#net zero transition

[alishatheninth]

1. I like dieworkwear. He is funny, doesn’t take himself seriously, and promotes a version of style based on taste, skilful tailoring, and good choices rather than conspicuous consumption or novelty. 

2. If you take climate seriously, you don’t want to follow 99% of climate scientists on social media. They have it figured out already and can’t do anything, that’s why they’re really depressing and your feed becomes a long list of people saying things you agree with but also literally cannot think about every minute if you are going to hold it together. Also, activists, while very important, have this tendency to shout “nothing’s working! Nothing has ever worked or will ever work! Politics is only going in the wrong direction!” and that is just not true.  Nearly every developed economy has an electricity generation pattern like the chart below for the UK (source here).  Efficiency is bringing down demand (it’s not purely a result of outsourcing high-energy-intensity manufacturing, the UK finished doing that ages ago) while renewables is cleaning up supply.

It’s not fast enough, we (the UK but also the world) still need wind and solar and batteries and probably nuclear and buses and bike lanes and walkable housing developments and heatpumps and high-efficiency airconditioning and re-usable packaging and really good veggie burgers and much less flying and shipping. But countries representing more than 76% of global emissions have now set net zero greenhouse gas emission targets, including China (by 2060, most are by 2050). There’s general agreement that a net zero transition does need to happen, even if the pathways to it are genuinely unclear, especially beyond the point where we’re at 80-90% of power generation from solar and wind everywhere and have electrified heating and ground transport. Meanwhile the world is cooking much faster than we thought it would. But if you actually want to know what is happening and what helps rather than empty slogans and mindless/ not-personally-relevant calls for action, follow sources who focus on the net zero transition not in an activist way but in a factual way. Carbon Brief and BusinessGreen are pretty good for the UK, for example. Or even read the official government reports on your country’s energy and transport industries, they are often surprisingly informative about what’s going on and have good charts! (Agriculture official reporting is a total mess though.) (I am still not over being told last week by someone whose job it is to counsel people suffering from climate anxiety that “if we got to net zero annual emissions tomorrow it wouldn’t make a difference”. YES IT WOULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE YOU FUCKING GUARDIANISTA, THINGS BEING BAD IS BETTER THAN THINGS BEING WORSE. Ye gods is this what you are telling people more vulnerable than me? No wonder your patients are suicidal.)

[thoughtlessarse]

Sweden adopts '100% fossil-free' energy target, easing way for nuclear

Sweden's parliament on Tuesday (20 June) adopted a new energy target, giving the right-wing government the green light to push forward with

Sweden’s parliament on Tuesday (20 June) adopted a new energy target, giving the right-wing government the green light to push forward with plans to build new nuclear plants in a country that voted 40 years ago to phase out atomic power. Changing the target to “100% fossil-free” electricity, from “100% renewable” is key to the government’s plan to meet an expected doubling of electricity demand to around 300 TwH by 2040 and reach net zero emissions by 2045. “This creates the conditions for nuclear power,” Finance Minister Elisabeth Svantesson said in parliament. “We need more electricity production, we need clean electricity and we need a stable energy system.” Sweden’s parties agreed a deal in 2016 that new reactors could be built at existing sites. However, without subsidies, it has been seen as too expensive. The new right-of-centre coalition says new reactors are essential to power the shift to a fossil-free economy and has promised generous loan guarantees. Around 98% of electricity in Sweden is already generated from water, nuclear and wind.

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Another right-wing European government propped up by the far-right.

They want to use modular reactors and extend the life of reactors already in operation. Any fault found in a modular reactor will mean all reactors of that type will have to be shut down worldwide, since they are all made the same way. Extended the life of reactors already in operation carries unforeseen risks. Then there's the nuclear waste.

This government is not certainly a change from those we've become used to from Sweden.

[thoughtlessarse]

Nuclear fusion can help Europe achieve net-zero goal, EU official says

Nuclear fusion, which replicates the sun's energy production, is a carbon-free technology that could help secure Europe's energy supply and

Nuclear fusion, which replicates the sun’s energy production, is a carbon-free technology that could help secure Europe’s energy supply and slash its emissions, according to European Commission official Massimo Garribba. “In the Commission, we follow a net-zero policy and so each and every energy source that can contribute to that is, of course, most welcome,” said Garribba, who is deputy director general at the Commission’s energy department. And according to Garribba, nuclear fusion “is clearly a candidate in the medium term to fit this role”. This is because fusion is carbon-free, safe and “has the potential to be rather limitless in the way that it can be exploited,” the EU official told participants at a EURACTIV event on Monday (20 March). Nuclear fusion replicates energy production in the sun, fusing two hydrogen atoms to produce helium and heat. It could be a way to generate large amounts of clean energy, helping to replace fossil fuels and reduce emissions. However, the technology is still being developed with current barriers, including the huge amount of energy required for the reaction to take place. Once it reaches a stage where more energy is produced than is used, it could become a key energy source for Europe. “It’s a reaction that is controllable. It can be turned on and off, so it makes an ideal dispatchable power source and it can serve as a baseload source of power,” said Jennifer Ganten, chief movement builder at the Commonwealth Fusion System. While a lot of work is needed to develop nuclear fusion, some projects are expected to have operating models by the middle of this decade, with the first reactors potentially connecting to the grid at the beginning of the 2030s. “Then there’ll be a ramp up, of course, so we think the technology would be ready for commercial use by the mid-2030s,” said Francesca Ferrazza, the head of magnetic fusion initiatives at Eni, the Italian energy company, which supported the event.

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If the timetable given is reliable there should be no need to rush into building more nuclear fission power stations.

[thoughtlessarse]

Shell directors personally sued over ‘flawed’ climate strategy

Claimants ClientEarth say the oil company’s plan puts the company at financial risk as the world transitions to clean energy

The directors of oil major Shell are being personally sued over their climate strategy, which the claimants say is inadequate to meet climate targets and puts the company at risk as the world switches to clean energy. Environmental lawyers ClientEarth have filed the lawsuit against the 11 directors at the high court in England. It is the first case in the world seeking to hold corporate directors liable for failing to properly prepare their company for the net zero transition, ClientEarth said. ClientEarth, which has a token shareholding in Shell, is suing under the UK Companies Act, and is supported by a group of large pension funds and other institutional investors. It argues a global transition to low-carbon energy is inevitable as world governments act to end the climate crisis and that Shell’s failure to move fast enough threatens the company’s success and would waste its investors’ money on unneeded fossil fuel projects. Shell recently announced a record annual profit of $40bn (£33bn), driven by the high energy prices resulting from Russia’s war in Ukraine. But, as climate litigation increases across the world, the company has suffered a flurry of recent legal and regulatory challenges. These include a Dutch court order to cut emissions from its oil and gas by 45% by 2030 and a claim that Shell is investing less in green energy than it says.

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Next up: BP

[stuartmackintosh]

WHAT DOES NET ZERO TRANSITION REALLY MEAN FOR YOUR BUSINESS?

The world is beginning to look towards an indispensable worldwide objective: Net-Zero transition. As per science, it is fundamental that we meet this objective no later than 2050 in the event that we are to give ourselves the possibility of restricting a worldwide temperature alteration to moderately safe levels.

The truth of this objective is a necessity to decrease discharges by 7.6% consistently somewhere in the range of 2020 and 2030. In 2020, it very well might be conceivable we will approach with outflows anticipated to fall between 4-7% yet under the deplorable conditions of a worldwide pandemic. This places into obvious alleviation the size of progress required. Be that as it may, the open door is as yet open and it is feasible to accomplish our objective and make our organizations stronger simultaneously.

For an association, what does Net Zero truly mean? How would you devise a vigorous technique for arriving at Net Zero?

THE MEANING OF NET ZERO

With no ideal opportunity to lose in restricting an unnatural climate change, there is a developing agreement between environment specialists who have been working with terms like "carbon lack of bias", "net-zero discharges" for quite a while. Set forth plainly, Net zero is a state where we add no gradual ozone-depleting substances to the climate. This implies emanation yield is offset with the expulsion of carbon from the climate by means of carbon sinks (e.g backwoods, mangroves, carbon catch, and so forth) Basically, what goes in, should be taken out.

[stuartmackintosh]

There is a lot of stuff on the internet about environmental activities on various sites, however, the Climate Crisis Economics book written by Dr. Mackintosh will transform your point of views and shed light on economics, political economy, and science to show how our communities will sustain their economic aspects for future.