As a weapon against global warming, it sounds so simple and low-tech that it could not possibly work. But the idea of using millions of buckets of whitewash to avert climate catastrophe has won the backing of one of the world’s most influential scientists.
Steven Chu, the Nobel prize-winning physicist appointed by President Obama as Energy Secretary, wants to paint the world white. A global initiative to change the colour of roofs, roads and pavements so that they reflect more sunlight and heat could play a big part in containing global warming, he said yesterday.
Speaking at the opening of the St James’s Palace Nobel Laureate Symposium, for which The Times is media partner, Professor Chu said that this approach could have a vast impact. By lightening paved surfaces and roofs to the colour of cement, it would be possible to cut carbon emissions by as much as taking all the world’s cars off the roads for 11 years, he said.
Building regulations should insist that all flat roofs were painted white, and visible tilted roofs could be painted with “cool-coloured” paints that looked normal, but which absorbed much less heat than conventional dark surfaces. Roads could be lightened to a concrete colour so they would not dazzle drivers in bright sunlight. “I think with flat-type roofs you can’t even see, yes, I think you should regulate,” Professor Chu said.
Pale surfaces reflect up to 80 per cent of the sunlight that falls on them, compared with about 20 per cent for dark ones, which is why roofs and walls in hot countries are often whitewashed. An increase in pale surfaces would help to contain climate change both by reflecting more solar radiation into space and by reducing the amount of energy needed to keep buildings cool by air-conditioning.
Professor Chu said that his thinking had been influenced by Art Rosenfeld, a member of the California Energy Commission, who drove through tough new building rules in the state. Since 2005 California has required all flat roofs on commercial buildings to be white; the measure is being expanded to require cool colours on all residential and pitched roofs.
Dr Rosenfeld is also a physicist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, of which Professor Chu was director. Last year Dr Rosenfeld and two colleagues from the laboratory, Hashem Akbari and Surabi Menon, calculated that changing surface colours in 100 of the world’s largest cities could save the equivalent of 44 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide — about as much as global carbon emissions are expected to rise by over the next decade.
Professor Chu said: “There’s a friend of mine, a colleague of mine, Art Rosenfeld, who’s pushing very hard for a geo-engineering we all believe will be completely benign, and that’s when you have a flat-top roof building, make it white.
“Now, you smile, but he’s done a calculation, and if you take all the buildings and make their roofs white and if you make the pavement more of a concrete type of colour rather than a black type of colour, and you do this uniformly . . . it’s the equivalent of reducing the carbon emissions due to all the cars on the road for 11 years.”
The US needed to increase its investment in clean energy research, he said, citing high-tech industries that spent 10 to 20 per cent of their income on research. The US was spending $1 trillion on generating electricity, but “nothing like” the $100 billion to $200 billion on research that would meet that standard, he said.
Source - The Times
Showing posts with label global carbon emissions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label global carbon emissions. Show all posts
Wednesday, 27 May 2009
Sunday, 13 July 2008
G8 statement on carbon reduction is hot air
Leaders of the richest and most polluting G8 nations have said they will “consider and adopt” a goal of 50% cuts in carbon emissions by 2050. But does this actually mean anything in practice?
So how much progress was made on climate change at the G8 summit? At first glance, it looks promising: the leaders of the richest and most polluting nations are talking about 50% cuts in global carbon emissions by 2050.
Make no mistake, that’s a lot. Because developing countries will demand the right to pollute more for years to come, to lift millions of their people from poverty by burning coal to produce cheap energy, the bulk of the suggested cut must be made by rich countries - the G8. Britain could face up to 95% cuts in its carbon output within four decades to meet its share of the load - a staggering ambition.
Some have criticised the apparently weak wording of the G8 statement - the leaders say they will “seek” to “consider and adopt” the 50% target. In fact, presented in its true context, the pledge is what green campaigners have been calling for.
“We seek to share with all parties to the UNFCCC the vision of, and together with them to consider and adopt in the UNFCCC negotiations, the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050.”
The alphabet soup stands for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the official way that countries sort out global climate treaties - and the only way in which developing countries such as China and India get a say. This statement is the G8, and the US in particular, saying they will do things properly.
Many questions about the target remain: what year will the 50% cut be measured against, for example, and what will be the shorter term goals needed to make it happen? But it could be a starting point.
This is where it starts to get a little fuzzy. The UNFCCC is currently trying to agree a successor to its 1997 Kyoto protocol, to restrict emissions over the crucial next two decades. One of the key blanks in that emerging deal is the lack of a long-term goal, or vision, to set the speed of the cuts. It could be a 2C maximum temperature rise, or a 450ppm limit for CO2 in the atmosphere, or, at a push, a halving of global emissions by 2050.
So, has the G8 provided the answer? Not yet. The same G8 countries agreed to “seriously consider” the same 50% cut by 2050 last year. Then, just a few months later at UNFCCC talks in Bali, the US retreated from that position, saying it was premature to set a long-term goal.
The UNFCCC held a meeting in Bonn last month at which a long-term goal was barely discussed - yet a few weeks later the rich countries have presented one, albeit the same as 12 months previously.
So what’s going on? Britain claims the US has shifted its position, but Britain has been claiming that for years with little hard evidence. The acid test will be the UNFCCC meeting in Poland in December - any more US stalling on a long-term target will expose the G8 statement as hot air.
Once such a vision is established under the UNFCCC, then countries are effectively locked into a process that will lead to shorter-term targets to slash emissions, and action. A 2050 goal expressed through the G8 makes no such demands and is safer political territory. The US knows this full well. So do the developing nations and green groups, hence their reluctance to embrace it. There is a long way to go yet.
Source - The Guardian
So how much progress was made on climate change at the G8 summit? At first glance, it looks promising: the leaders of the richest and most polluting nations are talking about 50% cuts in global carbon emissions by 2050.
Make no mistake, that’s a lot. Because developing countries will demand the right to pollute more for years to come, to lift millions of their people from poverty by burning coal to produce cheap energy, the bulk of the suggested cut must be made by rich countries - the G8. Britain could face up to 95% cuts in its carbon output within four decades to meet its share of the load - a staggering ambition.
Some have criticised the apparently weak wording of the G8 statement - the leaders say they will “seek” to “consider and adopt” the 50% target. In fact, presented in its true context, the pledge is what green campaigners have been calling for.
“We seek to share with all parties to the UNFCCC the vision of, and together with them to consider and adopt in the UNFCCC negotiations, the goal of achieving at least 50% reduction of global emissions by 2050.”
The alphabet soup stands for the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the official way that countries sort out global climate treaties - and the only way in which developing countries such as China and India get a say. This statement is the G8, and the US in particular, saying they will do things properly.
Many questions about the target remain: what year will the 50% cut be measured against, for example, and what will be the shorter term goals needed to make it happen? But it could be a starting point.
This is where it starts to get a little fuzzy. The UNFCCC is currently trying to agree a successor to its 1997 Kyoto protocol, to restrict emissions over the crucial next two decades. One of the key blanks in that emerging deal is the lack of a long-term goal, or vision, to set the speed of the cuts. It could be a 2C maximum temperature rise, or a 450ppm limit for CO2 in the atmosphere, or, at a push, a halving of global emissions by 2050.
So, has the G8 provided the answer? Not yet. The same G8 countries agreed to “seriously consider” the same 50% cut by 2050 last year. Then, just a few months later at UNFCCC talks in Bali, the US retreated from that position, saying it was premature to set a long-term goal.
The UNFCCC held a meeting in Bonn last month at which a long-term goal was barely discussed - yet a few weeks later the rich countries have presented one, albeit the same as 12 months previously.
So what’s going on? Britain claims the US has shifted its position, but Britain has been claiming that for years with little hard evidence. The acid test will be the UNFCCC meeting in Poland in December - any more US stalling on a long-term target will expose the G8 statement as hot air.
Once such a vision is established under the UNFCCC, then countries are effectively locked into a process that will lead to shorter-term targets to slash emissions, and action. A 2050 goal expressed through the G8 makes no such demands and is safer political territory. The US knows this full well. So do the developing nations and green groups, hence their reluctance to embrace it. There is a long way to go yet.
Source - The Guardian
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