Tag: emissions
Here’s Who’s Missing As 185 Nations Bid To Cut Climate Pollution

Here’s Who’s Missing As 185 Nations Bid To Cut Climate Pollution

By Alex Morales, Bloomberg News (TNS)

PARIS — Just 10 nations are sitting on the sidelines of the United Nations effort to rein in climate change, which drew unprecedented support from world leaders last week who turned out in record numbers to get the talks going in Paris.

Of the 195 countries represented at the discussions, 185 have submitted pledges. That’s a remarkable feat on its own and stands in contrast to previous U.N. gatherings.

“You need to take a moment to realize that that is an absolutely extraordinary number,” U.S. Special Envoy for Climate Change Todd Stern told reporters on Friday. “Virtually all the countries here have put forward their targets.”

The last time countries tried to strike a global deal was in 2009 in Copenhagen, when the discussions collapsed in a round of finger- pointing over who should move first on pollution. No official pledges were made before that conference, and just 55 countries met the deadline for submissions set for after the summit.

This time, ministers are more confident they’ll reach a deal, even though there are still holdouts. The pledges already on the table are estimated to limit the temperature increases since pre-industrial times to 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit). That’s short of the 2 degrees that envoys are targeting and the 1.5 degrees that the most vulnerable nations want — but it’s much better than doing nothing.

According to World Resources Institute data, the 10 nations not pledging account for a little over 2 percent of global emissions.

Here are the countries that haven’t yet submitted what the U.N. terms Intended Nationally Determined Contributions, starting with the biggest polluter not making a pledge:

Venezuela:

One of the blockers in Copenhagen, the South American oil exporter accounts for 0.83 percent of global greenhouse gases. Venezuelan envoy Claudia Salerno told reporters last week that the country’s pledge has been ready “for a long time,” but that Venezuela prefers to keep it up its sleeve in case the Paris deal isn’t ambitious enough. “We will keep until the end the possibility to continue to fight INDCs as not being the perfect tool to achieve the temperature goal that we set ourselves,” she said.

Uzbekistan:

The central Asian nation and former Soviet republic emits 0.5 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases.

Libya:

The divided nation with Africa’s largest oil reserves accounts for 0.27 percent of world emissions. With competing eastern and western administrations, preparing an emissions pledge won’t be at the top of Libya’s priorities.

North Korea:

The hermit nation, largely isolated from the rest of the world because of its repressive regime, emits 0.18 percent of world greenhouse gases.

Syria:

War-torn Syria divided into a patchwork of areas controlled by different factions, including Islamic State, is another country whose political situation prevents it from paying attention to its emissions. It makes 0.15 percent of the global total.

Nicaragua:

The Central American nation also stood against the deal in Copenhagen. It emits 0.09 percent of the world’s greenhouse gases. Nicaraguan envoy Paul Oquist Kelley last week compared the INDC process to a “lottery” that won’t succeed in limiting temperatures to acceptable levels. “It will take us to a 3-degree hell,” he told reporters. “Which is 4 degrees and 5 degrees in many of our countries.” He said Nicaragua won’t pledge because the whole system is distracting attention from inaction of the biggest polluters, like the U.S. and European Union.

Nepal:

One of Asia’s poorest nations, the country accounts for 0.08 percent of emissions.

Panama:

The Central American country accounts for 0.05 percent of greenhouse gases.

East Timor:

One of the world’s newest countries after gaining independence from Indonesia in 2002, East Timor accounts for around two-thousandths of 1 percent of world emissions, according to EU data.

Saint Kitt’s & Nevis

The Caribbean island country accounts for less than a thousandth of a percent of global greenhouse gases.

©2015 Bloomberg News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: French President Francois Hollande (C, 1st row), United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-moon (4th, 1st row) and Christiana Figueres (3rdL, 1st row), Executive Secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, pose for a family photo with head of states and government during the opening day of the World Climate Change Conference 2015 (COP21) in Le Bourget, near Paris, France, November 30, 2015.  REUTERS/Jacky Naegelen

Bill Gates To Announce Clean-Energy Fund To Boost Climate Talks

Bill Gates To Announce Clean-Energy Fund To Boost Climate Talks

By Alex Nussbaum, Bloomberg News (TNS)

NEW YORK — Bill Gates, the world’s richest man, and fellow philanthropists on Monday will announce a multibillion-dollar fund for clean-energy technology to combat climate change, according to an environmental group briefed on the announcement.

The effort, described as the biggest clean-energy research commitment ever, is intended to boost United Nations talks on climate change this week in Paris, said Jake Schmidt, international program director at New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council. He was briefed on the partnership by U.S. and French government officials.

It’s expected to involve Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., and other wealthy philanthropists committing money to support new research and development, he said. They will collaborate with research programs in the U.S., India and about 10 other countries. The U.S. may commit to doubling funding for clean-energy research and other countries may also increase their support, Schmidt said.

“There’s going to have to be a number of things set in motion in the coming years to put us on that trajectory,” Schmidt said Sunday. “We know we’re going to have to drive down the costs of technology deployment and maybe even create some new technologies.”

More than 140 world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama and Xi Jinping of China, will meet in Paris for talks aimed at producing an agreement that for the first time binds all nations, rich and poor, to cutting pollution from burning coal, oil and gas that’s blamed for a rise in global temperatures. Convincing developing nations of the merits of phasing out fossil fuel remains a sticking point in the negotiations.

“The idea is to show that these countries and these entrepreneurs are going to step up their effort to help speed up the kinds of emissions cuts we’re going to need,” Schmidt said.

The partnership and Gates’ role was first reported Friday by the online news organization ClimateWire.

©2015 Bloomberg News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: Bill Gates is the world’s richest man. AFP.com/ Eric Piermont

EPA Adopts Rules To Limit Oil Refineries’ Emissions Into Neighborhoods

EPA Adopts Rules To Limit Oil Refineries’ Emissions Into Neighborhoods

By Tony Barboza and Ivan Penn, Los Angeles Times (TNS)

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency adopted new rules Tuesday intended to clean the air around oil refineries across the nation.

The rules for the first time require refineries to monitor and report levels of benzene, a cancer-causing compound, at the boundaries of their properties and to cut emissions if they are too high.

The rules target about 150 oil refineries in the United States, strengthening standards on storage tanks, coker units, pressure relief devices and flares, which burn off excess gases. The measures are designed to reduce emissions that cause respiratory illness, increase cancer risk and contribute to smog and global warming while making refinery operations more efficient, the EPA said.

Refineries will have to encircle their facilities with one to two dozen canisters that continuously sample the air for benzene, a carcinogen that is considered an indicator of other harmful pollutants.

The so-called fence-line monitoring devices will not provide real-time air quality readings, but if benzene concentrations over time exceed the EPA’s limit of 9 micrograms per cubic meter, refiners will have to find the pollution source and fix it.

“This rule creates a kind of neighborhood watch for refinery pollution,” EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy said in a conference call with reporters. “Refineries can be held accountable for these fugitive emissions and take actions to stop them.”

The EPA was required to issue the long-delayed rules under a court-ordered consent decree with environmentalists and community groups in California, Louisiana and Texas, who sued the agency in 2012 for missing deadlines.

The rules drew praise Tuesday from those groups as bringing health benefits to predominately Latino and African-American communities near oil refineries that have long fought for stricter regulations to control pollution, noise and smoke from the sprawling operations.

“Communities should finally start to see reductions in the pollution that refinery flares are releasing around the clock into our air,” said Jesse Marquez, who heads the group Coalition for a Safe Environment in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Wilmington, where three major refineries operate.

More than 6 million people live within three miles of a refinery, according to the EPA, with minorities nearly twice as likely as the general population to live near the fence line.

In a statement Tuesday, the American Petroleum Institute said refinery air emissions were already at safe levels and have been declining for decades under existing regulations.

“Companies have already spent billions of dollars to reduce emissions, and air quality continues to improve as a result of these voluntary programs and existing regulations,” said Bob Greco, API’s downstream group director.
While the EPA has made substantial improvements since proposing the new standards last year, the API said, the regulations could cost up to $1 billion.

The EPA said implementing the rules by 2018 will cost $283 million, with “no noticeable impact” on the cost of gasoline and other petroleum products. Cutting emissions of air toxins, including benzene, toluene and xylene, by 5,200 tons per year will reduce cancer risks for more than 1.4 million people, the agency said.

Photo: Neighborhoods, presumably like the ones where this house is located, will now be at less of a risk of polluted air due to new EPA standards. Dean Terry/Flickr

Obama Lays Out New Climate-Change Plan

Obama Lays Out New Climate-Change Plan

By Christi Parsons, Tribune Washington Bureau (TNS)

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama declared his new carbon plan “the single most important step” the country can take to fight global climate change as he tried Monday to anticipate and rebut arguments from critics about harm his vision could do to American business.

Speaking in personal terms about his days at Occidental College in Los Angeles, Obama recalled the smog that made it hard to breathe when he went out for a run and the people who had to stay inside on especially bad days.

“You fast-forward 30, 40 years later, and we solved those problems,” he said. “At the time, the same time, the same characters who are going to be criticizing this plan were saying this is going to kill jobs.

“Despite those scaremongering tactics,” he said, “you can actually run in Los Angeles without choking.”

Obama said he was going “off script” on the remembrances, underscoring the personal importance he attaches to this key piece of his ambitious second-term agenda. The new regulations are designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from U.S. power plants by 32 percent between 2005 and 2030, through new regulations that the Environmental Protection Agency administrator insists are “within the four corners” of the Clean Air Act.

Obama said the new regulations were the most significant step “America has ever taken in the fight against global climate change.”

But Republicans and business leaders were already vowing to fight him. They say Obama’s clean power plan is part of a radical environmental agenda that comes at the expense of the American people. It could heap billions of dollars in added costs while shifting away from natural gas as a reliable and clean power source, said House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California.

“To the president, appeasing a fringe environmental movement has overtaken the more responsible path to grow our economy,” said McCarthy, vowing that the House will “consider every option possible to fight it.”

The plan would boost efforts already underway in California and other coastal states to increase the use of renewable power. But for mostly Republican-led parts of the country still heavily reliant on coal, the rules would force a major economic transition that many elected officials pledge to resist.

(c)2015 Tribune Co. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Photo: U.S President Barack Obama delivers remarks on the Clean Power Plan at an event in the East Room of the White House Aug. 3, 2015 in Washington, D.C. (Olivier Douliery/Abaca Press/TNS)