Lord Nicholas Stern, Senior British Economist

Some Ten (10) years now from the Stern report: a low-carbon future is the ‘only one available’

Economist says green development is the only route to global economic growth and points to China leading the world on climate change action

From an Article by Damian Carrington, The Guardian, October 27, 2016

Clean, green development is the sole route to future global economic growth, according to British economist Lord Nicholas Stern, with a continuation of polluting, high-carbon growth only leading to self-destruction.

There is a strong argument that China is now leading the world in action on climate change, Stern said, making the country both a competitor and inspiration for other nations.

Stern, speaking ahead of two lectures to mark the 10th anniversary of the highly influential Stern report, said the cost of not acting to halt global warming had risen while the costs of doing so had fallen.

The 2006 Stern report, commissioned by the UK government, found that the economic damage caused by unchecked climate change could be 5-20% of global GDP each year, but that cutting carbon emissions would cost just 1% of GDP. The report warned against delaying action, but this has not been heeded, said Stern on Thursday.

“We have delayed action,” he said. “The potential damages now look bigger than I suggested then. In that sense I underplayed the consequences of not getting on with it. But the costs of action are a good deal lower than I indicated then, in that technical progress has been faster that we thought. The cost of solar power [for example] is not far off a factor of 10 less than in 2006.”

Today, he said, a low-carbon future is the sole option for prosperity. “It is the only one available and it is a very exciting growth story,” Stern said. “Any attempt to follow high-carbon growth will eventually be self destructive due to the very hostile environment it creates. There was an old alleged tension between growth on the one hand and climate responsibility on the other, but it’s a completely fake horse race.”

Stern said other drivers of economic growth, such as using interest rates, tax changes and structural reforms, had limited potential. “Sustainable development of infrastructure and cities is the growth story of the future,” he said. “We are winning the arguments intellectually and politically, but it has all been much too slow.”

Stern foresees economies in which people travel using efficient self-driving cars, bicycles and walking, homes and businesses are powered by green energy, materials are widely recycled and ultrafast broadband supports home working. “It is a very attractive future if we just put our minds to it,” he said. “Cities where you can’t move and breathe make no sense.”

Stern said China could be seen as the leader in climate action today. “You can make a strong case for that,” he said, noting Chinese coal use peaked two years ago. “You have radical change in energy and very big structural change in the economy, moving very strongly towards service sectors and high-tech.”

He said a key driver is the threat to China from fossil fuel burning, both in terms of climate change impacts, particularly droughts and floods, and air pollution.

“I wish the whole world had known [in 2006] how big an issue air pollution was. We kill millions a year, so delay on that has resulted in probably the deaths of tens of millions of people,” he said. “The double gain – both reducing the risk of climate change and reducing air pollution – is now seen as a very powerful and attractive argument for action. This argument has been particularly strong in its attraction in China, which has probably moved the most in the last 10 years.”

Stern said China was also driven by the desire to be the biggest player in the green economy: “If there is a race in green products, China rather fancies itself to do well.”

China already leads the world in wind and solar energy installations and also has a major nuclear power programme. “The future of nuclear will be determined in China as it is the only country doing it at scale,” Stern said, suggesting 100-150 new nuclear power plants could be built there in the next 15-20 years.

The UK has been a leader on climate change, he said, both in its pioneering domestic laws passed in 2008 and in international negotiations towards the global Paris climate change agreement. “But the UK wobbled in 2015 in terms of support for renewables and that has created some uncertainty,” he said.

Since coming to power, the Conservative government has drastically cut or ended subsidies for wind and solar power, leading the UK to fall down league tables ranking national energy sectors and attractiveness for renewable energy investment. Stern said all low-carbon energy technologies, including nuclear, would be needed in the UK but that “solar and wind with storage is particularly promising”.

See also: www.FrackCheckWV.net

Europe Risks Losing 30 Million Jobs to U.S. Shale Boom

By Priyanka Sharma and Lananh Nguyen, Bloomberg News, July 17, 2014 

The U.S. shale-gas boom is placing 30 million jobs at risk in Europe as companies with greater reliance on energy contend with higher fuel prices than their American counterparts, the International Energy Agency said.

Manufacturers of petrochemicals, aluminum, fertilizers and plastics are leaving Europe to take advantage of booming U.S. production of natural gas from shale rock formations, Fatih Birol, chief economist for the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based adviser to 29 nations, said at a conference in London today.

“Many petrochemicals companies in central Europe are moving out,” Birol said. “Thirty million jobs are in danger.”

The U.S. has become the world’s largest producer of oil and gas as hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling help producers extract resources from shale rock. The country’s refineries processed a record volume of crude last week as plants took advantage of cheaper domestic crudes. Chemical makers from Germany’s BASF SE to Brazil’s Braskem SA plan to invest as much as $72 billion in U.S. plants to take advantage of low-cost natural gas feedstock.

West Texas Intermediate crude traded at a discount of $5.85 a barrel to European benchmark Brent at 5:43 p.m. on the ICE Futures Europe exchange in London. U.S. August natural gas futures traded for $3.96 per million British thermal units on the New York Mercantile Exchange, compared with $6.49/MMBtu for the equivalent U.K. contract on ICE in London.

U.S. refineries are competing for market share and benefiting from margins that exceed those of European competitors by as much as $10 a barrel because of cheaper crude, Hermes Commodities said in a report today.

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Comment: By continuing to ignore all of the environmental impacts and secondary costs of “shale fracking,” the U. S. is sowing the seeds of major societal disruption around the world.  And, how can we in all conscience refuse to adopt very strong programs to abate “climate change” as well as global “plastics pollution.” Our oceans and sea creatures are already plasticized. The future of Earth is in the balance now! Duane Nichols, July 22, 2014.

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Evan Hansen at US Senate

Hearing on Preventing Potential Chemical Threats and Improving Safety:

Oversight of the President’s Executive Order on Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security

Testimony of Evan P. Hansen, Downstream Strategies, Morgantown, WV

Before the Committee on Environment and Public Works, US Senate, March 6, 2014, as reported by WV Public Broadcasting.

Panelists included representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency and the United States Chemical Safety Board as well as authorities from communities that have witnessed recent chemical strife.

Evan Hansen, president of the Morgantown-based environmental consulting firm Downstream Strategies, spoke about the water crisis in West Virginia where a chemical leak into the Elk River recently polluted the drinking water of some 300,000 residents in the Kanawha Valley.

Hansen made some recommendations:

Chairman Boxer, Ranking Member Vitter, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify.

I am president of Downstream Strategies, an 11-person environmental consulting firm based in West Virginia. Since 1997, we have offered environmental services that combine sound interdisciplinary skills with a core belief in the importance of protecting the environment and linking economic development with natural resource stewardship. Our projects typically include elements of science and policy related to our Water, Energy, and Land Programs. Our tools include Geographic Information Systems, Monitoring and Remediation, and Stakeholder Involvement and Perspectives.

A summary of recommendations:

• Spill Prevention, Control, and Counter (SPCC) measures as they exist for oil containment, should be extended to chemical storage facilities.
• Develop safe drinking water laws. Public water systems should create protection plans, and both the assessment reports and the protection plans should be periodically updated as well as accessible to all downstream water systems.
• Make individual National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) permits for chemical facilities mandatory within zones of critical concern (above drinking water intakes).

Hansen also took advantage of the opportunity to point out that weaknesses in enforcement undermine any meaningful regulations.

Chairwoman Barbara Boxer—a democrat from California—stressed the importance of new legislation in the process of being drafted, saying that a bill to address new chemical concerns brought to light by the chemical spill in West Virginia was forthcoming.

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WV Senate Bill 373 Passes Out of the Legislature in the Last Hours of the 2014 Regular Session

WV Senate Bill 373 has now been approved by the WV Legislature.  It originated in the Senate and was significantly amended in the House of Delegates.  This updated version passed the Senate shortly after 10 pm on March 8^th. SB 373 now goes to the Governor, who must sign it before it becomes law in West Virginia.

A major theme of SB 373 is for the regulation and inspection of above-ground chemical storage tanks, with the greatest emphasis being those tanks within the critical zone of concern for drinking water intake ports.

The bill includes the long-term medical study of the 300,000 residents affected by the chemical spill of crude MCHM into the Elk River on January  9, 2014. The medical monitoring study would fall on the West Virginia Bureau for Public Health to conduct.

Also, all public water utilities in the State serving more than 100,000 customers will be required to install and monitor for containments by the same detection capabilities utilized by the Ohio River Valley Water Sanitation Commission, i.e. gas chromatography.  (When MCHM and PPH was leaked into the river, it traveled downstream to Cincinnati where they were able to shut off their intake and prevent the chemical from entering their facility.)

[Note that small drinking water systems which predominate throughout the State will be at some risk, given all the diverse sources of water pollution that can contribute both toxic organic compounds and concentrated metallic “salts”, such as chlorides, bromides, and sulfates.]