Aerospace giant Airbus has unveiled plans for what it hailed as the first commercial zero-emission aircraft.
The company said its hydrogen-fuelled passenger planes could be in service by 2035.
Airbus chief executive Guillaume Faury said the three ZEROe concept designs marked “a historic moment for the commercial aviation sector”.
The use of hydrogen had “the potential to significantly reduce aviation’s climate impact”, he added.
The concept of emissions-free aviation relies heavily on finding ways to produce large quantities of hydrogen from renewable or low-carbon sources.
Most large-scale production at the moment relies on fossil fuels, particularly methane, and is not considered to be low-carbon.
Analysts point out that it is not the first time that hydrogen has been touted as the saviour of modern air travel..
Its use in aviation goes back to the days of airships in the early 20th Century, but the Hindenburg disaster in 1937 brought that era to an end.
More recently, from 2000 to 2002, Airbus was involved in the EU-funded Cryoplane project, which studied the feasibility of a liquid hydrogen-fuelled aircraft.
Unveiling its latest blueprints, Airbus said its turbofan design could carry up to 200 passengers more than 2,000 miles, while a turboprop concept would have a 50% lower capacity and range.
A third, “blended-wing body” aircraft was the most eye-catching of the three designs.
All three planes would be powered by gas-turbine engines modified to burn liquid hydrogen, and through hydrogen fuel cells to create electrical power.
However, Airbus admitted that for the idea to work, airports would have to invest large sums of money in refuelling infrastructure.
“The transition to hydrogen, as the primary power source for these concept planes, will require decisive action from the entire aviation ecosystem,” said Mr Faury.
“Together with the support from government and industrial partners, we can rise up to this challenge to scale up renewable energy and hydrogen for the sustainable future of the aviation industry.”
The new Airbus designs are the fruit of a joint research project that Airbus launched with EasyJet last year to consider hybrid and electric aircraft.
The airline’s chief executive, Johan Lundgren, said: “EasyJet remains absolutely committed to more sustainable flying and we know that technology is where the answer lies for the industry.”
Since the beginning of the year, large numbers of protests against government inaction on issues of climate change have been taking place in cities worldwide. Most of the movement has taken place in Europe, is largely student-led, and was inspired by the Swedish teen activist Greta Thunberg, who has been speaking out and demanding action from leaders since last year. On March 15, thousands of environmentally concerned students in 80 countries held a “Fridays for Future” strike, marching through the streets with signs. This past week, parts of London were brought to a standstill by protesters from Extinction Rebellion, who have called on the British government to negotiate with them and to prioritize environmental protection.HINTS: View this page full screen. Skip to the next and previous photo by typing j/k or ←/→.
An Austrian youth shouts slogans during a climate protest, part of the “Fridays for Future” movement, outside the Hofburg palace in Vienna on March 15, 2019, a global day of student protests aiming to spark world leaders into action on climate change. #Joe Klamar / AFP / Getty
Extinction Rebellion climate-change activists perform a mass “die-in” under the blue whale in the foyer of the Natural History Museum in London, England, on April 22, 2019, the eighth day of the environmental group’s protest calling for political action to combat climate change. #Tolga Akmen / AFP / Getty
The Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg (center) leads a march of thousands of French students through Paris, France, on February 22, 2019, to draw more attention to fighting climate change. Her sign reads: “School strike for the climate.” #Francois Mori / AP
Thousands take part in a “Fridays for Future” protest in Santiago, Chile, on March 15, 2019. #Martin Bernetti / AFP / Getty
Hundreds of schoolchildren take part in a climate protest in Hong Kong on March 15, 2019. #Kin Cheung / AP
Students protest to demand action on climate change in Lisbon, Portugal, on March 15, 2019. #Rafael Marchante / Reuters
An inflatable planet Earth is bounced around the crowd during a climate-change-awareness rally at Sydney Town Hall in Australia on March 15, 2019. #Don Arnold / Getty
High-school students demonstrate near the Panthéon monument in Paris, France, on March 15, 2019. #Francois Mori / AP
Belgian students call for urgent measures to combat climate change during a demonstration in central Brussels, Belgium, on January 24, 2019. #Yves Herman / Reuters
Youths protest during the seventh Brussels youth climate march in Belgium on February 21, 2019. #Maja Hitij / Getty
The Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg delivers a speech during a meeting with the environment committee of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on April 16, 2019. She began her speech saying, “My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old, I come from Sweden, and I want you to panic. I want you to act as if the house was on fire. I have said those words before, and a lot of people have explained why that is a bad idea. A great number of politicians have told me that panic never leads to anything good, and I agree. To panic, unless you have to, is a terrible idea. But when your house is on fire and you want to keep your house from burning to the ground, then that does require some level of panic.” #Vincent Kessler / Reuters
Protesters carry signs as they march during the Youth Climate Strike in San Francisco, California, on March 15, 2019. #Justin Sullivan / Getty
Participants form a human pyramid during a rally for the Global Climate Strike for Future in Seoul, South Korea, on March 15, 2019. #Lee Jin-man / AP
About 1,000 Minnesota students skipped school to gather on the steps of the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota, on March 15, 2019, as part of global protests by young people to demand that governments take swift and decisive action to fight climate change. #Jim Mone / AP
Students take part in a global protest against climate change in Cape Town, South Africa, on March 15, 2019. #Mike Hutchings / Reuters
Students strike for action on climate change in front of the government headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine, on March 15, 2019. #Gleb Garanich / Reuters
A boy wears a mask as he attends a student climate strike as part of the Fridays for Future movement in Berlin, Germany, on April 5, 2019. #Markus Schreiber / AP
Students raise their fists during a protest against climate change on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on March 15, 2019. #Chris Wattie / Reuters
Demonstrators shout during a protest as they march through London, England, on April 12, 2019. #Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP
Police officers attempt to remove climate-change activists who locked their hands together as they block traffic in the City of London financial district during environmental protests by the Extinction Rebellion group on April 25, 2019. #Daniel Leal-Olivas / AFP / Getty
A climate-change activist is seen up in the trees around Parliament Square during the Extinction Rebellion protest in London, England, on April 23, 2019. #Peter Nicholls / Reuters
Demonstrators take part in a “funeral procession” during a climate protest in Parliament Square in London on April 15, 2019. #Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP
Members of the police carry a demonstrator during an Extinction Rebellion protest at the Marble Arch in London on April 24, 2019. #Toby Melville / Reuters
Protesters march along Whitehall toward Parliament, with Nelson’s Column in the background, in London on April 23, 2019, during a climate protest. #Matt Dunham / AP
Demonstrators shout during a protest as they march through London, England, on April 12, 2019. Young protesters took to the streets after a government report revealed that the nation was set to miss its emissions targets. #Kirsty Wigglesworth / AP
Climate change and environmental degradation are an existential threat to Europe and the world. To overcome these challenges, Europe needs a new growth strategy that will transform the Union into a modern, resource-efficient and competitive economy, where
there are no net emissions of greenhouse gases by 2050
economic growth is decoupled from resource use
no person and no place is left behind
The European Green Deal is our plan to make the EU’s economy sustainable. We can do this by turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities, and making the transition just and inclusive for all.PAGE CONTENTS
The European Green Deal provides an action plan to
boost the efficient use of resources by moving to a clean, circular economy
restore biodiversity and cut pollution
The plan outlines investments needed and financing tools available. It explains how to ensure a just and inclusive transition.
The EU aims to be climate neutral in 2050. We proposed a European Climate Law to turn this political commitment into a legal obligation.
Reaching this target will require action by all sectors of our economy, including
investing in environmentally-friendly technologies
supporting industry to innovate
rolling out cleaner, cheaper and healthier forms of private and public transport
decarbonising the energy sector
ensuring buildings are more energy efficient
working with international partners to improve global environmental standards
The EU will also provide financial support and technical assistance to help those that are most affected by the move towards the green economy. This is called the Just Transition Mechanism. It will help mobilise at least €100 billion over the period 2021-2027 in the most affected regions.
4 March 2020Proposal for a European climate law to ensure a climate neutral European Union by 2050Public consultation (open until 17 June 2020) on the European Climate Pact bringing together regions, local communities, civil society, businesses and schools
Seen as a “win-win” solution in terms of both economy and ecology, as well as the more obvious benefits of growing trees on farmland, such as producing timber and tree crops, agroforestation also carries considerable environmental benefits. [SHUTTERSTOCK]
In a clear nod to the strategic importance of agroforestry, the term has now cropped up in both the European Green Deal, the European Commission’s roadmap for making Europe the first climate neutral continent by 2050, and the EU’s flagship new food policy, the Farm to Fork (F2F) strategy.
“The Commission will ensure that Strategic Plans are assessed against robust climate and environmental criteria. These plans should lead to the use of sustainable practices, such as precision agriculture, organic farming, agro-ecology, agro-forestry and stricter animal welfare standards,” the communication on the Green Deal reads.
Likewise, the F2F strategy specifies that “new ‘eco-schemes’ will offer a major stream of funding to boost sustainable practices, including agroforestry.”
In this special edition of the agrifood podcast, EURACTIV’s agrifood team spoke to a range of policymakers and stakeholders to hear their remarks on the presentation of the highly anticipated Farm to Fork strategy, the new EU’s landmark food policy
Agroforestry is not always fully understood, but it can be defined as the integration of woody vegetation, crops and/or livestock on the same area of land, either via the incorporation of planting trees on agricultural land or introducing agriculture into existing woodland or orchards.
There are currently around 20 million hectares of agroforestry in the EU, according to EURAF, who estimate that close to 90% of the European grassland area could include silvopasture practices, which integrate trees, forage, and pasture, and that more than 99% of the European arable land would be suitable for silvoarable practices.
Seen as a “win-win” solution in terms of both economy and ecology, as well as the more obvious benefits of growing trees on farmland, such as producing timber and tree crops, agroforestation also carries considerable environmental benefits.
This includes contributing to flood protection, carbon capture and storage, regeneration of soils and biodiversity.
Agroforestation therefore holds huge potential for contributing to the sustainability goals and the aims of the EU Green Deal, according to Gerry Lawson, a forester and member of the European Agroforestry Federation (EURAF), who told EURACTIV that more must be done to support the uptake of the practice across the EU.
A recent report by the government think tank France Stratégie demonstrates the profitability of more environmentally friendly farms and proposes a review of the methods of allocating CAP subsidies to encourage a green transition in farming. EURACTIV France reports.
Lawson stressed that a key barrier for farmers is that they lack guarantees that planting trees on their land will not jeopardise direct payments from the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), either now or in the future.
“This is a real concern for farmers” he emphasised, explaining that this stems from a limitation of tree density to 100 trees per hectare in the current CAP. This limit has has made farmers wary of establishing, promoting and using agroforestry practices.
The limit was originally designed to guarantee agricultural production but it does not account for the fact that significant agricultural production can be obtained under and between trees.
However, Lawson explained that, according to a European Council working paper, in the new CAP, member states will have complete flexibility to make full direct payments on fields containing agroforestry, but that this flexibility has been poorly communicated with farmers.
“In the future, according to the proposal, member states would have the leeway to ensure agricultural area under agroforestry is fully eligible when justified based on the local specificities (e.g. density/species/size of the trees and pedo-climatic conditions) and the value added of the presence of trees to ensure sustainable agricultural use of the land,” the paper reads.
But this is something that has not yet been made explicit to farmers, according to Lawson.
“This flexibility must be made clear to farmers and reassurance must be offered that planting trees on their land means farmers won’t be financially penalised if you want to encourage farmers to engage in agroforestry,” he said.
Lawson also stressed that there were issues when it comes to proper monitoring of agroforestry in the EU.
Speaking of the Commission’s farm sustainability tool (FaST) that is currently in development, he highlighted that work must be done to ensure that the mapping tool includes the impact of farm-trees on nutrients and greenhouse gas emissions.
FaST is designed to become a world-leading platform to support sustainable and competitive agriculture based on space data.
“None of the Horizon 2020 projects for FaST include trees in their work, which means that there is a huge research gap,” Lawson said, adding that more work must be done to liaise with the EU research project to ensure that the benefits of agroforestry are properly accounted for.
While recognising the positive role of forests in mitigating global warming, the European Commission has riled the agroforestry and biomass industries by stating its intention of limiting growth in the sector.
[Edited by Zoran Radosavljevic]
EURACTIV’s editorial content is independent from the views of our sponsors.
For investors and policymakers, effectively addressing climate change poses particular challenges—not the least of which is the long time-lag between actions and outcomes. The inertia in the climate system means that greenhouse gases emitted today will warm the planet for decades to come.
21 September 2020
Lee Clements, FTSE Russell
For investors and policymakers, effectively addressing climate change poses particular challenges—not the least of which is the long time-lag between actions and outcomes. The inertia in the climate system means that greenhouse gases emitted today will warm the planet for decades to come.
Investors also face a more immediate challenge. Collecting a level-playing field of consistent data sufficient to understand the climate risk faced by sovereign issuers—that is, comparable national-level data—takes time. This means that, much more than with other risk factors, investors are steering using the rear-view mirror.
The recent annual recalculation of the climate risk scores for FTSE Climate Risk-Adjusted World Government Bond Index (Climate WGBI) provides a case in point. That index—derived from FTSE Russell’s flagship global fixed income index—offers a forward-looking assessment of the climate risk faced by sovereign issuers from 22 developed economies.
It incorporates three climate risk pillars. Physical risk measures the exposure of the country and its economy to the physical effects of climate change, such as sea-level rise, weather-related damage to agriculture, and climate-related natural disasters. The resilience pillar measures a country’s preparedness to cope with climate change, based on the strength of national institutions and its level of social and economic development.
The scores of most countries against these two pillars tend to be stable over time. It is the third pillar—transition risk—that sees the most year-on-year change. This pillar measures the potential impact on a country and its economy from the effort required to reduce emissions in line with the goal of the Paris Agreement—that is, to hold the rise in average global temperatures to no more than 2°C above pre-industrial levels. It uses a model with 15 variables, based around the Kaya equation of carbon intensity including GDP per capita, energy intensity of GDP and the carbon intensity of energy production to calculate to the degree of national GHG reduction consistent with 2 degrees.
Here, two countries stand out for a marked drop in performance this year compared with last. Austria, for example, has seen its transition score drop (on a scale of 0.00 to 1) from 0.43 to 0.26. And Finland’s has fallen from a creditable 0.76 to a much more middle-ranking 0.46.
In both cases, this is due to a growing gap between their rate of their recent GHG emission reductions and the rate required to meet their Paris targets. But it is worth observing why those scores changed. This year’s index calculation incorporates the latest consistent, verified national emissions figures—from 2017. To avoid anomalous years creating too much variability in this metric, it averages emissions over five years. This means that change in this figure is driven by 2011 data falling out of the metric, to be replaced with 2017 numbers.
Finland reported a big fall in emissions between 2011 and 2012 flattering its transition score. Austria, too, demonstrated good emissions reduction performance over that period but, since then, its emissions have been creeping up.
This has two lessons for investors analyzing sovereign climate risk. The first is that changes to climate performance measures can often be driven by historical changes and so it is vital to balance these with forward looking climate metrics as used in the Climate WGBI. The second is that this is a long slog. To reduce climate risk and meet the Paris targets, countries will have to reduce emissions year-in and year-out for many years to come; bursts of strong performance followed by backsliding or complacency will set alarm bells ringing on the climate risk register.
And big changes in the scores achieved by small sovereign issuers can have less impact to the uniquely global issue of climate change than less than small changes to the scores of big issuers. The constituents of the Climate WGBI are weighted by their climate scores relative to the benchmark. So the change to Finland’s transition risk score means its weighting in the index drops from 0.39% to 0.37%, while Austria falls from 0.64% to 0.57%.
As with all developed world sovereign bond indexes, the weighting of the United States has the greatest bearing on index composition. Here, a relatively modest drop in its transition score—from 0.23 to 0.14—means its weighting falls from 35.33% to 33.02%.
It is also worth noting that this score is largely based on data from 2012 to 2017—mostly during a more climate-friendly Democrat-led administration – and suggests that the US transition risk score may continue to deteriorate as the effects of the current climate-skeptical administration shows up in the numbers. It also suggests that, while a potential Democratic victory in the forthcoming presidential election may lead to a stark change in the rhetoric regarding climate action, there would be a significant lag in its impact being felt in climate risk metrics.
With great power comes great responsibility – and our ability to harness natural gases for means of production and development is no different. It’s common knowledge that the greenhouse effect on earth stems from the emission of GHG emissions released primarily by the burning of fossil fuels, but also stems from landfills, agricultural systems, industrial and waste management processes, and more.
This emission of gases has the effect of trapping the heat from the sun in our atmosphere, allowing it to enter but preventing it from escape – creating devastating natural phenomena such as earthquakes, floods, droughts, and more. Reducing this flow and emission of the greenhouse gases that spur global warming could prevent up to 3 million premature deaths annually by the year 2100. Without concentrated effort towards greenhouse gas emission reduction, the globe is not only in danger of suffering increased levels of damage, but suddenly needing to cope with an entirely new set of issues, entering the territory of climate disasters and constant risk to public safety.
Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Impacts on the World
Consciously reducing the emission of greenhouse gases during standard business processes impacts our global environment in multiple ways, including:
1) Air Quality
As temperatures rise and emissions increase both in volume and density, the Paris Agreement notes air quality is certain to worsen. With the degradation of air quality comes decreased accessibility of outdoor spaces, consequential damage to clean land and water, and we will be facing unprecedented challenges in trying to continue with personal and professional routines that have become our norm. With greenhouse gas emission reduction, air quality will improve and result in an across-the-board increase in health of our entire planet – from our bodies of water to our own internal bodily systems.
2) Economic Growth
In conjunction with the improvement of public health, the global economy will also benefit from a cleaner environment through a reduction in GHG emissions. Clean, green energy is more appealing from an economic standpoint than ever before, with a 19-44% difference of price between new natural gas generation as opposed to new coal generation in the US. The reduction of electrical use within homes and businesses, longer-lasting electric and fuel-efficient vehicles, and reduced waste from natural gas are only a few of the factors that will push the economy towards more tangible success than it has seen in recent years. Corporations will see significant ROI on investment into clean energy, and with more time and funding to dedicate towards product development and improvement, as well as increased organizational credibility through openness with stakeholders around their sustainability efforts, both sales and consumer satisfaction will rise.
3) Slowed Climate Change
Finally, and arguably the most impactful aspect of greenhouse gas emission reduction, is the overall slowed climate change and environmentally beneficial practices that will be implemented. Climate change is the central cause of increased droughts, sea level rise, drastic weather events, such as forest fires, and all the subsequent devastating effects of these events on humanity and our development in every sense. With this in mind, reducing GHG emissions is the number one key to working towards a cleaner, greener, safer, and healthier society around the globe.
Reducing Greenhouse Gas Emissions – Key Benefits to Organizations
In addition to these tangible global, large-scale benefits, organizations can also benefit from the positive impacts of greenhouse gas emission reduction. The biggest benefits of effective emission management include:
4) Cost Savings
When it comes to cost savings, the simple reduction of energy usage both shrinks your organizational carbon footprint and your operating expenses themselves. In 2016, Energy Star released a report – when Intelligent Energy Optimizers LLC (IEO) supplied LED lighting to replace the existing fluorescents and HIDs at Kimberly–Clark Berkley Mill, an investment of $350,000 by the owner resulted in annual savings of $160,000with full ROI in just over one and a half years.
5) Improved External Relations
The spending power of consumer populations holds immense sway in the process of influencing organizational action. The process of commitment to accountability in the arenas of broader sustainability as well as greenhouse gas emission reduction is a huge credibility boost in the eyes of the public. When your organization takes direct actions towards reducing carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas output, the causal increase in quality and depth of relationships with potential partners and external business connections is invaluable.
6) Improved Stakeholder Relations
Alongside the deepened relationship with the public, the impact of transparent sustainability metrics and performance holds immense potential to deepen invaluable relationships with stakeholders. More investors than ever before are diverting capital away from carbon-heavy, secretive companies, and turning towards those who chose to be open, proactive, and honest with their management of greenhouse gas emissions within the sustainability world, and beyond.
7) Regulatory Compliance
With a 20-fold increase in the amount of global climate change laws since 1997, ensuring proactive regulatory compliance is more prevalent in the minds of organizational leadership, public spheres, and stakeholders than ever before – and it’s only rising in importance. Implementing an effective greenhouse gas emission reduction strategy, as well as documenting and reporting on progress on that area, is a vital action for organizations to take in order to continue operations and reduce fines.
Ways to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
When it comes to the act of actually reducing these emissions, there are several paths you can take – and the more angles you approach from while working to solve the issue of effective greenhouse gas emission reduction, the more effective your final efforts will be.
Cut initial consumption of energy
Replace fossil fuels with cleaner, greener alternatives
Work towards higher energy efficiency rates
Purchase carbon offsets
Cut Consumption
Simply making an effort to decrease the amount of energy and supplies your organization is using during its daily operations can have a huge impact on the effectiveness of greenhouse gas emission reduction programs.
Clean Fuel Alternatives
With electric vehicles, innovations in solar energy, and countless more options available within the scope of moving away from fossil fuels and coal as primary sources of energy – as well as huge subsequent benefits when it comes to ROI and environmental protection – there’s really no downside to working towards using only clean fuel.
Energy Efficiency
When the reduction of operating costs as well as emission reduction hinge on the simple action of investing in more energy-efficient equipment, the decision is simple. Committing to the installation of more energy-efficient systems throughout a company’s functioning areas, whether retail, production, warehouse, or something entirely different, is the way to go.
Carbon Offsets
A carbon offset is a reduction in emissions of greenhouse gases made in order to compensate for emissions made by your company. The money used to purchase these offsets is used to finance projects – forest preservation, energy efficiency efforts, and landfill methane capture – that would not have been built without that investment and funding. Read more about carbon offsets and how to purchase them.
With these strategies under your belt, supporting the environment we live in as well as pushing towards the next level of excellence within your organization is more accessible than ever before. Don’t let the opportunity pass you by – invest in energy-efficiency and sustainability efforts for your business and join the march towards universal greenhouse gas emission reduction today.
(CNN)The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that coronavirus cases are surging alarmingly in Europe, as a “very serious situation” unfolds across the continent.As Covid-19 infections spike to record numbers, European governments are imposing strict local measures and weighing up further lockdowns in a bid to halt a second wave of the pandemic.But WHO regional director Hans Kluge said at a Thursday news conference that the increase in cases should serve as a warning of what is to come.”Weekly cases have now exceeded those reported when the pandemic first peaked in Europe in March,” Kluge said. “Last week, the region’s weekly tally exceeded 300,000 patients.”More than half of European nations have reported an increase of more than 10% in new cases in the past two weeks, Kluge added. “Of those, seven countries have seen newly reported cases increase more than two-fold in the same period,” he said.
Europe pushed the limit of how far to reopen. Now it may be too late to prevent a second virus wave“In the spring and early summer we were able to see the impact of strict lockdown measures. Our efforts, our sacrifices, paid off. In June cases hit an all-time low. The September case numbers, however, should serve as a wake-up call for all of us,” he said.”Although these numbers reflect more comprehensive testing, it also shows alarming rates of transmission across the region.”While there was an increase in cases in older age groups, those aged 50 to 79, in the first week of September, Kluge said, the biggest proportion of new cases is still among 25- to 49-year-olds.Countries across the continent have been easing lockdowns and reopening their economies, but governments are now scrambling to avert further outbreaks.”This pandemic has taken so much from us,” Kluge said, citing the nearly 4.9 million recorded Covid-19 cases in Europe and more than 226,000 deaths. “And this tells only part of the story,” he said. “The impact on our mental health, economies, livelihoods and society has been monumental.”
Ibiza’s 40-year party could finally be overEarlier this year, the first coronavirus wave spiked fast in France, but it was cut short by a strict nationwide lockdown. In total more than 31,000 people died there from the disease, out of more than 443,000 cases, according to Johns Hopkins University (JHU).Now, the number of new infections is rising fast. A record was set over the weekend with more than 10,000 new cases in a single day. The number of clusters has been rising steadily and, most worryingly, nationwide, the number of people in intensive care has risen 25% in the past week.Cases in the United Kingdom, Germany, Spain and Italy have also increased.New restrictions were imposed across England this week barring people from meeting socially in groups of more than six, of all ages, indoors or outdoors. Scotland and Wales have also tightened their social distancing rules.From Friday, even stricter measures will apply in the northeast of England amid a “concerning rise” in Covid-19 infection rates there, UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced in Parliament on Thursday.
Here’s how England’s new coronavirus rules will work 02:03The measures include a ban on socializing outside households or “support bubbles” and a mandated closing time of 10 p.m. for all bars, pubs, restaurants and leisure centers. They will apply to seven areas — including the cities of Newcastle, Sunderland and Durham — and will affect more than 1.5 million people.Hancock stressed the need to take “immediate action” against the virus with winter approaching.At least 41,773 people have died with coronavirus in the UK, according to JHU, the highest toll in Europe and fifth-largest number of any country in the world.The UK government has come under pressure over recent failings in its coronavirus testing system, with some people — including health care workers — experiencing difficulty in accessing tests or being directed to testing sites far from home.Prime Minister Boris Johnson defended Britain’s coronavirus testing record Wednesday, saying it compared favorably to other European countries and that recent problems were due to a “colossal spike” in demand.
WHO chief: We can fight the virus back again
Authorities in the Spanish capital of Madrid are to announce new coronavirus restrictions on Friday as the country also responds to an uptick in the number of cases.Spain has now recorded more than 30,000 deaths since the start of the outbreak, with more than 600,000 total cases.
The tourists are leaving Italy. Now catastrophe loomsMadrid accounts for approximately a third of all new cases, according to data from the country’s health ministry.The president of Madrid’s regional government, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has suggested that migrant populations are partly to blame.”(The outbreaks are partly) due to the way of life of Madrid’s immigrants and the population density of these districts,” she said Tuesday. “It is a way of life in Madrid.”Meanwhile, German authorities have imposed new restrictions and ordered more testing in a popular Bavarian ski resort after a coronavirus outbreak that has been linked to a US citizen working at a lodge operated by the US Army.The state prosecution service in Munich said it had launched an investigation into the American who may have caused the surge in cases.New regulations imposed in the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen over the weekend mean local bars will now close at 10 p.m. Parties are limited to 100 people — down from 200 — and groups eating indoors are capped at five, down from twice that.In neighboring Austria, Chancellor Sebastian Kurz has warned citizens that more cases are on their way. ”We are at the beginning of the second wave,” he tweeted Sunday. “We are facing difficult months in the autumn and winter. The number of infections is increasing from day to day.”Kurz asked Austrian citizens to continue to adhere to all virus measures and reduce social contacts.Meanwhile countries including Greece and Croatia, largely spared by the first wave, saw fast case number rises in August as tourists took summer vacations following the reopening of Europe’s internal borders in June.Kluge urged “an amplified collective effort by all European member states for the sake of all European member states,” as he addressed the media Thursday.”The response to the crisis has been very effective whenever the actions were prompt and resolute but the virus has shown (itself to be) merciless whenever partisanship and disinformation prevailed,” he said.”Where the pandemic goes from here is in our hands. We have fought it back before and we can fight it back again.”
CNN’s Zamira Rahim, Lindsay Isaac, Simon Cullen, Stephanie Halasz, Laura Perez Maestro, Ingrid Formanek, Melissa Bell and Pierre Bairin contributed to this report.
This article is designed to inform you of essential facts, prompt you to reassess certain behaviours and empower you to be part of the solution.
We are consuming our world to death
As consumers, we are hugely powerful. What we choose to buy (and importantly, not to buy) is a direct form of climate activism. Margins in most consumer sectors are slim, so it doesn’t take a huge number of people to change their shopping habits and force manufacturers and producers to change their processes.
But we are still a consumerist society. We have got used to buying what we want, when we want, for the cheapest price. Because what most of us tend to buy is cheap, we don’t think about the quality, how long it will last, or the aggregated cost of buying replacements. We have become addicted to “stuff”, driven by advertising and the pressure of social media to own more, blurring the lines between what we need and what we want.
The planet cannot cope with the amount of resources we take from it every day to make the stuff we buy. Earth Overshoot Day is the day in the year when we have extracted more resources than the Earth can produce and generated more waste than the Earth can absorb in a single year. In 2019, Earth Overshoot day was 29th July. This means we need about 1.75 planets to cope with what we take and what we throw out.
Fires and deforestation to make way for cattle grazing and cheap agriculture on the Amazon frontier, Rondonia, Brazil
We are literally consuming our planet to death. Every year we extract 88 billion tonnes of natural resources, every month we cut down 2 million hectares of forests, every week we pollute over 5 billion tonnes of groundwater, and every day we use 6,000 tonnes of pesticides.
And all of this is to make the food we eat, the clothes we wear, the cars we drive and the crap we buy. This cannot go on. Governments, industry and corporations refuse to act with the urgency that is required, too focused on shareholder profits and vested interests.
We have to change how we consume and in doing so, send the signals to the markets that the days of unethical, destructive and unnecessary consumption are over.
How we shop
In the last decade, shopping has become ultra-convenient with whatever you want delivered directly to your door in record time, often with no extra cost. But there is an extra cost, and it affects you and your community.
When you get something delivered, it is usually driven to you in a fossil fuel vehicle. At first it may seem efficient that a single vehicle is conducting one delivery route to multiple addresses than hundreds of vehicles driving to the shops and back. But it’s potentially worse for the environment.
A delivery van is constantly stopping, starting, idling, braking and manoeuvring. These actions use up far more fuel and emit far more carbon emissions than a smoother drive to the shops. And where are these carbon emissions going? Into the streets and neighbourhoods where you live.
Also, when you buy online you are buying blind, particularly with clothes. You won’t know if the product is truly what you want or if it fits. That means you have to return it, which is more journeys by vehicles that wouldn’t have happened if you had bought in person. Returns logistics company Optoro found hauling around returned items in the US creates over 15 million metric tonnes of CO2 emissions a year, potentially equivalent to what 3 million cars might put out in the same period.
There’s also a good chance that your return items will just end up in landfill, with over 2.5 billion kilograms of waste produced through returns.
TAKE ACTION Consider whether you really need to have that item there and then. Can it wait until you can go into town or a shopping centre and purchase multiple items in one trip. Also, many delivery services are now using carbon free methods including electric vehicles, so always prioritise those options over the standard fossil fuel methods.
Food
Globally, around a third of food is wasted, and a recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report stated that during 2010-2016, food waste contributed 8-10% of total man-made greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. UK waste charity WRAP estimates that in the UK around 10 million tonnes of food waste is generated every year, post-farm gate, 70% of which was intended to be consumed by people. This has a value of over £20 billion and is associated with more than 25 million tonnes of GHG emissions.
These are sobering thoughts considering recent estimates show 8.6% of the world, or 736 million people, are currently living in poverty. To top it off, most of the food waste ends up in landfill that releases methane into the atmosphere – a GHG 20 times more destructive than carbon.
Food and food waste is the debate of our time, considering that global agriculture accounts roughly 25% of annual GHGs and intensive methods of farming are destroying the very soils we rely on.
Fashion is one of the world’s worst polluting industries, accounting for roughly 10% of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. That’s an energy consumption greater than the global aviation and shipping industries combined.
According to waste charity WRAP, the annual footprint of a household’s newly bought clothing, along with the washing and cleaning of its clothes, is roughly the equivalent to the carbon emissions from driving a non-electric car for 6,000 miles. What’s more, three-fifths of clothing ends up in incinerators or landfills within a year of being produced.
Leadership forum, the Global Fashion Agenda predicts that by 2030 global apparel consumption will rise by 63%. If they’re right, the impact of this will be devastating to the planet. Fortunately, we have the power to stop this through simple actions and by reassessing our toxic relationship with fashion.
It is a simple fact that in the west, we consume far more than we need. This is why not only are landfills over spilling across the world but our minimal recycling processes can’t cope with the little waste we do try to recycle.
A key aspect of consumption is thinking through the whole life cycle of anything you buy. How long before something you buy turns to waste, what does it look like, how will you dispose of it and where is it likely to end up. Here are some simple facts to consider and help understand how overconsumption leads to such a dramatic waste problem.
In the UK alone, 70 million plastic coffee cup lids go to landfill every day.
A pair of jeans will only be worn 41 times before being thrown away.
40 million tonnes of electronic waste is generated each year, the equivalent to 800 laptops every second.
The great pacific garbage patch is now larger than 1.6 million km2. That’s the same size of Iran, or twice the size of Texas or Turkey.
Over 10 billion plastic bags are produced every day across the world.
Every week, 250,000 tonnes of plastic waste is dumped in the oceans.
Our waste problems are directly linked to our consumption problems. If we sort out consumption then we might be able to sort out our waste. That falls down to all of us knowing we have a role to play.
Nations around the world are pledging to plant billions of trees to grow new forests. But a new study shows that the potential for natural forest regrowth to absorb carbon from the atmosphere and fight climate change is far greater than has previously been estimated.
When Susan Cook-Patton was doing a post-doc in forest restoration at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center in Maryland seven years ago, she says she helped plant 20,000 trees along Chesapeake Bay. It was a salutary lesson. “The ones that grew best were mostly ones we didn’t plant,” she remembers. “They just grew naturally on the ground we had set aside for planting. Lots popped up all around. It was a good reminder that nature knows what it is doing.”
What is true for Chesapeake Bay is probably true in many other places, says Cook-Patton, now at The Nature Conservancy. Sometimes, we just need to give nature room to grow back naturally. Her conclusion follows a new global study that finds the potential for natural forest regrowth to absorb atmospheric carbon and fight climate change has been seriously underestimated.
Tree planting is all the rage right now. This year’s World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, called for the world to plant a trillion trees. In one of its few actions to address climate concerns, the U.S. administration — with support from businesses and nonprofits such as American Forests — last month promised to contribute close to a billion of them — 855 million, to be precise — across an estimated 2.8 million acres.
The European Union this year promised 3 billion more trees as part of a Green Deal; and existing worldwide pledges under the 2011 Bonn Challenge and the 2015 Paris Climate Accord set targets to restore more than 850 million acres of forests, mostly through planting. That is an area slightly larger than India, and provides room for roughly a quarter-trillion trees.
The study found that natural regeneration can capture more carbon more quickly and securely than tree plantations.
Planting is widely seen as a vital “nature-based solution” to climate change — a way of moderating climate change in the next three decades as the world works to achieve a zero-carbon economy. But there is pushback.
Nobody condemns trees. But some critics argue that an aggressive drive to achieve planting targets will provide environmental cover for land grabs to blanket hundreds of millions of acres with monoculture plantations of a handful of fast-growing and often non-native commercial species such as acacia, eucalyptus, and pine. Others ask: Why plant at all, when we can often simply leave the land for nearby forests to seed and recolonize? Nature knows what to grow, and does it best.
Cook-Patton’s new study, published in Nature and co-authored by researchers from 17 academic and environmental organizations, says estimates of the rate of carbon accumulation by natural forest regrowth, endorsed last year by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, are on average 32 percent too low, a figures that rises to 53 percent for tropical forests.
The study is the most detailed attempt yet to map where forests could grow back naturally, and to assess the potential of those forests to accumulate carbon. “We looked at almost 11,000 measurements of carbon uptake from regrowing forests, measured in around 250 studies around the world,” Cook-Patton told Yale Environment 360.
New vegetation grows amid burnt trees in the Amazon in the state of Para, Brazil. ANTONIO SCORZA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
She found that current carbon accumulation rates vary by a factor of a hundred, depending on climate, soils, altitude, and terrain. This is much greater than previously assessed. “Even within countries there were huge differences.” But overall, besides being better for biodiversity, the study showed, natural regeneration can capture more carbon more quickly and more securely than plantations.
ALSO ON YALE E360
Will climate change upend projections of future forest growth? Read more.
Cook-Patton agrees that as climate change gathers pace in the coming decades, rates of carbon accumulation will change. But while some forests will grow more slowly or even die, others will probably grow faster due to the fertilization effect of more carbon dioxide in the air, an existing phenomenon sometimes called global greening.
The study identified up to 1.67 billion acres that could be set aside to allow trees to regrow. This excludes land under cultivation or built on, along with existing valuable ecosystems such as grasslands and boreal regions, where the warming effects of dark forest canopy outweigh the cooling benefits of carbon take-up.
Combining the mapping and carbon accumulation data, Cook-Patton estimates that natural forest regrowth could capture in biomass and soils 73 billion tons of carbon between now and 2050. That is equal to around seven years of current industrial emissions, making it “the single largest natural climate solution.”
Cook-Patton said the study’s local estimates of carbon accumulation fill an important data gap. Many countries intent on growing forests to store carbon have data for what can be achieved by planting, but lack equivalent data for natural regeneration. “I kept getting emails from people asking me what carbon they would get from [natural] reforesting projects,” she says. “I had to keep saying: ‘It depends.’ Now we have data that allow people to estimate what happens if you put up a fence and let forest regrow.”
Aboveground carbon accumulation rates, in metric tons of carbon per hectare per year, in naturally regrowing forests in forest and savanna biomes. COOK-PATTON ET AL., NATURE 2020
The new local estimates also allow comparisons between the potential of natural regrowth and planting. “I think planting has its place, for instance where soils are degraded and trees won’t grow,” she said. “But I do think natural regrowth is hugely under-appreciated.”
The great thing about natural restoration of forests is that it often requires nothing more than human inaction. Nature is constantly at work restoring forests piecemeal and often unseen on the edges of fields, on abandoned pastures, in scrubby bush, and wherever forests lie degraded or former forest land is abandoned.
But because it requires no policy initiatives, investments, or oversight, data on its extent is badly lacking. Satellites such as Landsat are good at identifying deforestation, which is sudden and visible; but the extent of subsequent recovery is slower, harder to spot, and rarely assessed. Headline grabbing statistics on the loss of the world’s forests generally ignore it.
In a rare study, Philip Curtis of the University of Arkansas recently attempted to get around the problem by devising a model that could predict from satellite imagery what had caused the deforestation, and hence the potential for forest recovery. He found that only about a quarter of lost forests are permanently taken over for human activities such as buildings, infrastructure, or farming. The remaining three-quarters suffered from forest fires, shifting cultivation, temporary grazing, or logging, and at least had the potential for natural recovery.
Another study published this year found that such recovery was widespread and rapid even in an epicenter of deforestation such as the Amazon. When Yunxia Wang of the University of Leeds in England analyzed recently-released Brazilian data from the Amazon, she found that 72 percent of the forest being burned by ranchers to create new cattle pasture is not pristine forest, as widely assumed, but is actually recent regrowth. The forest had been cleared, converted to cattle pasture and then abandoned, whereupon the forest returned so fast that it was typically only six years before it was cleared again. Such was the confusion caused by this rapid forest turnover that regular land-use assessments frequently wrongly categorized this new growth as degraded old-growth forest.
“Actively reintroducing native plants will still be a better option in highly degraded sites,” says one scientist.
Wang noted that if Brazil’s President, Jair Bolsonaro, wanted to fulfill a promise made by his predecessor Dilma Rousseff at the 2015 Paris climate summit to restore 30 million acres of forest by 2030, then he need not plant at all. He could just allow regrowth to proceed in the Amazon without further clearing.
Brazil’s other great forest, the Atlantic forest, is already on that path, recovering slowly after more than a century of clearance for coffee and cattle. The government has an Atlantic Forest Restoration Pact that subsidizes landowners to replant, often with trees intended to supply the paper industry. Yet Camila Rezende of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro says most of the forest regrowth is not from planting but from “spontaneous” regrowth, as forest remnants colonize neighboring abandoned farmland. She estimates that some 6.7 million acres of Atlantic Forest has naturally regenerated in this way since 1996. It now makes up about a tenth of the forest.
Much the same has been happening in Europe, where forest cover is now up to 43 percent, often from naturally recolonizing farmland rather than planting. Italy, for instance, has grown its forest cover by a 2.5 million acres. In the former Communist nations of central Europe, 16 percent of farmland in the Carpathian Mountains was abandoned in the 1990s, much of it reclaimed by the region’s famed beech forests. Across Russia, an area of former farmland about twice the size of Spain has been recolonized by forests. Irina Kurganova of the Russian Academy of Sciences calls this retreat of the plow “the most widespread and abrupt land-use change in the 20th century in the Northern Hemisphere.”
The United States has also seen natural forests regenerate as arable farmland has declined by almost a fifth in the past 30 years. “The entire eastern United States was deforested 200 years ago,” says Karen Holl of the University of California, Santa Cruz. “Much of that has come back without actively planting trees.” According to the U.S. Forest Service, over the past three decades the country’s regrowing forests have soaked up about 11 percent of national greenhouse gas emissions.
A worker plants Sitka spruce saplings at a reforestation project in Doddington, England in 2018. DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
With nature on the march, a major concern is whether a push for planting might grab land for plantations that natural forests might otherwise recolonize. The result would be less wildlife, less amenity for humans, and often less carbon stored.
Ecologists have traditionally dismissed the ecological gains from natural restoration of what is often called “secondary” forest. Such regrowth is often regarded as ephemeral, rarely sought out by wildlife, and prone to being cleared again. This has led many to regard planting to mimic natural forests as preferable.
Thomas Crowther, co-author of a widely-publicized study last year calling for a “global restoration” of a trillion trees to soak up carbon dioxide, emphasizes that, while nature could do the job in places, “people need to help out by spreading seeds and planting saplings.”
But a reappraisal is going on. J. Leighton Reid, director of Restoration Ecology at Virginia Tech, who recently warned against bias in studies comparing natural regeneration with planting, nonetheless told e360, “Natural regeneration is an excellent restoration strategy for many landscapes, but actively reintroducing native plants will still be a better option in highly degraded sites and in places where invasive species dominate.”
Others make the case that most of the time, natural restoration of secondary forests is a better option than planting. In her book, Second Growth, Robin Chazdon, a forest ecologist formerly at the University of Connecticut, says that secondary forests “continue to be misunderstood, understudied, and unappreciated for what they really are — young self-organizing forest ecosystems that are undergoing construction.”
Yes, she agrees, they are work in progress. But they generally recover “remarkably fast.” Recent research shows that regrowing tropical forests recover 80 percent of their species richness within 20 years, and frequently 100 percent within 50 years. That seems to be better than what human foresters achieve when trying to replant forest ecosystems.
Tree planting can worsen outcomes for everything from the number of bird and insect species to canopy cover.
A review of more than 100 tropical forest restoration projects by Renato Crouzeilles of the International Institute for Sustainability in Rio de Janeiro, with Chazdon as a co-author, found that success rates were higher for secondary forests allowed to regenerate naturally than for those subjected to the “active restoration” techniques of foresters. In other words, planting can often worsen outcomes for everything from the number of bird, insect, and plant species, to measures of canopy cover, tree density, and forest structure. Nature knows best.
Now, Cook-Patton has extended the reappraisal to the carbon-accumulating potential of natural forest regeneration. It too may often be superior.
This scientific rethink requires a policy rethink, says Holl. “Business leaders and politicians have jumped on the tree-planting bandwagon, and numerous nonprofit organizations and governments worldwide have started initiatives to plant billions or even trillions of trees for a host of social, ecological, and aesthetic reasons”.
She concedes that on some damaged lands, “we will need to plant trees, but that should be the last option, since it is the most expensive and often is not successful.”
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Why green pledges will not create the natural forests we need. Read more.
Planting a trillion trees over the next three decades would be a huge logistical challenge. A trillion is a big number. That target would require a thousand new trees in the ground every second, and then for all of them to survive and grow. Once the cost of nurseries, soil preparation, seeding, and thinning are accounted for, says Crouzeilles, it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. If natural forest growth is cheaper and better, does that make sense?
The unprecedented health emergency and economic crisis triggered by the Covid-19 pandemic risks to be a setback for clean energy innovation efforts at a time in which faster progress is needed. The report quantifies the needs for technology innovation and investment for a cleaner and more resilient energy sector at net-zero emissions. It identifies key technology attributes that can help accelerate innovation cycles.
The report also offers five key innovation principles for delivering net-zero emissions. It highlights issues requiring immediate attention, such as the importance of governments maintaining research and development funding at planned levels through 2025 and considering raising it in strategic areas.
The report comes with a new ETP Clean Energy Technology Guide that encompasses around 400 component technologies and identifies their stage of readiness for the market.
Without a major acceleration in clean energy innovation, net-zero emissions targets will not be achievable. The world has seen a proliferating number of pledges by numerous governments and companies to reach net-zero carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions in the coming decades as part of global efforts to meet long-term sustainability goals, such as the Paris Agreement on climate change. But there is a stark disconnect between these high-profile pledges and the current state of clean energy technology. While the technologies in use today can deliver a large amount of the emissions reductions called for by these goals, they are insufficient on their own to bring the world to net zero while ensuring energy systems remain secure – even with much stronger policies supporting them.
Energy efficiency and renewables are fundamental for achieving climate goals, but there are large portions of emissions that will require the use of other technologies. Much of these emissions come from sectors where the technology options for reducing them are limited – such as shipping, trucks, aviation and heavy industries like steel, cement and chemicals. Decarbonising these sectors will largely demand the development of new technologies not yet in use. And many of the clean energy technologies available today need more work to bring down costs and accelerate deployment.
Innovation is the key to fostering new technologies and advancing existing ones. This report assesses the ways in which clean energy innovation can be significantly accelerated with a view to achieving net zero emissions and enhancing energy security.
Innovation is not the same as invention. After a new idea makes its way from the drawing board to the laboratory and out into the world, there are four key stages in the clean energy innovation pipeline. But this pathway to maturity can be long, and success is not guaranteed:
Prototype: A concept is developed into a design, and then into a prototype for a new device (e.g. a furnace that produces steel with pure hydrogen instead of coal).
Demonstration: The first examples of a new technology are introduced at the size of a full-scale commercial unit (e.g. a system that captures CO2 emissions from cement plants).
Early adoption: At this stage, there is still a cost and performance gap with established technologies, which policy attention must address (e.g. electric and hydrogen-powered cars).
Mature: As deployment progresses, the product moves into the mainstream as a common choice for new purchases (e.g. hydropower turbines).
Why we need innovation
There are no single or simple solutions to putting the world on a sustainable path to net-zero emissions. Reducing global CO2 emissions will require a broad range of different technologies working across all sectors of the economy in various combinations and applications. These technologies are at widely varying stages of development, but we can already map out how much they are likely to need to contribute to the emissions reductions necessary to meet international energy and climate goals.
The key technologies the energy sector needs to reach net-zero emissions are known today, but not all of them are ready. Around half of the cumulative emissions reductions that would move the world onto a sustainable trajectory1 come from four main technology approaches. These are the electrification of end-use sectors such as heating and transport; the application of carbon capture, utilisation and storage; the use of low-carbon hydrogen and hydrogen-derived fuels; and the use of bioenergy. However, each of these areas faces challenges in making all parts of its value chain commercially viable in the sectors where reducing emissions is hardest. Our new ETP Clean Energy Technology Guide2 provides a framework for comparing the readiness for the market of more than 400 component technologies.
Understanding the scale of the energy innovation challenge
Global energy sector CO2 emissions reductions by current technology readiness category in the Sustainable Development Scenario relative to the Stated Policies Scenario, 2019-2070
GtCO2 per yearMature (25%)Early adoption (41%)Demonstration (17%)Prototype (17%)20202025203020352040204520502055206020652070-40-35-30-25-20-15-10-50IEA. All Rights Reserved
Mature
Early adoption
Demonstration
Prototype
Early-stage technologies play an outsized role. Around 35% of the cumulative CO2 emissions reductions needed to shift to a sustainable path come from technologies currently at the prototype or demonstration phase. A further 40% of the reductions rely on technologies not yet commercially deployed on a mass-market scale. This calls for urgent efforts to accelerate innovation. The fastest energy-related examples in recent decades include consumer products like LEDs and lithium ion batteries, which took 10-30 years to go from the first prototype to the mass market. These examples must be the benchmarks for building the array of energy technologies to get to net-zero emissions.
If governments and companies want to move more quickly towards net-zero emissions, progress on early stage technologies needs to be accelerated. In this report, we present a Faster Innovation Case that explores how net-zero emissions could be achieved globally in 2050, partly by assuming that technologies currently only in the laboratory or at the stage of small prototypes today are quickly made available for commercial investment. There are big uncertainties around these technologies’ costs and timelines, but this theoretical case indicates what could be achieved through a global push on innovation.
In our Faster Innovation Case, almost half of all the additional emissions reductions in 2050 relative to current policy plans would be from technologies that have not yet reached the market today. Relative to a case in which there is no improvement to technologies already in use today, early-stage technologies provide about one-third of the emissions reductions in the Faster Innovation Case. In practice, this case would require, for example, an average of two new hydrogen-based steel plants to begin operating every month between now and 2050. Currently, technology for these plants is only at the prototype stage. At the same time, 90 new bioenergy plants that capture and store their own CO2 emissions would need to be built every year. Today, there is only one large-scale facility in operation.
Failure to accelerate progress now risks pushing the transition to net-zero emissions further into the future. The pace of innovation in coming decades will depend on the policies governments put in place today. A delay in demonstration projects and a slowdown in deployment of early adoption technologies following the Covid-19 crisis would require greater government efforts down the line, such as supporting new technologies for longer until they are competitive. For example, capital costs of key technologies like hydrogen electrolysers could increase by up to 10% by 2030, making it harder to scale up production.
How innovation can help reach net-zero emissions goals faster
Aligning investment cycles with net-zero targets can create large markets for new technologies and avoid huge amounts of “locked in” emissions. For some energy sectors, 2050 is just one investment cycle away, making the timing of investments and the availability of new technologies critical. Boosting spending on low-carbon research and development and increasing investments in key demonstration projects for the most challenging sectors can be particularly effective. If the right technologies in the steel, cement and chemical sectors can reach the market in time for the next 25-year refurbishment cycle – due to start around 2030 – they can prevent nearly 60 gigatonnes of CO2 emissions (GtCO2).
Avoiding huge amounts of “locked-in” emissions is crucial
Unlocking CO2 at the next investment point in heavy industrial sectors by sector, 2019-2060
At a time when faster innovation is sorely needed, the Covid-19 pandemic has delivered a major setback. In the immediate future, the world’s capacity to bring new technologies to market will be weaker as a result of the disruptions caused by the pandemic. Market and policy uncertainties threaten to reduce the funds available to entrepreneurs.
Innovation involves a wide range of participants, but governments have a pivotal role that goes far beyond simply funding research and development. They set overall national objectives and priorities, and are vital in determining market expectations, ensuring the flow of knowledge, investing in essential infrastructure, and enabling major demonstration projects to go ahead.
If governments rise to the challenge created by the Covid-19 crisis, they have an opportunity to accelerate clean energy innovation. This can help protect the approximately 750 000 jobs in energy research and development. And it can be a strategic opportunity for governments to ensure that their industries come out of the Covid-19 crisis stronger and ready to supply future domestic and international growth markets. On a path towards meeting sustainable energy and climate goals, we project that investments in technologies that are today at the stage of large prototype and demonstration would average around USD 350 billion a year over the next two decades.
Some areas deserve immediate attention from governments looking to revitalise economic activity. In particular, it is important to maintain research and development funding at planned levels through 2025 and to consider raising it in strategic areas. Market-based policies and funding can help scale up value chains for small, modular technologies – as they did for solar panels – significantly advancing technology progress. Synergies with other technologies across sectors is a relatively low-cost way to innovate. Electrochemistry, which underpins batteries, electrolysers and fuel cells is a clear example.
The Covid-19 crisis could cripple or catalyse energy innovation
For governments aiming to achieve net-zero emissions goals while maintaining energy security, these principles primarily address national policy challenges in the context of global needs, but are relevant to all policy makers and strategists concerned with energy technologies and transitions:
Prioritise, track and adjust. Review the processes for selecting technology portfolios for public support to ensure that they are rigorous, collective, flexible and aligned with local advantages.
Raise public R&D and market-led private innovation. Use a range of tools – from public research and development to market incentives – to expand funding according to the different technologies.
Address all links in the value chain. Look at the bigger picture to ensure that all components of key value chains are advancing evenly towards the next market application and exploiting spillovers.
Build enabling infrastructure. Mobilise private finance to help bridge the “valley of death” by sharing the investment risks of network enhancements and commercial-scale demonstrators.
Work globally for regional success. Co-operate to share best practices, experiences and resources to tackle urgent and global technology challenges, including via existing multilateral platforms.
As countries around the world pursue a more secure and sustainable energy future, the IEA will continue to support governments, industry, investors and other stakeholders in advancing energy innovation with the aim of accelerating transitions to cleaner and more resilient energy systems.
The IEA proposes five key innovation principles
References
Sustainable trajectory or path to net-zero emissions refers to the Sustainable Development Scenario.
A new interactive tool developed by the IEA that provides detailed information and analysis on the level of maturity of over 400 different technology designs and components, as well as a compilation of cost and performance improvement targets and leading players in the field. Available online at www.iea.org/articles/etp-clean-energy-technology-guide.
An Austrian youth shouts slogans during a climate protest, part of the “Fridays for Future” movement, outside the Hofburg palace in Vienna on March 15, 2019, a global day of student protests aiming to spark world leaders into action on climate change. 
Extinction Rebellion climate-change activists perform a mass “die-in” under the blue whale in the foyer of the Natural History Museum in London, England, on April 22, 2019, the eighth day of the environmental group’s protest calling for political action to combat climate change. 
The Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg (center) leads a march of thousands of French students through Paris, France, on February 22, 2019, to draw more attention to fighting climate change. Her sign reads: “School strike for the climate.” 
Thousands take part in a “Fridays for Future” protest in Santiago, Chile, on March 15, 2019. 
Hundreds of schoolchildren take part in a climate protest in Hong Kong on March 15, 2019. 
Students protest to demand action on climate change in Lisbon, Portugal, on March 15, 2019. 
An inflatable planet Earth is bounced around the crowd during a climate-change-awareness rally at Sydney Town Hall in Australia on March 15, 2019. 
High-school students demonstrate near the Panthéon monument in Paris, France, on March 15, 2019. 
Belgian students call for urgent measures to combat climate change during a demonstration in central Brussels, Belgium, on January 24, 2019. 
Youths protest during the seventh Brussels youth climate march in Belgium on February 21, 2019. 
The Swedish environmental activist Greta Thunberg delivers a speech during a meeting with the environment committee of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on April 16, 2019. She began her speech saying, “My name is Greta Thunberg. I am 16 years old, I come from Sweden, and I want you to panic. I want you to act as if the house was on fire. I have said those words before, and a lot of people have explained why that is a bad idea. A great number of politicians have told me that panic never leads to anything good, and I agree. To panic, unless you have to, is a terrible idea. But when your house is on fire and you want to keep your house from burning to the ground, then that does require some level of panic.” 
Protesters carry signs as they march during the Youth Climate Strike in San Francisco, California, on March 15, 2019. 
Participants form a human pyramid during a rally for the Global Climate Strike for Future in Seoul, South Korea, on March 15, 2019. 
About 1,000 Minnesota students skipped school to gather on the steps of the state capitol in St. Paul, Minnesota, on March 15, 2019, as part of global protests by young people to demand that governments take swift and decisive action to fight climate change. 
Students take part in a global protest against climate change in Cape Town, South Africa, on March 15, 2019. 
Students strike for action on climate change in front of the government headquarters in Kiev, Ukraine, on March 15, 2019. 
A boy wears a mask as he attends a student climate strike as part of the Fridays for Future movement in Berlin, Germany, on April 5, 2019. 
Students raise their fists during a protest against climate change on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, on March 15, 2019. 
Demonstrators shout during a protest as they march through London, England, on April 12, 2019. 
Police officers attempt to remove climate-change activists who locked their hands together as they block traffic in the City of London financial district during environmental protests by the Extinction Rebellion group on April 25, 2019. 
A climate-change activist is seen up in the trees around Parliament Square during the Extinction Rebellion protest in London, England, on April 23, 2019. 
Demonstrators take part in a “funeral procession” during a climate protest in Parliament Square in London on April 15, 2019. 
Members of the police carry a demonstrator during an Extinction Rebellion protest at the Marble Arch in London on April 24, 2019. 
Protesters march along Whitehall toward Parliament, with Nelson’s Column in the background, in London on April 23, 2019, during a climate protest. 
Demonstrators shout during a protest as they march through London, England, on April 12, 2019. Young protesters took to the streets after a government report revealed that the nation was set to miss its emissions targets. 
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