Winter camping and other stories →

Interesting climate stuff is always building up in the “share with all my lovely readers” folder.

Only some of it ever sees the light of day.

It turns out that going away on a mini road-trip without the laptop makes the backlog even worse.

Mahurangi meandering and winter camping on the Tawharanui Peninsula makes things better though too.

Here’s the wild beach by the campsite, not long before the storm hit:

That storm lasted twenty four freaking hours.

Yay for no-leak tents. Thanks Craig.

Here’s one of the Hereford zombie beasts on the council-run sustainable farm inside the open sanctuary at Tawharanui:

Twenty of these giants staring at you in silence has its unnerving side.

Luckily, they don’t seem to attack photographers.

It’s a pretty cool part of New Zealand and I’ll do a proper post about it soon.

But back to the backlog.

In no particular order…

One of the minuscule silver linings to the ongoing global Covid-shitshow:

“Amid the immense hardship of the Covid-19 pandemic, one unexpected bright spot has emerged: residents from Los Angeles to New Delhi are reporting unprecedented smog-free skies—the result of a drastic reduction in vehicle-based and industrial air pollution.

“No single activity contributes more greenhouse gas emissions than driving to and from work. Transportation is the number one source of emissions in the United States, and light-duty vehicles contribute the lion’s share of all carbon emissions. The most common mile traveled by households operating light-duty vehicles is the one to and from work.”

Going forward, the authors suggest:

“The vanishing of the daily commute has brought to light the burden of cars and trucks on health and the environment. As an intentional effort to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, at low cost to society, policymakers and businesses should continue to encourage working from home for jobs that allow it, even after the coronavirus crisis has receded.”

While this seems like a good simple idea, a Covid-recovering country like New Zealand is already being faced with the unintended consequences of working from home when life gets back to normal: all the downtown businesses that rely on office workers start to die off (if they haven’t gone bung already).

As for Adani’s infamous future coal mine in Australia, Aspen—the fourth insurance company named in the recent leak, has said it will not renew its insurance policies for Adani’s mine.

It’ll be interesting to see how Marsh—Adani’s insurance broker—deals with the fact that all four insurance companies have now cut free and run for the hills.

Also, don’t forget that other battles are being waged about other new coal mines in Australia’s wilderness too.

It’s not just Adani.

Rio Tinto—in other news—isn’t really helping raise the image of mining companies in general in Australia:

“Rio Tinto has repeated its apology to traditional owners for the destruction of a rock shelter that had been occupied for more than 46,000 years, after its iron ore chief executive, Chris Salisbury, reportedly told a staff meeting that the apology was for any distress caused, not an admission the company had done wrong.”

It turns out that they weren’t apologising for blowing up the historical site, they were just apologising for any distress caused by blowing it up.

I’m glad this misunderstanding was quickly sorted out.

In a surprise to no-one, emissions scoot back to "normal" →

From the New York Times:

“After a drastic decline this spring, global greenhouse gas emissions are now rebounding sharply, scientists reported, as countries relax their coronavirus lockdowns and traffic surges back onto roads. It’s a stark reminder that even as the pandemic rages, the world is still far from getting global warming under control.

“In early April, daily fossil fuel emissions worldwide were roughly 17 percent lower than they were in 2019, as governments ordered people to stay home, employees stopped driving to work, factories idled and airlines grounded their flights, according to a study published in May in Nature Climate Change.”

Here’s a plot showing the drop in emissions compared to 2019, and the fairly rapid (world-wise) rise back towards 2019 levels.

The “surprised” researchers weren’t so surprised:

“The study’s authors said they were surprised by how quickly emissions had rebounded. But, they added, any drop in fossil fuel use related to the coronavirus was always likely to be temporary unless countries took concerted action to clean up their energy systems and vehicle fleets as they moved to rebuild their ailing economies.

“We still have the same cars, the same power plants, the same industries that we had before the pandemic,” said Corinne Le Quéré, a climate scientist at the University of East Anglia in England and lead author of the analysis. “Without big structural changes, emissions are likely to come back.”

No shit, Sherlock.

I find the flipped and rotated plot equally interesting, for other reasons:

If you can decrypt the February through May double-Greek from left to right, remember that China shut down like crazy in February, got the pandemic “pretty much” under control, and then opened up again towards March-April. China’s emissions curve basically shows that.

The US part of the plot is more worrying. Emissions corresponding to “peak shutdown” are from the start of April to the start of May. Since then, US emissions are trending back to normal, despite an ongoing and massive spread of Covid-19 across the country, some parts more than others. The lack of effective social safety net in the US is pretty flagrant.

Even more disheartening is the part corresponding to the rest of the world, much of it poor. Its “peak shutdown” appears to have been early April. Since then, the overall trend is “back to normal”, despite the fact that only now is the pandemic really taking off in poorer countries like India and Pakistan.

Clearly, to survive financially, or stay alive in a physical sense in such countries—or the US—you probably have to get back to work while a pandemic rages all around.

And this might kill you.

[Cover photo: Yawar Nazir/Getty]

Tesla's million mile battery →

I’ve talked before about how amazing Tesla’s current batteries are.

Now, from Bloomberg:

“The Chinese behemoth that makes electric-car batteries for Tesla Inc. and Volkswagen AG developed a power pack that lasts more than a million miles -- an industry landmark and a potential boon for automakers trying to sway drivers to their EV models.

“Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. is ready to produce a battery that lasts 16 years and 2 million kilometers (1.24 million miles), Chairman Zeng Yuqun said in an interview at company headquarters in Ningde, southeastern China. Warranties on batteries currently used in electric cars cover about 150,000 miles or eight years.”

The average American drives 13,476 miles a year. If these up-and-coming batteries lasted “forever”, that’s like 92 years of driving!

Other stuff must start to go wrong with the battery for them to say it lasts “only” 16 years.

Still…

Interesting that everyone says that one of the reasons Tesla’s share price is so high is their massive lead in battery tech. Yet here, it’s made to seem like this new battery tech is available to the highest bidder, such as Volkswagen.

Digging a little deeper, in a Reuters article from about a month ago:

“The new “million mile” battery at the center of Tesla’s strategy was jointly developed with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Ltd (CATL) (300750.SZ) and deploys technology developed by Tesla in collaboration with a team of academic battery experts recruited by Musk, three people familiar with the effort said.”

So it seems more likely that though Volkswagen may also work with this same Chinese company, it still doesn’t have access to the same battery tech as Tesla.

Given the extremely murky world of Cobalt mining, it’s also good to see that:

“Tesla’s new batteries will rely on innovations such as low-cobalt and cobalt-free battery chemistries.”

It’s also fascinating how car batteries that don’t have enough charge left for relaxed driving are starting to be repurposed as home electricity storage systems.

Very cool.

[Cover photo: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg]

A new dawn in a post-Covid country. What have we learned so far? →

As some of you may know, I ended up in New Zealand as Covid-19 hit.

And there I am still.

Luckily for me, New Zealand locked down early, closed the borders, and mostly behaved.

Conclusion: today is the 23rd day with no new cases.

Who knows if this dodgy virus will get back in? But for the moment, life is back to some kind of “normal”.

“Back to normal” means cars, concerts, stadium sports, domestic flights, and… back to the office, yippee!

But is this really what we want to get back to?

Back to normal is roads filled with cars, and noise.

Back to normal is pretty sunsets. Because, air pollution has returned.

So are we ready for a brave new world?

Ummmmmm…

At the most, maybe little positive changes on the edges?

I just don’t think rich Capitalist countries—or perhaps any countries—are structured in a way that lets meaningful change stick its head through the door. The machine is simply waiting to drag us all in to its cogs again.

Money! Jobs! Holidays! SUV!

Slow, occasional change, is possible though.

It might be the best we can hope for.

Here’s a great article talking about what New Zealand temporarily “became” during lockdown. Here are some juicy titbits.

On streets:

“It's been such a delight to see the streets reclaimed by people, safe from the tonnes of steel usually barrelling along them. I've seen parents walking and children riding down the middle of streets in complete safety, stopping for long, two-metres-removed chats with neighbours and friends. No cars in sight. 

Again that begs a question: why is it so novel for people to be the dominant user of our roads? We've designed our suburbs to give primacy to the 'needs' of cars. That doesn't work for people. For us.”

It’s oh, so still:

“It's oh so quiet. Just as a fish isn't familiar with the concept of water, we'd be forgiven for not noticing the continual noise that forms the backdrop to our days. Then it all stopped. No traffic on the roads or in the air, no rushing about. Back to the old modes of transport – walking, cycling, running, skating. And something else – a peace, a tranquility that, like dark skies, seems so natural and beneficial. Birds chirping. Wind puffing. Surf booming in the distance.”

“I wasn't expecting the quiet to have such a profound effect on me. Since it did, I've been wondering how to keep that alive…” [as life goes back to “normal”]

Walking up the middle of suburban Auckland streets at night without even the sound of a single car was pretty trippy.

So where “could” we go from here?

“But now, so soon, it seems we're emerging from this strange and passing time. That leaves us with a simple choice: we could file these silver linings away as merely pleasant surprises that were fleetingly, accidentally part of our lives. We could go back to how things were, and tell our kids about them when they're grown. 

“That would leave an obvious question unanswered: if the experience was so profound, why didn't anything more come of it?

“Or alternatively, we could take a moment – this moment – to press pause. We could acknowledge the power of these silver linings to gratify us and bring deeper meaning to our days – and consequently our lives. We could begin to take steps to embed them into our lives, or richer still, into our society.

“Just to be clear, that won't happen on an individual level. It's a collective opportunity, not a personal burden. You can't control the noise levels in my suburb, just like you can't walk safely down the middle of the road like you could a few weeks ago.”

That’s where the dreaming comes in.

But it’s nice to dream, right?

One final thought:

“Did you know that modern humans – the most materially rich of any moment in history – work harder than medieval peasants?”

Remember all this as you all head back to the daily slog.

Is there a better way to live, waiting to be discovered, out there?

Keep an eye open.

[Cover: The Peasant Wedding, by Flemish painter Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1567 or 1568]

How to stop an Australian mine, sort of →

As you may know, Australia keeps on building and planning massive new coal mines, despite the fact that burning coal is a pretty stupid thing to do if you want a planet you can live on.

Adani’s massive new mine under construction is one of my pet peeves. You can see what I’ve said before about this mine and the people trying to stop it here and here.

In those posts, we saw how Siemens has been pushed to stop helping to build necessary infrastructure for Adani’s mine.

The general idea is to find a way to get some big important company out of the loop, making it impossible to finish the mine in some way.

Another frontal attack involves trying to scare off insurers for the mine, as I talked about here.

In the last two days, there’s been a new flurry of revelations about the Mine’s insurers.

Someone from Marsh, the insurance brokers reportedly working with Adani since 2015, has leaked details of which international insurers are hiding in the shadows:

“Leaked invoices obtained by The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age reveal for the first time that insurers have agreed to cover work on the politically contentious coal mine. Liberty International Underwriters, HDI and XL Australia charged Adani for policies covering construction work for the mine and rail project in November last year, while reinsurance giant Aspen Re also covered work in January, the invoices show.”

From what I can see, this leak broke like a firecracker up the jacksie for these insurance companies.

Their PR departments must have pulled off all-nighters to get on top of this:

“Liberty International Underwriters is a subsidiary of Liberal Mutual Insurance, a Boston-based company that announced it would not insure the Adani mine in January last year.

“A spokesman for the company said prior to that announcement, Liberty had a policy for early works construction that expired in October 2019 and it was contractually obligated to cover construction defects for a further 24 months.

"We’re taking many steps that demonstrate our commitment to the shift toward clean energy, and we will continue to improve and build on the progress we’ve made," the Liberty spokesman said.

“HDI's parent company, German-based Talanx, inked a new policy in November prohibiting it from underwriting new thermal coal projects.

“An HDI spokesman said it did not cover the project directly but could not rule out having policies with contractors employed by Adani. "It is part of our fundamental business principles not to grant any new direct insurance cover to projects like the Adani Carmichael coalmine.

“A spokeswoman for XL Australia, a subsidiary of French insurance giant AXA, said it also had default cover related to an expired policy that would end in 2021.”

From all of this blurry language, it’s not entirely obvious who is still insuring the mine?

And I’m not thinking Adani is itching to release the current line-up.

For something a bit more positive related to this story:

“Australian insurers QBE, Suncorp and Allianz have each refused to underwrite work on the mine and have adopted climate policies that restrict exposure to companies that rely on fossil fuels. Australia's four major banks — ANZ, Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank and National Australia Bank — have also refused to lend to the project.”

Not to mention the slope, which is increasingly slippery:

“However, doubts about the financial viability of the project have intensified amid falling coal prices and rising output from renewables.”

I get the feeling this is just the start when it comes to new coal mines in rich countries. As other energy options become cheaper and the public increasingly decides that coal is for losers, expect a rapid lemmings-like cliff jump for anyone brave (or stupid) enough to propose a new mine.

[Cover photo: Brendan Beirne]

Wicked Wednesday: Mama bear →

Welcome to a new occasional post called ‘Wicked Wednesday’.

As ‘wicked’ can either mean ‘dastardly evil’ or ‘totally awesome dude’, you’ll have to check in to see which one it is.

Today it’s a ‘totally awesome dude’ kinda day.

“A few weeks ago, a nature photographer who lives near Yellowstone national park sent a four-word text message to Dr Jane Goodall, the British primatologist.

“Miraculously, she still lives!”

“The photographer, Thomas Mangelsen, was referring to a grizzly bear known as “399”, probably the most famous wild bruin in the world. At 24, not only is she one of the oldest grizzlies living outside a zoo, she has also continued having cubs to a venerable age, becoming a poster child for the recovery of bears in the greater Yellowstone ecosystem.”

Four new cubs. Amazing, and ridiculously cute.

Thomas D Mangelsen / mangelsen.com

What’s the deal with Yellowstone and protection?

“The population of grizzlies in the Yellowstone region was given protection under the Endangered Species Act in 1975 after their numbers dipped to less than 150, and scientists feared they could disappear altogether. But their recovery, thanks to habitat protection, crackdowns on poaching and a ban on hunting, is considered one of the greatest conservation triumphs in US history. Today, at least 700 grizzlies inhabit the region and, luring tourists, they have paid tangible economic dividends.

Here’s more on what’s been going on at Yellowstone since 1975. In particular, the reintroduction of wolves 25 years ago, still controversial, regenerated the whole park ecosystem, much the same way as introducing large foraging animals did at Knepp Estate in England (there’s more cool stuff on Knepp in my blog posts here and here).

Have a wicked day!

[Cover photo also by Thomas D Mangelsen / mangelsen.com]

Best ever use of an oil pipeline →

Check out this dude using an oil pipeline in a superior way:

His name is Armin Küpper and his “Pipeline Funk” was recorded in Mönchengladbach, Germany.

I also love how he came by bike with a beer and a packed lunch.

Sehr gut!

Double-sided solar panels →

From Cell press via Euronews:

“Double sided solar panels which collect light on both sides and move to follow the sun’s position produce over a third more energy than standard systems.”

The sun tracking part involves:

“…technology which uses global weather information from NASA to tilt the panels so they are in the best position to get the most sun throughout the day.”

I’m all for double-sided if it’s cost effective and worth the CO2 emissions required to cover the “bottom side” of the solar panels with more solar panels.

To give an idea, upward-pointing solar panels typically need 6 months to a couple of years to become “carbon positive”. That is, to output enough solar energy themselves to “cover” the (mostly non-renewable CO2-emitting) energy that was required to build them.

I’d imagine It’d take much longer for the underside of a solar panel to become carbon positive.

As for the moving to follow the sun’s position, you have to be careful, because moving parts break down, require maintenance, require skilled technicians.

I’m doubting it’s worth it in the end. Otherwise, you’d already see moving solar panels left, right and centre on the houses in your neighbourhood.

I haven’t. More details here.

For those who are really really really interested in solar panels, here’s the full scientific article talking about double-sided sun-tracking solar panels. I get the feeling it’s all a bit pie-in-the-sky at the moment.

Later later.

[Cover image from Pixabay]

Emissions are massively down but CO2 keeps moovin' on up. Why? →

From the Washington Post:

“The coronavirus-related economic downturn may have set off a sudden plunge in global greenhouse gas emissions, but another crucial metric for determining the severity of global warming — the amount of greenhouse gases actually in the air — just hit a record high.

“According to readings from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the amount of CO2 in the air in May 2020 hit an average of slightly greater than 417 parts per million (ppm). This is the highest monthly average value ever recorded, and is up from 414.7 ppm in May of last year.”

The highest monthly average in likely three million years.

We are the champions!

Champagnnnnnnne!

Here’s the pretty picture of this year’s record:

Not cool, people. Not cool.

And confusing to boot. You mean a 17% drop in CO2 emissions didn’t do diddly squat? What the flying frick is this sweet hell?

Well, even with a big coronavirus-led drop, humans doing human shit are still producing too much CO2 for the planet’s systems to deal with, so CO2 is still accumulating in the sky. Hanging out with the ozone, shooting the shit.

“The buildup of CO2 is a bit like trash in a landfill. As we keep emitting, it keeps piling up,” said Ralph Keeling, who directs Scripps’s carbon dioxide monitoring program, and whose late father, Charles David Keeling, began measurements at the Mauna Loa Observatory in Hawaii in 1958.”

So, what would we have to do to see a real downward blip in the graph?

“According to a Scripps news release announcing the findings, CO2 emissions reductions on the order of 20 to 30 percent would need to be sustained for six to 12 months in order for the increase in atmospheric CO2 to slow in a detectable way.”

Crikey!

[Cover image of CO2 by Jynto.]

End days for coal in the US →

A short follow-up to my earlier post on the dramatic drop in coal use in the US over recent years.

“Solar, wind and other renewable sources have toppled coal in energy generation in the United States for the first time in over 130 years, with the coronavirus pandemic accelerating a decline in coal that has profound implications for the climate crisis.

“Not since wood was the main source of American energy in the 19th century has a renewable resource been used more heavily than coal, but 2019 saw a historic reversal, according to US government figures.”

Mark Twain is no doubt thinking of a witty line or two to commemorate this moment from beyond the grave:

“Coal consumption fell by 15%, down for the sixth year in a row, while renewables edged up by 1%. This meant renewables surpassed coal for the first time since at least 1885, a year when Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and America’s first skyscraper was erected in Chicago.”

Here’s a cool plot from the Guardian showing coal falling down a hill, and renewables climbing up to meet it:

How much is coal crashing?

“The ongoing collapse of coal would have been nearly unthinkable a decade ago, when the fuel source accounted for nearly half of America’s generated electricity. That proportion may fall to under 20% this year, with analysts predicting a further halving within the coming decade.”

We just shouldn’t forget that some of this coal is being replaced by natural gas, which is also a fossil fuel, even though it pollutes only about half as much as coal does.

“The coal sector has been beset by a barrage of problems, predominantly from cheap, abundant gas that has displaced it as a go-to energy source. The Covid-19 outbreak has exacerbated this trend. With plunging electricity demand following the shutting of factories, offices and retailers, utilities have plenty of spare energy to choose from and coal is routinely the last to be picked because it is more expensive to run than gas, solar, wind or nuclear.”

The end of coal for electricity generation in the US looks pretty set in stone to me.

[Cover photo: The Four Corners Power Plant, Waterflow, New Mexico. It has announced it will close. Susan Montoya Bryan/AP]

Renewables are cheaper than chips →

One of those weirdly framed articles where you wonder if the headline writer misunderstood the author. Here’s the headline:

“Energy firms urged to mothball coal plants as cost of solar tumbles”.

Whereas the first two paragraphs are:

“Building new solar power projects would generate cheaper electricity than running most of the world’s existing coal power plants, according to a global renewable energy report.

“New figures have revealed that more than half of the world’s coal plants could be undercut by the falling cost of new large-scale solar projects, which are now more than 80% cheaper to build than in 2010.”

Which is not the same thing as urging firms to mothball coal plants.

Not to mention the fact that the sun doesn’t shine at night, which the headline writer may have overlooked.

In the end, the article is actually about the falling cost of renewables, which is good.

“In under a decade the cost of large-scale solar power has fallen by more than 80% while onshore wind has fallen by almost 40% and offshore wind has declined by almost 30%.” 

Yay.

[Cover photo: World’s largest solar plant at Moura, Portugal. Universal Images Group/Getty Images]

Using a pandemic to reconstruct with green fairy lights →

Among other things, this blog is a time machine.

It only lets you go backwards though.

See what was going on in the world at this or that date.

See what decisions were made, missed, avoided.

In today’s entry for posterity, we record the budget decisions made by little New Zealand in the midst of a worldwide pandemic.

For context, stupid amounts of money are being printed to get the country on its feet again.

Like everywhere.

Some think it’s a perfectly good time to reconstruct the economy with much more focus on the environment than before.

That “some” doesn’t exactly include the government.

“In announcing the 2020 Budget, which creates a $50 billion Covid-19 recovery and relief fund and pumps billions into health, infrastructure and wage subsidy extensions, Jacinda Ardern said, "There are few things that I think I will ever consider as being outside the bounds of possibility any more."

“One of those few things appears to be meaningful action on climate change.”

To be fair, there were a few good things in the budget, including:

“The biggest investment is $1.2 billion for rail, a third of which is earmarked for replacing the Interislander ferries. Alongside this, $56 million has been appropriated to improve insulation in 9,000 Kiwi homes - leaving 591,000 still under-insulated. Around $100 million will go to forestry and the Emissions Trading Scheme and another $34 million to New Zealand's participation in international research to reduce agricultural emissions. Lastly, $30 million will be invested in replacing coal boilers in schools, hospitals and other public buildings.”

$1.2 billion doesn’t sound too bad, right?

“Compare that to $5.3 billion for roads in the Government's January infrastructure spend, or its $400 million tourism industry bailout and $1 billion Air New Zealand bailout, neither with any sustainability strings attached.”

Hmmm…

In Europe, you can force airlines to swallow climate conditions on bailouts, because Europe has these things called “trains” in competition with planes.

New Zealand has these things called roads, plus three expensive “mainline” tourist trains plodding around like shiny dinosaurs at about fifty kilometres an hour, perfectly useless for nearly everyone except tourists, and expensive to boot!

What is encouraging though is that there’s no shortage of activists, academics and engaged citizens in New Zealand with excellent ideas for the future:

“In the weeks leading up to the Budget, climate activists and academics - and the Climate Change Commission - pushed for serious investment in climate solutions. Many offered possible policies, allowing us a glimpse at what a truly transformational Budget would look like.

“To begin with, it would still contain the environmental highlight of Budget 2020: $1.1 billion for conservation jobs, including pest control, uprooting wilding pines, planting native trees and cleaning up waterways.

“Then it would tackle emissions with vigour. The $56 million investment in the Labour-Greens Warmer Kiwi Homes project would be boosted to take care of the hundreds of thousands of houses that will still be under-insulated after Budget 2020's commitment.

"Oil Change International research has shown that energy efficiency projects like home insulation deliver more jobs for every government dollar spent, internationally, even than investment in renewable energies, which in turn gives more jobs per dollar of government spend than investment in fossil fuels," Oil Change International senior campaigner David Tong told Newsroom.

“Thousands of New Zealanders could be put to work mounting solar panels on state houses, schools, hospitals and other public buildings, allowing the country to fully decarbonise its electricity generation. Research and production of batteries to store excess energy for dry years when hydroelectricity plants produce less could employ hundreds more.

“The country's biggest polluter, agriculture, could be targeted for serious sustainable funding, through regenerative agriculture investment.

"We would love to see investment in moving from an emissions-intense, high-yield, low-value model of agriculture to a model of agriculture that regenerates nature, lowers emissions and provides better results for farmers' back pockets," Tong said.

“The Government could work harder to electrify private transport, New Zealand's second-biggest polluter. Alternately, it could adopt literally any meaningful transport emissions policy, given it currently has none.”

See?

All that’s missing is political will, including from the Left.

Come on New Zealand. Be a star!

[Cover photo: Sciadopitys]

That time the UK had a pandemic and too much sunshine at the same time →

It’s all go in the UK, I tell you!

Due to lower energy demand during the ongoing coronavirus shitshow:

“Hundreds of renewable energy projects may be asked to turn off this weekend to avoid overloading the grid as the UK’s electricity demand plummets to record lows.

“Britain’s demand for electricity is forecast to tumble to a fifth below normal levels due to the spring bank holiday and the shutdown of shops, bars and restaurants mandated by the coronavirus lockdown.”

No-one could have predicted sunshine and coronavirus happening at the same time in Britain.

No-one.

There may be more solar power produced than required at certain times in upcoming days there.

However, the UK’s power supply is still backed up (and to be honest constantly partly powered) by natural gas all through the day. Here’s the last 24 hours for instance:

From EnergyDashboard.

You can see that even at the peak solar and wind power times of the day, natural gas keeps chugging along at the bottom, like an evil shadow.

What I don’t currently know is if there’s a “lower limit” to the natural gas “input” into the UK’s system. Can it be completely closed off like coal can be?

To be investigated further…

(As I write this post, the UK has now gone 44 days without coal! Check out the counter here to see if the record is still standing.)

In this frankly flabbergasting context, the UK is nevertheless full steam ahead with new solar developments. A 900 acre one is Kent is about to break ground.

It’ll provide enough clean electricity to power 91,000 homes.

During the day.

Why on earth should the Brits be building new solar capacity when—as you’ve seen above—they’ll have to turn some of what they already have off in the next few days?

Welcome to intermittency, green power’s dastardly twin.

The sun don’t shine at night, and the wind does whatever the hell it wants, whenever it wants.

This is of no help to Bob who wants to cook his vegetarian pizza after sunset on a windless day.

Currently, Bob’s best friends are nuclear, hydro, and good ol’ natural gas.

(Bob’s already said, ‘Hasta la vista baby’ to coal. Bob is a good man underneath his gruff exterior.)

Intermittency is a big problem in the renewable energy world.

This is why you’ll probably be hearing more and more about battery storage for renewable energy.

You pump excess solar and wind energy into batteries during the good times, and siphon it back out during the bad. For the new solar project in Kent:

“A boom in battery projects could mean the electricity generated by solar panels during the day could help to keep lights on at night too, helping to cut carbon emissions and domestic energy bills.”

Batteries have their own issues too, around scarcity of key minerals and the impact of mining these—on both the people doing the mining and the environment.

We’ll leave that debate for another day when I’ve researched the costs and benefits of battery storage a bit more. Contact me if you have some great sources on this subject.

Aside from batteries, there’s another trick you can use to deal with intermittency, if you have hydro energy sources.

Basically, you can use excess renewable power to pump water back up behind the hydro turbines, keeping it up there until it’s magical power-bringing electrons are once again needed, bursting back into action with another toboggan ride down the pipes.

The technical term for this is Pumped-storage Hydroelectricity.

Expect to hear more about this.

Murky water in clean green New Zealand →

[Bit of a rambling one today. Hope some of it makes sense. May have overdosed on nitrates from the last swim I had.]

Being stuck in New Zealand during the coronavirus pandemic has given me time to think about where the country and its environmental image is headed.

it’s a tricky one, and like many things, following the cold hard cash and the desire to retain living standards are fruitful paths to follow in the quest for truth.

New Zealand in 2020 clings with torn fingernails to its clean green paradise mythology, hiding away in a far-flung corner of the map.

Sometimes it’s so hidden, it’s not even on the map.

Tourism advertising propagates this nirvana myth to a perfectly gullible planet.

But even just the flying to New Zealand from Europe is a full twelve months’ CO2 emissions for a typical European. We’re talking six tonnes of CO2 for the round trip: six thousand kg.

Large parts of New Zealand do remain “green”, whether it be “environmentally”—one third of the country is protected land, or merely the colour of the grass: green sheep farms and green beef farms and green dairy farms. (more like brown at the moment: drought in the North)

41% of New Zealand’s total land area is sheep, beef, and dairy farming.

One of the reasons the country slips under the “Jesus what an environmental catastrophe” radar is because there are only five million people with massive per capita emissions, rather than five hundred million people with massive per capita emissions.

India is less than two tonnes CO2-equivalent/person/year.

The world average is around five tonnes/person/year.

New Zealand is around eighteen tonnes/person/year.

35% of these CO2-equivalent emissions are from farmed animals belching and farting (methane, much more potent than CO2).

The vast majority of the resulting “animal products” are shipped overseas to make muchos dolares to keep living standards up to where kiwis expect them to be.

[Homework question: Is it worth it? Choose your own definition of “worth” before answering.]

Which brings us to the water.

It’s a story so ghastly story in kiwiland, it has its own Wikipedia page.

Basically, massive animal farming leads to massive water pollution.

Nitrogen, phosphorus, sediment from erosion of farmed land, etc.

It’s a real battle:

“In 2016, a controversial video by Greenpeace highlighted the contribution of dairy farming to river pollution, stating that over 60 percent of monitored rivers are unsafe to swim in. This video advertisement was appealed by DairyNZ, but the Advertising Standards Authority found in favour of Greenpeace.”

The level of greenwashing is truly stupefying in New Zealand.

The farming sector runs ads all the time insinuating they are “on to it”, “cleaning up their act”, etc.

But it’s mostly hot methane:

“The latest state of the environment report, released yesterday, shows the national dairy herd grew by 70 percent between 1994 and 2017, increasing the level of nitrogen getting into waterways.

“The report said 94 percent of the river lengths in urban areas are not swimmable, that figure is 82 percent for rural river lengths.

“It also found that between 1996 and 2012 more than 70,000 hectares of native vegetation was converted to pasture, forestry and urban areas.

“Greenpeace spokesperson Steve Abel said the report painted a comprehensively damning picture of the dairy industry, which is harming biodiversity, rivers and lakes.

"Dairy bosses have been telling us they're well on the way to cleaning up their act, but the environmental statistics show the truth - the biggest degradations in New Zealand's environment in recent years have been caused by the dairy industry," Mr Abel said.

"This latest report from the Ministry for the Environment is a withering exposé of dairy's part in trashing the planet."

There have been plenty of bollocks-based pledges and the like from these “reformed” farmers.

But very few facts on the ground.

Most New Zealanders are rightly peeved off that their rivers are now so poo-friendly.

But there’s still not much biting of the golden hand money cow feeding clean green New Zealand with taxed profit dollars so far.

The idea that maybe less animal farming is a good idea in the scheme of things remains an abstract pipe dream.

New water rules are definitely on the way though, despite all the valiant greenwashing.

Some farmers say they may have to give up if the strictest water rules come in.

Isn’t that the point though? If you’re polluting the fuck out of a river, and you can’t find a way to stop it, shouldn’t you have to stop farming?

Why is this even framed as a debate?

Right, time to go hug a tree and watch a river flow past.

Without dipping my feet in.

Bye for now.

[Cover photo: Air West Coast/ 123rf]

You'll never look at whales in the same way again →

This is one hell of a crazy climate story.

“In the depths of the ocean, and out of sight for most of us, there’s a quiet miracle happening. Many humpback whale populations, previously devastated by commercial whaling, are making a comeback.”

I can already see you asking: ‘Why is this a climate story? Have you lost your mind (again), Kevin?’

Probably. But still:

“On average a single [humpback] whale stores around 33 tonnes of CO2. If we consider only the Antarctic humpback whales that breed in Brazil, protecting this population alone has resulted in 813,780 tonnes of CO2 being stored in the deep sea. That’s around twice the yearly CO2 emissions of a small country like Bermuda or Belize, according to 2018 emissions data. That’s because when a whale dies naturally, it exports carbon stored in its gigantic body to the deep sea, keeping it locked up for centuries.”

What the actual awesome frickity-flip is this mind-blowing transmogrification?!

It is now time to bring out the “Whale pump”:

“Wherever whales, the largest living things on earth, are found, so are populations of some of the smallest, phytoplankton. These microscopic creatures not only contribute at least 50 percent of all oxygen to our atmosphere, they do so by capturing about 37 billion metric tons of CO2, an estimated 40 percent of all CO2 produced. To put things in perspective, we calculate that this is equivalent to the amount of CO2 captured by 1.70 trillion trees—four Amazon forests’ worth—or 70 times the amount absorbed by all the trees in the US Redwood National and State Parks each year. More phytoplankton means more carbon capture.”

This is where whale poop enters the picture (you knew it was coming).

Yep, it’s whale poop that feeds the pump:

“It turns out that whales’ waste products contain exactly the substances—notably iron and nitrogen—phytoplankton need to grow. Whales bring minerals up to the ocean surface through their vertical movement, called the ‘whale pump’.”

Here’s a pretty picture of the whale poop pump: (click to zoom)

Try and get those ‘buoyant fecal plumes’ out of your mind faster than Cotton Eye Joe.

I dare you.

Where did you come from, where did you go? Where did you come from, Cotton-Eye Joe?

Sorry. Focus Kevin, focus.

If your mind still isn’t entirely blown, this might help:

“This is where the whales come in. If whales were allowed to return to their pre-whaling number of 4 to 5 million—from slightly more than 1.3 million today—it could add significantly to the amount of phytoplankton in the oceans and to the carbon they capture each year. At a minimum, even a 1 percent increase in phytoplankton productivity thanks to whale activity would capture hundreds of millions of tons of additional CO2 a year, equivalent to the sudden appearance of 2 billion mature trees. Imagine the impact over the average lifespan of a whale, more than 60 years.”

Two billion trees a year! Madness.

Basically, we’d be stupid not to turn the oceans over to whales for like forever now thank you very much Jesus.

I’m now taking bets on the first airline to switch from trees to whales for their dodgy carbon offset magical party trick schemes.

Let’s get those whales pooping and procreating and Make America Great Again!

Or something like that.

[Cover photo source unclear. It is either from Getty or ISTOCK/JAMESTEOHART]

The unintended consequences of kicking plastic in the goonies →

From the Guardian:

“A biochemicals company in the Netherlands hopes to kickstart investment in a pioneering project that hopes to make plastics from plant sugars rather than fossil fuels.

“The plans, devised by renewable chemicals company Avantium, have already won the support of beer-maker Carlsberg, which hopes to sell its pilsner in a cardboard bottle lined with an inner layer of plant plastic.”

Ok. From the outside this seems like a good thing. Less microplastics, less pollution, right?

Yay?

“Avantium’s plant plastic is designed to be resilient enough to contain carbonate drinks. Trials have shown that the plant plastic would decompose in one year using a composter, and a few years longer if left in normal outdoor conditions. But ideally, it should be recycled, said Van Aken.

“The bio-refinery plans to break down sustainable plant sugars into simple chemical structures that can then be rearranged to form a new plant-based plastic – which could appear on supermarket shelves by 2023.”

What will this stuff be made from?

“The path-finder project will initially make a modest 5,000 tonnes of plastic every year using sugars from corn, wheat or beets. However, Avantium expects its production to grow as demand for renewable plastics climbs.”

Ok, so let’s get this straight. First you have to grow the raw materials. Where? In newly cleared parts of the Amazon?

In your back yard?

Then you have to make these bottles. Currently that means using a mixture of renewable energy and fossil fuels.

Then you can chuck the used bottle out the window, but “ideally” it should be recycled.

More energy needed to do that.

Let’s not pretend these companies don’t understand the environmental impact of all this. They have to make it seem like they have the finger on the pulse:

“In time, Avantium plans to use plant sugars from sustainable sourced biowaste so that the rise of plant plastic does not affect the global food supply chain.”

Why not do it from day one if you think it’s possible?

What a cop-out!

And all the time strenuously avoiding any mention of the underlying problem: buying too much shit in plastic containers (and containers in general, really).

If a bottle of Coke cost fifty bucks, there’d be a lot of people drinking water out of taps again.

This is just one more example of those price/convenience/environmental destruction tradeoffs we know so well.

The environment rarely wins.

I remain skeptical.

[Cover photo: Diego Azubel/EPA]

An accidental trip to Australia →

Today I start off blabbering about tidal turbines but end up in a completely different place.

Stick with me.

It all begins with this speculative article out of Australia:

“Australia is famous for its beaches and exhilarating surf. But the ocean offers more than just a surfer's paradise: its tides are also a source of renewable energy.

“Among those harnessing this tidal potential is Sydney-based Mako Energy. The company makes underwater turbines ranging between two and four meters in diameter. One turbine operating in constantly flowing water can produce enough electricity to power up to 20 homes.”

Here’s a video from Mako Energy showing how their turbines work:

Sounds interesting.

And why does Australia need ideas like this again? Well…

“Renewable energy accounted for just 6% of Australia's primary energy consumption and 17% of its electricity generation in the 2017-2018 fiscal year, according to the country's Department of Environment and Energy. This is partly because Australia has abundant and low-cost coal resources.”

Pretty low numbers for such a rich country.

But. Coal.

Solar and wind are definitely on the uptick though. Big ongoing investment in these in Australia.

However, in data from just one year earlier:

“Renewable sources contributed 39,087 GWh (15%) of total electricity generation in 2017, a decrease of 7% compared with 2016.”

So it “seems” that the ongoing increase in renewable electricity generation is not leading to a decrease in fossil fuel-based electricity generation.

However, it turns out this is not really true. It’s a mistake to fixate on the change from one specific year to another.

It would be especially misleading in this case. Here’s the electricity generation data for Australia from 2005-2020 (You can click on it to pop-it-up).

Data from OpenNEM.

It’s very clear that solar and wind are eating into the total, and also that the total is pretty stable over the last decade or so.

It’s brown coal (pretty awful stuff) that’s fading as renewables rise up like reborn kangaroos.

However, again, don’t forget that electricity generation is only a subset of overall energy generation. Electricity generation says nothing about the coal and gas used in industry, or the fact that nearly every car and truck on Australia’s roads still runs on fossil fuels.

It is but one part of the puzzle. As mentioned above, Australia still runs on 94% fossil fuels for its overall energy consumption.

Not a number you’d want to tattoo on your chest.

Final thought for the day: We’re not out of that Eucalyptus grove yet, cobber.

[Cover photo courtesy of Mako Energy]

Bye bye coal, hello wind! →

Ten years ago, coal was the source of nearly half of the US’s electricity.

From the New York Times today:

“The United States is on track to produce more electricity this year from renewable power than from coal for the first time on record.”

Yay?

“And it comes despite the Trump administration’s three-year push to try to revive the ailing industry by weakening pollution rules on coal-burning power plants.”

Doh!

“Those efforts, however, failed to halt the powerful economic forces that have led electric utilities to retire hundreds of aging coal plants since 2010 and run their remaining plants less frequently.”

Simply put, coal is now too expensive.

Surreal, but true.

“The cost of building large wind farms has declined more than 40 percent in that time, while solar costs have dropped more than 80 percent. And the price of natural gas, a cleaner-burning alternative to coal, has fallen to historic lows as a result of the fracking boom.”

Today’s elephant in the room is brought to you by natural gas.

Natural gas is still a fossil fuel. It just emits less CO2 than coal, that’s all.

About half as much.

Around two thirds of the slack from the drop in coal use in the US over the last decade was taken up by natural gas, one third by renewables.

The overall total electricity generation was pretty much unchanged over those ten years though.

This is therefore a true drop in CO2 emissions from electricity production.

Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah!

[Cover photo: Libby March for The New York Times. It’s a photo of New York State’s last coal burning plant before being shut down in March 2020.]

Wind in Iowa, bok choy in China →

Good news out of Iowa and Kansas:

“A new report from the American Wind Energy Association says wind is now the largest single source of electricity in Iowa.

“According to the trade association's Wind Powers America 2019 Annual Report, Iowa is now generating more than 10,000 megawatts of wind energy, accounting for more than 40% of the state's electricity.

“Wind became the leading source of electricity in both Iowa and Kansas this year, making them the first states to reach that benchmark. Previously, coal-fired power generation had been Iowa's main source of electricity.”

Yay!

Bad news out of China:

“Some airlines have been offering wild deals -- dubbed "bok choy-price" tickets by local media because they're as cheap as vegetables -- on domestic routes to attract fliers.

“For example, China Southern Airlines' Xinjiang branch is offering multiple routes at just 10% to 20% of their original prices.”

Boo!

I take it as given that humanity will learn sweet fuck all from the historic drop in CO2 emissions we are currently experiencing.

[Cover photo: Karl-Heinz Wellmann]

A New Zealand dairy farmer taking his farm back to nature →

You may remember my blog post on rewilding Britain and my review of Isabella Tree’s book Wilding about setting free a British farm to revert back to in-yo-face nature.

Here’s a New Zealand story in that spirit.

It’s a story about Mark, a dairy farmer down in the south of the South Island.

“In mid 2017, dairy farmer Mark Anderson sat down at his South Otago kitchen table with a rep from a chemical fertiliser company for a regular scheduled catch up, as he did every month or so. But this time the conversation went a little different than usual.”

After being diagnosed with an auto-immune disease, he took a deep dive into healthy living, agricultural systems, and organic regenerative agriculture.

He was also bothered by the need to put more and more synthetic products on to the land, not to mention the human costs of working in intensive agriculture, like burn-out and marriage break-ups.

As you can imagine, with all this stuff swishing around in his brain, the fire-side chat with the rep went spiffingly.

“As a trusted source of information about how to run his farm, he asked the rep about how chemical fertilisers interact with the healthy biological functioning of soils, and what he thought about those interactions. After that conversation Anderson never heard from the fertiliser rep again.”

“Don't blame the reps, they're just telling you what they've learned from the industry. But it woke me up to how at the end of the day, they're just running a business.”

He then took the cow(s) by the horns, so to speak.

“He took the recommendations of his friend and neighbour Hamish Bielski who had begun practising the five soil health principles and sent him YouTube videos on regenerative agriculture and holistic grazing. He read books written by agroecologist Nicole Masters and microbiologist David Montgomery and Soil Food Web founder Elaine Ingham. He started following the research of highly influential regenerative farmer Gabe Brown in North Dakota, attended a seminar with soil ecologist and soil carbon expert Dr Christine Jones, and went to a woolshed session with humble Australian regenerative sheep and cropping extraordinaire Colin Seis.“

“He has learned a lot from his mentor Siobhan Griffin - an American dairy farmer who successfully transitioned her dairy farm in New York state from being one of the first certified organic dairy farms in the state in 1997, to using regenerative grazing to sequester carbon. She has since moved to South Otago to become a regenerative farming coach.”

Good to see the word “YouTube” not associated with the phrase “conspiracy theory” from time to time.

In practice his farming is still full-on, but the processes around it are changing, month by month, year by year.

“Anderson has split his herd of 750 dairy cows in two, and cut down to once a day milking to focus on regenerative grazing techniques. He has put in place a longer grazing rotation on his paddocks to maximise solar energy harvesting (photosynthesis), moving the herd up to five times a day.  The cows eat the top third or so of the plants, which contain the highest levels of energy, they trample about another third of the pasture into the ground which helps feed the soil biology and create a circular system, and they leave about one third which may be soiled to regrow rapidly.”

In the spirit of Isabella Tree’s Knepp Estate with its large grazing stomping digging ecosystem-building animals:

“Anderson explains his approach aims to mimic the grazing patterns of large herds of ruminant animals across the pre-colonial American prairies and Eastern European and Mongolian steppes.”

It’s a long path to regenerative farming though. You have to be pretty pig-headed:

“While Anderson thinks it will take another five years of transition to have a truly regenerative system, early results are promising within a short space of time. Recent soil tests taken to 15cm have seen levels of both potassium and mineralisable nitrogen double. Other soil nutrients such as calcium, magnesium, sodium and organic sulphur have increased between 5-10 percent, a consequence of improved plant diversity and grazing management alone.”

Other great developments:

“Within the past year, organic matter in the soil has increased by 1 percent. Given that a 1 percent increase in organic matter can boost the soil's water holding capacity by anywhere from 144,000 to upwards of 180,000 litres of water per hectare, Anderson's farm is now becoming considerably more resistant to periods of drought.”

I say good on him.

The elephant in the room is that animal farming in New Zealand is a fully-fledged environmental catastrophe.

The belching and farting of New Zealand’s cows and sheep (methane) works out to 28 million tonnes a year in CO2-equivalent emissions.

This is already 5.6 tonnes of CO2 per capita! And that’s without even getting to any other emissions (of which there are shitloads).

Most of the result of this sheep and dairy farming is exported overseas (beef, lamb, milk) because cold hard cash is currently valued much higher than decreasing CO2 emissions in New Zealand.

So Mark’s farm is a fantastic step for the planet’s biodiversity and the soil’s health as a whole, but if the number of belches and farts stays the same, we’re still accelerating towards the wall.

I’m sure Mark realises this and has plans afoot to continue to be part of the solution, not part of the problem.