The UK Government’s new Bioenergy Strategy released last week aims to accelerate the use of renewable energy generated sustainably from biomass. Bioenergy is stated in the strategy as ‘one of the most versatile forms of low carbon and renewable energy’ and is proposed to be used for heating, electricity and transport fuel.

The Government’s overall goal is to meet the renewables target by 2020 and the carbon reduction targets by 2030 and 2050. To achieve this, the focus has to be on new technologies (e.g. wind, solar) and biomass energy as well. The strategy predicts that 11 per cent of all UK energy will come from biomass by 2020. This number can be achieved sustainably using domestic and international biomass resources and be sustained in the long term in spite of the expected emergence of international demand for biomass feedstock.

The Government also recognise the risks of bioenergy, emphasised by many green organisations. To address the concerns (e.g. food security, biodiversity) the Government states that sustainability and affordability are the highest importance and the strategy sets a framework of principles to guide UK bioenergy policy in the future. Amongst others the principles state that the biomass used for bioenergy has to deliver genuine carbon reductions over its full lifecycle and future bioenergy policies must assess risks to food security and biodiversity.

Alongside the strategy the government released several reports on issues relevant to or affected by the proposed bioenergy strategy. For instance, a report on the UK jobs in the sector highlights that increased use of bioenergy would create around 50,000 jobs by 2020. Analyses on the bioenergy feedstock suggest that the amount of waste going to landfill at the moment would decrease by using it for bioenergy.

The Government used a holistic approach in preparing this strategy but did not seek to answer all the questions about the issue. One thing is perfectly clear though that the Government wants sustainable and affordable bioenergy to be an integral part of UK’s energy production in the future.

The Royal Society yesterday published ‘People and the Planet‘, a report which marks the end of nearly two years of work by a group including both the British Ecological Society’s current President, Professor Georgina Mace FRS and a past-President of the Society, Professor Alastair Fitter FRS. Speaking to the Radio 4 ‘Today’ programme yesterday morning, Professor Mace warned that we are eroding the earth’s vital support systems through over-consumption and unfettered economic growth and that as a consequence we are not doing a very poor job of ‘gardening the planet’.

The study examines the links between global population and consumption and the implications for our finite planet. The aim of the report is to provide policy guidance to decision makers and to inform interested members of the public. Yesterday’s publication led to very interesting coverage on the Guardian’s environment blog, with members of the working group, including the group’s chair, Nobel Prize-winning geneticist Sir John Sulston FRS, commentators and others offering their views on the content. Some of those commenting contended that the scientists were too negative in their assessment and that economic growth should not always be viewed as having negative consequences for the environment. One suggestion was that economic growth means that natural resources such as timber could be replaced with man-made materials for development purposes, so reducing environmental degradation. Another was that economic growth means technological and scientific advances, with humanity thereby innovating our way out of a crisis.

Aside from any external comment on the project’s conclusions, the overriding message of the study is that we must examine population growth and consumption patterns together and that it is the combination of these two factors that has an effect on the planet. The human population is set to reach 10 billion people, from the current seven billion, by the middle of this century. Over 1.3 billion people currently live in abject poverty, on less than $1.25 per day. It is clearly not desirable to see a world in which both the population increases and inequalities are exacerbated. Inequality must be addressed, people must be lifted out of poverty, but as their wealth and living standards increase, so too will the consumption of resources. Reducing consumption whilst also reducing inequalities and ensuring that those in poverty achieve an adequate living standard is a dilemma, and one which seems intractable.

Yet, speaking to the Today Programme yesterday morning, Sir John Sulston described tackling these pressures on the planet, what he characterised as ‘planning to flourish’, as ‘very simple’. Echoing the conclusions of the report he stated that we need to ‘dematerialise’ our economy, for example by investing in zero carbon forms of energy and by moving beyond GDP as a measure of economic growth to price in natural capital. In addition, tackling population growth will require countries to work together constructively, rather than the developed somehow lecturing the developing world in how to address birth rates. Contraception should be made available to those who want it in Africa, where two thirds of the anticipated growth in population is projected to occur, for example, but representatives of some African nations, such as Kenya, are requesting this, rather than this being imposed from outside.

Top priority is afforded to lifting people out of poverty, in the report’s conclusions. The international community is urged to address inequality through investment in education, family planning and economic development. The other recommendations are (to paraphrase):

- Most developed and developing economies must stabilise and reduce material consumption levels (de-coupling economic growth from environmental impacts and improving the efficiency of resource use, for example);
- Reproductive health and voluntary family planning programmes should be supported by political leadership and financial commitments;
- Population and the environment should not be considered separately. Demographic changes should be factored in to Rio +20 negotiations, for example;
- Governments should invest appropriately in urbanisation, for example supporting waste collection, which has the potential to reduce environmental impacts through allowing resource efficiencies;
- High quality primary and secondary education should be available for all young people;
- Governments should accelerate the development of a comprehensive wealth measure, including improving national natural asset accounting;
- Governments should collaborate to develop socio-economic systems and institutions not dependent on continued material consumption.

Natural and social scientists have an important role to play. The seventh recommendation calls for scientists to increase their research into the interactions between consumption, demographic changes and environmental impacts, providing policy-makers with the information they require in order to ensure that both the planet and the human population under pressure can continue not only to survive but also to thrive.

Voting in two resolutions last week, MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) called for the European Commission to introduce a Seventh Environmental Action Programme and for higher political priority to go to preserving and restoring damaged ecosystems.

The Seventh Environmental Action Programme (7th EAP) will be Europe’s next flagship environmental policy. The sixth EAP is due to expire in July this year. MEPs have called for the 7th EAP to mainstream climate change and other environmental objectives across all policy areas, whilst also reflecting the need for binding targets for greater energy efficiency. The EAP should also lead to an overall reduction in waste generation, along with ambitious prevention, re-use and recycling targets for waste.

In addition, MEPs have called for the 7th EAP to incorporate targets to ensure the sustainable use of land and to address emerging threats to human and animal health, such as nanomaterials, endocrine disruptors and the combined effects of chemicals in the environment. MEPs also urge Member States to implement fully and effectively existing rules on water. MEPs also used the resolution to encourage the European Commission to introduce sustainability criteria for biofuels and biomass.

MEPs sitting on the Environment Committee of the European Parliament voted on a second resolution to call for more ambitious targets to restore damaged and degraded ecosystems, whilst also highlighting the economic damage caused by biodiversity loss. The loss of biodiversity, they stated, ‘leads to devastating economic costs to society which until now have not been sufficiently integrated into economic and other policies’. Reforms to the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and Common Fisheries Policy, along with reforms to the Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) – the EU budget from 2014-2020- are necessary to tackle this, they state.

For example, payments under the CAP should be underpinned by cross-compliance measures that contribute to the preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. In addition, at least 1% of the total MFF should be devoted to environmental protection. The Common Fisheries Policy should guarantee an ecosystem approach to fisheries management.

The Environment Committee calls for the target to restore at least 15% of degraded ecosystems by 2020, agreed at the UN’s 10th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Nagoya, in 2010, to be seen only as a ‘minimum’, with the EU going beyond this to tackle environmental degradation. In addition, the MEPs call for detailed EU and national level plans to be developed to phase out all environmentally harmful subsidies by 2020.

Climate change and the continual rise in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are well established in the environmental policy agenda. However, although the general scientific evidence for climate change is now rarely refuted, the issue continues to be a very large, complex and wide-reaching challenge and there is still significant ongoing research in the field. These studies often produce novel findings with implications for the policy response to climate change.

The importance of nitrogen
In the current climate change forum, discussion of GHG emissions more often becomes a discussion of carbon emissions and the carbon cycle. However, the European Nitrogen Assessment produced last year by a team of scientists led by Mark Sutton and Clare Howard, stresses that human disruption of the nitrogen cycle has been just as severe and could have consequences just as serious as those related to carbon.

In its natural state, nitrogen exists mainly in the form of stable nitrogen gas. However, over the past century, intensive fertiliser production and burning of fossil fuels have led to a doubling of the rate at which more reactive nitrogen is formed. This has resulted in increased formation of the GHG nitrous oxide as well as other gases and particulate matter harmful to human health. Deposition is also leading to a change in soil fertility, altering plant growth rates and community composition.

Nitrogen presents a unique challenge to policy as the cycle is very complex meaning that a response will require cooperation between actors from a wide range of disciplines. However, within Europe, progress in addressing this challenge has already been made with the establishment of NitroEurope which brings together 64 institutions to collaborate on understanding and addressing the impact of nitrogen on the GHG balance. The result of this work is the European Nitrogen Assessment which has now been adopted as an activity under the international Convention on Long-range Transboundary Air Pollution.

Critically, the ENA estimates the economic cost of nitrogen damage – increasingly seen as the most effective way to communicate environmental issues to policy makers and industry – which it puts at €70-320 billion/year in the EU, making a compelling argument for urgent attention. Recommended actions for policymakers to pursue include improving the efficiency of agriculture, improving fossil fuel combustion methods, and reducing consumption of energy and animal products.

Link between emissions, ocean temperatures and ‘extreme’ weather
The link between industrial emissions and climate change is now widely accepted, but a study published in Nature this month is the first to clearly show a link between industrial air pollution and recorded variations in ocean temperature.

Findings of the study, which used a state-of-the-art Met Office climate model to simulate physical processes in the Earth’s atmosphere, show a link between aerosol pollution in the atmosphere and changes in the pattern of temperature shifts in the Atlantic Ocean. These shifts, known as the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation, see warm and cold fluctuations in the ocean’s temperature over several decades and are widely believed to result in changes to hurricane activity in the North Atlantic and rainfall patterns in Africa, South America and India, often leading to humanitarian disasters.

The new study is significant as, until now, these fluctuations were thought to be due to natural variability but, according to Ben Booth, a Met Office climate processes scientist and lead author of the research, the findings now suggest that ‘natural disasters…such as persistent African drought…may not be so natural after all’.

The model shows a clear correlation between Atlantic variations and industrial pollution levels; peaks in emissions coincide with cooler ocean temperatures whilst the introduction of clean air policy in the 90s resulted in warming of the seas. This has significant implications for climate change and emission policy of the future as it shows a clear link between air pollution, regional climate variability and natural disasters.

Warning that biomass may increase rather than reduce EU carbon emissions
A call was made to policymakers at the European Parliament at the end of March for Brussels to rethink its carbon accounting rules for biomass energy, stating that the current EU definition of wood biomass as a ‘carbon neutral’ fuel is inaccurate.

Currently, wood makes up the bulk of the EU’s biomass energy – alongside agricultural crops and residues, and vegetation waste – and is awarded subsidies, feed-in tariffs and electricity premiums in order to encourage its adoption as one of the EU’s main sources of renewable energy.

However, groups including the European Environment Agency’s independent Scientific Committee, have warned that the time lag between the carbon debt created when a tree is felled, transported and combusted as fuel, and the carbon credit gained when a new tree has grown to absorb carbon in place of the old one (‘bio-recovery time’), will result in a rise in CO2 concentrations in the interim. More critically, the carbon balance will depend on what is grown to replace felled forests – under the current accounting rules of the EU, energy crops can be grown on the footprint of previous woodland, even though these tend to absorb and store less CO2 with the result that net carbon emissions may in fact increase.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) states that biomass can only be classified as carbon neutral if all land use impacts have been considered, something which the EU has acknowledged with proposals for binding criteria designed to identify truly carbon-neutral biomass sources.

These proposals are due to be released later this year but have been repeatedly postponed due to opposition from countries including forest-rich Finland and Sweden. According to sources quoted by EurActiv, there is an apparent lack of enthusiasm amongst the EU’s energy directorate to pursue these criteria, and it is possible their release could be put back yet again.

Implications for environmental policy
Such advances in climate change and emissions research can reveal current environmental policy to be ineffective in tackling the issues they are designed to address, or – such as in the case of biomass energy – even unintentionally damaging. Ensuring ongoing research and effective communication across the science-policy interface within the field of climate change is therefore critical.

A new £1 billion competition has been announced by the UK Government to support the development of industrial scale Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) technology. So far CCS has been developed on small scales but no commercial scale test of the technology has ever been undertaken.

The Government’s previous attempt to incentivise the development of commercial-scale CCS collapsed in October 2011 following the withdrawal of all nine companies participating in the scheme, citing concerns over the financial viability of the programme.

Changes have now been made, meaning that the competition announced today will accept applications from schemes that trap carbon dioxide pre-combustion, as well as post-combustion, and will also be open to both gas as well as coal fired power plants.

One or more demonstration plants will be funded and it is anticipated that the selected projects will be up and running by 2016 – 2020. By the end of the 2020’s the Government expects 12 – 20 new plants to be fitted with the technology.

Alongside the £1 billion fund, Ministers have also announced £125 million to support research and development of CCS, including a new £13m CCS Research Centre; a virtual network coordinated by the University of Edinburgh. Ministers will also announce shortly the details of how the technology can be supported in the long-term. One approach that the Government favours is believed to be to encourage ‘clusters’ of power plants to develop, with these then supporting each other and sharing best practice in the development and utilisation of CCS.

Original articles:
Fiona Harvey, the Guardian, 3 April 2012 – New push for carbon capture and storage with £1 bn competitionDavid Shukman, BBC, 3 April 2012 – New UK attempt to capture carbon

16:50, Wednesday 23 November 2011, The Geological Society

The Carbon Capture and Storage industry in the UK is thought by many to have the potential to become as large as the North Sea oil and gas industry has been over the past 40 years. If this can be achieved, it will be a major contribution to meeting our carbon emissions targets, and could generate significant value for the economy. Is this ambition realistic? What are the scientific, technical, regulatory, economic, political and social challenges?

The Geological Society, together with the American Association of Petroleum Geologists, is holding a joint two-day research conference on Carbon Capture and Storage on 22-23 November, bringing together geoscientists and reservoir engineers to discuss scientific and technical challenges, uncertainties and opportunities for CO2 storage.

The conference will conclude with a panel debate, at which the conference delegates will be joined by an invited audience of those from government, industry, regulators, NGOs and others involved in planning and policy-making. A distinguished panel will lead a discussion of the policy-making, regulatory, economic and social context for CCS, and the
broader implications of the issues discussed over the previous two days, chaired by conference convenor Professor Jon Gluyas. The panellists are:

Dr David Reiner (Senior Lecturer in Technology Policy, Judge Business
School, University of Cambridge)

Professor Richard Macrory (Professor of Environmental Law, University
College London)

Mr Mervyn Wright (Technical Lead, CCS Demonstration Project, Department
of Energy and Climate Change)

Dr Bryan Lovell (Senior Researcher, University of Cambridge / President
of the Geological Society)

Registration will be from 16:15 on Wednesday 23 November. The discussion will run from 16:50 to 18:00, and will be followed by a drinks reception.

We very much hope you will be able to join us for this debate. If you wish to attend, please email policy@geolsoc.org.uk, stating your name and job title/preferred affiliation. There is no charge for attending the debate.

(Places at the conference itself are still available – full details and registration are at www.geolsoc.org.uk/ccs_nov2011.)

The Economist is hosting a live online debate on renewable energy until 18th November. The motion is: “Renewables: This house believes that subsidising renewable energy is a good way to wean the world off fossil fuels” and opening statements are currently being welcomed. Contribute to the debate at http://www.economist.com/debate/debates/overview/217.

Welsh Labour’s First Minister, Carwyn Jones, is set to ask the UK government to devolve powers to Welsh government when it comes to decisions over clean energy projects in Wales.

After a series of public campaigns against the National Grid plans to build a new 19 acre substation and expanse of pylons to support new wind farm developments, Welsh Labour are expected to call for devolved power because at present, the final decision for planning approval will be made in Westminster not Cardiff.

The First Minister stated that it was “unacceptable” for planning decisions regarding wind farms in Wales to be made in London and is expected to raise the matter at the British-Irish Council held in the English capital today.

As part of the UK government’s energy strategy to decrease emissions and increase the amount of energy derived from renewable sources to a total of 10% by 2010, the Welsh government proposed seven new areas in Wales, known as Tan 8, for wind farm development in the year of 2005. The decision has since proved controversial culminating with over 1,500 protesters campaigning outside the Senedd in May.

Following the protests, Welsh Government announced plans to limit the number of wind farm developments in the Tan 8 areas. Welsh Labour however, maintains that they are committed to UK energy targets (which they are currently achieving) but want more control over final decisions affecting Welsh landscapes.

Vince Cable yesterday announced more detailed plans for the green investment bank, including some indication of the type of projects that will be financed. The bank will be the first of its kind in the world, specifically designed to fund the new low carbon green economy. The announcement, and publication of a progress report by the department of business innovation and skills, follows a speech given by Nick Clegg at an event hosted by Climate Change Capital.

The deputy Prime Minister emphasised the need to consider the reasons for investing, including preserving the environment on which we rely for the next generation. He also mentioned the economic incentive to make the UK the world leaders in producing green technology, suggesting that many companies could set up manufacturing plants in the UK.

In an oral statement to the House of Commons Vince Cable focussed on the legally binding commitment made by the government to reduce carbon emissions 50% by 2050, and the need to revolutionise our energy and transport sectors, and invest in green infrastructure to achieve this target. He also noted the requirement for stable long term green policies to encourage investment in green infrastructure, which will flow through the green investment bank. £3 billion will initially be invested in the bank.

The progress report published by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills picks out the Water Framework Directive and Air Quality Standards Regulations as other key legislation to be supported by the green investment bank. Money will be invested in waste water management and improving flood defences replacing loss of funding due to Defra budget cuts. Money will also be invested in improving air quality and reducing emissions from vehicles.

Both Nick Clegg and Vince Cable noted the economic benefits of investment in green infrastructure in terms of saving energy and money, however there was no mention of investment to protect ecosystem services, and biodiversity, or the possible cost of inaction in these areas. Investment in better protection of ecosystem services will be vital for protecting the environment for the next generation.

Last week the University of Cambridge hosted the BES Annual Symposium, this year titled ‘Forests and Global Change’. The event was a huge success with 370 delegates attending the three day symposium which was called “the best symposium yet” by one of the speakers, Adrian Newton.

A number of experts gave presentations on the latest research into the effect a changing climate has on forest ecosystems, and what this might mean in the future. The talks covered a range of subjects from carbon storage to biodiversity conservation, and expanded on how we can implement action through the development of new strategies such as ‘Reduced Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation’ (REDD).

By bringing together so many experts to showcase this information it is hoped progress can be made towards the creation of an informed approach to climate change and its impact of forest ecosystems, and further help to bridge the gap between science and policy.