Trees as air conditioning

 Hat tip to Christoph Chorherr

[In German; Google translation below]

"Ein ausgewachsener Laubbaum kann an einem heißen Sommertag etwa 300 bis 500 Liter Wasser verdunsten. Bei einer Verdunstung von 400 Litern pro Tag entspricht das einer Kühlenergie von ca 270 kWh" Zum Vergleich. Das entspricht 4-6 kleineren Klimaanlagen (je 2-3 Kw Kühhleistung." orf.at/stories/3427...

"A mature deciduous tree can evaporate approximately 300 to 500 liters of water on a hot summer day. At an evaporation rate of 400 liters per day, this corresponds to a cooling energy of about 270 kWh."

For comparison, this is equivalent to 4-6 small air conditioners (each with 2-3 kW cooling capacity).

See also The magic of trees

Global warming has a lot to answer for

Another Peter Nesbit 

Global heating accelerating

 From a toot by Peter Gleick

Global warming is not just happening, it's accelerating rapidly.
That means the impacts and consequences are accelerating as well.

So, up from ~0.2 per decade to ~0.3 per decade.  Note that the 2023 datum is only so far this year (Jan-Sept).    The rest of this year is likely to push this year's average up even further, because of El Niño, taking us beyond 1.5 degrees above the 1850-1900 average.  Already.  Long before 2040.

And still we permit emissions to rise.  Still we make excuses for inaction.  Still we allow oil and gas companies to buy politicians.  

Temperatures have been rising for 100 years

 Global temperatures have been rising for over a hundred years, though the faster rise only began from the 1970s onwards.  This coincided with a steady expansion in CO2 and other greenhouse gas emissions, which accelerated after WW2 and again with the rise of China.   Note 1) the occasional random spikes up, and down; 2) cycles around the rising trend caused by such natural cycles as ENSO  (El Niño Southern Oscillation); 3) occasional 2-3 year blips caused by volcanic eruptions (for example after the Mt Pinatubo eruption in 1991).  

Temperatures have drifted lower since the last El Niño, in 2016, just as they did in the one before in 1998.  The post 1998 decline led many to conclude that global temperatures had stopped rising, though that notion was dispelled when the next ENSO cycle came along.  Over the next couple of years, the volcanic eruption in Tonga will likely cool the Earth by at least 0.5 degrees, because of the emission of sulphur dioxide aerosols.

(Chart from  Our World in Data)

Hurricane Ida: Climate change made a monster storm

 From Open Mind

Warm sea water is what powers hurricanes. Usually, sea surface temperature (SST) in the Gulf of Mexico needs to exceed 29°C to intensify a hurricane, and every fraction of a degree above 29°C increases the chance — dramatically — of not just intensifying, but super-charging it, creating a “monster storm.”

Which makes one wonder … if a storm passes by, what are the odds the sea surface temperature (SST) will exceed 29°C? Or more? Have the odds changed over time? Of course SST isn’t the only factor at play, only fools say so, but only bigger fools deny its impact on tropical storms.

To learn more about the history of SST in the area visited by hurricane Ida during her journey from Cuba to New Orleans, I selected the region from longitude 92°W to 85°W, latitude 23°N to 30°N, and retrieved daily data for SST in that region from 1981 through Aug. 2 of this year, from the OI (optimal interpolation) v2 dataset.

There’s an obvious annual cycle (hotter in summer, colder in winter), and if we remove it to define anomaly we get this:

The red line is a trend estimate from least-squares regression, and indicates that SST has increased since 1981, by about 0.85°C. It’s overwhelmingly “statistically significant.”

For sea surface temperature and its impact on hurricanes, that amount of warming is HUGE. It’s easy to dismiss it as “quite small” with an offhand “less than 1°C.” But if you really know hurricanes, you know that “every fraction of a degree counts” is, if anything, an understatement. An increase of a “mere” 1°C is nothing like “quite small.”

Of course that’s anomaly, not temperature itself, and it’s for the entire year, not the summer months when temperatures are highest. I split the time span into four decades, from 1981 to 1991, 1991 to 2001, 2001 to 2011, and 2011 to 2021. Then I estimated the probability density function (pdf) during the summer months (Jun/Jul/Aug/Sep) for each decade by two methods: a histogram, and with a smoothed estimate (kernel smooth). I got this for the four decades:

It’s obvious; the chance of meeting or exceeding that 29°C threshhold has increased, particularly from the 1981-1991 decade to the 2011-2021 decade.

If we look at the survival function (1 minus the cumulative distribution function), not only does it give the probability of meeting or exceeding any given value, it’s straightforward to estimate uncertainty ranges for those probabilities (shaded regions surrounding solid lines):

Between the 1981-1991 decade, and 2011-2021, the chance of meeting (or exceeding) the 29°C threshhold went from about 42%, to over 70%. The chance of meeting (or exceeding) 29.5°C, offering much more energy to the storm, went from about 18% to just over 50%. As for the 30°C limit — big trouble in hurricane town — the odds go from a mere 3% chance to a whopping 21%, a 7-fold increase.

It's perfectly obvious to everybody (except those whose salaries and bonuses depend on it not being obvious, like oil company executives and marketing people) that there is a global climate emergency.  It's equally obvious that it's only going to get worse, because too little is being done to reduce emissions.  What will it take?

Florida Keys face stark reality

 From The Guardian

Long famed for its spectacular fishing, sprawling coral reefs and literary residents such as Ernest Hemingway, the Florida Keys is now acknowledging a previously unthinkable reality: it faces being overwhelmed by the rising seas and not every home can be saved.

Following a grueling seven-hour public meeting on Monday, held in the appropriately named city of Marathon, officials agreed to push ahead with a plan to elevate streets throughout the Keys to keep them from perpetual flooding, while admitting they do not have the money to do so.

The string of coral cay islands that unspool from the southern tip of Florida finds itself on the frontline of the climate crisis, forcing unenviable choices upon a place that styles itself as sunshine-drenched idyll. The lives of Keys residents – a mixture of wealthy, older white people, the one in four who are Hispanic or Latino, and those struggling in poverty – face being upended.

“The water is coming and we can’t stop it,” said Michelle Coldiron, mayor of Monroe county, which encompasses the Keys. “Some homes will have to be elevated, some will have to be bought out. It’s very difficult to have these conversations with homeowners, because this is where they live. It can get very emotional.”

Once people are unable to secure mortgages and insurance for soaked homes, the Keys will cease to be a livable place long before it’s fully underwater, according to Harold Wanless, a geographer at the University of Miami. “People don’t have a concept of what sea level rise will do to them. They just can’t conceive it,” he said.

On Monday, the county gave details of its plan to spend $1.8bn over the next 25 years to raise 150 miles of roads in the Keys, deploying a mixture of new drains, pump stations and vegetation to prevent the streets becoming inundated with seawater. The heightened roadways are eagerly anticipated by residents who told the meeting of cars being ruined by the salt water and of donning boots to wade to front doors.

“The roads are shot, they’re full of cracks, the water is permeating up,” said Kimberly Sikora, who lives in a vulnerable neighborhood of Key Largo called Stillwright Point that is still awaiting a full road elevation proposal. “I’m just looking for some kind of relief.”

Another resident, Robert Schaller of Twin Lakes, an area further along in the planning process, muttered that he “should’ve done my due diligence” when buying his house last year. “I literally stand on my balcony and watch the water come up through my street,” he said. “It’s coming up right through the pavement.”

The pancake-flat Keys are in jeopardy from rising seas that are, as a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (Noaa) scientist told the county commissioners in the Monday meeting, accelerating upwards as the vast ice sheets of Greenland and Antarctica melt away. Human-caused global heating means an extra 17in of sea level rise by 2040, according to an intermediate Noaa projection used by the county.

Compounding this problem, the islands’ porous limestone allows the rising seawater to bubble up from below, meaning it just takes high tides on sunny days to turn roads into ponds, while global heating is also spurring fiercer hurricanes that can occasionally crunch into the archipelago.

Yet, despite this, the Keys electorate remains staunchly Republican

The threats faced by the Keys are shrugged off by some of its wealthy retirees who view the situation with a certain fatalism, while others in this Republican-voting bastion openly question the science. Eddie Martinez, one of the county’s five elected commissioners, challenged the Noaa scientist, William Sweet, on his sea level rise projections on Monday.

The sea level rise to date is “really a nothing number”, said Martinez, who told Sweet: “You’re a little bit more on this CO2 side, I’m more on the actual measurement side.” Another commissioner, David Rice, said that “predicting the future is probably best done with a crystal ball” and speculated that global temperatures could change following several volcanic eruptions.

“There are people who don’t want to sell because they love it here, others who want to get out while they can and those in complete denial who call you a troublemaker who is driving down property values by talking about it,” said George Smyth, a retiree who moved to Key Largo a decade ago for the quiet, slow-paced lifestyle. In 2019, his neighborhood spent 90 days partially submerged in water.

Other new realities are more laborious – Smyth has to wash his car continually to rid it of salt water and has to pay for trucks to unload piles of crushed-up rocks around his property as a buffer against the encroaching tides. While Smyth doesn’t class himself as particularly wealthy, these protections are beyond the means of low-income Keys residents, many of whom live in exposed mobile homes dotted along the islands.

Smyth fears that the county will require poorer residents to stump up the money for the roads, rather than put a levy on the tourists that flock to the Keys. “We feel we are being held hostage,” he said. “I feel sorrow for what is coming and the loss of what is a wonderful community.”

But the mayor defiantly insists the Keys can be saved, even if it is currently unclear how. “We know we live in paradise and we want to keep it that way,” said Coldiron.

What's happening in the Florida Keys is also happening in Miami.  

Power sector emissions have peaked

From ClimateCrocks 

(Quoting BNEF)

Global recessions, wars, and (yes) pandemics have a way of driving down energy demand. Last year, the International Energy Agency said the collapse in global primary energy demand brought on by Covid-19 was the biggest drop since the end of World War II, itself the biggest drop since the influenza pandemic after World War I.

Something was different about this collapse, though, something that is not only unprecedented but until recently impossible in global energy. As the IEA’s latest data shows, renewable energy grew last year, and it was the only energy source that did so as consumption of gas, oil, and coal all declined. Renewables were not just an energy growth sector; they were the only energy growth sector.

Not only did renewable energy grow, it did so in record fashion. The IEA’s latest data confirms something my colleagues and I have been observing since the end of 2020: renewable energy installations not only increased during the pandemic, they exceeded even the most bullish of expectations, with wind installations increasing 90% and solar increasing 23%. The IEA only expects more this year – as it says, “Exceptionally high capacity additions become the ‘new normal’ in 2021 and 2022, with renewables accounting for 90% of new power capacity expansion globally.”​ [Note that this is gross new capacity.  In net terms, with old coal power stations being closed, the net percentage may have passed 100%.]

If we cut power sector emissions (~30% of total CO2 emissions) and land transport emissions (~20%), we will have achieved the 50% cut in emissions we need to prevent 1.5 degree rise in global temperatures since pre-industrial times.  Though total power sector emissions might rise this year, as world growth resumes, the rise will be small because of the new renewable capacity coming on line.

Is China greening?

 From ZME Science

China is the world's biggest nation by population and the greatest carbon emitter by far, being responsible for roughly 28% of global carbon emissions in 2019. The United States, the second-largest carbon-emitting nation, stood at 11%. 

This is not news so far. For many years China has held this title due to its large population and heavy reliance on coal, which continues to this day despite hundreds of billions worth of investments in renewable energy infrastructure projects. 

Although China is by far the no. 1 carbon emitter worldwide, the Chinese government has always argued that they are a developing country that has to catch up to the west. Besides, on a per capita basis, China doesn't emit that much. Or does it? 

According to a new report, China emitted more greenhouse gas than the entire developed world combined in 2019. Furthermore, per capita, China is emitting more than countries like France, the UK, or Spain.

As China grows its emissions, which are forecasted to rise until at least 2030, its per capita emissions will also grow relatively to the developed world, where the trend is to decarbonize. 

Although China currently emits the highest levels of CO2 annually, it has emitted far less than the United States over the past three centuries. Cumulative carbon dioxide emissions in the U.S. reached 367 billion metric tons by 2018. All this CO2 comes with consequences. Another report released this week, this time from NOAA, concluded the US has warmed 1.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1 degree Celsius) since 1901-1930. 

It is also true that China is the world's largest investor in wind and solar.  Note in the chart below how rapidly UK per capita emissions are falling, and how China's emissions may also have peaked.  We need to halve emissions by 2030, and China will have to be part of that, or we will fail.

Source: ZME Science.  

If we halve emissions we halve warming

 I had a Twitter exchange with Michael E Mann, the climatologist, about whether if we (the world) cut emissions by half over the next decade, whether the global temperature increase, currently 0.2 degrees C per decade, would fall. 

Me: Hi. A quick question. If we cut emissions by 50% by 2030, will the rate of increase in global temps start to fall, so the decadal increase in the 2030s is 0.1 degrees C as opposed to the current 0.2? And if we halve emissions again, will the increase fall again?

Michael E Mann: Roughly yes. The transient warming response is roughly linear in the incremental emissions, so cut emissions in half, you cut the warming in half.

Me:Thank you. That is excellent news. It's better than I've been thinking (I thought temps would go on rising at 0.2 degrees until emissions cease). It implies that we should front-load emissions cuts, doesn't it?

Michael E Mann: Yes.

If we cut emissions by half, the transient rise (i.e., on a decade-by-decade basis, as opposed to the longer-term rise over centuries) will also halve. In other words, the temperature rise in the 2030s could fall to 0.1 degree if we halved emissions. And if we halve emissions again, the decade-by-decade temperature increases will halve again, getting close to zero.

This is incredibly good news. We are not helpless to avert disastrous climate change. Because together, globally, emissions from electricity generation and land transport make up ~50% of total emissions, and renewables are cheaper than coal in electricity generation, while battery pack costs will reach $100 by late 2022, allowing EVs to have the same 'sticker price' as petrol/diesel cars. Indeed, The Driven has a report that BYD, China's largest EV manufacturer, will start selling an EV in Australia with a drive-away price of A$35,000 as of next year.

And a national fleet of EVs will be very useful for stabilising the grid, because even small ones store about 2 days of an average household's electricity use, while the grander EVs store 4 days. Since 'near firm' electricity generation requires just four hours of storage, an electric fleet attached to the grid will provide more than enough backup to stabilise the grid in all but the most extreme circumstances. EVs can be used to stabilise the grid either passively or actively. Passive stabilisation is where EVs don't charge when demand on the grid is high, but do when demand is low. Active stabilisation is when EVs put some of their stored power back into the grid when demand is high/supply low. Of course, charging pricing regimes will have to be revised, to reward owners for allowing some of their stored electricity to be used by the grid.

There are still ill-informed (or venal) troglodytes out there who oppose these shifts. But they are inevitable, because of the technological advances and cost declines in renewables and batteries. Inevitable. And the spread of carbon prices as the EU insists its trading partners introduce their own or face carbon tariffs on their exports to the EU will only accelerate these inexorable and unavoidable trends.

Source: NOAA

2020 temperature tied record

 From ClimateCrocks

Temperatures last year tied the modern record, climate scientists reported today. Overall, the planet was about 1.25°C warmer than in preindustrial times, according to jointly reported assessments from NASA, the U.K. Met Office, and other institutions.

The annual update of global surface temperatures—an average of readings from thousands of weather stations and ocean probes—shows 2020 essentially tied records set in 2016. But the years were nothing alike. Temperatures in 2016 were boosted by a strong El Niño, a weather pattern that warms the globe by blocking the rise of cold deep waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Last year, however, the Pacific entered La Niña, which has a cooling effect. That La Niña didn’t provide more relief is an unwelcome surprise, says Nerilie Abram, a climate scientist at Australian National University. “It makes me worried about how quickly the global warming trend is growing.”

The past 6 years are the six warmest on record, but the warming of the atmosphere is unsteady because of its chaotic nature. The ocean, which absorbs more than 90% of the heat from global warming, displays a steadier trend, and here, too, 2020 was a record year. The upper levels of the ocean contained 20 zettajoules (1021joules) more heat than in 2019, and the rise was double the typical annual increase, scientists reported yesterday in Advances in Atmospheric Sciences. The subtropical Atlantic Ocean was particularly hot, fueling a record outbreak of hurricanes, says Lijing Cheng, a climate scientist at the Chinese Academy of Sciences’s Institute of Atmospheric Physics who led the work.

This heat, monitored down to 2000 meters by a fleet of 4000 robotic probes, is spreading deeper into the ocean while also migrating toward the poles. An extreme heat wave struck the northern Pacific, killing marine life. For the first time, warm Atlantic waters were seen penetrating into the Arctic Ocean, melting sea ice from below and driving its extent nearly to a record low. The warming ocean and melting ice sheets are raising sea levels by 4.8 millimeters per year, and the rate is accelerating.

[Read more here]

 From Peter Kalmus

50 years of international agreements  on climate and still the Keeling curve keeps on rising.

Think of the level of atmospheric CO2 as water in a bath.  There is a trickle flowing out (natural weathering of CO2 with rocks) but we keep on turning the taps on further to let in more water (burning fossil fuels).  For the level of CO2 in the atmosphere to drop, we need to turn the taps down so low that the amount flowing into the bath (atmosphere) is less than the trickle flowing out.   Or we need to accelerate the process of removing CO2 from the atmosphere, i.e., achieve negative emissions. 

Global emissions have probably peaked, because even though they will rise in 2021 from 2020, the steady growth of renewable electricity and EV sales will reduce CO2 emissions, faster and faster each year.  And the rise in 2021 won't take annual emissions back above 2019 levels. [Update, March 2025: No they haven't peaked.] But that won't be enough to cut the CO2 in the atmosphere.   For that to happen, emissions will have to fall to close to zero.  And until the level of atmospheric CO2 levels off, global temperatures will continue to rise.

Global heating: a steady uptrend

 From climate scientist Zack Labe

Cost of extreme weather quadruples in 40 years

[And that's in inflation-adjusted terms]

 From Inside Climate News

A new analysis commissioned by the nonprofit advocacy organization Environmental Defense Fund that looks at the cost of climate-linked natural disasters details how the financial impacts of fires, tropical storms, floods, droughts and crop freezes have quadrupled since 1980. 

The number of extreme weather disasters has more than doubled in 40 years.

And the cost has quadrupled

[This is just a quick summary.  You can read the full article here.]

It's becoming clearer and clearer that the costs of climate change and global heating are beginning to far exceed the costs of preventing further climate change.  As global temperatures rise, the costs will rise too--exponentially.

Western US heatwave

 From CBS News.

The most far-reaching heat wave of the summer is now underway across the western states. More than 150 record high temperatures will be challenged through the middle of next week from San Antonio to Sacramento to Seattle.

Excessive heat watches, warnings and heat advisories are in effect for 12 states including most of California. More than 50 million people will swelter in highs over 100 degrees [38 degrees C] through next week.

After climbing to a scorching 128 degrees [53 degrees C] on July 11, Death Valley is once again forecast to breach 125 degrees this weekend. And unlike past heat waves, this summer the hot weather will not spare anyone in the region except the immediate coast of California. 

On Friday the heat will stretch from Texas, where highs will be around 105 [41 degrees C] in various parts of the state, up through the valleys of California, also near 105.

In Phoenix, which has already eclipsed its record for the most days above 110 degrees of any summer on record, highs are expected to top that number every day from Friday through at least next Thursday. In fact, a daily record high temperature is in jeopardy of being topped every day from Saturday through Wednesday. 

In the longer term, a groundbreaking study from this spring revealed the western U.S. is in the midst of one of its driest 20-year periods in history and has now entered a megadrought, among its worst in the last 1,200 years. The authors say this is due to a dry natural cycle combined with human-caused climate change. 

In fact, the climate is warming in the deep Southwest faster than any other area of the lower 48 states. Since 1970, average temperatures there have risen by 4 to 6 degrees Fahrenheit [2.2 to 3.3 degrees C]. This helps explain why, even though there's still more than a month to go in summer, Phoenix has already shattered its record number of 110+ degree days.

The West is not alone in having an unusually hot summer. NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, put out its monthly report this week finding July was the hottest on record in the Northern Hemisphere. 

Copernicus, the European Union's Earth observation program, also released its monthly report finding that through the last 12-month period, Earth's average temperature was nearly 1.3 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels. That's only 0.2 degrees away from exceeding of the first goal of the Paris Agreement, which is to limit the globe's warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.

Recent research shows that since the 1950s, heat waves globally are getting significantly more frequent, lasting longer and producing more cumulative heat — making populations more vulnerable to heat stress. In the U.S. this is especially true in the West, where a 2018 study from NOAA found that climate change will surpass natural patterns this decade as the main cause of heat waves. 

12 months to July 2nd hottest ever

The average global temperature anomaly for August 2019 to July 2020, relative to the 20th century average,  was behind only the 2015/16 August-July average. There was an El Niño in 2015/16, and there isn't one now.  How long before we pass to new record highs even without an El Niño?

Source: NOAA

German heatwave

Sunflowers at sunrise in Munich on Wednesday morning. Photo: DPA

 From The Local.de.

For several days in a row, temperatures around Germany have been well over 30C. When will the heat let up?

The weather in Germany continues to leave us all sweltering with temperatures up to 36C expected on Wednesday, as well as a few storms in some parts of the country.

And brace yourselves: the ‘Hitze’ is far from over. 

"What is striking about this heatwave is the endurance. At least until Wednesday one week from now, it will simply remain very hot,” said meteorologist Dominik Jung to the weather portal wetter.net. 

“And even after that it continues to be quite warm with flashes of extreme heat,” said Jung, adding that there are no signs of significant cooling down until August 21st. 

The heatwave also perpetuates the dry weather, said Jung, as there has not been enough rain throughout the year.

Germany is heading for an extreme drought for the third year in a row, with a risk of forest fires in many parts of the country, such as Berlin's neighbouring Brandenburg.

"It could hardly be worse," said Jung. "And while everyone is cheering that it will be so beautiful in the summer, nature, forests and agriculture continue to suffer.

"The forest has already suffered a great deal of damage from the drought so far.”

What was that, again?  Oh, there's no such thing as global warming?  You mean the heatwaves in Europe and Siberia and the Arctic aren't happening.....?  

NZ glacier melt accelerates

 From The Guardian 

Twice a year, glaciologist Lauren Vargo and her colleagues set up camp beside two small lakes close to New Zealand’s Brewster glacier. Each time the trek to carry the measuring stakes takes a little bit longer as the glacier’s terminus gets further away.

Dr Vargo, a native of Ohio now working at the Antarctic Research Centre at the Victoria University of Wellington, is studying New Zealand’s glaciers from the air and on the ice.

New research just published in the journal Nature Climate Change has found that extreme melting of the country’s glaciers in 2018 was at least ten times more likely to have happened because of human-caused global heating.

Loss of ice across New Zealand’s glaciers in 2011, which was another extreme melt year, was six times more likely because of the planet’s warming, the study found, caused by an accumulation of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere mostly from burning fossil fuels.

Vargo, the lead author of the study, told the Guardian: “As scientists we know that theoretically warm temperatures should melt ice, but the goal of the research was to formally show that link between melting and climate change.”

The study looked at changes to 10 of New Zealand’s glaciers and was sparked by what Vargo and colleagues witnessed on monitoring flights in 2018.

“In previous years there was always snow on the glaciers but, in 2018, about half of them had no snow on them at all,” Vargo said.

The annual monitoring flights over 50 glaciers have been taking place in New Zealand since 1977 and record the position of the snowline and the thickness and flow of the ice.

Mt Cook, NZ South Island

Peak coal

From The Guardian

The size of the global coal power fleet fell for the first time on record over the first six months of the year, with more generation capacity shutting than starting operation.

Global Energy Monitor, a US research and advocacy group that tracks fossil fuel development, found the closure of coal generators, mostly across Europe and in the US, outstripped stations being commissioned, largely in Asia.

China, the world’s biggest annual greenhouse gas emitter, continues to dominate coal power development, having built nearly two-thirds of the world’s operating plants and being home to almost 90% of generators under construction. It is home to half the world’s operating coal-fired electricity capacity.

But the monitor’s global coal plant tracker database found the amount of coal power commissioned in China to the end of June was more than 40% below the same stage last year – 11.4 gigawatts compared with 19.4GWs – because of the coronavirus pandemic.

While China continues to build coal, construction has ground to a near halt in India, which shut more capacity than it opened. New Delhi oversaw the commissioning of 0.9GWs of coal generation – less than half the size of Australia’s largest coal plants – while 1.2GWs were closed and more than 27GWs of proposals were cancelled.

Christine Shearer, Global Energy Monitor’s coal program director, said the global decline was due to both the economic shock of the pandemic and record retirements in the European Union after an increase in the carbon price and tightening of pollution regulation. It follows coal-fired generation falling by an estimated 3% last year.

China and India had a glut of coal-fired power capacity, with fleets running at barely half capacity before the pandemic struck. Despite this, Chinese provinces were granting permits for construction at the highest rate since 2016. In contrast, Vietnam, Bangladesh and Egypt had promised or proposed significantly scaling back construction plans and backed renewable energy and gas development.

Shearer said India had “radically reduced” the amount of coal it planned to build as the fuel struggled to compete with new solar and wind: “They don’t have anyone to sell the power to because there are cheaper alternatives.”

Analysis of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change scenarios suggests coal power generation will need to fall 50% below current levels by 2030 to put the world on a path to keeping global heating within 2C of pre-industrial levels. About 75% will need to shut over the decade to stay below 1.5C.

To repeat what I've said before:

1. New-build renewables are now cheaper than coal almost everywhere in the world.  In some countries the cost of new-build solar is close to the operating cost of coal.
2. Getting rid of coal is critical to meeting Paris climate goals.
3. Cutting emissions in China is vital, because it's the world's largest polluter.  We don't know what the next 5 year plan in China will be, but it will have a huge influence on the world.

It is now crystal clear that (thermal) coal demand has peaked.  And the ongoing declines in the costs of wind, solar and batteries mean that this decline will accelerate, because the gap between the cost of new-build coal and new-build renewables will go on widening.  And that is why the coal price continues to trend lower, even as the iron ore price recovers (China is a major consumer of both)

Will China build hundreds of new coal power stations?

From Carbon Brief

China’s 14th five-year plan (FYP), setting out its national goals for 2021-2025, will arguably be one of the world’s most important documents for global efforts to tackle climate change.

The overarching plan for economic and social development in the world’s largest emitter is to be finalised and approved in early 2021, followed by more detailed sectoral targets over the next year. A power sector plan can be expected around winter 2021-22.

Ahead of the FYP’s publication, powerful stakeholders, such as the network operator State Grid and industry body the China Electricity Council, are lobbying for targets that would allow hundreds of new coal-fired power stations to be built. And a recent update to the “traffic light system” for new coal-power construction signaled further relaxation of permitting.

This is all despite significant overcapacity in the sector, with more than half of coal-power firms already loss-making and with typical plants running at less than 50% of their capacity.

The push for more coal power also appears at odds with China’s climate goals, including a target to peak its CO2 emissions no later than 2030. To reach this goal, low-carbon sources will need to cover any increases in energy demand, meaning less need for additional electricity generation from coal.

As the country grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, however, controls on overcapacity may be vulnerable to the political priority of propping up economic growth. As a result, the restraints on another coal power boom are likely to be financial and economic, rather than regulatory.

China’s coal-power overcapacity dates back to the 12th FYP. This was formulated in the early 2010s as part of the largest economic stimulus programme in history, launched in response to the global financial crisis. It targeted a huge expansion in coal mining and coal-fired power generation.

Then, from 2014, the authority to approve new coal-fired power plants was transferred from the central government to the provincial level, in a drive to cut red tape.

Many local governments jumped at the opportunity to prop up [local] GDP and create demand for locally mined coal with new power projects, leading to around 210 projects with a total capacity of 169GW being rubber-stamped in less than a year.

China’s economic system is based on abundant and cheap capital being made available to the state-owned sector with little concern for economic viability, as long as the investments made are broadly aligned with the five-year plans.

This system can mobilise vast amounts of resources, but is prone to over-investment, as companies and local governments use capacity expansion to boost GDP and gain market share. The planning machinery limits overcapacity with control policies – with varying levels of success.

Many experts and industry bodies argue for a move away from top-down targets and controls, to investment driven by market forces. However, the spending needed to fuel a new stimulus program can only be mobilized if investment is directed at the behest of the state, rather than the market – as a rule, China does not fund stimulus with on-budget spending, but by directing state-owned enterprises and commercial banks to spend more. In these circumstances, lack of controls on capacity additions runs a high risk of over-investment.

While the planning machinery appears to lean towards another wave of coal-power expansion, the industry itself seems more cautious, given the current economic and institutional situation.

Moreover, CO2 emissions depend on coal consumption, not the amount of generating capacity. This means that even if there is a surge of new coal-plant construction, there is no guarantee that China’s coal-power CO2 emissions will rise.

China’s coal-fired capacity currently stands at around 1,050GW, so the targets being pushed by some imply a net increase of 150-250GW. At least 100GW of capacity built before 2000 can be expected to retire by 2030, putting the amount of new capacity being proposed at 250-350GW.

There is already 100GW of new coal power under construction, meaning that another 150-250GW of capacity would have to secure permits and financing and go into construction.

Yet even before the economic havoc wreaked by efforts to contain the coronavirus, Beijing was expected to freeze regulated electricity prices for the next year or two, to help the manufacturing industry and other economic sectors, but undermining the profitability of power generation.

Meanwhile, the annual operating hours of coal power are expected to decline further over time, due to competition from renewable energy and severe overcapacity of the whole system.

With coal plants averaging around 4,000 hours of operation per year, less than half of the 8,760 theoretical maximum, the profitability of major power companies is already extremely low. Last year saw the first bankruptcies in the sector, with pressure from wind and solar one of the key factors.

Electricity market reforms, due to be implemented over the next few years, make the profitability of new coal plants even lower and more uncertain, as the power system moves away from guaranteed operating hours and prices.

The need for capacity to meet peak demand will also be substantially reduced when cross-region transmission and flexibility increases, instead of every province building capacity as if it was an island. Many of the proposed capacity targets and projections appear to ignore these changes.

Chinese energy data published in late February made it clear that clean-energy investment will need to accelerate substantially to meet China’s climate goals. CO2 emissions increased for the third year in a row in 2019, by around 2%, and only 35% of the increase in energy demand was covered by low-carbon sources.

This share will have to reach 100% or more for emissions to peak and decline, especially as the focus on energy security limits the scope for switching from coal to gas and oil.

Taken together, the evidence points to multiple reasons why some of the major state-owned coal power developers are hesitant to commit to new coal. This is fundamentally different from the assumptions of the policymaking bodies and lobby groups mentioned above.

In a recent magazine interview [no longer online, but cached in summary], a researcher within China’s official thinktank, the Energy Research Institute (ERI), argued that new coal-power development should cease and that coal power should be phased out altogether by 2050. This interview appeared on Chinese social media site WeChat only a few hours before it disappeared, exposing the sensitivity of the issue.

China and coal are key to preventing global temperatures from rising 2 degrees C or more.

New coal capacity in China is trending lower (note that the chart shows gross new capacity not net—globally, net additions are close to zero)  However, there should prob'ly be no new capacity given how low current capacity utilisation is.  And since this year, and going forward, the cost of new-build solar has reached "grid parity", i.e.,  its cost is now below the wholesale price of a predominantly coal-powered grid, it makes no sense.   However, bureaucratic institutions like to do things the way they always have done.  But if China and the world are to cut emissions to zero by 2050, the rate at which new coal capacity is installed in China needs to fall faster than it is.

How sensitive is the climate to a doubling of CO2?

From ClimateCrocks.

Climate change is real, caused by human activity and a serious problem that needs to be addressed. In a new study published last week, which one of us helped author, we’ve gotten a better understanding of exactly how serious. The good news is that some of the worst-case scenarios seem a bit less likely than before. The bad news is that it’s clearer than ever that warming will not be mild or modest in a world where we fail to cut emissions rapidly.

Climate scientists have been trying to narrow down how, exactly, the climate will respond to increasing levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) for well over a century. We call this “climate sensitivity” — in essence, how sensitive the climate is to our emissions. In 1979 a major report suggested that global surface temperatures would ultimately rise somewhere between 2.7 and 9.1 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 and 4.5 degrees Celsius) if the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere was doubled. Thirty-five years later, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change gave the same range in their most recent assessment report.

A four-year effort led by 25 experts in the field has finally been able to give us a better understanding of how sensitive the climate actually is. By combining lines of evidence from physics-based studies, historical temperature records and records from the Earth’s more distant past — such as during the last ice age — we find that if the amount of CO2 doubles in the atmosphere, the world will likely warm between 4.7F and 7F (2.6C and 3.9C).  

Such warming may not sound too bad — after all, what difference does a few degrees make? A lot, it turns out. If we go back to the depths of the last ice age, 20,000 years ago, we find that the global average temperature of Earth was only about 9F (5C) colder than today. That was enough of a difference to lower sea level by 300 feet and build up ice sheets thousands of feet thick covering much of North America. That Earth was basically a different planet.  

We now know that a worst-case scenario of high future emissions and high sensitivity risks warming comparable to the warming since the end of the last ice age, occurring over the next one or two centuries. That would impose extremely difficult challenges to human society and natural ecosystems.

It is not inevitable that we will double carbon dioxide in our atmosphere — we control whether we do better or worse than that. We can cut our emissions rapidly enough to avoid doubling CO2 this century, given the political will to do so, and still limit warming below the internationally agreed-upon guardrail value of 3.6F (2C). Alternatively, if our emissions continue increasing, we could end up tripling rather than just doubling atmospheric CO2 by the end of the 21st century. How much warming occurs is up to us, and by narrowing the range of climate sensitivity, we now have a better idea of the consequences of our actions.
On the emissions front we have some reason for modest optimism. Over the past decade, the world has made progress on bending down the emissions curve. Global carbon dioxide emissions are still rising, but only at half the rate they were in the 2000s. [I don't know where they get that from.  See here] The world’s use of coal peaked in 2013 and has been declining. We succeeded in making clean energy less expensive, and carbon-free sources now provide more energy than coal worldwide. Nightmare scenarios where global emissions triple by the end of the century now seem far less likely, as we see them near a plateau.

At the same time, there is an ever-growing gap between where we are today and the emissions reductions needed to limit warming to globally agreed-upon targets. CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere over time, so simply stopping emissions from increasing does not stop the world from warming. Peak emissions — which we will hopefully see this decade — are only the first and easiest step on the long road to zero emissions.

At this point, our findings rule out scenarios where warming ends up being minor, but it also makes some truly catastrophic outcomes less likely. This means that how bad climate change will be rests firmly in our hands. To minimize the risk to future generations, it is crucial to control the one thing we can: our future emissions.

[Dr Zeke Hausfather is the director of climate and energy at the Breakthrough Institute. Dr Andrew Dessler is a professor of Atmospheric Sciences at Texas A&M University.]

    From The Conversation.

At the dawn of the industrial revolution, the Earth’s atmosphere contained 278 parts of CO₂ per million. Today, after more than two and a half centuries of fossil fuel use, that figure is around 414 parts per million (ppm). If the build-up of CO₂ continues at current rates, by 2080 it will have passed 560 ppm – more than double the level of pre-industrial times.


Exactly how the climate will respond to all this extra CO₂ is one of the central questions in climate science. Just how much will the climate actually change?


A major new international assessment of the Earth’s climate sensitivity, now published in the journal Reviews of Geophysics, addresses this question. This research has improved our understanding of how much the world will eventually warm if the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is maintained at double the level of pre-industrial times.


While an exact figure is still not possible, low levels of warming are now found to be far less likely than previously thought. Very high values are slightly less likely too. There is much greater certainty that, if left unchecked, global warming would be high enough to bring very severe impacts and risks worldwide.


[Sensitivity] can be estimated using three main lines of evidence:

• Temperature measurements made with thermometers from 1850 (when enough global coverage began) to the near present. By comparing temperatures, CO₂ levels and the effect of other climate drivers in the past and present, we can estimate the longer-term changes.
• Evidence from paleoclimate records from the peak of the last ice age 20,000 years ago, when CO₂ was lower than now, and a warm period around 4 million years ago when CO₂ was more comparable to today. We can tell how warm the climate was and how much CO₂ there was in the atmosphere based on the make-up of gases trapped in air bubbles in ancient ice cores.
• Present-day observations – for instance from satellite data – and evidence from climate models, theory and detailed process models that examine the physics of interactions within the climate system.

Global heating assessments for a doubling of CO₂

The ranges estimated in the chart above are wide.  But if you take the centrepoint of the assessments, it is 3 degrees C or more.  This would be catastrophic. We have to stop atmospheric CO₂ doubling.  It's as simple as that.