By Chris Mooney
Just before the most important global climate meeting in years, (click here) a definitive United Nations report has found that the world is well off course on its promises to cut greenhouse gas emissions - and may have even farther to go than previously thought.
Seven major countries, including the United States, are well behind achieving the pledges they made in Paris just three years ago, the report finds, with little time left to adopt much more ambitious policy measures to curb their emissions.
"We have new evidence that countries are not doing enough," said Philip Drost, head of the steering committee for the United Nations Environment Programme's (UNEP) annual "emissions gap" report, released in Paris today.
That verdict is likely to weigh heavily during a UN climate meeting that begins in Poland next week, where countries are scheduled to discuss how well they are, or aren't, living up to the goals set in the landmark 2015 the Paris climate agreement....
...But the new UNEP document presents considerably more direct policy analysis and perhaps even some finger-pointing. The document goes through G20 member nations one by one, listing which ones are failing to live up to the promises they made in Paris three years ago (promises that, themselves, are far too little to keep the planet's warming in check). Together, the G20 countries account for 78 per cent of the globe's emissions.
Seven of these countries - Argentina, Australia, Canada, the Republic of Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and the United States - are off track to meet their Paris promises for the year 2030, the UNEP report finds. So is the entire European Union.
Several other G20 countries - Russia, India and Turkey - are already on course to exceed their Paris promises by a good measure, but the report questions whether this may in part because they have aimed their ambitions too low....
Next year is 2020. That was the year when the world was supposed to see a leveling out of CO2 and CO2 equivalent emissions to assist in reaching the goals of 2030. METHANE pollution has to end. There is no doubt that methane is adding to the difficulty in ending the climate crisis.
The savings in the Blueprint are compliments of the Union of Concerned Scientists.
January 3, 2019
By Mark Specht
...California’s program (click here) has three different types of resource adequacy requirements, each designed to keep the grid operating under different types of conditions:
System Capacity: These requirements help keep the lights on during the annual “peak load,” when California uses the most electricity. Peak load usually happens on a hot summer day when everyone turns on their air conditioning. The exact requirements are determined by forecasting the next year’s peak load and adding 15% just to be safe.
Local Capacity: These requirements help keep the lights on in certain local areas during grid emergencies. For example, a grid emergency might entail a combination of a transmission line to a local area going down and a power plant in the local area going out. Different requirements are determined for each local area by studying worst-case-scenario grid emergencies in each area.
Flexible Capacity: These requirements help keep the lights on in the evening when solar generation is winding down and people are starting to use more electricity after coming home from work. Because solar generation tapers off in the evenings when electricity demand is still high, these requirements ensure we have enough flexible resources that can start producing electricity quickly. These requirements are different for each month of the year, and they are based on the largest forecasted three-hour “ramp,” or increase in electricity demand....
There is no turning back the hands of time. The damage is done and it is up to people to protect their planet by understanding and acting to reduce all greenhouse gases.
December 12, 2018
By John Bowden
A researcher and former deputy chair (click here) of a U.N.-backed panel on climate change warned top industrialized nations against disagreeing with a report detailing the dangers of climate change, contending that "so-called superpower" cannot argue with science.
Jean-Pascal Ypersele, a climatologist and professor at Université catholique de Louvain in Belgium, told The Associated Press that countries should do everything possible to work towards the reports goal of reigning in carbon emissions by 2030, at which point scientists say damage to the climate will be irreversible unless urgent action has been taken.
“Nobody, even the so-called superpowers, can negotiate with the laws of physics,” Ypersele told the AP.
Ypersele also said that the 2030 target for controlling carbon emissions and dramatically reducing the use of fossil fuels was non-negotiable....
