Day: September 21, 2022

What if carbon border taxes applied to all carbon – fossil fuels, too?

Most national carbon border adjustments being considered target only manufactured goods. Thatree Thitivongvaroon via Getty Images

by Joonha Kim, Rice University and Mark Finley, Rice University

The European Union is embarking on an experiment that will expand its climate policies to imports for the first time. It’s called a carbon border adjustment, and it aims to level the playing field for the EU’s domestic producers by taxing energy-intensive imports like steel and cement that are high in greenhouse gas emissions but aren’t already covered by climate policies in their home countries.

If the border adjustment works as planned, it could encourage the spread of climate policies around the world. But the EU plan, as well as most attempts to evaluate the impact of such policies, is missing an important source of cross-border carbon flows: trade in fossil fuels themselves.

As energy analysts, we decided to take a closer look at what including fossil fuels would mean.

In a newly released paper, we analyzed the impact and found that including fossil fuels in carbon border adjustments would significantly alter the balance of cross-border carbon flows.

For example, China is a major exporter of carbon-intensive manufactured goods, and its industries will face higher costs under the EU border adjustment if China doesn’t set sufficient climate policies for those industries. But when fossil fuels are considered, China becomes a net carbon importer, so setting its own comprehensive border adjustment could be to its energy producers’ benefit.

The U.S., on the other hand, could see harm to its domestic fuel producers if other countries imposed carbon border adjustments on fossil fuels. But the U.S. would still be a net carbon importer, and adding a border adjustment could help its domestic manufacturers.

What is a carbon border adjustment?

Carbon border adjustments are trade policies designed to avoid “carbon leakage” – the phenomenon in which manufacturers relocate their production to other countries to get around environmental regulations.

The idea is to impose a carbon “tax” on imports that is commensurate with the costs domestic companies face related to a country’s climate policy. The carbon border adjustment is imposed on imports from countries that do not have similar climate policies. In addition, countries can give rebates to exports to ensure domestic manufacturers remain competitive in the global market.

This is all still in the future. The EU plan phases in starting in 2023 but currently isn’t scheduled to fully go into effect until 2026. However, other countries are closely watching as they consider their own policies, including some members of the U.S. Congress who are considering carbon border adjustment legislation.

Capturing all cross-border carbon flows

One issue is that current discussions of carbon border taxes focus on “embodied” carbon – the carbon associated with the production of a good. For example, the EU proposal covers cement, aluminum, fertilizers, power generation, iron and steel.

But a comprehensive border adjustment, in theory, should seek to address all cross-border carbon flows. All the major analyses to date, however, leave out the carbon content of fossil fuels trade, which we refer to as “explicit” carbon.

In our analysis, we show that when only manufactured goods are considered, the U.S. and EU are portrayed as carbon importers because of their “embodied” carbon balance – they import a lot of high-carbon manufactured goods – while China is portrayed as a carbon exporter. That changes when fossil fuels are included.

The impact of including fossil fuels

By assessing the impact of a carbon border adjustment based only on embodied carbon flows, those involving manufactured goods, policymakers are missing a significant part of total carbon traded across their borders – in many cases, the largest part.

In the EU, our findings largely reinforce the current motivation behind a carbon border adjustment, since the bloc is an importer of both explicit carbon and embodied carbon. [view graph of EU carbon border adjustment data]

For the U.S., however, the results are mixed. A carbon border adjustment could protect domestic manufacturers but harm the international competitiveness of domestic fossil fuels, and at a time when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is placing renewed importance on the U.S. as a global energy supplier. [view graph of U.S. carbon border adjustment data]

The Chinese economy, as an exporter of embodied carbon in manufactured goods, would suffer if its trading partners imposed a carbon border adjustment on China’s products. On the other hand, a Chinese domestic border adjustment could benefit Chinese domestic energy producers at the expense of foreign competitors who fail to adopt similar policies. [view graph of China carbon border adjustment data]

Interestingly, our analysis suggests that, by including explicit carbon flows, the U.S., EU and China are all net importers of carbon. All three key players could be on the same side of the discussion, which could improve the prospects for future climate negotiations – if all parties recognize their common interests.

Joonha Kim, Graduate fellow, Baker Institute, Rice University and Mark Finley, Fellow in Energy and Global Oil, Baker Institute for Public Policy, Rice University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

A new era of made-in-USA solar

Read the full story at pv magazine.

There are both challenges and benefits to boosting solar manufacturing in America. The Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 includes a host of measures to support the production of US renewable energy technologies and could foster a new era for made-in-America solar. pv magazine USA Senior Editor Anne Fischer explores the current status and outlook of US solar manufacturing.

Jersey City mapping food rescue opportunities

Read the full story at Smart Cities Dive.

As part of a broader effort to decrease food waste and mitigate residents’ food insecurity, Jersey City, New Jersey, announced Thursday it’s launching a citywide initiative focused on diverting food from local businesses that might otherwise get thrown out.

The city’s Department of Public Works, which manages composting, and the Department of Health and Human Services, which manages food and nutrition, is receiving technical assistance and grant support from the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, and working with the consultancy Center for EcoTechnology to map the city’s network of organizations involved in food rescue. 

The initiative entails assembling a better data picture of who is involved in food rescue, to eventually determine how resources could be redistributed, city officials explained. Efforts also aims to educate businesses on how to minimize waste and boost rescue, while decreasing costs related to refrigeration, water, storage and waste removal.

Sustainability requires new thinking

Read the full story at Utility Dive.

As we build tenfold the number of solar, wind, and clean storage facilities, we must not cause unintended consequences. We cannot negatively impact vulnerable communities or the environment. We must protect clean water supplies, vegetated wetlands, and valuable vistas for future generations.

To ensure we plan correctly and don’t make the same mistakes we did in the past, planners use a concept called Geodesign.

This bubble bench purifies local air with 120 liters of algae water

Read the full story in Fast Company.

Algae produce 70% of oxygen in the atmosphere. Now, the pollution-fighting material is coming to street furniture.

America’s summer of floods: What cities can learn from today’s climate crises to prepare for tomorrow’s

Flash flooding made a mess in Dallas in August 2022. AP Photo/LM Otero

by Richard B. (Ricky) Rood, University of Michigan

Powerful storms across the South, following flash floods in Dallas, Death Valley, St. Louis, Yellowstone and Appalachia, have left cities across the U.S. questioning their own security in a warming climate.

Dallas was hit with nearly 15 inches of rain that turned roads into rivers and poured into homes starting Aug. 21, 2022. Neighborhoods in Jackson, Mississippi, were inundated a few days later as the Pearl River rose and a water treatment plant breakdown left the city without clean drinking water. In late July, extreme storms struck the mountains of eastern Kentucky, sending rivers sweeping through valley towns and triggering mudslides that killed more than three dozen people.

Floods are complex events, and they are about more than just heavy rain. Each community has its own unique geography and climate that can exacerbate flooding, so preparing to deal with future floods has to be tailored to the community.

I work with a center at the University of Michigan that helps communities turn climate knowledge into projects that can reduce the harm of future climate disasters. The recent floods provide case studies that can help cities everywhere manage the increasing risk.

Houses in a steep valley are flooded to their rooflines with muddy water.
Extreme storms in mountainous regions like eastern Kentucky can quickly funnel floodwater into valleys, creating different hazards than flatter cities would face from the same storm. Arden S. Barnes/For The Washington Post via Getty Images

Flood risks are rising

The first thing the recent floods tell us is that the climate is changing.

In the past, it might have made sense to consider a flood a rare and random event – communities could just build back. But the statistical distribution of weather events and natural disasters is shifting.

What might have been a 1-in-500-year event may become a 1-in-100-year event, on the way to becoming a 1-in-50-year event. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 delivered Houston’s third 500-year flood in the span of three years. Ellicott City, Maryland saw catastrophic floods in 2016 and 2018, and the town flooded again in June 2022.

Basic physics points to the rising risks ahead: Global greenhouse gas emissions are increasing global average temperatures. Warming leads to increasing precipitation and more intense downpours, and this increases flood potential.

Communities aren’t prepared

Recent floods are revealing vulnerabilities in how communities are designed and managed.

Pavement is a major contributor to urban flooding, because water cannot be absorbed and it runs off quickly. Similarly, after a forest fire or extended drought, water runs off of soil rather than soaking in. This can overwhelm drainage systems and pile up debris that can clog pipes and culverts.

Failures in maintaining infrastructure, such as levees and storm drains, are a common contributor to flooding.

If the infrastructure is well designed and maintained, flood damage can be greatly reduced. However, increasingly, researchers have found that the engineering specifications for drainage pipes and other infrastructure are no longer adequate for the increasing severity of storms and amounts of precipitation. This can lead to roads being washed out and communities being cut off.

Four maps show how risk of extreme precipitation increased in some regions, particularly the Northeast, and projections of increasing rainfall in the East in the coming decades.
Even in a future with low greenhouse gas emissions, extreme precipitation events will be more likely in parts of the U.S. National Climate Assessment 2018

The increasing risks affect not only engineering standards, but zoning laws that govern where homes can be built and building codes that describe minimum standards for safety, as well as permitting and environmental regulations.

By addressing these issues now, communities can anticipate and avoid damage rather than only reacting when it’s too late.

Four lessons from case studies

The many effects associated with flooding show why a holistic approach to planning for climate change is necessary, and what communities can learn from one another. For example, case studies show that:

A man in a boat peers under sheeting along a level. The river side is higher than the dry side across the levee.
A crew inspects a levee constructed around a medical center to hold back floodwater from the Mississippi River in Vidalia, La., in 2011. Scott Olson/Getty Images
  • It is difficult for an individual or a community to take on even the technical aspects of flood preparation alone – there is too much interconnectedness. Protective measures like levees or channels might protect one neighborhood but worsen the flood risk downstream. Planners should identify the appropriate scale, such as the entire drainage basin of a creek or river, and form important relationships early in the planning process.
  • Natural disasters and the ways communities respond to them can also amplify disparities in wealth and resources. Social justice and ethical considerations need to be brought into planning at the beginning.

Scenarios: How to manage complexity

In the communities that my colleagues and I have worked with through the Great Lakes Integrated Sciences and Assessment center, we have found an increasing awareness of floods and, more generally, the challenges of a warming climate.

Many communities have some capacity to deal with weather-related hazards, but they realize that past practices will not be adequate in the future.

A man stands next to a long metal door that opens from the ground and is part of a flood control system for the building behind him.
Tim Edwards, facility manager for the National Archives, with the flood control gate system that kept a 2019 storm from flooding the building in Washington, DC. Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post via Getty Images

We have found that by focusing on vulnerabilities, discussions about future climate risk become more real. Communities start to recognize the interconnectedness of zoning, storm drains and parks, for example, and the value of clearing of debris from stream beds. They also see the importance of engaging regional stakeholders to avoid fragmented and ineffective adaptation responses.

We use scenario planning to help officials examine several plausible climate futures as they develop strategies to deal with specific management challenges. Examining case studies and past floods provides a way to consider future flooding events from an experience base of known community vulnerabilities.

In most exercises I have participated in, local officials’ instinct is to protect property and persist without changing where people live. However, in many cases, that might only buy time before people will have little option but to move. Scenario planning can bring focus to these difficult choices and help individuals and communities gain control over the effects of climate change.

This article was updated Aug. 26, 2022, with flooding in Mississippi.

Richard B. (Ricky) Rood, Professor of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering and School of Environment and Sustainability, University of Michigan

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Americans keep moving to where the water isn’t

Read the full story from Vox.

According to an analysis published earlier this month by the Economic Innovation Group, 10 of the 15 counties last year were in the water-strained Southwest. Since 2012, an additional 2.8 million people have moved to counties that spent the majority of the past decade under “severe” to “exceptional” drought conditions.

The curious task of digitizing Darwin’s beans and butterflies

Read the full story at Atlas Obscura.

Squeaky beans may have inspired a few fits of giggles, but the task of conserving organic material for digitization is serious, occasionally even dangerous work. Conservation of the beans is part of the Darwin Correspondence Project, a massive undertaking to digitize thousands of Charles Darwin’s private letters. By 2022, the team aims to release a complete archive of the late botanist’s work to the public.

Bioacoustics is helping conservationists monitor wildlife, but the tech needs improvement

Read the full story at Fast Company.

The ability of audio recorders to gather large amounts of data can make them more efficient than traditional camera-trapping and remote-tracking methodologies, but it’s still too labor-intensive.

Armadillos are on their way to Chicago

Read the full story from WBEZ.

Armadillos, with their shells and long snouts, are often found waddling through the Texas desert.

But over the past decade, the animals have started to migrate into Illinois — and now they’re overwhelming the southern part of the state and showing up as far north as Peoria and Springfield. Experts say the shift is partly because of wetter summers and milder winters.