Category: environment and ecology

Green opportunities far outweigh the costs

Fifth contribution to the Imagining 2020 series of essays comes from Phillip Mills, executive director of Les Mills International, who describes his vision for a low carbon future based on ‘clean technology’. Phillip, with a group of leading members of the NZ business community, has been urging the NZ government to work on cleantech/greentech initiatives. He received a World Class New Zealand Award for New Thinking in 2009 and was Ernst & Young New Zealand Entrepreneur of the Year in 2004.

The transition to a low carbon future is something most economies are grappling with, and if they’re not, they should be. There’s much talk about what this might look like and whether it will require cataclysmic change. From where I sit the short answer is no. And that’s because my vision for a low carbon future is based on switching the dialogue from costs to opportunities. The opportunities are those inherent in the clean technology boom and they are huge.

While most New Zealanders agree we need to lift our economic game and get growth ticking at a faster rate, we are currently busting our guts to raise productivity under what’s become a tired, outdated economic structure.

 

Consider the following:

  • We’re working longer hours but achieving lower productivity than others in the OECD.
  • Unemployment is at its highest level in a decade
  • As a small pastoral economy we are at risk of being sucked dry by spiralling resource costs because of the increasing affluence of emerging economies.
  • Cracks have appeared in our 100% Pure New Zealand brand, compared with our actual behaviour. Several articles in international media last year took us to task for our environmental performance and it’s clear we need to do more, environmentally, to protect our brand and our export and tourism industries. Instead, in firming up intentions to intensify farming and allow mining on Crown land including parts of the conservation estate, the Government is running the risk of further sacrificing our brand, if not our environmental quality.

It’s time for an entirely new economic engine to power us towards a brighter future within a low-carbon economy.

It’s time for an entirely new economic engine to power us towards a brighter future within a low-carbon economy. This requires a shift in our focus to what’s called ‘clean technology’ – developing and commercialising innovative, green technologies in the areas of clean energy, clean transportation, clean industry, clean agriculture and the environment.

This isn’t just another short-lived, green fad for those with a penchant for tree-hugging. The ‘green wave’ may be slow rolling at present but will, over the next decade, gather force for an economic boom on a scale to rival the information age and the industrial revolution. Certainly, this is an area where New Zealand needs to be ahead of the pack.

A number of New Zealand business leaders have teamed together to cast a vision for a clean economy. We believe we have a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to transform New Zealand’s economy by gaining early-mover status in the emergent, clean technology market. This year, we have sent a book by Australian economist Ben McNeil: The Clean Industrial Revolution to all Members of Parliament, detailing the compelling economic argument for our case.

In summary, putting focus on the emergent, clean-tech market presents a compelling opportunity for New Zealand to:

  • Reverse our slide down the OECD tables through the creation and attraction of major new industries and the addition of significant value to our biggest current ones
  • Add brand value and reduce the risk of significant and possibly irreparable brand damage to exports and tourism
  • Cut costs at a national and individual business level
  • Reduce our exposure to risks such as escalating foreign oil and resource costs, carbon costs and tariffs (legislated and market-led).

A clean, low-carbon economy is highly efficient and fiercely competitive. It holds the promise of prosperity for all New Zealanders by inspiring new jobs and retraining, higher-value exports and a stronger eco-brand to attract overseas tourists and consumers.

The nay-sayers talk about the cost of developing and implementing clean technologies. But the fact is the opportunities far outweigh the costs.

The nay-sayers talk about the cost of developing and implementing clean technologies. But the fact is the opportunities far outweigh the costs. Denmark, with a similar population to New Zealand, decided to champion wind energy and now supplies more than half the world’s wind turbines, The Danes have added tens of thousands of high value jobs to their economy, reduced their carbon intensity by a third in ten years, dramatically reduced their exposure to imported energy costs and created a new export business the size of Fonterra – earning $15 billion a year in exports alone.

Germany and Sweden, also early movers in green-tech, have had similar results and the rest of the world is beginning to wake up. In the US, President Barack Obama has promised significant investment to move to an alternative energy economy. Indeed, American businesses are investing heavily in the development and use of clean technologies as the basis of the country’s next wave of wealth generation.

Countries and companies who are investing in clean technologies also reduce expenditure on raw materials and energy, achieve greater efficiency and less waste at a huge rate of return on their investments.

To “do a Denmark” and really win this game as a nation, New Zealand needs to identify our greatest opportunities – clean agriculture and various renewable energy sources are obvious candidates – then pin our ears back and go for them.

We’re already blessed with huge natural advantages in this area. And we can be encouraged that hundreds of Kiwi companies already recognise this and are quietly leading the way. They include start-up companies such as Lanzatech – making ethanol from flue gases; to Air New Zealand – recognised as the world’s greenest airline. Todd Energy is investing in tidal power generation in the Kaipara and our biggest exporter, Fonterra, outlined its benefits from climate change, energy and sustainability strategies at the World Environment Day symposium in June.

We need the same visionary leadership that led to the creation of our hydro dams and state forests in the 1930s

Local supporters of the clean-tech revolution now number more than 100 senior business leaders and we’re working hard to urge the Government to set up a joint government and business investigative committee to identify the best opportunities and the most efficient ways to capitalise on them through a “clean tech’ strategy for New Zealand. We need the same visionary leadership that led to the creation of our hydro dams and state forests in the 1930s; the Vogel Government’s development of telegraph, national railways and shipping links and the introduction of refrigerated shipping that opened our farming industry to the world.

Rather than playing catch-up with Australia, let’s surpass our trans-Tasman cousins with a strong, clean economy that enables us to live our values and is viable over the long-term. I’d welcome discussion on this important issue.

US trial for Aquaflow technology

Blenheim company Aquaflow which works on the production of bio-fuel from algae, and whose progress Hot Topic has reported on several times (follow the Aquaflow tag) has announced a new venture, this time in the US. They will be working with a Honeywell company at an industrial site in Hopewell, Virginia. The aim of the project, supported by a $1.5 million cooperative agreement with the US Department of Energy, is to capture CO2 from exhaust stacks and use it to enhance algae growth in nutrient wastewater from the manufacturing facility.

Continue reading “US trial for Aquaflow technology”

Siberian seabed methane: first numbers

The latest estimate of methane release from the shallow seas off the north coast of Russia — the East Siberian Arctic Shelf (ESAS) — suggests that around 8 teragrams per year (1Tg = 1 million tonnes) of the gas are reaching the atmosphere. This is equivalent to previous estimates of total methane release from all oceans. The study, led by Natalia Shakhova and Igor Semiletov and published in this week’s Science (Extensive Methane Venting to the Atmosphere from Sediments of the East Siberian Arctic Shelf, Science 5 March 2010, Vol. 327. no. 5970, pp. 1246 – 1250 DOI: 10.1126/science.1182221), is based on fieldwork over 2003 – 2008. Over 80% of the bottom water over the ESAS was found to be supersaturated with dissolved methane, and 50% of the surface water. More than 100 “hotspots’ were discovered, where large quantities of methane are escaping from the sea-floor. Here’s Shakhova discussing the paper’s findings in a University of Alaska Fairbanks video (press release):

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Continue reading “Siberian seabed methane: first numbers”

Seeing Further

 

Seeing Further: The Story of Science and the Royal Society

The name of Bill Bryson attracted me and I obtained through the library a copy of his new book Seeing Further: The Story of Science & the Royal Society, only to find that he is the editor, not the author. But he has done a splendid job as editor, collecting contributions from 21 authors, in an eclectic mix with room for novelists as well as professors. I hadn’t thought to be mentioning the book on Hot Topic, but there are three or four chapters which touch on climate change and which seemed worth reporting.

Novelist Maggie Gee provides a chapter of nicely modulated writing on the ways in which writers explore the possible end of the world and what draws them to do so.  Some of her own novels have been described as apocalyptic and she comments that at a conscious level she uses the threat of apocalypse “to re-focus attention  on the short-term miracle of what we have, this relatively peaceful and temperate present where the acts of reading and writing are possible.” But she is aware that fears of climate change apocalypse are real enough. Contrasting the regular engagement of the Royal Society in the climate change debate with the quietude of her own Royal Society of Literature (of which she is a Vice-President) a little further down the Thames, she posits that writers are like most people in not fully believing it will affect their lives. Those who do take it seriously “are thought slightly mad, or over-intense, unlike the sensible majority who just somehow know things will always go on as they do today.” She follows with a perceptive observation of the resulting inhibitions of climate change believers. “It’s like a religion: don’t bring it up. Belief seems like a claim to virtue, a holier-than-thou-ness which will annoy others. Thus some of us, myself included, become cowards, or lazy.”

That said, she expresses her admiration for the “terrible striving” she sees in some young people, but also her pity and her urge to say to them ‘Be kinder to yourself’. Some of the young “are already assuming all the costs and allowing themselves none of the benefits of life on this planet, whereas others, older and much, much richer, have taken all the benefits and paid none of the costs.”

She offers some interesting comparisons between writers and scientists. Scientists have to vouch for the truth and solidity of what they say, whereas artists “are protected by the worn trench-coat of irony”. [Great line! GR] On the plus side for climate scientists, they have a clear part to play. They are useful. “Writers very often do not feel useful.” Nevertheless they have something to offer, including this: “We can try to defamiliarise the present, make our readers realise afresh how marvellous our living planet is.”

There are also similarities in the roles of scientists and writers. Both have the opportunity to look beyond the demands of the present out to the wide web of life and to the future in its many possible forms.  If we refuse that attempt we run the risk of losing everything. “The laboratories and libraries that we need and love to pursue our crafts are some of the first things that would be lost with the collapse of civilisation.”

Stephen Schneider’s chapter tackles the scientific uncertainties in climate change. Uncertainty has to be part of the science because it is concerned with the future. The question is how large the uncertainties are. Some of them centre around the so-called climate sensitivity, often estimated as the temperature increase due to a doubling of atmospheric CO2 levels from pre-industrial levels of about 280 ppm. The IPCC offers a likely range of 2-4.5 degrees, with a 5-17 percent chance of it being higher and a ‘best guess’ of 3 degrees. Not easily communicated to policy-makers and the public.

It’s also difficult to explain how systems science gets done. Traditional ‘falsification’ controlled experiments are not possible. “What we can do is assess where the preponderance of evidence lies and assign confidence levels to various conclusions.” It would be nice to stick only with empirical data, but the best that can be done is to continually update the underlying data behind predictions and refine predictions as required.

This means that scientists, and policy-makers, grappling with climate science impacts are dealing with risk management. Judging about acceptable and unacceptable risks is a value judgment  which many traditional scientists are uncomfortable with.  Schneider is one of them, “but I am more uncomfortable ignoring the problem altogether”.

The matter is complicated by another feature of systems science difficult to manage: the possibility of ‘surprises’ in future global climate, such as tipping points which lead to unusually rapid changes of state.

Schneider explains how the IPCC worked out a standardised quantitative scale to treat the uncertainties –- low confidence, medium confidence, high confidence and very high confidence, likely, and so on. The aim is to better inform the risk management decisions of policy-makers.

Not all is uncertain in the science. It can be regarded as settled that warming is occurring and virtually settled that human activities are the primary driver of recent changes.  The uncertainties are about how severe warming and its impacts will be in the future. These uncertainties have to be managed rather than mastered.

Oliver Morton in a chapter on Earth’s energy flows and the cycles of the biosphere, comments on the use of ancient sunlight stored in fossil form to drive the engines of industry and civilisation. In itself the amount of energy thus liberated is tiny by planetary scales. But the warming it results in is, in terms of energy flows, about one hundred times larger than the amount of energy released by the fossil fuels.

Energy from fossil fuels ties the flow of energy to the material flow of the carbon cycle in a deeply damaging way. We must simply find other flows to tap. Energy flows through the winds, the currents of the oceans, the rivers, the growing of the grass. It flows out of the ground and down from the sky. Energy of all sorts flows through the world and it’s not hard to imagine new ways in which that energy can do the work of humanity.

Martin Rees, the President of the Royal Society since 2005, looks ahead to the next fifty years. He’s not sanguine.  Along with an exploding human population and its need for food, energy and resources, and along with the extinction threats hovering over biodiversity, he sets the threat from a warmer world and the significant probability that it will trigger a grave and irreversible global trend as in rising sea levels or runaway release of methane in the tundra.  He wants to see plenty of citizen scientists, measuring up to the social responsibility that goes with their scientific work. He ends with a vision of the vast changes in the Earth in the last one millionth part of its history, a few thousand years, including the anomalously fast rise in the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. It’s been an unprecedented ‘fever’ less than half way through the Earth’s life.  It will need some wise choices to steer to a safe outcome.

[GR adds: Martin Rees is visiting NZ this month as the guest of the Royal Society of NZ to give two Rutherford Memorial Lectures, in Christchurch on March 22 and Wellington on March 23. Details here. I’d love a report on the Wellington lecture from someone!]

A blast from the past

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Two years ago I took part in the World Peace Summit: Climate Change – What To Do? in Wellington, at the Westpac St James Theatre. I blogged about it at the time (before and after), and promised to link to the video of my talk when it was available. Of course, I then completely forgot to check, and so when I stumbled upon myself on Youtube earlier today, I thought I’d finally keep my promise. Given that I was talking in 2008, I think my comments stand up quite well (I’m rather pleased with my remarks about warmer winters being snowier winters), though my technological optimism is now tempered by pessimism both about the state of the climate system and our ability to come up with policies to reduce emissions. If you follow the “more from” links on the Youtube page, you can also watch David Wratt, Pene Lefale, Rod Oram, Andrew West, and Rachel Brown’s presentations.