It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Thursday, November 11, 2021
COP26: 70 people have been arrested at protests in Glasgow since start of climate summit
Officers have arrested 70 people at COP26 to date, Police Scotland has said.
Assistant Chief Constable Gary Ritchie said: “Police officers have had several hundred engagements with people who were protesting and have made around 70 arrests.
He continued: “The policing operation for COP26, the biggest in UK history, is drawing towards a close.
“Since the start of the conference we have policed numerous events and protests, some official, others unofficial, across the city and the country.
“We helped ensure that two huge marches through the city attended by tens of thousands of protesters were completed successfully.
“With the exception of a tiny minority of protesters intent on creating conflict and compromising public safety, all of these events were peaceful.”
First Minister Nicola Sturgeon urged people to take part peacefully in the climate marches last weekend saying it was a powerful and democratic way to make their voices heard.
COP26: 70 people have been arrested at protests in Glasgow since start of climate summit
Mr Ritchie continued: “I would like to thank protesters and all the police officers and stewards engaged in these operations for ensuring rights were upheld, voices were heard and peaceful protest was facilitated, while also maintaining the safety of all involved.
“It is important to us that we understand what the experience of COP26 has been for people in Glasgow and Scotland.
“For this reason, we want to hear from those who have attended or experienced our policing of these events in Scotland recently.
“This is about gathering insight that we will use to ensure we are effective and collaborative in our approach; working with communities to keep people safe as they practise their human rights of freedom of assembly and of association.”
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez gets to taste Irn-Bru after searching for 'national drink' during COP26
Stephen Mcilkenny
THE SCOTSMAN US congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has managed to get her hands on Scotland’s other national drink.
The Democrat arrived at the COP 26 UN climate summit in Glasgow on Tuesday as part of a US congressional delegation.
Posting on Instagram earlier, she said she wanted to try Irn-Bru while in Scotland.
Following on from the initial post, she tweeted: “I finally got a hold of some Irn-Bru.”
In response to a question on whether she has sampled the bright orange, fizzy drink, she posted: “I am trying to get my hands on some!
“So far it’s been non-stop work with no real independent time so I am hoping for a window to find some.
“The schedule has us leave early and get back late.
“Where do I find it?? Do y’all have bodegas here?”
Responding to another question, she repeated her wish to try Irn-Bru and said she also wants to “touch Harris tweed and see a castle”.
She said the delegation’s schedule is “jammed” but she hopes to have a “few hours in the next few days for us to actually see this beautiful place”.
Following on from her tweet Irn Bru tweeted: “The BRU got through”
On Tuesday, the congresswoman spoke at a press conference at the climate summit and also attended an event on gender and the climate crisis at which the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, made a speech.
A spokesman for Irn-Bru said: “It’s phenomenal that Scotland’s ginger nectar has made such a splash with delegates from across the globe.
“We’d love to help AOC try an ice cold can of Bru while she’s in Glasgow.”
In an Instagram video of herself trying the drink for the first time, the US congresswoman said: “Oh my God, love it, love it."
She added: “This tastes just like the Latina soda Kola Champagne.”
The caption on her Instagram post read: “I was so shocked at having something in Glasgow that tasted like home. “However Irn-Bru is also very unique on its own. It’s got pizazz. Will bring some cans home to NY for sure!”
The World's First Alliance to End Fossil Fuels Is Here
Costa Rica and Denmark are leading the world's first concrete effort to stop the climate crisis in its tracks.
GLASGOW, SCOTLAND — Costa Rica and Denmark have a new plan to save the world: Stop extracting fossil fuels. In a landmark announcement at United Nations climate talks on Thursday, the countries unveiled the initial signatories of the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance.
The premise of the alliance is simple. Countries must create a plan to end fossil fuel extraction. There is no better substitute for ending the climate crisis. Extracting and burning oil, gas, and coal have unleashed catastrophic changes to the biosphere that sustains us. Ending their use as drivers of the global economy is a way to ensure no more damage is done.
“We really need to accelerate action,” Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica Andrea Meza said at a press conference. “We’ve been addressing the demand side. ... But we cannot also leave the supply side there. We need to have this conversation ... which we know is not an easy discussion.”
The duo did a soft launch over the summer and have been working to rally support. On Thursday, they unveiled the first members, which include France, Ireland, Sweden, Wales, Greenland, and Québec as full members. California—which has a long history of extraction and recently suffered a major oil spill—and New Zealand have joined as “associates” who are ending-extraction-curious but have yet to come up with full plans to no longer pull oil, gas, and coal out of the ground. And Italy is listed as a friend.
“In order to begin healing from the climate catastrophe we have created we must first stop digging our way to destruction,” Mohamed Adow, the founder and head of Power Shift Africa, said in a statement. “Ending our extraction and use of oil and gas is a necessary step in ending our self-harming addiction to fossil fuels.”
A steady drumbeat of scientific reports have shown why ending the fossil fuel era is vital to humanity. The International Energy Agency found new oil and gas exploration must end by 2022 (yes, next year) to have a shot at keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) of pre-industrial levels. A 2018 report by the world’s top climate scientists found the world will need to curtail coal use by 78%, oil use by 37%, and gas use 25% by 2030 to have a shot at that target as well.
That threshold is crucial to the fate of small island states that would be swallowed by rising seas—but it’s also central to protecting everyone on Earth. The past year alone has unleashed climate horrors around the world from fires to floods, showing nowhere is safe from global warming. Yet world leaders have failed to step up to the plate until now.
While there are certainly demand-side approaches, including more widespread use of electric vehicles, public transit, and biking, curtailing the supply of our demise is a pretty damn good way to start. The alliance is significant as a world-first. But it also shows how much work there is to be done.
Major fossil fuel producers like the U.S., Russia, and many nations throughout the Middle East are nowhere to be found. Instead, those countries—and others throughout the world—have focused on nebulous emissions cuts and promises of net zero. The latter offers wiggle room for countries to keep producing and using fossil fuels based on plans to capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere at some point down the road. Those technologies currently exist, but at nowhere remotely near the scale needed. The U.S. is still leasing oil and gas permits while Russia’s state-owned gas company is planning a ginormous gas terminal in the Arctic. And counties in the Middle East like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates... well, their economies are built on oil. Still, the countries here represent a new vanguard and the commitments aren’t inconsequential.
“My own country Denmark, when we made the decision in 2019, we were the biggest oil producer in the EU,” Danish Climate Minister Dan Jørgensen said. “Other countries on the list that have substantial production. And we need to look at the reserves; Greenland has huge reserves. It’s not without meaning. Having said all that, this is the first step.”
Twenty countries also pledged at the talks to stop fossil fuel financing abroad—but not at home, which is a little oversight. In a separate text on Wednesday, documents tied to the negotiations between all countries called for phasing out coal and ending fossil fuel subsidies. That’s almost surely the first time fossil fuels have ever appeared in even draft documents at international climate talks. That may seem weird given that this is year 26 of talks, and it’s been quite clear the whole time that fossil fuels are the problem. But here we are.
In a separate announcement on Thursday, a number of activists with Greta Thunberg’s Fridays for Future movement called for the world to sign a fossil fuel non-proliferation treaty, another mechanism to end extraction. At least some countries and a growing segment of civil society are ready to step up to the challenge of ending fossil fuels.
“The launch of BOGA marks a departure from decades of international climate policy in which the question of aligning the production of fossil fuels with carbon budgets was ignored,” Tzeporah Berman, chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, said in a statement.
Whether the Beyond Oil and Gas Alliance and Fridays for Future signatories are enough to ensure the final agreement in Glasgow mentions fossil fuels, let alone get strengthens language around ending their use, is enough to move the dial remains to be seen. But make no mistake that this is a watershed moment.
Acid in palm oil linked to cancer spread, finds study
One fatty acid found promoted metastasis in mouth cancers and melanoma skin cancer
‘Metastasis is estimated to be responsible for 90 per cent of all cancer deaths’. Photograph: iStock
Researchers have discovered how an acid found in palm oil alters the cancer genome, increasing the likelihood the disease will spread.
The scientists have started developing therapies that interrupt this process and suggest a clinical trial could begin in the next couple of years.
The spread of cancer — metastasis — is the main cause of death in patients with the disease and the vast majority of people with metastatic cancer can only be treated, but not cured, researchers say.
Fatty acids are the building blocks of fat in our body and the food we eat.
Metastasis is promoted by fatty acids in the diet, but it has been unclear how this works and whether all fatty acids contribute to the spread of the disease.
The new study, led by researchers at IRB Barcelona, Spain, found one such fatty acid commonly found in palm oil, called palmitic acid, promoted metastasis in mouth cancers and melanoma skin cancer in mice.
Other fatty acids called oleic acid and linoleic acid — omega-9 and omega-6 fats found in foods such as olive oil and flaxseeds — did not show the same effect.
According to the research, neither of the fatty acids tested increased the risk of developing cancer in the first place.
The research found that when palmitic acid was supplemented into the diet of mice, it not only contributed to metastasis but also exerted long-term effects on the genome.
Even when the palmitic acid had been removed from the diet, cancer cells that had only been exposed to it in the diet for a short period of time remained highly metastatic.
Researchers discovered this memory is caused by epigenetic changes to how our genes function.
The changes alter the function of metastatic cancer cells and allow them to form a neural network around the tumour to communicate with cells in their immediate environment and to spread more easily.
Clinical trial
By understanding the nature of this communication, the researchers uncovered a way to block it and are now in the process of planning a clinical trial to stop metastasis in different types of cancer.
Professor Salvador Aznar-Benitah, senior group leader at IRB Barcelona and ICREA research professor, and senior author of the paper, said: “I think it is too early to determine which type of diet could be consumed by patients with metastatic cancer that would slow down the metastatic process.
“That said, based on our results one would think that a diet poor in palmitic acid could be effective in slowing down the metastatic process, but much more work is needed to determine this.
“We are not concentrating on this direction of research, instead we are focusing on new potential therapeutic targets that we could inhibit and that could have a real therapeutic benefit for the patient irrespective of their diet.”
Dr Helen Rippon, chief executive at Worldwide Cancer Research, said: “This discovery is a huge breakthrough in our understanding of how diet and cancer are linked and, perhaps more importantly, how we can use this knowledge to start new cures for cancer.
“Metastasis is estimated to be responsible for 90 per cent of all cancer deaths — that’s around nine million deaths per year globally.
“Learning more about what makes cancer spread and — importantly — how to stop it is the way forward to reduce these numbers.”
The findings are published in the journal Nature and part-funded by the UK charity Worldwide Cancer Research. – PA
Quebec premier shuns meeting with Nicola Sturgeon as experts brand situation ‘a nightmare scenario’ for SNP
The political situation in Quebec is a “nightmare scenario” for Scotland, experts have claimed, as Quebecois premier Francois Legault failed to broker a meeting with Nicola Sturgeon when he visited Glasgow for COP26.
Both leaders’ offices have confirmed that on Mr Legault’s visit to Scotland last week, no attempt was made to set up a meeting with Ms Sturgeon. This is despite the two governments having previously enjoyed cordial relations in the spirit of seeking independence for their territories.
Daniel Béland, James McGill professor in the department of political science at McGill University in Montreal, said Mr Legault’s status as a former long-term supporter of Quebec independence, but now – despite remaining a nationalist – no longer being in support of sovereignty, could make Ms Sturgeon nervous about parallels being drawn between Canada and Scotland.
He said the situation playing out in Quebec – where the party in power are former supporters of independence who set up their own pro-nationalist parties, but no longer support an independence referendum – could be a “nightmare scenario” for Ms Sturgeon.
Quebec Premier François Legault was at COP26 in Glasgow.
The Scottish Government has pledged to hold a new referendum on independence by the end of 2023.
Mr Legault has been the leader of the nationalist party Coalition Avenir Québec (CAQ) since it was founded in 2011 – and the first premier who is not a member of the Quebec Liberal Party or the Parti Québécois (PQ) since the 1970s, despite having previously been a Cabinet minister in the pro-separatist government.
The CAQ party was one of a number formed after various high-profile names splintered from the main independence party, Parti Quebecois, in the early 2010s, following an unsuccessful second independence referendum in the 1990s.
Prof Béland said: "It is significant because there have been strong ties between Quebec and Scotland in terms of diplomacy and that in the past, Quebec premiers have met with Scottish officials.
"It is strange that they did not meet because Legault spent quite a bit of time in Scotland, he was there for several days.”
Prof Béland warned a further splintering of the SNP, away from support for a referendum, as has happened in Quebec, could be a “nightmare scenario” for the party.
Former first minister Alex Salmond set up his own pro-independence party, Alba, before the Holyrood election in May, taking with him a number of former MSPs.
Prof Béland said: “It could be a nightmare scenario that someone from the SNP decides to leave and says ‘we support autonomy for Scotland, but not independence’, because that is what Legault is doing.
"For Sturgeon, [meeting Mr Legault] could be a problem. It’s not the best match.”
Prof Béland said that, equally, the Quebec administration could be nervous of potential independence in Scotland.
He said: “It might be a problem because it might create a revival of the sovereign based movement in Quebec. And he [Mr Legault] has jumped off that boat long time ago.
"He no longer supports independence. He is a strong nationalist, but he rejects the idea of a referendum on sovereignty.
"I think it's a bit awkward. So if he was seen in Scotland supporting the independence of Scotland implicitly or otherwise, that might cause some some tensions within his coalition.
"There are still some people who believe deep inside he is still a sovereignist. He is not just the premier of Quebec, he is a former sovereignist who rejects that now.”
During his time in Glasgow, Mr Legault met with several dignitaries, including Prince Charles, former US Secretary of State John Kerry, and US president Joe Biden's climate advisor Gina McCarthy.
John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde, pointed out Ms Sturgeon was more likely to have wanted to court heads of national governments, rather than those in charge of provinces and smaller states, like Mr Legault.
He said: “Perhaps Nicola Sturgeon is not too upset not to be seen to be photographed with the premier of a nationalist movement that has so far failed and which has not really demonstrated much in the way of likelihood of success ever since it failed a second referendum – a topic on which she, at least, is currently determined to try and embark.”
Prof Curtice added: “Clearly the central issue of all of this is that no room was given to her to speak at the main [COP26] conference and that she has supplemented that by spending her time going around this enormous jamboree, and talking to a lot of people, including people who are heads of national governments.
"It was a photo opportunity and a diplomatic opportunity. At the end of the day, what she is concerned about most of all is what the premier of Canada thinks, rather than what the premier of Quebec thinks.
"One of her objectives is to create an independence that the rest of the world will be willing to recognise, so it is what the heads of national government say that matters. Who knows if she’s been able to do that on this occasion to be able to do some quiet diplomacy in that direction.”
The Scottish Government acknowledged that no bilateral meeting had been sought between the First Minister and the Premier of Quebec – from either party.
A spokesperson said: “The Scottish Government is actively engaged with Canada and ministers met with environmental ministers from three Canadian provinces, including Quebec, to discuss climate change.”
Ewan Sauves, press spokesman for the Premier of Quebec, said there had been no request for a meeting with Ms Sturgeon.
He said: “As is customary, we have notified the UK and Scotland of our arrival for COP 26, but the Minister of International Relations and of La Francophonie has not requested a meeting.”
He did not specify why no request was made.
Students win $100,000 prize from Elon Musk’s carbon-removal competition
Led by senior Laura Stieghorst, a team of University of Miami students will use the award to advance their idea for reducing atmospheric carbon levels
IMAGE: FROM TOP LEFT ARE DREW RICH, CHRIS LANGDON, ANWAR KHAN, ZACH BERKOWITZ, NANCY LEWIS, LAURA STIEGHORST, ISABELLE FITZPATRICK, AND EDEN LEDER. PHOTO: JENNY HUDAK/UNIVERSITY OF MIAMIview more
CREDIT: JENNY HUDAK/UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI
Last spring, as Laura Stieghorst watched Elon Musk’s SpaceX rocket blast off from Cape Canaveral, the University of Miami undergraduate wished the billionaire would pour as much money into saving the planet from climate change as he was enabling people to leave it.
Just a few days later, Stieghorst was delighted to learn that the Musk Foundation had launched the $100 million XPRIZE Carbon Removal project, a global contest aimed at generating ideas for extracting and sequestering carbon dioxide from the atmosphere or ocean—and the prizes included a total of $5 million for ideas from students.
Stieghorst immediately got to work. She spent her summer researching various methods for ocean-based carbon removal and was intrigued by those that would increase the alkalinity of the water and neutralize the acidification that, along with warming waters, is imperiling coral reefs and other marine ecosystems. She connected with Greg Rau, a renowned carbon cycle expert who patented such a process, and then she recruited a team of students and faculty members from five schools across the University. They spent seven intense weeks developing a proposal for the XPRIZE.
On Wednesday, Stieghorst and her Accelerated Carbonate Ion Dissolution and Dispersal (ACIDD) student team members—Isabella Arosemena, Zach Berkowitz, Jeanette Betke, Isabelle Fitzpatrick, Anwar Khan, Eden Leder, Nancy Lewis, and Drew Rich—learned their work had paid off. XPRIZE announced that ACIDD is one of five student projects awarded $100,000 to advance Musk’s goal of removing 1 billion tons of CO₂ per year from the atmosphere.
Now, Stieghorst, who is graduating in December with a degree in ecosystems science and policy, acknowledges that now the hard work really begins. “I am over the moon,” she said. “I had so much confidence in the solution that I imagined this happening. But everything we did was theoretical. So, now we have to prove the idea works in the real world and at scale.”
The ACIDD proposal was based on a process developed by Rau, the chief technology officer and co-founder of Planetary Hydrogen, a carbon-capture startup. The process generates a low-carbon form of alkalinity using waste products from mining, water, and renewable electricity, and harvesting valuable byproducts such as hydrogen—a key ingredient to a decarbonized energy system. When added to the ocean, the alkalinity enhances the ocean’s uptake of CO₂ from the air while countering local ocean acidification.
“Essentially, it’s like one big Alka Seltzer,” Stieghorst said. “When the tablet dissolves in water, it can neutralize acid. Distributing this liquid in the ocean will have a similar effect. Accelerating it to human-time scales can safely lock away our anthropogenic carbon emissions for more than 100,000 years.”
Working with Planetary Hydrogen, the ACIDD team will assess the environmental impact of the process by measuring its effects on laboratory corals.
The team’s faculty advisors, Chris Langdon, a professor at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science who was instrumental in connecting Stieghorst to Planetary Hydrogen, and Esber Andiroglu, associate professor of practice in the Department of Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering, guided the students through the XPRIZE proposal, with Planetary Hydrogen’s support. Now, with the ACIDD team’s prize in hand, both teams plan to work together to advance their common goal of unlocking the power of the oceans to address the climate crisis—and win the grand XPRIZE in 2025.
“Laura and her team are an inspiration to all those who are working to advance climate solutions,” said Jason Vallis, Planetary Hydrogen’s vice president for external relations. “We were extremely impressed with her leadership in getting this project off the ground and are thrilled to learn of the team’s success in the student XPRIZE competition. We look forward to working together to bring ocean carbon dioxide removal to the forefront.”
The partnership is one that Langdon, who studies the biology and ecology of corals, said could expand important research in the future. “Corals are a super delicate organism,” he said. “If we can show that we can add the Planetary Hydrogen product to the water and it doesn’t injure the health of the corals—or even enhances their health—that could go a long way in convincing people that a larger-scale experiment would be safe to try.”
For her part, Stieghorst looks forward to the day that the ACIDD team’s job is building a market for and social acceptance of ocean-based carbon dioxide removal technologies. “CO2 is invisible. Alkalinity is complicated,” she said. “If we’re creating a solution that is, hopefully, going to be global one day, you need a lot of public support.”
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To learn more about the ACIDD project, email Laura Stieghorst at lxs962@miami.edu or visit the team’s Instagram or Twitter pages.
The frontiers of energy
Shuji Nakamura receives the 3rd annual Richard J. Goldstein Energy Lecture Award from the ASME
UC Santa Barbara professor Shuji Nakamura is the recipient of the 3rd Annual Richard J. Goldstein Energy Lecture Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Established in 2019, the award recognizes “pioneering contributions to the frontiers of energy, leading to breakthroughs in existing technology, leading to new applications or new areas of engineering endeavor, or leading to policy initiatives.”
Nakamura, a professor in the departments of electrical and computer engineering, and of materials at UC Santa Barbara, was selected for “transformational innovation in energy-conserving electronic and photonic materials, particularly pioneering work in light emitters based on wide-bandgap semiconductors and the invention of efficient blue-light emitting diodes that have rendered substantive bright and energy-saving white light sources.”
“It is my great honor to receive the Richard J. Goldstein Energy Lecture Award,” Nakamura said. “LEDs have been used in applications in a variety of lighting and displays in order to reduce energy consumption. Laser lighting would be the next generation of lighting by utilizing blue lasers. I hope that the invention of LEDs and laser lighting will contribute to minimizing global warming in the future.”
“On behalf of the College of Engineering, I offer sincere congratulations to Shuji Nakamura for receiving the 2021 ASME Richard J. Goldstein Energy Lecture Award,” said Interim Dean Tresa Pollock. “We continue to take tremendous pride in being able to call Shuji our friend and UCSB colleague. As this award clearly underscores, his tenacity in pursuing the world-changing blue LED continues to serve as an inspiration to us all.”
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Nakamura received a bronze medal and a certificate, and gave a lecture on the topic of the invention of the blue LED and the future of lighting at the virtual ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition that took place Nov. 1-4, 2021.
The LED Frontier When the bright blue LED was invented around the early 1990s, it was a game-changer. For decades, scientists and engineers around the world had been working hard to develop the blue light emitting diode, which was a necessary step toward the development of energy efficient, solid-state white lighting. Nakamura was among the first to overcome that challenge, with a novel system that greatly improved the quality of gallium nitride (GaN) crystals that are the foundation of his bright blue LEDs. Prior to his Two-Flow Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) technique, GaN had been considered too difficult to work with despite its potential, because the crystals were prone to flaws in their growth.
Nakamura’s work indeed has paved the way for highly energy-efficient, durable and versatile lighting that has found its way into homes, businesses, displays, automobiles and more. His work has earned him numerous honors and accolades, including the 2006 Millennium Technology Prize, the 2014 Nobel Prize in Physics, a 2015 Global Energy Prize and the 2021 Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering. Nakamura, who joined the UC Santa Barbara faculty in 2000, is a fellow of the National Academy of Engineering, of the National Academy of Inventors and of the Royal Academy of Engineering.
The Richard J. Goldstein Energy Lecture Award was established in 2019 and named after ASME’s 115th president, who led ASME from 1996 to 1997. Having formally retired in May 2018, he is currently Regents’ Professor and James J. Ryan Professor Emeritus of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities.
ASME helps the global engineering community develop solutions to real world challenges. Founded in 1880 as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, ASME is a not-for-profit professional organization that enables collaboration, knowledge sharing, and skill development across all engineering disciplines, while promoting the vital role of the engineer in society.
What would expanding the EU's emissions trading system mean for consumers and climate goals?
A new article published in Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy outlines the benefits, costs, and policy design considerations of expanding the European Union’s Emissions Trading System to cover road transport and heating fuels
The European Union’s Emissions Trading System (ETS) is one of the world’s largest carbon markets. A new paper, published today in the journal Economics of Energy and Environmental Policy, considers the benefits, costs, and policy design options of making it even bigger.
The article dives into the feasibility and widespread effects of including road transport and heating fuels, like those used for gas boilers, in the ETS. Putting a carbon price on these two heavily used fuels, the authors find, would be a cost-effective method of reducing emissions, but doing so may affect consumers—underlining the need for thoughtful policy design and implementation.
The ETS is a cap-and-trade market; it places a limit on overall emissions from the EU’s industrial sector, commercial aviation within the European Economic area, electricity generation, and more. The system was established in 2005 and has continued to evolve since then, and has existed alongside other standards-based policies to keep emissions in check.
While including heating and road transport fuels has not been proposed before by the European Commission, doing so would be an “institutional adjustment of unprecedented scale,” the authors write, and would raise the system’s coverage from 43 percent to 74 percent of EU greenhouse gas emissions. At present, there are no regulations in the EU that put a cap on emissions from road transport and heating fuels, so the extension could act as a “backstop” to make sure that the EU does not exceed its carbon budget.
“At a time when many nations are struggling to meet, or make plans to meet, their climate goals, the expansion of this system could present a feasible way to pick much needed low-hanging fruits,” coauthor and Resources for the Future (RFF) Postdoctoral Fellow Geoffroy Dolphin said.
Because the extension would overlap partially with existing EU and national policies, the value of the extension would primarily lie in its ability to increase cost efficiency and to cap emissions–the authors argue that current regulations are ineffective at ensuring that emissions from heating and road transport fuel stay within a carbon budget compatible with the Paris Agreement objective.
The paper, which analyzes existing literature on carbon pricing and the EU’s ETS, also assesses the distributional implications of such a policy expansion.
While the per capita consumption of road transport fuel is relatively even across the EU, the use of commercial and residential heating fuel differs based on region—as does the ability to shoulder any increases in cost due to the expanded carbon fee. Romania, for example, would have almost 62 percent of its emissions covered under the expansion at an average price of roughly €26/ton of carbon dioxide-equivalent. Germany, on the other hand, would have about 92 percent of its emissions covered under the expansion at a price of almost €35/ton of carbon dioxide-equivalent.
“Extending the EU ETS to heating and road transport is a great way of adding credibility to European net-zero policy," coauthor and University of Cambridge professor Michael Pollitt said. "Importantly, it forces governments to put complementary policies to decarbonize heat and transport in place to help consumers adjust to the inevitable rises in fossil fuel prices. A high and rising carbon fee can also positively affect people both through their use of income, as well as on their sources of income as the economy adjusts to new prices.”
But while the literature suggests that the carbon price may result in uneven growing pains, the authors find that thoughtful policy design can help relieve those burdens and lessen the variation of costs across income categories or geographic regions.
A lower emissions cap, for example, would result in higher carbon prices and higher consumer prices for places that are slow to adjust to the new system. The exact magnitude of the price increase would also depend on the stringency of other policies targeting these sectors. Considering that the EU is likely to implement other strong standards in the coming years, the authors expect that the increase in prices for consumers will be moderate as the new policies would achieve substantial emissions reduction.
The ETS carbon fees by their nature would raise government revenue, so costs could also be neutralized through a consumer rebate or lower prices elsewhere.
“There’s a lot of potential here,” Dolphin said. “Enacting a policy like this would be difficult – but it’s definitely doable.”
For more, read the Economics of Energy andEnvironmentalPolicy article by Michael G. Pollitt of the University of Cambridge and Geoffroy G. Dolphin of Resources for the Future and the University of Cambridge: “Should the EU ETS Be Extended to Road Transport and Heating Fuels?”
HARVARD JOHN A. PAULSON SCHOOL OF ENGINEERING AND APPLIED SCIENCES
China is the world’s largest producer of hydrogen – currently chiefly an industrial feedstock consumed by the chemical and refining industries – and overwhelmingly produces it from coal emitting CO2, termed “black” hydrogen. China also leads the world in wind power generation, with 61% of its onshore wind capacity located in windy northern regions, where it must sometimes be wasted because the grid cannot accommodate its inherent variability. But renewable power can be used to produce hydrogen without CO2 emissions, called “green” hydrogen, through electrolysis of water that can be timed to accommodate variations in renewable generation.
Now a team of researchers from Harvard University, Shandong University and Huazhong University of Science and Technology have explored the potential harnessing of China’s wind energy to produce carbon-free green hydrogen at a cost lower than that of coal-derived black hydrogen. If green hydrogen can prove cost-competitive with black carbon for existing industrial uses, it may have even greater decarbonization potential as a zero-carbon energy source in key sectors that are otherwise difficult to decarbonize, including iron & steel production, cement making, and heavy-duty transportation.
The researchers chose Western Inner Mongolia, with its high wind power generation and large coal and black hydrogen production, as a representative region to estimate the technical and economic feasibility of producing green hydrogen using wind power. The results show that green hydrogen produced from wind power is competitive with black hydrogen, with large production levels possible at less than US$2/kg – a widely recognized threshold for cost-competitiveness. And by 2030, shifting black hydrogen to green hydrogen derived from Western Inner Mongolia’s growing wind power for use as industrial feedstocks alone could reduce about 100 million tons of CO2 emissions per year, equal to roughly half of the entire carbon footprint of the megacity of Beijing.
Managers looking to create social conditions that lead to open, diversified and large networks — which are known to spur innovation — should avoid implementing pay-for-performance incentives that rest on short-term and quantitative performance metrics. According to new research published in Strategic Management Journal, such pay incentives result in more closed and smaller networks in organizations, suggesting that managers can use incentive plans to design innovation networks in their organizations.
The study, titled “Pay and networks in organizations: Incentive redesign as a driver of network change,” was published Aug. 26 and written by Hitoshi Mitsuhashi, of the School of Commerce at Waseda University in Tokyo, and Azusa Nakamura, of the Department of Management and Technology at Bocconi University in Milan.
“[F]rom a practitioners' standpoint, our findings highlight the role of managerial policies in shaping networks in organizations,” the authors write.
Mitsuhashi and Nakamura looked to answer two questions in particular, based on gaps in existing research: What can managers do to create social conditions that promote certain networks that are preferable for their goal attainment? And what management policies are available if they want to exert some influence on networks in their organization?
What was known from existing research about networks — and what Mitsuhashi and Nakamura built their study on — are the types of networks that increase work performance and how such preferable networks emerge.
For their work, the study authors focused on the change of incentive plans from those that weakly link short-term individualized contributions with remuneration to those that tightly link them. For example, switching from seniority-based pay to a performance-based incentive plan.
They also looked at the effects of such an incentive redesign on corporate innovators, arguing that the shift would cause two particular habits in the employees: They would deliver more measurable short-term outcomes and they would seek a fair share of the credit on the outcomes that they jointly achieve with others in their networks. These habits, the authors hypothesized, would prompt corporate innovators to build easily manageable networks to quickly execute projects and get rewarded.
To test the theory, Mitsuhashi and Nakamura used Japanese electronics firms' patent application filing data, focused on co-innovator networks and adopted a quasi-experimental research design. They chose Fujitsu Limited and NEC Corporations as the treatment group, and the companies’ performance-based incentive plans as the treatment effects. The researchers conducted difference-in-differences (DID) analyses and estimated the incentive plans’ effects by comparing individual employees before and after the plans took effect with individuals in control groups.
Based on interviews with corporate innovators who experienced the incentive redesign in these firms and HR experts who observed their responses, they found three areas of change took place when incentive plans were redesigned based on performance. First, they found that corporate innovators became more goal-oriented and focused more on achievement. Second, the short cycle of performance evaluation created a short-term orientation among employees and increased their risk aversion. Third, the incentive redesign made innovators more individualistic and they became more sensitive about who made what contributions, even deterring others from claiming specific achievements in team settings.
The results supported the authors’ theory that the incentive redesign leads to more closed and smaller networks in organizations. They also found some evidence — although inconsistent — that it caused innovators to build networks with others who have similar expertise.
“A critical message from these observations is that before engaging in incentive redesign, companies need to understand that, No. 1, (it) influences goals that employees pursue, No. 2, employees might adapt their networks to the renewed goals and, No. 3., the updated networks might not be ones that managers prefer,” Mitsuhashi says.
While the findings help to further the understanding of pay and networks in organizations — and highlights their intersection — it offers practical advice for managers: Moving to a pay-for-performance incentive model that relies on short-term and quantitative performance metrics could come at the risk of innovation within the organization.
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Quebec Premier François Legault was at COP26 in Glasgow.