of independence, Bangladeshi energy experts should have more of a say in preparing the energy sector master plan than foreign experts from JICA.

Japanese investment in Bangladesh should take the form of scaling up its renewable-energy transition to benefit from the rapid decline in the cost of solar and wind energy globally and for power storage technologies. Coal and natural gas are carbon-intensive fossil fuels, and will become a burden for Bangladesh in the long run. 

Prime Minister Kishida and his Liberal Democratic Party must prioritize action on climate change by ushering in new government policies to combat the crisis, starting by ruling out funding Phase 2 of the Matarbari coal plant. 

Source: Worldometer

Winter rains in Greenland accelerate ice melt

Meltwater runs through Greenland’s Russell glacier
Source: Climate News Network

From Climate News Network.

The largest body of ice in the northern hemisphere faces a problem scientists had not identified before: Greenland’s winter rain is accelerating the loss of its vast store of ice.

Two new studies have identified mechanisms for ever-faster melting of the ice. One is that the snowline keeps shifting, to alter the levels of radiation absorbed by the ice sheet that masks the Greenland bedrock.

The other is that ever more snow and ice is simply washed away by the rainfall – even in the Arctic winter. That is because global warming has raised Greenland’s summer temperatures as much as 1.8°C, and by up to 3°C in the winter months.

Reports of winter rain over an icecap large enough – if it were all washed into the ocean – to raise global sea levels by more than seven metres are a surprise: glaciologists expect some melting of the polar ice caps each summer, to be replaced each winter by snowfall that insulates the ice below and then endures for much of the following summer.

Such icecaps are thought to shed most of their mass as glaciers deliver ice downstream to the coast, and icebergs calve and float south.

But research in the journal The Cryosphere tells a different and unexpected story: direct meltwater now running off Greenland into the sea accounts for seven-tenths of the 270 billion tonnes of ice that Greenland loses each year. And increasingly, rainy weather is the trigger that sets off the rivulets of meltwater streaming to the coast.

German and US researchers took data from 20 Greenland weather stations between 1979 and 2012, and matched this with satellite imagery that could distinguish snow from liquid water. In the data they identified more than 300 episodes of melting in which the initial trigger was the arrival of rain.

And during the 33 years of data, they found that melting associated with rainfall doubled during the summer months, and tripled in winter. Nearly a third of all the flow of water from Greenland was initiated by rainfall.

But research in the journal Science Advances in the same week pinpoints another related factor in setting the rate of melting in Greenland: the snowline.

This varies significantly from year to year. Once again, snow tends to reflect radiation, and with darker ice to absorb it the new study suggests that even Greenland’s icy mountains conform to simple physics.

Researchers flew drones inland across the bare ice to identify the snowline. A pause during a few days of high winds brought a big surprise.

“Suddenly the snowline was just gone. In a couple of days it had moved 30 kilometres or so up the ice sheet and was now out of the range of our drones.

[Read more here]

Kiss goodbye to southern Florida and coastal Bangladesh.

Bringing electricity to the poor

Another of the false claims of the dotty denialists is that by discouraging the expansion of coal mining and coal-fired power stations, somehow we are denying poor people the right to the benefits we enjoy of on demand electricity.  The problems with that point of view are, though, that it's not the absence of generation capacity which keeps electricity from poor people, but the absence of a grid; and that the poor and poor countries will be the worst affected by climate change.

So what can be done?  A piece in IEEFA"s blog discusses the roll-out of solar to the poor in Bangladesh.  In Bangladesh, 25% of the population does not have access to the grid.

In rural Bangladesh, especially the coastal southwest, it is common to see tiny solar panels embedded even in humble thatch-roofed huts. This is mostly the work of Infrastructure Development Company Limited (Idcol), a government-backed Bangladeshi energy and infrastructure group that claims more than 90 percent of the country’s booming home solar market. 

Since 2003, Idcol has installed solar panels in 3.95 million off-grid homes, reaching 18 million people. In terms of individual units served (rather than total wattage), 

Bangladesh has become one of the world’s largest markets for home solar systems. 

Since electricity — even in small doses — powers lamps, cellphones, fans, water pumps, health clinics and equipment for businesses, it is critical in improving the lives of the poor. 

Mahmood Malik, chief executive of Idcol in Dhaka, calls its arrival for the rural poor “a silent revolution you can’t feel sitting in the city.”

Read more here.  Of course, the obvious benefit of distributed generation is that you don't need the grid.  Unfortunately, as this article points out, Bangladesh itself is not doing enough to transition to a green grid.

Incidentally, Bangladesh which is situated on the alluvial delta of the Ganges, is the most vulnerable country in the world to rising sea levels.  16% of its land area would disappear into the sea with just a 1.5 metre rise in the sea level.

(Source)