Green wave presenting major opportunities and risks for Canadian businesses

Brian Banks

Contributor

Friday, October 29th 2021, 9:00 am - Experts from the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices say many companies in Canada will see both wins and challenges as the world moves towards a low-carbon future.

Next month, the small city of Portage la Prairie, Manitoba, 75 kilometres west of Winnipeg, will celebrate the grand opening of the largest pea protein plant on Earth.

Roquette Canada, a division of the French food giant Roquette, built the 200,000-square-foot plant at a cost of $600 million, to capitalize on skyrocketing North American demand for alternative proteins.

That demand is surging, in part, because production of plant proteins — key ingredients in an array of products, including high-profile foods like Beyond Meat — typically emits much less carbon than animal sources.

While the plant’s 120 permanent full-time jobs are an obvious boon for the city of 14,000 and surrounding communities, investments like Roquette’s are needed in all parts of Canada — in all kinds of different sectors — if this country is to prosper and successfully transition in a world economy moving rapidly towards a low-carbon future.

That’s the key message in a just-released, first-of-its-kind report, called “Sink or Swim,” prepared by a multidisciplinary team of experts for the Canadian Institute for Climate Choices.

It’s also especially timely, coming just days before the start of the COP26 United Nations Climate Change Conference, where Canada and other countries will reaffirm accelerated 2030 emissions reductions targets to help meet the goal of reaching global net zero carbon by 2050.

“The green wave is coming fast. Big changes in global markets bring big opportunities, but also big risks,” the report states.

 

Sunset over biogas capture wells in an open meadow section of Frederic-Back Park, Quebec. (Alain Beauchesne/ iStock/ Getty Images Plus)

THE WORLD IS MOVING

Rachel Samson, one of the report’s lead authors, emphasized in an interview with The Weather Network that while the science on climate change is strong and clear, this is about recognizing the reality of an economic transition, first and foremost.

“The rest of the world is moving on this,” said Samson. “Investors are taking action to reduce emissions. Policies are changing. Technological costs are coming down. Within that context, Canada really needs to act in order to maintain its competitive position in the world.”

The report’s aim wasn’t to identify low-emissions sectors and activities — for the most part, those are known. Instead, researchers wanted to find out how well or poorly Canadian companies in different sectors are positioned to succeed in the low-carbon transition and to use those findings to guide investment and policy decisions.

What they found was concerning.

“Canada is not ready,” the report states. “Big investments are not happening at the scale needed. Businesses are vulnerable to sudden changes in global markets or investor sentiment. Promising companies that could drive future growth struggle to attract financing. And there are limited plans to protect and empower workers and communities most affected by change.”

COMPANY STRESS TESTS

Different sectors require different strategies and solutions. To help get a clearer picture, researchers ran “stress tests” on all publicly traded Canadian companies under future carbon-cutting policy scenarios, then grouped them into three categories — demand creation, carbon costs, and demand decline — according to which of those “drivers” most affected their profit.

The first category includes companies in sectors like electric batteries and energy storage, which primarily need to create more demand to succeed. The second, which includes companies in mining and heavy manufacturing, saw profits cut by rising carbon costs; to succeed, they need to reduce emissions. The third, which includes oil, gas, and coal companies, face declining demand and must shift into new business lines.

In a real highlight, authors were then able to use these results to identify specific companies and communities at greatest risk across the country.

“It’s the first Canadian report that does this, so I think it’s very, very important,” Lisa DeMarco, a senior partner and CEO of Resilient LLP, a Toronto law firm specializing in climate and clean energy, told The Weather Network.

Most striking about those results? No province or territory is exempt. And so, while those heavily reliant on oil and gas have the highest proportion of workers in transition-vulnerable sectors (Alberta is first at 9.1 per cent), a province like Ontario, with more workers and a big reliance on the transportation sector, also has many thousands of workers exposed (5 per cent).

“For workers, the stakes are particularly high in terms of what businesses and governments do to manage the transition,” Samson added.

GETTING IT RIGHT

Samson emphasizes that there are also areas where Canada is getting it right, particularly in sectors where the transition opportunities are strong. She points to General Motors of Canada’s $1 billion investment in its plant in Ingersoll to start making electric vans there in 2022.

Likewise, international miner Vale has invested $150 million to extend the life of a nickel mine in Manitoba in response to demand from makers of electric vehicle batteries. And in Quebec, aluminum manufacturers Alcoa and Rio Tinto have struck a partnership called Elysis, which recently began making low-carbon aluminum, using a technology that eliminates all direct GHG emissions from the smelting process.

The problem, Samson said, is there aren’t more examples like this. “Our analysis shows it’s clearly not [enough] yet.”

The report emphasizes that the onus is on businesses and private sector capital to make the critical investments — much like Roquette Canada’s example in Portage la Prairie. But it also details how supportive government policy, mandated climate-related disclosure rules for public companies, and targeted, strategic investments are key.

“Government has a role to play in mobilizing that investment and channeling it in the directions needed for Canada’s success,” Samson said.

That not only means doing more, but doing it quickly — which would also align with the federal government’s updated goal to cut Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions by 40‑45 per cent by 2030.

“There’s a reason we called the report ‘Sink or Swim,’ because it really depends on the choices that businesses and governments make over the coming decade,” Samson said. “If they take the actions that we recommend, if they make the investments that are needed, then it will be very positive for Canada, with new sources of economic growth, and new sources of jobs.”

Thumbnail credit: Maryna Terletska/ Moment/ Getty Images

The environmental impact of rocket launches: The 'dirty' and the 'green'

If the environment was your priority, which rocket would you choose?

By Tereza Pultarova 

SPACE.COM

Europe's Ariane 5 uses solid rocket boosters to get off the ground. 

(Image credit: Arianespace)

When it comes to their environmental impacts, not all rocket fuels are equal. Which are the industry's 'dirty secrets' and which technologies might satisfy even Greta Thunberg?

Here's a look at commonly used rocket propellants and their impact on the environment. The research is limited and experts caution that not enough data has been gathered to precisely assess the impacts of various types of rocket propellants and rocket engines on the climate and the environment. So keep that in mind in our rocket fuel analysis below.

UDMH: "Devil's venom" poisons the soil for decades

The good thing about UDMH, short for Unsymmetrical Dimethylhydrazine, is that in the west it's only used in those parts of space systems that don't come in contact with Earth. This fuel, dubbed Devil's venom by Soviet scientists, is responsible for turning a vast area of a Kazakh steppe into an ecological disaster zone, according to a report by the United Nations Development Program cited in a comprehensive review of the environmental impacts of space launches published in the Journal of Cleaner Production last year.

Highly carcinogenic for humans, UDMH spills from first and second stages of Russia's popular Proton rockets as they fall from the altitude of 25 and 60 miles (40 and 100 kilometers) respectively. Since 1965, Proton has successfully launched hundreds of government and commercial satellites. As a side effect, it soaked the Kazakh soil in poison. Very little has been published about the environmental impacts, but scientists believe that UDMH and the byproducts of its transformation can stay in the soil for decades, the review stated.

UDMH also powers the first four generations of China's Long March rockets (generations 2 to 4 are still being used).

"In Western countries, this kind of propellant is only used for satellite propulsion and for the very upper stages where it doesn't come in contact with the atmosphere," Filippo Maggi, associate professor of aerospace engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy, who studies rocket propulsion technologies, told Space.com. "There are advantages to UDMH. It doesn't need a source of ignition, you can store it in ambient temperature and it provides a lot of energy."

Still, Maggi added, researchers are looking for possible replacements for the toxic UDMH even in those less risky technologies.

Russia said in 2018 that it would discontinue the production of Proton and replace the launcher with a new rocket called Angara, which uses Rocket Propellent 1 (RP-1), a refined version of aviation fuel kerosene.

Solid Rocket Motors: Particle factories that produce acid rains, ozone holes

Solid rocket motors (SRMs) help many heavy-lift rockets off the ground. Most well known are possibly the solid rocket boosters of NASA's space shuttles, which burned a mixture of aluminum and ammonia, and were not exactly an environmental win.

Some rather strange occurrences were reported after space shuttle launches. The massive cloud generated during liftoff contained rather reactive chemicals such as hydrochloric acid and aluminum oxide. These substances got mixed up with water from the deluge system that cooled down the launch pad and the rocket. This cloud then spread in the surrounding environment, affecting soil and water quality, and damaging vegetation, according to the review.

After several space shuttle launches, large amounts of dead fish were found in nearby water bodies, a study cited in the review reported. Scientists then experimented with open, closed and partially closed buckets with water that were left near the launch site during liftoff. They found that as stuff from the space shuttle cloud rained into the buckets, the water inside turned into a mild acid. Fortunately, in nature, the water PH quickly returned to normal (although not quickly enough for the dead fish).

In the 1990s, scientists flew high-altitude planes through the space shuttle exhaust plumes. They wanted to know what the chlorine from the exhaust did to the ozone layer. They indeed found local ozone holes in the rocket's wake, David Fahey, the director of the Chemical Sciences Laboratory at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, who led the research, told Space.com in an earlier interview. But the holes healed quickly after each launch and were not large enough to affect the ozone layer globally. At least not at the frequency of launches at that time.

But there are still other components of the SRM exhaust that scientists still don't fully understand and are concerned about. The aluminum oxide from the exhaust forms particles that might reflect sunlight and thus change how much heat reaches Earth's surface. These particles get injected into the otherwise pristine upper layers of Earth's atmosphere, the stratosphere and the mesosphere, and potentially trigger temperature changes.

Martin Ross, of the U.S. Aerospace Corporation, a leading expert on atmospheric effects of rocket launches, who was part of the ozone-measuring campaign in the 1990s, told Space.com that the team did measure aluminum oxide particles at that time but did not focus on how much they scatter or absorb light. At that time, the scientists were interested in the particles' contribution to ozone depletion.

"We need to understand on the science side what these particle components do," Ross said. "How do they change the temperature of the stratosphere? But we also need to understand what exactly is being emitted, how much of it is being emitted. Right now we don't know. We are more or less guessing, based on general principles of rocket engine combustion."

The space shuttle may long be retired but SRMs are still in use, helping off the ground Europe's Ariane 5 as well as the upcoming Ariane 6 rocket, which are using liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen as their main fuel. NASA will use longer versions of these polluting boosters to help propel its new Space Launch System megarocket for the upcoming Artemis moon missions.

Hybrid rocket engines, such as those used by Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo, produce a lot of soot (Image credit: Virgin Galactic)

Hybrid rocket engines: the not so clean newcomer

Hybrid rocket engines burn solid fuel with liquid or gaseous oxidizer. Most famously, this technology is used by Virgin Galactic in their suborbital SpaceShipTwo space planes, which take tourists for short flights to the edge of space and back.

These engines are relatively simple and safe to operate, but scientists are not impressed with their environmental side effects.

"Hybrid engines can use different types of fuels, but they always generate a lot of soot," said Maggi. "These engines work like a candle, and their burning process creates conditions that are favorable for soot generation."

Soot particles, or black carbon, just like particles of aluminum oxide, can affect how the atmosphere absorbs heat. Just like the aluminum oxide, the soot particles get injected into the higher layers of the atmosphere where they might remain forever. And as their concentrations gradually increase over decades, their effect might set in rather stealthily.

According to Maggi, the soot particles generated by hybrid rocket engines are extremely small and light-weight. In fact, when he and his colleagues tried to measure the soot output of hybrid rocket engines in a laboratory, they couldn't reliably do it with precision because of the particles' minuscule size.

"We were able to measure the particle output from solid rocket motors," Maggi said. "These are about a micron in size, and there [are] a lot of them. But because they are large, they fall to the ground more quickly. In hybrid rocket engines, we were not able to collect the soot from the plume because it's extremely fine, a few nanometers in size."

SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket burns RP-1, which is similar to aviation fuel kerosene. This fuel tends to produce a lot of soot particles when it burns.
(Image credit: SpaceX via Twitter)

Kerosene: Reliable, but sooty

Rocket Propellant 1 (RP-1) is a popular type of rocket fuel similar to aviation fuel kerosene. Stable at room temperature and not too explosive, kerosene provides enough energy to lift rockets off the ground even without the help of additional solid rocket boosters.

RP-1 powered the first stages of NASA's famous Apollo-era Saturn V. Today, it propels SpaceX's Falcon 9.

Just like hybrid rocket engines, RP-1 fueled rockets produce soot. Martin Ross cautioned that the amount of pollution released might not depend just on the fuel but also the construction of the engine itself. To say which rockets are dirtier than others is therefore currently impossible.


"Even for the same propellant, rocket engines with a different combustion cycle will have different amounts of black carbon emissions," Ross said.


RP-1 fueled engines also produce carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas responsible for human-induced climate change. Scientists are, however, currently not concerned about the effects of the carbon dioxide emitted by rockets. That's simply because all other sources of greenhouse gases dwarf the overall contribution of global spaceflight.

According to Martin Ross, the amount of fossil fuels burnt by the space industry is only about 1% of that burned by aviation.

Smaller rockets, such as Blue Origin's Blue Shepard, can run entirely on the clean liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen.

 (Image credit: Blue Origin)

Liquid oxygen/Liquid hydrogen: Green but weak fuel that can't do it on its own

From the perspective of the environment, it can hardly get better than liquid oxygen/liquid hydrogen (LOx/LH2). This fuel's exhaust is almost entirely made of water vapour, the effects of which in the atmosphere have been extensively studied. The impacts? Zero, Martin Ross said. Even Greta would approve.

While LOx/LH2 is rather explosive, this problem can be solved with careful handling. It also has low energy density — to lift a rocket off the ground using just LOx/LH2 would require enormous tanks. That's why large rockets such as ESA's Ariane 5 and 6 and NASA's SLS have additional solid boosters to overcome the initial pull of Earth's gravity. Smaller rockets, such as Blue Origin's suborbital New Shepard, can run just on LOx/LH2.

The space shuttle's three main RS-25 engines used to run on LOx/LH2, which was supplied from a giant external tank that was dropped when empty and disintegrated in the atmosphere.

"Water vapor emissions, that's the one area of rocket emissions that is very well known," Ross said. "We have done modelling studies in 2017 that looked at the water vapor emissions at all the different altitudes as the launch vehicle goes up through the atmosphere. We found that the net effect is very very small."

The small effect, however, might be noticeable to observers on the ground. Space shuttle launches frequently triggered formation of spectacular mesospheric clouds. These clouds that can occasionally form in the mesosphere, the otherwise dry layer of the atmosphere at 31 to 53 miles (50 to 85 kilometers) of altitude, glow at night as the sun, already hidden below the observer's horizon, still illuminates them.

SpaceX's megarocket Starship burns methane, which is efficient and clean. 

(Image credit: SpaceX)

Methane: A promising fuel that can leak on the ground

Methane-based rocket propellant is an upcoming technology that might in the future help the spaceflight industry to wean itself off the more polluting SRMs, Maggi said. Methane is a potent greenhouse gas. But it burns more cleanly than RP-1 and provides more energy than LOx/LH2, according to Maggi.

"Methane might soon replace hydrogen in launchers," said Maggi. "Liquid methane and liquid hydrogen can provide high thrust in a launcher that is still relatively compact."
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Despite being a very potent greenhouse gas, methane as a rocket fuel also seems to be quite environmentally friendly because of its burning efficiency.

"If you produce a good propulsion unit, the efficiency of that unit can be as high as 99.5%," said Maggi. "That means that the residues of methane would be basically zero. You might have some carbon monoxide released instead of carbon dioxide. But that would be very little."

Ross added that methane engines, theoretically, should produce less soot than kerosene.

"That's an expectation, again, based on general principles," Ross said. "We do need to actually get up there and measure the emission indexes as the rocket flies to have a complete understanding of all these problems."

Some studies, however, point out that methane, frequently transported in the form of gas, might leak into the atmosphere from gas pipes. 80 times more warming than carbon dioxide, the leaked gas then accelerates the climate change.

SpaceX's superheavy rocket Starship burns liquid methane in its Raptor engines and so does an experimental engine called Prometheus, which is currently being developed by the European Space Agency.

Biofuels: A little explored dark horse

Several rocket start-ups are experimenting with sustainable alternatives to RP-1 made from waste products or biomass. All of these technologies are in their early stages and so far, we only have the word of the proponents to gauge the merits.

U.K. company Orbex that builds a 3D-printed micro-launcher Prime that runs on biopropane recently commissioned a study that found that the technology might produce 86% less emissions compared to a similar-sized RP-1 fuelled rocket. Most of these reductions come from the negative carbon footprint of the fuel production rather than by the rocket emitting considerably less. Interestingly enough, the study concluded that the biopropane-fueled Prime should produce much less soot than rockets burning RP-1. Soot particles, unlike carbon dioxide emissions, do worry scientists because of their possible effects on the temperature of the higher layers of the atmosphere.

Another U.K. rocket startup, Skyrora, experiments with an alternative to RP-1 called Ecosene, made from non-recyclable plastics. The company, too, says that burning this fuel would produce less emissions, up to 40%, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, soot and sulfur.

In February this year, American start-up bluShift Aerospace flew its first stage rocket prototype Stardust 1.0, which uses proprietary solid biofuel made from agricultural waste. The test rocket reached less than one mile in altitude.

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Big oil says up to governments at climate talks to rein in demand

Published OCTOBER 29, 2021

FILE PHOTO: Dust blows around a crude oil pump jack and flare burning excess gas at a drill pad in the Permian Basin in Loving County. Photo: Reuters

LONDON - Leaders of Europe's biggest oil and gas companies said political leaders attending U.N. climate talks that start this week must make carbon markets more effective and that only governments can effectively curb fossil fuel demand.

Oil majors will be among the big companies conspicuous by their absence at the COP26 meeting that begins in Glasgow, Scotland, on Sunday to attempt to agree ways to limit the planet's warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

Ben van Beurden, the chief executive of the world's biggest fuel retailer Royal Dutch Shell, told reporters this week that, as oil and gas companies, "we were told that we were not welcome" at COP26.

European oil majors have set much more ambitious emissions cutting targets than their U.S. rivals, but they also have to fend off accusations that, over decades, they hid the role that their products played in heating the planet.

They have long supported carbon pricing as a business-friendly way to engineer a transition to a cleaner economy, but agreement on the role of carbon markets has proved a major sticking point at climate talks.

"This carbon credits market is currently unorganised, unregulated and therefore dangerous," TotalEnergies Chief Patrick Pouyanne said this week, but he reiterated his support in principle.

"Our positions are well known, we are in favour of carbon pricing," he said.

Shell's van Beurden in a LinkedIn post on Friday, echoing previous comments by BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney, said oil companies alone could not control demand for fossil fuels.

"Let’s say Shell switched the products we sell overnight. Instead of petrol and diesel, motorists at our service stations could only get hydrogen, or recharge their electric cars. It wouldn’t make people buy a hydrogen or battery electric car. They would simply drive down the road and fill up at one of our competitors," van Beurden said.

"So governments will have to play an essential role in helping to shape demand, using mandates where needed, creating the right climate for investment, and helping steer society towards low-carbon and renewable energy." 

REUTERS

Australia’s 2050 net zero emissions plan relies on ‘gross manipulation’ of data, experts say

Estimates for carbon dioxide storage in trees and soil go far beyond upper bounds of what peer-reviewed science suggests is possible

The Morrison government’s long term emissions reduction strategy, released ahead of Cop26, was criticised for not including new policies and relying on new technology. 

Photograph: Lukas Coch/EPA

Adam Morton and Peter Hannam
Fri 29 Oct 2021 

The Morrison government’s 2050 net zero emissions plan relies on a “gross manipulation” of data that suggests trees and soil can absorb far more carbon dioxide than is actually possible, according to experts in the field.

The government’s long term emissions reduction strategy, released ahead of a major climate summit in Glasgow starting on Sunday, was criticised for not including new policies and relying on new technology to make deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in the 2030s and 2040s.

It assumed 10-20% of the emissions cut needed by 2050 would come from paying for international and domestic offsets, including planting trees and other vegetation on marginal agricultural land and techniques to improve the health of soil. This would allow some fossil fuel industries to operate beyond 2050 by effectively cancelling out their emissions by drawing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.


Angus Taylor to promote fossil fuels at Glasgow Cop26 climate summit

The government has not released the modelling underpinning the plan, but the strategy document suggests 63m tonnes of carbon dioxide a year could be sequestered in trees and other vegetation and potentially more than 103m tonnes a year could be stored in soil on cropping and grazing land.

Several experts told Guardian Australia these estimates went beyond the upper bounds of what publicly available peer-reviewed science suggested was possible.

Richard Eckhard, a professor of sustainable agriculture at the University of Melbourne, said some of the per-hectare soil carbon storage numbers were roughly double what was likely to be achievable.

“Soil carbon will not be enough to offset agricultural emissions, let alone the coal industry,” he said. “The idea we can bail out the coal industry with soil carbon is just fanciful.”

Polly Hemming, a carbon offsets expert with the Australia Institute, a progressive thinktank, said the government’s strategy assumed tree planting could capture 42 tonnes of carbon dioxide per hectare each year. But the most you could store in optimum conditions – in giant mountain ash forests, for example – was about half that: roughly 19 tonnes per hectare each year for up to 25 years, she said.

“There’s just no way you could ever get to that 42m tonnes a year they are talking about, especially because they are talking about using marginal lands,” Hemming said.

On soil carbon, the government report said there was limited data available on how much could be stored across Australia, but cited two estimates. The first, by CSIRO, suggested 35-90m tonnes could be stored annually. The second and more prominent in the report was by AgriProve, a soil carbon business that earns revenue through the government’s emissions reduction fund. It said there was potential for at least 103m tonnes annually to be stored across the country.


Former finance minister who helped sink carbon price now urging Australia to adopt one

Eckhard said it made little sense that the government would use data from a business working in the area as it created a potential conflict of interest. “Why did the government not go to the best soil science available?” he said.

Hemming said the government had assumed that up to 4.5 tonnes of carbon dioxide could be stored per hectare of soil each year, when the published science suggested the upper limit in optimal conditions was about 1.8 tonnes per hectare. “Best practice science that’s publicly available says this isn’t credible,” she said.

She said the government strategy did not seem to acknowledge that a stand of trees or piece of land could not keep sequestering carbon dioxide indefinitely as each would eventually reach equilibrium and not be able to store any more. Both Eckhard and Hemming said it also did not factor in the impact of climate change-enhanced bushfires and drought on natural carbon stores.

Eckhard said soil carbon in Australia was 90% dependent on rainfall, and that was expected to decline in many areas. “Why would we hedge our future climate change strategy on something that climate change itself is going to challenge?” he said.

Bill Hare, a scientist and chief executive of Climate Analytics, said the strategy had confirmed the government was exaggerating the amount of carbon dioxide that could be stored in the land. “It’s a gross manipulation of what’s possible,” he said.

He said the report suggested the government’s technology-led approach could lead to as little as a 66% cut in actual emissions by 2050 compared with 2005 levels, and leave up to 215m tonnes a year that was supposed to be addressed through domestic and international offsets.

The government has backed the data in the strategy as coming from the CSIRO and energy department.

Angus Taylor, the emissions reduction minister, said on Thursday he would use the Cop26 climate summit in Glasgow to promote Australia as a “safe and reliable” place to invest in gas, hydrogen and “new energy technologies”. He will join the prime minister, Scott Morrison, at the summit following a meeting of G20 leaders in Rome this weekend.

On Friday, the Morrison government released a new climate adaptation strategy that said the cost of natural disasters were expected to almost double by 2060 and backed the importance of markets to help Australians cope as the planet heats up.

The National Climate Resilience and Adaptation Strategy identified a range of perils including intensifying cyclones, rising sea levels and heatwaves. Citing evidence by Deloitte Access Economics, it said the cost of natural disasters in Australia would increase from about $38b to $73b by 2060 even with ambitious global action to reduce emissions.

But, as the emissions reduction strategy, it came with no new funding. It said the government’s role should include helping markets to develop ways to build resilience into the values of assets under threat from global heating.

Hemming said the policy just re-announced existing initiatives. “There are no clear targets or timelines,” she said.

Taylor said the most important legacy Cop26 could have was “a genuine, global commitment to a step up in collaboration on the technology solutions needed to achieve net zero”. But the summit will largely focus on commitments to cut emissions over the next decade.

The Morrison government has resisted calls to increase Australia’s short-term goal beyond that set under Tony Abbott six years ago – a 26-28% cut by 2030 compared with 2005 levels. It puts it at odds with the British hosts, the US and the European Union, which have stressed that developed countries need to cut emissions in half by 2030.

Selwin Hart, the UN secretary general’s special adviser on climate change, this week criticised Australia’s approach. “Where countries are depending on technologies that have not yet been developed, or indicating they intend to cut in the 2030 and 2040s, quite frankly, that’s reckless and irresponsible,” he said.

A UN report this week found the world was falling short on emissions reduction and would face disastrous temperature rises of at least 2.7C unless countries strengthened their pledges

Why India can't live without coal despite its negative environmental effects

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Years of mining in coal-rich hubs have left villages

 struggling for access to water

Salimah Shivji · CBC News · Posted: Oct 26, 2021 

Coal mining is a major economic driver in Chandrapur, a coal-rich hub in central India, and it isn't expected to stop anytime soon. (Salimah Shivji/CBC)

A lone well sits in the middle of the Bhatali village square in central India's coal-rich Chandrapur district, steps from a massive open-pit mine.

The well is dug 10 times deeper than previous ones, which all ran dry years ago, and the water spurting from it is not safe to drink.

"Our lands have gone to waste," said village leader Subhash Gaurkar, pointing to the coal mining activity that surrounds the town. 

Mining of the highly polluting fossil fuel in Chandrapur, like in many other coal-rich regions of India, has siphoned most of what was, at one time, a plentiful water supply. 

India is the world's second largest producer of coal, behind China. Critics worry that fossil fuel will be the centrepiece of the country's energy production for several decades yet, along with the environmental and health consequences that come with it.   

"Our wells are 30 feet deep and the mines are 80 feet deep," Gaurkar said. "The mines suck all the water, so we don't get that water. How can farmers irrigate their farm then?"  

Subhash Guarkar stands in front of the makeshift water treatment hut where villagers line up to pay for and collect their treated drinking water. The region's groundwater is nearly depleted from decades of excessive coal mining. (Salimah Shivji/CBC)

Manoj Waghmare, 36, doesn't any longer. His field, across the street from the large coal mine, sits empty and devoid of crops. 

"Nothing can grow here now. We have nothing left," he said, claiming silt and water from the nearby mine has seeped into the soil, contaminating it. 

"Our land of 60 years has become completely barren," Waghmare said. 

(The mine has compensated other farmers in the area for loss of land, but Waghmare said he is still waiting for his sum.)  

Water comes at a price

With the area's groundwater depleted, drinking water comes from a small, makeshift treatment hut set up near that lone well — a government-built system that pumps water from the nearby Erai river. 

This lone well is dug 10 times deeper than previous ones which ran dry years ago, with the groundwater depleted from decades of coal mining in the Chandrapur area in central India. (Salimah Shivji/CBC)

Villagers line up to use a pay-by-card system to fill up their large jugs with water. The cost: 20 litres of water for five rupees (roughly eight cents Cdn).

It's emblematic of the harmful effects of coal extraction on local communities, according to Suresh Chopane, president of the Chandrapur-based environmental non-profit Green Planet Society.

"Water everywhere, not a single drop to drink," Chopane said. "This is what the situation is in Chandrapur." 

Coal is king

And yet, India is forging ahead with plans to expand its coal production as demand surges, with new plants under construction even as the price of coal, once seen as the cheapest and easiest option, is spiking. 

The country is third on the list globally for greenhouse gas emissions, even though the average Indian uses far less energy than the average Canadian or American. 

Manoj Waghmare, 36, stands with his father Nirash, near the family's farming field that is no longer able to grow crops, he said, because of the mining activity. (Glen Kugelstadt/CBC)

  

India is also navigating a coal shortage this fall with domestic production falling short of growing demand as its economy emerges from the pandemic. Some of India's power plants reported having only a few days' supply left in October, fuelling the threat of blackouts hitting large cities. 

• The world is supposed to share the cost of fighting climate change. Here's how that works

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Coal, the dirtiest of fossil fuels, is the backbone of India's energy grid, providing more than 70 per cent of the country's power. 

'We can't stop it'

The largest coal miner in the world, Coal India Ltd., is owned by the national government, and at least seven of India's states are heavily reliant on the revenues from extraction of the fossil fuel, including Maharashtra state, where Chandrapur is located. 

The industry provides jobs for some four million Indians, as well as strong ripple effects in the economy. 

"We can't stop it," said Kishor Jorgewar, a member of the state of Maharashtra's Legislative Assembly.

"Stopping mining activities is like stopping the prosperity of a nation."

WATCH | Why coal is the backbone of India's energy grid:

India’s coal mines are drying up the groundwater, destroying crops and leaving residents to pay for clean water, but the country still relies on the dirty fuel for power and revenue as it attempts to move toward cleaner energy sources. 3:58

The local politician is adamant that more of the revenues collected from coal should go to the communities adversely affected by mining activity to tackle pollution and water depletion, but he is aware his region's economy would grind to a halt if India were to abandon coal. 

It's a reality even environmentalists like Chopane accept. 

"It will take time," he told CBC News. "We're expecting 10 to 15 [more] years that we will have to depend on coal." 

International pressure is growing on India to further reduce its carbon footprint and commit to getting to a net-zero emissions goal. As the West moves away from coal, it's looking for other nations to do the same. Reducing coal dependence is expected to be a primary focus of the United National climate conference COP26, set to begin next week in Glasgow.

• Deforestation of Amazon rainforest helps push greenhouse gases to record high

• Investing in new coal, oil and gas projects must stop to hit climate goals, global energy agency says

But India is looking for more foreign investment to help meet its climate targets, not pressure from the West, nor does it appreciate being labelled a climate laggard. 

Its negotiators pushed back hard at a fraught G20 meeting earlier this year in Naples, penning a statement that called out those around the table for not focusing on bringing down high per-capita emissions in richer countries. 

India is the world's second-largest coal producer. It accounts for more than 70 per cent of the developing country's energy production. (Salimah Shivji/CBC )

India's stance is complicated. The country has set ambitious renewable energy targets to invest heavily in solar and wind power. Its goal of 450 gigawatts (GW) of renewable capacity by 2030 that environmentalists have lauded, even as India continues to promote coal. 

'Unfair' demands

"This country is heavily dependent on a coal-based economy and the politics around it," said Ashwini K. Swain, a fellow at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research. 

That interdependency is not easy to break. 

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Take the national railroad. 

Indian Railways receives nearly half of its revenue from coal, charging more to transport the fossil fuel around the country in order to heavily subsidize train tickets for passengers, making travel accessible for much of the country's poorest. 

According to Swain, it's unfair to expect India to abruptly replace coal with renewable energy when industrialized nations have used the dirty fuel for years with few consequences, driving growth but also driving up emissions that have contributed to a warming planet.

Workers unload coal from a supply truck at a yard on the outskirts of Ahmedabad, India. Some four million Indians depend on coal for their livelihoods, many of them living in the poorest parts of the country. (Amit Dave/REUTERS)

He has calculated that India's added solar and wind power capacity will be for future electricity demand, as the country develops. 

"The question is: what is the alternative economic pathway for India?" he said. 

"The developed countries have something else as an alternative to coal, be it gas in some countries, be it nuclear in other countries," Swain said. 

"India doesn't have anything as of right now." 

Nothing to replace coal yet, with tens of millions of Indians still living without electricity and fully dependent on the dirtiest of fossil fuels.  

A train loaded with coal rolls through Chandrapur. Indian Railways receives nearly half of its revenue from moving coal across the country, charging more for that service in order to subsidize cheaper fares for passengers, which makes rail travel across the vast nation more accessible to some of the country's poorest. (Salimah Shivji/CBC)

How industry is depending on carbon capture technology for climate goals

The technology, however, is not yet widely available and is highly expensive.

Author of the article:
Reuters
Cassandra Garrison
Publishing date: Oct 29, 2021 

MEXICO CITY — Industries from cement to mining are creating plans to cap and cut their planet-warming emissions, and many depend on a technology still in development: carbon capture.

There are two main types of carbon capture and storage: Point-source carbon capture and storage (CCS) sequesters CO2 produced at the source, like a smokestack, while direct air capture (DAC) removes carbon dioxide (CO2) from the atmosphere. Captured CO2 usually is permanently stored underground, although carbon capture utilization and storage (CCUS) reuses the CO2.

The technology, however, is not yet widely available and is highly expensive.

The capacity of CCS projects grew 48% from 75 million tonnes per annum (mpta) at the end of 2020 to 111 mtpa by September, according to the Australia-based Global CCS Institute. Several groups see a need for billions of tonnes of storage by midcentury; Exxon Mobil Corp expects a $2 trillion market by 2040.

Here’s how four large industries, all major carbon emitters, are using CCS technology.

CEMENT AND CONCRETE

Cement and concrete production accounts for about 8% of global CO2 emissions. Massive kilns that heat raw materials in order to make clinker, a key ingredient of cement, account for the majority of emissions.

The Global Cement and Concrete Association recently announced a road map to net-zero cement by 2050 and pledged 10 industrial-scale carbon capture plants by 2030.

Carbon capture technology is the “elephant in the room,” Fernando Gonzalez, chief executive of Mexico’s Cemex, said in a company presentation this month, referring to the challenges around developing the technology.

Cemex, North America’s largest cement producer, Switzerland-based Holcim AG, formerly LafargeHolcim, and Germany’s HeidelbergCement all are working on projects.

IRON AND STEEL

The process of making iron and steel is energy and carbon intensive due to the use of fossil fuels like coal to power blast furnaces, and output has grown in recent years.

To hit emissions targets, 75% of CO2 produced globally by the sector needs to be captured, according to the World Steel Association. That equates to 14 steel plants with CCS technology built every year from 2030 to 2070. Currently, the world has only one large-scale iron and steel facility with CCS.

ArcelorMittal, one of the world’s largest steelmakers, signed a Memorandum of Understanding this year with Air Liquide, a France-based industrial gases company, to develop carbon capture technologies with the aim of producing low-carbon steel at its Dunkirk site.

OIL AND GAS

Until recently, capturing carbon produced by fossil fuels and injecting it underground has largely been a means to squeeze more oil from aging wells. There are several proposals to build CCS hubs, but few have gone beyond the development stage.

Now, numerous large energy companies are incorporating CCS into their plans for reducing emissions, but the lack of carbon trading markets or tax incentives to make the investment worthwhile has held back U.S. development.

Occidental Petroleum is currently developing with private equity firm Rusheen Capital Management a Direct Air Capture facility in Texas that would pull about 1 million metric tons of CO2 annually from the air – using fans and chemical reactions. Occidental created a business, 1PointFive, to build a demonstration unit and sell direct carbon capture facilities to others.

Chevron has said it plans on using carbon capture and offsets to cut operational emissions to net zero by 2050, with plans to store roughly 25 million tonnes of CO2 annually. It plans on spending roughly $8 billion by 2028 in low-carbon investments that includes carbon capture and offsets.

MINING

Parts of the mining industry sees carbon capture and storage as a way to reduce emissions at coal-fired power plants, the main source of electricity in mining hub Australia. Some mining companies are also studying ways to replace natural gas in operations with hydrogen, which does not produce carbon emissions when burned.

The Minerals Council of Australia called hydrogen production and CCS “critically important technologies” for a country that gets about 65% of its electricity from coal. Gassified coal also can be used to produce hydrogen.

Rio Tinto Ltd, one of the world’s largest mining companies, in October said it would invest $4 million into privately held Carbon Capture Inc, which is developing technology to suck carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and chemically bind it – and thus permanently store it – to rocks. If the technology works at a large scale, it could allow Rio to market copper and other electric vehicles minerals it produces as carbon neutral.

 (Reporting By Cassandra Garrison in Mexico City; additional reporting by Peter Henderson in Oakland, Ernest Scheyder in Houston, Gary McWilliams in Houston and David Gaffen in New York; editing by Peter Henderson and Leslie Adler)

Miners look to carbon capture to move beyond net zero: Andy Home

CREDIT: REUTERS/MATTHIAS RIETSCHEL

The global race to carbon neutrality is a double-edged sword for the metals and mining sector. The world is going to need a lot more of metals such as lithium, copper and nickel to decarbonise, but the mining sector is itself a big carbon emitter.


LONDON, Oct 29 (Reuters) - The global race to carbon neutrality is a double-edged sword for the metals and mining sector.

The world is going to need a lot more of metals such as lithium, copper and nickel to decarbonise, but the mining sector is itself a big carbon emitter.

Mining contributes between 4% and 7% of man-made greenhouse-gases, much of it generated by coal both as a mined resource and as a power source, a 2020 report by consultancy McKinsey found.

The world's mining companies are rushing to reduce their carbon footprint through electrification and a shift to renewable power.

Carbon capture could allow some to move beyond neutrality to become net carbon negative.

The technology for industrial-scale carbon capture and storage is still in its infancy and largely untested.

But some minerals do it naturally. It's just a case of having the right rock and speeding up the process.

Miners tend to be the perennial villains in the environmental debate, but they could yet be the unlikely pioneers of large-scale and permanent carbon storage.

CIRCULAR CARBON

Carbfix, a subsidiary of Iceland's Reykjavik Energy, has since 2014 captured over 73,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide from the Hellisheidi geothermal power plant and pumped it underground.

Iceland's basalt rock formations are perfect for converting the carbon dioxide into carbonate minerals, effectively trapping the gas in a stable form for millennia.

Nature does this all the time. Rocks dissolve with rain-water and flow into rivers, picking up other minerals such as calcium and magnesium along the way before settling on the ocean bed eventually to become carbonate minerals such as limestone.

Such rock weathering absorbs around one gigatonne of carbon dioxide each year. Unfortunately, that's about how much the earth also creates each year in the form of volcanic activity.

The natural process also plays out in painfully slow geological time.

Carbfix's solution is to inject as much carbon dioxide as possible into the water before pumping it into the basalt, which speeds up the mineral reaction time to under two years.

The process just needs carbon, water and basalt and is a neat way of returning the carbon to the ground from whence it came. And it's cheap at around 15 euros (US$17.50) per tonne.

Carbfix has just announced a tie-up with Rio Tinto RIO.L to scale up the technology at the company's ISAL aluminium smelter, which also sits on basalt rock formations.

The initial injection wells for the Coda Terminal, the world's first mineral carbon storage hub, will be drilled next year with commercial production due in 2025.

Rio will benefit not only from carbon capture within its smelter and power supplier but also from the carbon credits accruing from its basalt-rich land, a significant asset in a market that is already starting to fracture between low- and high-carbon aluminium products.

CARBON-HUNGRY TAILINGS

It doesn't have to be basalt and you don't have to inject carbon dioxide underground for this mineralisation process to work.

As BHP Group BHPB.L has found out at its Nickel West operations in Western Australia.

The tailings at the Mt Keith mine, rich in magnesium oxide, another carbon absorber, have been capturing around 40,000 tonnes per year "accidentally and unknowingly", according to Greg Dipple, the University of British Columbia professor who led a study on the waste material.

Tailings speed up the weathering process because the rock has been crushed, exponentially increasing the surface area for mineral reaction, he told the Canadian Mining Journal.

BHP is now conducting further studies on its tailings dam to see just how much more carbon might be absorbed by tweaking the natural process.

Nickel is a key metallic input for lithium-ion batteries and BHP signed in July a supply deal with Tesla TSLA.O. The company boasts its nickel carries half the carbon footprint of even the newest producers in top supplier Indonesia.

Its green nickel could become greener still thanks to its tailings dam.

GREENER METAL

Nickel and precious group metals are often found in the right sort of rock - ultramafic in geologist speak - for carbon sequestration, adding a new dynamic to project financing.

Talon Metals Corp TLO.TO is hoping its Tamarack nickel-cobalt-copper project in Minnesota will not only supply U.S. battery makers with green metal but will actively absorb carbon while doing so.

The company is studying the potential of carbon capture both via tailings and through injection into the surrounding rock formation.


The first can shift the carbon dial down towards neutrality. Mt Keith's tailings, for example, offset around 11% of its carbon footprint each year, according to Dipple.

The second, actively buying up carbon from nearby industries such as steel makers before injecting it underground, is the way towards becoming net carbon negative.

As with both Rio's Iceland aluminium smelter and BHP's nickel operations, this reinforces the green credentials of the product for discerning buyers such as Tesla's Elon Musk.

But the real significance could be as much about image as economics.


Talon Metals is hoping to fast-track the Tamarack project, which ticks all the Biden Administration's boxes for enhancing domestic supply chains for critical and battery minerals.

However, steering a new mine through the U.S. permitting process is getting increasingly difficult.

The Twin Metals copper-nickel project, also in Minnesota, is facing a potential 20-year ban on the land it wants to mine. Antofagasta ANTO.L, the project owner, is appealing the U.S. Forest Service's proposal.

The fate of the Resolution copper project, a long-stalled joint venture between Rio Tinto and BHP, is also now at an appeals court as Native Indians seek a reversal of the original land agreement.

It's unclear how the Biden Administration can square its green environmental credentials with its vision of a green industrial revival made with domestically-sourced metals.

Carbon capture injects a whole new dimension into the heated debate around new mines and metals plants.

Mining is "the most toxic industry in America", according to Becky Rom, national chair of The Campaign To Save The Boundary Waters, an environmental group opposed to the Twin Metals project.

Would new projects attract such venom if they could prove that they were part of the environmental solution rather than the problem?

We may not have long to find out.

The idea of a nickel mine or aluminium smelter being net negative in terms of carbon emissions may seem far-fetched, but the reality may be coming sooner than you think.

(Editing by Mark Potter)
The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.

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