“We were swimming in the rivers, played football and other games on buffers,” reminisced Takele Getachew, a 58-year-old man.

But for the past few decades that has not been possible, as the water became more and more polluted due to urban development.

“I witnessed closely how the Ginfile and Kebena have gradually been polluted and become waste disposal sites and sewerage spillways,” Getachew lamented.

After decades of neglect, there is now some hope for the waterways. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s controversial Addis Ababa River Side Project, also known as the ‘Beautifying Sheger Project’, aims to clean up the rivers, making the city a model of green development in the process.

“I think the new riverside development project will save the rivers,” Getachew said, adding that they are a living memory of “past good times” and of the city’s “identity”.

The three-year project, expected to cost 29 billion birr ($900 million), aims to enhance the well-being of city dwellers by mitigating flooding and pollution through the creation of public spaces and parks, bicycle paths and walkways along the riverside.

But cleaning up Addis Ababa’s rivers comes with a human cost.

“The river was polluted and we were suffering floods during rainy season, but it is being cleaned now,’ said Asnakech Mesfin, 55, a mother of two who lives in an area known as the Sheraton expansion, an area affected by the development.

The project also runs through the densely populated villages known as Basha Wolde Chilot, Siga Mededa and Arogew Kera or generally Arat Killo.

The government “started demolishing our shelters without any warning’’, Asnakech said. “They send police here and demolished our shelters during holidays which led us to live on the streets for 4 months.’’

“The question is where shall we shelter? Any development should give priority for people first.”

The project starts from Mount Entoto to Akaki, covering 56km of green areas along the rivers, passing through the former Basha Wolde Chilot, in front of the national Parliament at Arat Kilo and the heavily populated Piassa in Addis Ababa’s centre.

The first phase of the project, running from Entoto to Bambis Bridge, is under construction with financial support the state-owned China Construction Company (CCCC), and is scheduled to be finished by May 2020. It is estimated to currently be about 55% complete.

It runs down to the Grand Menelik II Palace, through an area with villages like Asnakech’s. Now, there are just the place names remaining, but no residents.

Addis Ababa riverside development plan (Source: Mayor Office of Addis Ababa)

Not far from the project site, there are mud and plastic homes where poor residents still dwell. The few people left along the river are experiencing tough conditions, with huge lorries passing through villages and construction taking place around them.

Thousands fear displacement during the second phase of the project.

The development has been criticised for not respecting two of the 15 principles of sustainable development, agreed in 2012 at the Stakeholder Forum of the Rio 20+ meeting.

Principle 9 states that, “all citizens should have access to information concerning the environment, as well as the opportunity to participate in decision-making processes.”

And principle 5 says developments should ensure “individuals and societies are empowered to achieve positive social and environmental outcomes”.

Neither of these principles appears to have been followed.

Most of Asnakech’s village was demolished long ago. The residents were relocated to the outskirts of the city, paying for new government accommodation through a loan scheme.

“They told us immediately to leave the place. We would be happy if they informed us before’’, she said.

“There is no value just constructing buildings and developing green areas without due attention to livelihoods,” she said. “They are treating us like enemies.”

“The government has not visited us and discussed with us to find a solution. I have been suffering to support my son who is a grade 6 student here on the street,” Asnakech said.

The city government and prime minister’s office declined to comment.

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Addis isn’t the only one of Ethiopia’s cities to have faced critical waste management challenges and difficulties implementing and sustaining urban green infrastructure. But the problem is more complex in the capital.

Dr. Manaye Ewenetu, Associate Engineer at Symmetrys Structural and Civil Engineers, criticised the sustainability of the city’s green strategy but approved of the prime minister’s vision.

Ewenetu is concerned about two things – access to water and pollution. “There is already water stress in the city and will continue to get worse unless a proper demand and supply assessment is undertaken by the relevant authorities,” he said.

“As it is observed on the ground, most of the Addis Rivers are non-perennial rivers which mean they do not have flows for most of the year except during the winter period.’’

A detailed hydrological assessment should have been undertaken to establish the flow regime of the rivers in the city to ensure the flow of water in summer season, he said.

He also worries about pollution in the rivers. “At the moment dirty water from all residential and commercial properties including factories, schools, and hospitals is discharged into the rivers,’’ he said.

So while Addis Ababa’s River Side project is a genuine attempt to green a developing city, critics say it is still a long way from being a model of sustainable development.

This article was produced as part of an African reporting programme supported by Future Climate for Africa. See our editorial guidelines for what this means.

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The UK ranks seventh in the world in installed solar capacity – behind China, US, Japan, Germany, India and Italy, according to the International Energy Agency’s 2018 data.

Official UK figures tell us there are now over one million installations of solar photovoltaic (solar “PV”) panels. On people’s homes, on businesses, in community-owned projects.

They generate energy for their owners, but they can also generate excess electricity which is deposited into the National Grid network for others to use. Fantastic.

Exactly how much electricity, you might ask? No-one knows – most electricity grids were designed in the previous century when there was no need to measure “reverse flow”, meaning electricity coming back into the grid from your home.

This has consequences for the climate. In the absence of exact measurement/prediction of solar energy input, fossil-powered generators need to be kept running, inefficiently, so they can take the strain when the network is underpowered.

UK climate diplomacy ‘already happening’ for Cop26 despite leadership vacuum

So even if we were getting 100% of our power from renewable energy, we would still need to keep a few gas generators running but turned down, in case clouds happen to drift over many of our solar panels all at once.

If we could measure the solar contribution – or even better, if we could forecast it just four hours in advance – we could have much less fossil fuel burning as a backup. Forecasting for the present or a very short time ahead like this is sometimes called “nowcasting”.

It could save approximately 100,000 tonnes of CO2 per year in the UK alone. Rolled out worldwide, it could save on the order of a hundred million tonnes per year by 2030.

Here’s an animation which illustrates the rhythm of solar generation, and how dramatically it is affected by cloud.

The video covers June 2019, and as well as the clouds you can see coloured dots, each one representing a PV installation which has made public what it’s generating. When a dot is bright white/yellow, it’s outputting close to its peak capacity.

So to predict/measure solar electricity power, what do we need to know?

First, detailed maps of cloud cover, like a weather forecast in extreme detail.

Second… we need to know the geolocations for all those solar panels. The government knows approximately how many they are, because owners of large PV installations have to register in order to feed energy into the grid.

But that’s only the large ones – only two-thirds of the country’s PV capacity.

But for those registered systems, at least, the government knows the locations, right? Well, not so fast. There’s address data, but that’s not quite the same as knowing exactly where to drop a pin in a map, as you’ll know if you’ve used GPS navigation in the countryside.

The biggest error we found in the official geolocations is for a solar farm inside a large Ministry of Defence site in Wiltshire. The geolocation in the data takes us to the front gate for the military site – not to the solar farm, which is 2 kilometres away.

So what can we do? How can we find the location of a million solar panels, a million needles in a haystack?

We’re developing machine learning methods to detect solar panels from satellite images. That could help. But to get that working well we need good quality training data, so it doesn’t solve the problem in itself.

Instead, we’ve found an amazing resource in the power of crowdsourcing, and in particular in the existing “open data” community of OpenStreetMap.

If you’re not familiar with OpenStreetMap – it’s a worldwide community of people creating the best and most detailed map data of the world, a lot like Wikipedia does for encyclopaedic information.

And just like Wikipedia, it’s radically open: the “copyleft” licence lets you download everything the users have created, and do all kinds of things with it.

Image credit: Russ Garrett’s Open Infrastructure Map

We made a call to the OpenStreetMap UK community to help us find solar PV installations, and they did amazing work.

Over the course of a few months, a couple of hundred volunteers spotted solar panels in the streets, or in aerial imagery, and added over 120,000 installations to OpenStreetMap’s geographic database.

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How many do you see, on your regular route to work, or school, or town?

A really important part of this is the openness and community aspect of it. The data, created by “the crowd”, are there for you or anyone else to use.

We’re still aiming to get as many of the one million as possible.

Do YOU know of solar panels near you? If so, here’s a really simple way to get them added to the map:

1. Visit openstreetmap.org

2. Use the search box (top-left) to find your local area – and zoom in close so you can see details such as buildings.

3. Right-click and choose “Add a note here”.

4. Type in some notes. Make sure to mention solar or PV in your text. It can be really helpful to add description such as “solar PV on the third house along this street”.

If you do this, you’ll be leaving a public note, and an existing OpenStreetMap user will come along and turn it into map data. But if you like, you can dive right in and edit OpenStreetMap yourself. (Just remember: don’t copy any information from Google or other commercial maps – there’d be copyright issues.)

Together we’ve found the exact location for hundreds of thousands of solar panel installations. Here’s to finding hundreds of thousands more!

Dan Stowell is a lecturer and Turing Fellow at Queen Mary University of London and Jack Kelly is a founder of Open Climate Fix, which uses computers to fix climate change.

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Drawing on data from the Worldwide Patent Statistical Database, the two Paris-based think tanks found a sharp drop in patent applications for carbon-busting inventions since the beginning of the decade.

Applications plummeted 77% from a high of 1,256 in 2011 to 285 in 2018 in the power generation sector and 918 to 298 in buildings over the same period. The figure for transport peaked at 740 in 2014, slumping to 259 last year. Inventions related to carbon capture and storage and manufacturing were also down.

The downward trend was confined to technologies for mitigating climate change. Communication and health innovations, in contrast, saw steady growth.

“The precipitous decline in patented innovation since 2011-2012 is a stark warning, since there can be a long lag between innovation and cost reductions,” authors Miguel Cárdenas Rodríguez, Ivan Haščič and Nick Johnstone wrote.

“We have benefited significantly in recent years from the research efforts that went into wind and solar power in the 1990s and 2000s, with increasingly competitively generation costs. The evidence presented here based on patents raises concerns about developments in future years.”

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The analysis did not fully explain the reasons behind the trend, but cited political uncertainty and technological maturity as possible culprits. A growing overlap between digital and carbon-cutting technology can also make the latter harder to single out.

“Carbon is ubiquitous in our economies, and because it is ubiquitous, the means by which you can mitigate it are ubiquitous,” Johnstone told Climate Home News. “For that reason it can be increasingly difficult to identify these inventions that can lead to climate mitigation, just because, like mushrooms, they can pop up anywhere.”

In 2015, then-US president Barack Obama fronted Mission Innovation, a pledge by 24 countries and the European Commission to double investment in clean technology research and development by 2021.

Most signatories are lagging behind that commitment, however. A December report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation found they were collectively on track to increase public R&D spending only 50% percent over the 5-year period.

In an e-mail to CHN, David King, who as UK former climate envoy was a key architect of Mission Innovation, described the IEA/OECD findings as “surprising”. This did not mean the initiative had failed, he said, as it only fully launched in 2016/17 and “is still getting off the ground.”

It could take six or seven years for the investment to show up in patent applications, King added. “R&D is a slow business!”

Despite current president Donald Trump’s hostility to international cooperation on climate change, the US is “still on board”, King insisted. “They don’t want to miss out on the innovations [and] wealth-creating opportunities.”

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Geoengineering techniques that reflect away sun rays and suck carbon from the atmosphere have long been talked about as last-resort solutions to stem the worst effects of climate change.

But as greenhouse gas emissions remain stubbornly high and geoengineering research gets underway, there is growing concern these technologies could be deployed without protections against their serious risks – and that the prospect of a technofix will be taken as a licence to keep on polluting.

To kickstart the conversation, Switzerland will introduce a resolution at the UN Environment Assembly in Kenya in mid-March, calling for an assessment of the potential methods and governance frameworks for each one by August 2020. It would be an early step towards an international system for regulating the suite of technologies.

“There is a risk that geoengineering could be applied by someone without any international control, and we are very concerned about that,” Franz Perrez, head of the international affairs division at Switzerland’s Federal Office for the Environment, told Climate Home News. “Some are already testing solar radiation management, scientific research is already going on. We cannot close our eyes anymore and say ‘This is only science fiction’.”

The resolution is backed by Burkina Faso, Micronesia, Georgia, Lichtenstein, Mali, Mexico, Montenegro, Niger, South Korea and Senegal, according to the latest version dated 25 February.

Geoengineering refers to a wide range of techniques for modifying the climate system, from planting trees to fiddling with clouds.

Untested technologies to manage solar radiation – essentially, dim the sun –  pose the biggest concerns. Ideas include releasing aerosol particles from airplanes to reflect sunlight away (mimicking the effects of volcanic eruptions) and spraying seawater drops into clouds to make them more reflective. But they could also change weather patterns, disrupting agriculture and exacerbating geopolitical tensions.

And if this is not accompanied by emissions reductions, more will be needed to sustain the temperature effect – “practically forever”, Douglas MacMartin, a leading geoengineering scientist working at Cornell University and Caltech, told a Chatham House conference in London last week.

Yet with government oversight, it may be preferable to runaway global warming. “You would not take chemotherapy drugs just for fun, you would not sit in your car and set off your airbags just for fun,” MacMartin said. “There are clearly serious challenges to solar geoengineering, but they only make sense to face in context with the challenges of climate change itself.”

Geoengineering: Poor country scientists to get support to study impacts

Better-known options, which remove CO2 from the air, include afforestation and combining biomass power plants with technology to catch and store their emissions (known as BECCS). But even simple interventions like tree-planting may call for international rules to ensure that emissions cuts in one place aren’t cancelled out somewhere else.

Attention to geoengineering is growing as the global temperature remains on course to rise by at least 3C compared to pre-industrial levels. The UN’s panel of climate scientists suggested last October it would be difficult to meet the Paris Agreement’s stretch limit of 1.5C without some of these more radical techniques.

“The reality is that [carbon dioxide removal] is no longer a question of whether or not [according to the UN science report]. It’s which one, which technology, how much, when do you start, who pays for it,” said Janos Pasztor, executive director of the Carnegie Climate Geoengineering Governance Initiative and the former UN assistant secretary-general on climate change.

“But there has been very little debate [about solar radiation management] in the circles beyond scientists… it’s still looked at as esoteric, science fiction, crazy, difficult, challenging – and all of those things apply,” he told CHN at the Chatham House conference.

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For some, however, geoengineering is so dangerous that it should be banned altogether.

It could worsen the climate, be weaponised and exacerbate geopolitical imbalances, said Silvia Ribeiro, Latin America director at ETC Group, an organisation that looks at socioeconomic and ecological issues around new technologies. “Investments in geoengineering are already providing justifications for high greenhouse gas emitters to continue emitting and postpone real reductions.”

The UN has so far taken a cautious, piecemeal approach. Th 190-plus parties to its Convention on Biological Diversity extended a moratorium on all climate-related technologies in 2016, while a 2013 convention on marine pollution prohibited geoengineering of the oceans. The UN’s climate change secretariat regulates global emissions accounting, including from forestry and bioenergy.

ETC Group worries the Swiss resolution implicitly assumes that geoengineering is acceptable and just needs international governance.

Perrez countered that the country wants the UN Environment Programme to assess the state of the science and the research gaps, the risks, benefits and uncertainties, the actors working on research and deployment, and how it could all be governed. Then, he said, countries can start talking about what to allow and how.

But the way emissions are going now, “it’s hard to say that it will not be needed”, Pasztor said, referring to CO2 removal. “The reality is that emissions reductions alone are no longer enough, because we have already put so much carbon into the atmosphere that even if we stop today we’re still going to keep this climate change for hundreds of years.”

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While afforestation has been a part of climate policy for decades, the development of other CDR technologies such as Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS), Direct Air Capture and Storage (DACS) or Soil Carbon Sequestration (SCS) is still in its infancy. No country is presently pursuing substantial research or regulatory support in this area, not even an international climate policy leader like the EU.

Critics usually present CDR as an unreliable magic bullet, a potential moral hazard that will deter serious mitigation efforts or an intervention with side effects worse than the climate change impacts it tries to prevent. But such generalised statements usually ignore that the problem is not the technologies, but the scale they are assumed to be deployed. Therefore, it is important to assess and decide in which climate policy strategy CDR should be embedded.

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In this context, is useful to distinguish between gross and net negative emissions. Models currently find that for meeting a 1.5-2C target global CO₂ emissions will have to reach net zero in the second half of the century and go deeply into negative territory afterwards.

Net zero emissions represent a balance between sources and sinks of greenhouse gases, implying that there remain some residual gross positive emissions, stemming from fossil fuel use, industrial processes or agriculture that may be prohibitively expensive or even impossible to mitigate (sources). These need to be offset by gross negative emissions (sinks) that could come from natural (e.g., SCS) or engineered sinks (e.g., DACS).

Net negative emissions occur when the gross negative emissions exceed the gross positive emissions, i.e. when the sinks exceed the sources.

Under the EU’s current 80-95% by 2050 reduction target it is not imperative to discuss CDR politically since this ambition level can in principle be achieved through conventional mitigation measures alone. Only a more ambitious economy-wide headline target, essential to achieve the Paris Agreement’s temperature goal of 1.5-2C, can ensure that CDR will enter the EU’s climate policy agenda. Following the release of the European Commission’s proposal on Wednesday for a new long-term climate strategy this is going to be discussed within the EU, and decided by 2020.

Miguel Arias Cañete: EU’s climate caterpillar looks to seal legacy

Global mitigation pathways consistent with 1.5-2C indicate that the EU would deliver cumulative CDR of at least 50 Gigatonnes CO₂ by 2100, more than ten times the EU’s current annual emissions. A comprehensive CDR approach would embrace this challenge by openly acknowledging that the EU would have to reach reduction targets of far more than 100% in the second half of the century to help limiting the global temperature increase to at least 2C, and that this is only possible with huge amounts of CDR – a significant political challenge for EU policymakers.

Different from global scenarios a limited CDR approach would focus on the path towards net zero emissions. Putting the goal of reaching and maintaining a balance between emissions and removals centre stage, the focus would merely be on offsetting residual emissions from industry, transport and agriculture through comparatively limited amounts of CDR. To address concerns that a deliberate CDR policy might weaken conventional decarbonisation, the EU could split its net zero objective into sub-targets for reducing emissions and for enhancing sinks, e.g. with a 90-10 or 95-5% ratio that could be seen as a smooth extension of the EU’s current long-term target.

Focusing on CDR in the context of net zero could facilitate public authorities (perhaps at city or regional levels) and companies re-setting their objectives to go beyond present claims of ‘100% renewables’ and aiming for full ‘climate neutrality’. Such initiatives would probably avoid potentially controversial and complex BECCS facilities, and more likely start with extending current emissions offsetting practices like afforestation and introducing other forms of small-scale terrestrial CDR, highlighting local ecological or agricultural co-benefits.

Conceptually combining CDR with the logic of net zero emissions would introduce a sequential political strategy. A decarbonisation approach that intends to lead to a low level of residual emissions as soon as possible (to be tackled by a pragmatic phase-in of CDR) should be the priority of EU climate policy. Only in a subsequent step, would it make sense for the EU to scale-up the deployment of CDR technologies considerably. Aiming for an EU emissions reduction target of more than 100% could be an integral part of a global climate recovery strategy that helps meeting the 1.5-2C target.

But to be successful, such a strategy needs to be based on a much enhanced level of regulatory and technical expertise and on a much higher level of trust that CDR can be a credible climate policy approach.

Oliver Geden is head of the EU/Europe research division, German Institute for International and Security Affairs. Glen Peters is research director at the Center for International Climate Research. Vivian Scott is senior researcher at the school of geosciences at the University of Edinburgh. This analysis is based on a scientific journal article recently published in Climate Policy.

Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro is the environmental story of 2018.

No-one is better positioned than CHN’s Fabiano Maisonnave to cover the impact of his presidency on the world’s most important forest. We are the only international news site with a correspondent living in the heart of the Amazon. You can read some of the great reporting Fabiano has already done for us here.

We know we need to keep on this story, but after a huge 2018 and with the biggest UNFCCC talks in years approaching, our resources are really stretched. Please help us to keep Fabiano writing by making a small donation through our Patreon account.

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The tech billionaire, owner of aerospace manufacturer SpaceX and CEO of electric car and battery company Tesla tweeted that he had a solution for getting the trapped boys out: a miniature submarine.

Ultimately the sub, which had been developed by engineers from two of his companies, was unnecessary and all 13 made it out of the cave unharmed.

But for Musk it was a low-cost coup. His tweet has been liked more than 200,000 times and captured newspaper headlines in major and minor outlets across the world.

It was only when Musk inexplicably and without evidence called rescuer Vern Unsworth a paedophile on Twitter that his involvement turned sour.

Musk had been responding to Unsworth’s take that Musk’s submarine offer was a “PR stunt” that “had absolutely no chance of working”.

I suspect that the Thai govt has this under control, but I’m happy to help if there is a way to do so

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 4, 2018

It was an unseemly, ultimately disastrous public meltdown from Musk, whose investors called on him to retract his statement. (He eventually did).

But the out-of-the-blue insertion of a Musk company into a moment of intense media and public anxiety is a familiar play Musk has turned to his advantage again and again.

It’s a strategy he has developed by taking on the biggest crisis of them all: climate change. Not only are his companies – Tesla, Solarcity, SpaceX (which is trying to build the hyperloop) – promoted as answers to the problem of carbon emissions. He has also made a habit of following severe weather events with offers of free, cheap or rapidly deployed tech.

I would be happy to talk. Hopefully, Tesla can be helpful.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 6, 2017

Following the devastation of October 2017’s Hurricane Maria, Musk responded by sending Tesla power battery packs to help resolve national power outages across Puerto Rico.

Tesla Powerwall batteries are rechargeable lithium-ion battery energy storage devices that can store solar energy – helpful where the grid has been destroyed. Children’s Hospital del Nino in San Juan was just one of the “11,000 projects underway” in the country (according to Musk) helped by Tesla in restoring power.

He helped restore power in Alabama, USA in 2010 after Hurricane Katrina by donating a 25-kilowatt solar power system to the relief efforts, and similarly in Fukushima, Japan a year later following the tsunami.

Perhaps his boldest and most audacious crisis intervention came after power was knocked out by a storm across the entire state of South Australia in 2016. As Australia’s right-wing commentariat blamed the government’s pro-renewable stance for the blackouts, Musk threw himself into the political fight, tweeting that Tesla would build the world’s biggest battery in 100 days “or it is free”.

Tesla will get the system installed and working 100 days from contract signature or it is free. That serious enough for you?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 10, 2017

South Australia’s government took the bet and Musk came through. Tesla’s 100MW battery system brought power to more than 30,000 homes and has kept the South Australian power grid online when coal stations have crashed.

These high tech airdrops demonstrate the success of renewable power technology in crisis relief efforts. They also place Musk companies on the ground in moments where his competitors have been disrupted.

Musk’s companies create things that offer genuine hope for solving both immediate local problems and big global ones. He has a record of making a difference to intractable problems with engineering, technology and bold ideas.

He also has displayed a knack for turning those offers of help into PR bonanzas. Where that goes right, it goes really, really right. Among his fans, Musk’s reputation is that of a ubiquitous global saviour. His offers of help (see above) are often prompted by admirers on social media calling on him to turn his hand to the crisis of the day.

But Unsworth’s comments, which named up the more self-serving aspects of Musk’s Thai offer, evidently stung the billionaire. His mixture of business strategy, viral marketing and idealism is a high wire act. When it goes wrong, it can look cynical and the social media tools Musk uses to such advantage can quickly turn against him.

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It has been said that they can be seen as “a house for trees inhabited by people”. The exterior facades feature a total of 21,000 plants, including 800 full size trees.

Recently appointed as president of the Milan Triennale art and design museum, professor Stefano Boeri, is the architect who invented and managed the construction of the “vertical forest”. which was first realised in the 26 and 18-floor skyscrapers in the new business centre of Milan.

CHN: Professor Boeri, how did you come up with the idea of lining skyscrapers with trees?

SB: The idea came from afar; perhaps I first envisioned it when, at the age of 13, I read “The Baron in the Trees” by Italo Calvino: the story of a young nobleman who, by choice, decides to move into a tree and there spend his entire life. Since then, obviously, there were a lot of other hints, but what impressed me most, has been the in-depth study on how big cities in the world rapidly expand, with terrible implications on our environment.

Can you give us some numbers?

Megalopolises grow at impressive speed. To give you an example, Beijing, with its suburbs, has now reached 103 million inhabitants. Cities occupy only 2% of our planet’s land mass but account for 75% of the production of carbon dioxide pollution, the main cause of climate change.

Do you see a way for combating this phenomenon?

Plants are the best defence against these polluting factors. They ingest carbon dioxide through the process of photosynthesis and absorb thin powders and pollutants. Starting from these considerations, I came up with the idea of planting an arboretum in the centre of a large and populated city. My two vertical forest buildings occupy 1,500sq m of ground and host 21,000 plants. If the same number of living trees were to be planted on a flat surface, it would take an area of at least 30,000sq m.

Was this idea immediately well accepted?

Not really. At the beginning, we had to fight against scepticism, mistrust and suspicion, as always happens when you propose new and never before tested ideas.

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How did you overcome all objections?

With a coordinated effort by specialists from a variety of scientific disciplines, ranging from botany to sociology, and from environmental protection to design. We studied everything up to the most minute detail, and came up with many original and innovative solutions for the problems we had to face.

For example, in order to identify the most suitable plantings of full size trees capable of withstanding windy days, we went to Florida, a state with a lot of knowledge about hurricanes, There, we conducted tests in their wind tunnels to identify those varieties be placed on the upper floors. Normally you do not have many windy days in Milan but, when they do happen it may create a problem. To our surprise, we discovered that plants with large leaves and extended branches were most fit to resist the wind.

Now, how do you assess this experience?

Now the picture is quite clear and the experiment has been very successful: 800 high trees are in place since 2012 and we have not lost a single one. Only two trees had to be replaced, but it was due to the fact that they had suffered during transportation. The tenants of the two vertical forest buildings have lived happily in this unique environment since 2014. We also discovered that the presence of the plants reduces the effect of dizziness caused by living high up off the ground.

To get it all done we imagine that you had to devise many new and never before tested technological solutions.

Yes, we had to make difficult decisions and impose solutions that, at the beginning, were not appreciated by everyone. As an example, all the plants on the walls of the buildings are considered as a common condominium service and, as such, are managed as a whole. They have been entrusted to Laura Gatti’s team of specialists who had to develop new and peculiar skills, in relation to the special care that they must devote to the vertical forest; we call them “the flying gardeners”.

Four times a year they come in with a seasonal cycle that consists of two external treatments and two internal ones. By doing this, we are able to guarantee professional uniformity in treatments and, last but not least, a drastic reduction of maintenance costs, with respect to what the individual tenants would have to pay if they had to attend to the plants on their own.

Did everything go as planned or have you had some sort of surprise?

We continue to discover new things. For one, we had the clear demonstration of the intelligence of plants as our trees grow and come very close to the ceiling of the overlying terraces, but never touch them. Also, we found that they widen up to get closer to the neighbouring plants without ever overlapping. In essence, they seem to manage the assigned space with great rationality.

Another surprise: for fighting ticks on the plants without using pesticides, we decided to bring in 9,000 ladybirds from Germany. Shortly thereafter, the ticks had disappeared, but the richly fed ladybirds had multiplied. It did not last long, as the birds rapidly exterminated them. As a result, swallows, now very rare in Milan, have nested on our buildings. The vertical forest has become a new and varied ecosystem.

What impact has the vertical forest had in Italy and in the world?

We have not patented anything, and all the adopted solutions have been published; there are no secrets and we are pleased to see that architecture inspired by the same criteria is developing in other parts of the world, from Japan to China to South America to the north of Europe.

Obviously, since we were the first and the ones who accumulated the more in-depth experience in the field, we are constantly called upon to cooperate and to design new green architectural structures. We work a lot in China, and I am very proud of one of our projects to be built in Eindhoven in the Netherlands, where a new complex designed as a vertical forest will be destined to “social housing” for young couples on very low incomes. Interestingly enough, the final cost of these structures, including the green, does not exceed €1,300 per square meter.

In Italy, unfortunately, there is still little attention being paid to urban green areas. Thus we lose incredible opportunities for the development of new jobs and for the managed improvement of the environment. Few people know that in recent years, our wooded areas are expanding in total surface area in spite of forest fires and frequent neglect.

When shall we see the first Vertical Forests in the United States?

I hope soon. 

This article was first published in Italian in America Oggi.

The post ‘We have brought swallows into Milan’, says father of the vertical forest appeared first on Climate Home News.

By 2020 at least seven new gigawatt-size battery factories are scheduled to start operating on the continent, with another three developments rumoured.

Within a decade, these facilities will be churning out 80GWh a year. More than three times the 2017 global production capacity of lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

‘Gigafactories’, a term coined in the US by Elon Musk’s Tesla, produce batteries on the scale of more than 1GWh per year. Until this year, Europe had no factories of that size.

But with demand for electric vehicles on the continent predicted to surge (Dutch bank, ING, predicts that all new vehicle sales in Europe will be electric by 2035), a new battery infrastructure is coming for Europe.

Of the five leading global manufacturers of lithium-ion batteries, three are planning, or have begun building, gigafactories in Europe: LG, Samsung and the Tesla/Panasonic partnership.

Norway’s electric car demand is outstripping supply – with lessons for the EU

The push from these established US, Japanese and South Korean players has prompted a number of European companies to invest in the construction of their own regionally-based gigafactories.

Car manufacturer Daimler has two planned facilities in its home country of Germany. Daimler is also working on plants in the US, China and Thailand.

A spokesperson for the company, which owns Mercedes-Benz, told Climate Home News the company would be investing more than €1 billion in a global battery production network.

“The local production of batteries is an important success factor for the electric offensive of Mercedes-Benz Cars and decisive for flexibly and efficiently meeting the global demand for electric vehicles. The production network is thus very well positioned for the mobility of the future,” she said.

European start-ups have caught on to the EV business opportunity. Swedish company Northvolt plans to spend $4.7bn on a Nordic plant and Germany’s TerraE has announced two plants at undisclosed locations in Germany.

Browse our interactive map to see how European demand for electric car batteries will be met.

The post Europe’s coming gigafactory boom, mapped appeared first on Climate Home News.

Driven by generous tax breaks (carrot) and increasing road tolls (stick), demand for EVs has been rising rapidly. Because of these tax breaks, electric cars can be sold at the same price as fossil fuel vehicles. EVs, however, are considerably cheaper to run.

A calculation by our institute shows that, for example, an e-Golf reduces total running costs (excluding insurance, depreciation and parking) by around 75% compared to its diesel equivalent, for someone driving through an Oslo toll station twice daily.

This makes it attractive for Norwegian consumers to replace their diesel or petrol cars by electric ones. A recent poll showed that nearly half of the people, who are planning to buy a new car in 2018, want a chargeable one.

In fact, the demand for electric cars in Norway is currently growing so rapidly that car producers cannot keep up with it. Thousands of Norwegians have been waiting for months for their new EVs and car sellers have repeatedly extended delivery dates.

The waiting time for existing models like Volkswagen e-Golf, Hyundai Ioniq and Opel Ampera-e is between eight months and two years. Meanwhile, thousands have paid to be put on a waiting list for new models by Nissan, Tesla, Audi and Jaguar, which will be launched in the coming months and years.

A recent survey among Norwegian consumers, which we ran as part of an EU-funded research project on energy efficiency, shows that Norwegian consumers are willing to pay considerably more for cars with lower running costs.

Yet what happens if supply does not meet demand, for various reasons? The delays risk putting off consumers buying energy-efficient products.

Climate goals

Moreover, delays in electric car production also put Norway’s and the EU’s climate targets at risk. Under the Paris Agreement, Norway pledged to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 40% by 2030, relative to 1990 levels. How Norway will meet this target outside the emissions-trading sectors is currently still a matter of negotiations with the EU.

Transport is certainly the most important sector in Norway’s climate efforts. Emissions from transport have risen since 2005. In order to fulfil the Paris pledge, emissions will need be to cut by half by 2030. The Parliament has set an indicative target that all new passenger vehicles sold by 2025 should be emissions-free.

While electric car sales in Norway are far ahead of most other European countries, they are only just keeping up with the Norwegian Environment Agency’s projections and are far behind projections from the independent Institute for Transport Economics.

The institute has estimated that Norway needs around 65,000 new electric vehicles on the road in 2018 alone to hit the 2025-target, which is close to twice the number of EVs sold in 2017. Supply will need to increase manifold over the coming years if Norway wants to meet its vehicle and climate targets.

The current waiting lists for new electric vehicles indicate that supply is limiting sales. Being dependent on production abroad, a small country like Norway is vulnerable to marketing decisions by car producers and other market players in the transport sector.

With the European Union currently reviewing its Clean Vehicles Directive, it can learn important lessons from the EV revolution, and its setbacks, in Norway.

First, a well-designed policy package of carrots and sticks can drive deployment of energy-efficient technologies faster than expected. Second, policy makers must make sure that car manufacturers actually can deliver – on acceptable timescales – what they offer.

The Clean Vehicles Directive would benefit from considering these lessons, and avoid that car manufacturers respond to the directive with EV “window dressing”. If not, the climate and energy targets in the EU may be in peril.

Steffen Kallbekken is the research director of the CICERO Center for International Climate Research. Håkon Sælen and Erlend Hermansen are senior researchers; Elisabeth Lannoo is a senior communication advisor of the same organization.

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Emerging economies will get the assistance in the form of loans and donations, over and above the 300 million euros ($369m) France had already committed in 2015, AFP reported.

Speaking at the founding conference of the International Solar Alliance in New Delhi, Macron took an indirect jibe at the United States for leaving the United Nations climate change deal.

“Our solar mamas did not wait for us,” he said, referring to a group of women solar engineers. “They started to act and deliver complete results. They did not wait and stop because some countries just decided to leave the floor and leave the Paris agreement.”

US President Donald Trump had in 2017 decided that his country was withdrawing from the Paris climate agreement, signed by 195 countries in December 2015.

India and France are co-hosting the first International Solar Alliance summit in New Delhi. Heads of state of 23 nations were present at the event.

The International Solar Alliance is a treaty based inter-governmental alliance of 121 sunshine-rich countries that lie fully or partially between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Their adoption of solar energy is expected to help reduce the use of fossil fuels and combat climate change. Sixty countries have signed the agreement to join the alliance. Macron said member countries made up three-fourths of the world population, PTI reported.

At the event, Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggested reading the Vedas to find ways to control climate change. “The Vedas consider the sun as the soul of the world, it has been considered as a life nurturer,” he said. “Today, for combating climate change, we need to look at this ancient idea to find a way.”

Modi also proposed a 10-point action plan to make affordable solar energy technology available to all nations.

This article was produced by Scroll.in

The post France’s Macron pledges €700m to solar energy push appeared first on Climate Home News.

ISA, a brainchild of India and France launched at the Paris climate summit in 2015 with the aim to efficiently exploit solar energy in the countries that lie between the tropics, expects to ink a host country agreement just ahead of the big day. The agreement is to be signed between the ISA and India, the latter being the nation that is home to its headquarters and is leading the intergovernmental coalition to kick-start solar projects globally.

The agreement that India is hoping will be sealed by March 9 will provide operational autonomy to the host country for basic functioning like recruitments, signing contracts and issuing of tenders, which are crucial for the implementation of solar programmes that are to be undertaken under the ISA.

The one-day ISA summit that will be held on March 11 at the President house in the capital city of Delhi will be an important one, given that it will be the first summit for the ISA since it became a legal entity In December last year following ratification by more than 15 countries.

Two new programmes — on scaling solar E-mobility and storage, and on rooftop solar — are expected to be unveiled at the summit that will see a presence of heads of over 50 member countries including France and India, who had jointly launched the sunshine coalition at the 2015 climate summit in Paris.

121 solar projects

It is also expected that 121 solar projects — the number representing the number of member countries in the alliance — will get a green signal at the summit. The final list of the 121 projects is yet to be released. The upcoming ISA summit was to be held in December last year but was postponed at the last minute due to Gujarat state elections.

The ISA is the first treaty-based intergovernmental organization to be based in India that aims to help sunshine-rich developing countries tap solar energy at more affordable prices through aggregating both demand and risks in order to bring down costs and secure investments of solar developers.

The coalition has already launched three programmes. The first one, called scaling solar applications for agricultural use, aims to promote solar water pumps instead of diesel pumps for irrigation to benefit both farmers and the environment. The second programme focuses on scaling up affordable financing for solar while the third aims to promote solar mini-grids, especially in the least developed and small island countries.

Talking about how ISA is generating demand for solar during a discussion at the World Sustainable Development Summit that was organized by the Energy and Resources Institute (TERI) between February 15-17, Upendra Tripathy, Interim Director General of ISA, said, “We have aggregated demand of 500,000 solar water pumps and we are aggregating risks as well for going for a global tender. For example, Bangladesh has said they need 50,000 pumps every year and India has said it needs 100,000 pumps in the next three years. Similarly, we are putting together demand from Mauritius and Uganda as well. We are mobilizing 500,000 pumps, and with the global tender, prices will come down. Industries are the best stakeholders that can bring this sort of change in the fields.”

Calling the first programme as a win-win situation both for the farmers and the environment, Tripathy said, “In India, we have 7.5 million diesel pumps. In ISA countries, we are trying to do a census of how many diesel pumps are used. Also, when a farmer installs a pump, he needs to erect five poles just to supply electricity to it which cost INR 2.5 lakh (USD 3,880).”

Challenges remain

However, there are challenges when it comes to the mega solar irrigation pump initiative, which according to the officials is moving along with full force.

“We have been able to mobilize demand of 464,000 pumps out of 500,000. But this is just the demand. The countries are only saying that we need so many pumps. When we now talk to the industries, they say we need a commitment from them to buy. When we talked to Uganda, for example, Uganda said that the federal government has given the commitment but the buying has to be done by the local government. And there is a provincial government too in the middle,” Tripathy told indiaclimatedialogue.net.

“Now we have to see if we can tender it without buying. But if we do it without the commitment of buying, then the manufacturer would say that look this means nothing. Look, no one says that we would like to tender but we won’t buy,” he said. “So we are trying to organize finances for the 500,000 pumps and give a reasonable certainty that this will be purchased by the sovereign countries, but we can’t give a commitment at the moment. So the prices won’t come down as much when there is a guarantee of buying but at least we have created an ecosystem where these pumps can be utilized.”

As for the initiative of solar mini-grids, the programme has not picked up pace in comparison to solar water pumps.

“We have in fact asked Indian industries how much they can put in Africa, something has happened but we have to go to a global scale in that,” Tripathy told indiaclimatedialogue.net. “We are focusing on small island countries like Fiji, but like the first programme (solar water pumps), each country has not given their demand because they are yet to get a clarity on mini-grids, so we have to bring a lot of awareness, capacity building and quality control. Only then the demand will be created.”

Research centres

In order to address the issues of awareness, quality control and local capacity building, ISA will also be setting up Solar Technology Application Research Centres in select countries and an infopedia. Financial challenges and making solar projects more affordable are the main areas that ISA is working on.

“The European Union is coming up with some financial assistance of 370,000 euros to clear the infopedia, which will help in our mission. The World Bank has put USD 500,000 for awareness and other activities and then of course there is a corpus fund that we are trying to create to address how to run ISA when India will stop funding after the fifth year of its inception,” said Tripathy. “India has already raised USD 18 million for the corpus. The Green Climate Fund has given us the possibility of using funds, which will attract more funds in future. And there is an interest in companies. A Chinese company has come forward with USD 1 million. This really became a hot story considering China is not a member of ISA yet.”

Officials at the ISA are hoping that the upcoming summit will bring the required political support to implement national solar roadmaps for each member country.

This article was produced by India Climate Dialogue

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But recently it has entered the national spotlight. In the space of a year, Taiyuan has shifted its entire taxi fleet from petrol power to electricity. Thanks to strong support from the local government, electric vehicle (EV) sales in the city accounted for 7% of total car purchases in 2017, compared to 1% globally.

What’s happening in Taiyuan serves as an important lesson for other cities as governments struggle to shift economic growth away from heavy industry towards more sustainable models of development.

By reducing the number of petrol cars on the road, the city is tackling its car pollution problem while shoring up China’s position as a leader in clean technology.

Taiyuan illustrates how with the right policy support, a town can deliver rapid change. But the city still has plenty of conventional cars on its roads and its experience also shows the risks of moving too quickly.

Taiyuan’s taxi switch

In 2015, Shanxi’s coal output stalled before shrinking by 14% the following year. In need of new sources of economic growth, Taiyuan’s government began working hard to court the country’s burgeoning electric vehicle sector.

In 2016, and with little fanfare, the city switched its entire taxi fleet to electric cars (excluding the private cars used by services like Didi and Uber). Chinese vehicle manufacturer BYD sold 8,292 E6 vehicles. So how did a city built on coal wealth come to have more electric taxis than any other in China?

China is the world’s largest car market. Its leaders have set ambitious medium-term goals for automotive efficiency and climate change, including a cap on carbon emissions by 2030. In September 2017, they went further and announced plans to ban combustion engine cars altogether (though no timeline was announced).

China began promoting EVs in 2009, initially across ten cities. However, Taiyuan was not one of them. In fact, its cold temperatures can limit the effectiveness of the lithium-ion batteries used by EVs, potentially reducing the distance vehicles can travel.

Nonetheless, in March 2016 manufacturer BYD set about opening its first factory in Taiyuan. Today, six other EV makers have facilities there. And BYD alone is expected to contribute 5% of the city’s GDP.

This is partly due to support from local government, which is working hard to lure carmakers.

Like most of China’s city’s, Taiyuan has a public taxi fleet owned by several companies. In recent years this has been supplemented by an unofficial taxi sector, which operates in much the same way as Uber, with private drivers offering their services through a mobile application.

Public taxi drivers buy their own vehicles (or lease them from companies). However, it’s the local government that decides the type of cars that can operate as public taxis through mandatory purchase requirements.

The contract to buy over 8,000 BYD cars, which retail at 300,000 yuan (US$46,000) each, was a welcoming signal to the EV sector.

Taiyuan’s city planners also promised to replace all public buses (some 2,650) with electric ones, which is expected to complete this year.

In recognition of its EV policies, Taiyuan also made the International Council on Clean Transportation’s list of 20 EV Capitals last year – a ranking of cities with the highest EV sales.

Electrification of the taxi fleet meant Taiyuan accounted for 1% of electric vehicles globally as of 2016. Data and image from the ICCT’s 2017 EV Briefing.

Making the switch work

Having a local EV manufacturer has helped Taiyuan to bring electric cars online but without an overhaul of the existing infrastructure, a complete switch would have been impossible.

The provision and maintenance of charging stations, and management of new grid demands are needed, too. As are public awareness campaigns that promote greater understanding around the benefits of EVs.

Why Taiyuan has moved ahead 

First, the size of Taiyuan’s taxi fleet is relatively small (Beijing and Shanghai each have fleets greater than 50,000), which made planning and financing the transport upgrade simpler.

Secondly, charging stations were carefully positioned on the city’s ring road, making them easier for drivers to access.

“They can charge and go,” said Li Dewang, of the Taiyuan Environmental Planning Institute. Convenience is a factor.

Timing was another. Taiyuan’s fleet was due to be replaced in 2016 anyway (in China, municipal governments set limits on how long fleets are allowed in operation before re-registration is needed), so taxi drivers were expecting to buy new vehicles.

Finally, Taiyuan’s government had the financing and determination to offer generous consumer subsidies for EV vehicles. (Subsidies offered roughly double the provincial government rate, according to the Economic Observer, which is owned by Chinese state media site, Xinhua). In Tiayuan, drivers can buy a 300,000 yuan (US$46,000) BYD E6 for 87,500 yuan (US$14,500).

“In late 2015 and early 2016 many drivers were against the change,” said Xie Hongxing, head of Clean Air Asia, an international environmental non-profit organisation. “But by March 2016 a majority who’d made the switch were happy; by June most had switched and there weren’t many objections,” he added.

Electric taxis solve the problem [of vehicle pollution],” said Wu Ye, a deputy professor at Tsinghua University’s School of the Environment, “but we can’t yet say Taiyuan has been successful.”

A limited success

The city’s car owners have been less eager to embrace vehicle electrification. EVs account for 1.8% of all road vehicles in Taiyuan (20,000 EVs out of 1.15 million vehicles). Of this, almost half are designated taxis and buses.

“Taiyuan’s taken the first step, but there’s a long way to go yet,” said Wu Ye.

More charging stations are needed and parking garages.

But more worrying is that Taiyuan’s electricity is still mostly sourced from polluting coal generation.

“80% of Shanxi’s electricity comes from coal, 10% from wind, solar and hydro, and despite this, wind power is still being wasted. So the electricity system could be better managed,” so that coal power is displaced by renewables, said Zhao Yongqiang, deputy head of the Renewable Energy Centre at the National Development and Reform Commission’s Energy Research Institute.

In China as a whole, coal accounted for 63% of electricity generated in 2016. But Shanxi produces one quarter of the country’s coal and its power generation relies on it far more than the national average.

Deeper reforms

The plan to build and buy EVs looks to have been successful in Taiyuan. But that doesn’t mean that other cities will be able to replicate it.

It is worth noting that the city’s promotion of the EV sector is closely associated with the current mayor, Geng Yanbo, who featured in the BBC documentary The Chinese Mayor. Geng is a controversial figure. As mayor of the city of Datong he embarked on wide-ranging plans to improve traffic flow and infrastructure, but was criticised for pushing through changes too quickly and destroying sites of cultural importance.

As mayor of Taiyuan, Geng has rebuilt the city’s road network and as the chair of a working group promoting EVs is a strong advocate for the technology. Whilst electrification of the taxi fleet has bolstered the city’s low-carbon reputation, it does little to address the city’s worsening traffic pollution given that taxis make up only a small proportion of vehicles.

Although replacing 8,000 taxis with EVs within a year is a huge feat, it is only a starting point for the broader transport reforms Taiyuan needs. And these will depend on much more than the determination and capabilities of whoever is in charge.

The electrification of its taxi fleet put Taiyuan at the forefront of cities replacing their fuel-burning vehicles. On October 23, 12 cities in the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, including London and Paris, announced they would buy only zero-emission buses from 2025. Previously some countries, including Germany and the UK, announced plans to ban the sale of fuel-burning vehicles. China has also started looking into a timetable for doing this.

But for Taiyuan to remain an EV Capital and become a real leader in promoting a shift to greener transport, this coal city needs to consider deeper reforms.

This article was produced by China Dialogue and shared under a creative commons licence. Read the original here

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The aspect that has generated the most interest is the battery’s rapid response time in smoothing out several major energy outages that have occurred since it was installed.

Following the early success of the SA model, Victoria has also secured an agreement to get its own Tesla battery built near the town of Stawell. Victoria’s government will be tracking the Hornsdale battery’s early performance with interest.

Generation and Consumption

Over the full month of December, the Hornsdale power reserve generated 2.42 gigawatt-hours of energy, and consumed 3.06GWh.

Since there are losses associated with energy storage, it is a net consumer of energy. This is often described in terms of “round trip efficiency”, a measure of the energy out to the energy in. In this case, the round trip efficiency appears to be roughly 80%.

The figure below shows the input and output from the battery over the month. As can be seen, on several occasions the battery has generated as much as 100MW of power, and consumed 70MW of power. The regular operation of battery moves between generating 30MW and consuming 30MW of power.

Generation and consumption of the Hornsdale Power Reserve over the month of December 2018. Author provided. Data from AEMO.

As can be seen, the generation and consumption pattern is rather “noisy”, and doesn’t really appear to have a pattern at all. This is true even on a daily basis, as can be seen below. This is related to services provided by the battery.

Generation and consumption of the Hornsdale Power Reserve on the 6th of Jan 2018. Author provided. Data from AEMO.

Frequency Control Ancillary Services

There are eight different Frequency Control Ancillary Services (FCAS) markets in the National Electricity Market (NEM). These can be put into two broad categories: contingency services and regulation services.

Contingency services essentially stabilise the system when something unexpected occurs. This are called credible contingencies. The tripping (isolation from the grid) of large generator is one example.

When such unexpected events occur, supply and demand are no longer balanced, and the frequency of the power system moves away from the normal operating range. This happens on a very short timescale. The contingency services ensure that the system is brought back into balance and that the frequency is returned to normal within 5 minutes.

In the NEM there are three separate timescales over which these contingency services should be delivered: 6 seconds, 60 seconds, and 5 minutes. As the service may have to increase or decrease the frequency, there is thus a total of six contingency markets (three that raise frequency in the timescales above, and three that reduce it).

This is usually done by rapidly increasing or decreasing output from a generator (or battery in this case), or rapidly reducing or increasing load. This response is triggered at the power station by the change in frequency.

To do this, generators (or loads) have some of their capacity “enabled” in the FCAS market. This essentially means that a proportion of its capacity is set aside, and available to respond if the frequency changes. Providers get paid for for the amount of megawatts they have enabled in the FCAS market.

This is one of the services that the Hornsdale Power Reserve has been providing. The figure below shows how the Hornsdale Power Reserve responded to one incident on power outage, when one of the units at Loy Yang A tripped on December 14, 2017.

The Hornsdale Power Reserve responding to a drop in system frequency. Author provided. Data from AEMO.

The regulation services are a bit different. Similar to the contingency services, they help maintain the frequency in the normal operating range. And like contingency, regulation may have to raise or lower the frequency, and as such there are two regulation markets.

However, unlike contingency services, which essentially wait for an unexpected change in frequency, the response is governed by a control signal, sent from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO).

In essence, AEMO controls the throttle, monitors the system frequency, and sends a control signal out at a 4-second interval. This control signal alters the output of the generator such that the supply and demand balanced is maintained.

This is one of the main services that the battery has been providing. As can be seen, the output of the battery closely follows the amount of capacity it has enabled in the regulation market.

Output of Horndale Power Reserve compared with enablement in the regulation raise FCAS market. Author provided. Data from AEMO.

More batteries to come

Not to be outdone by it’s neighbouring state, the Victorian government has also recently secured an agreement for its own Tesla battery. This agreement, in conjunction with a wind farm near the town of Stawell, should see a battery providing similar services in Victoria.

This battery may also provide additional benefits to the grid. The project is located in a part of the transmission network that AEMO has indicated may need augmentation in the future. This project might illustrate the benefits the batteries can provide in strengthening the transmission network.

It still early days for the Hornsdale Power Reserve, but it’s clear that it has been busy performing essential services and doing so at impressive speeds. Importantly, it has provided regular frequency control ancillary services – not simply shifting electricity around.

With the costs and need for frequency control service increasing in recent years, the boost to supply through the Hornsdale power reserve is good news for consumers, and a timely addition to Australia’s energy market.

Dylan McConnell, Researcher at the Australian German Climate and Energy College, University of Melbourne

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

The post Tesla’s South Australian super battery beats expectations for first month appeared first on Climate Home News.

With reform, though, experts told Climate Home News exchanging money through the decentralised system can be made cleaner than a regular credit card or cash transaction.

The blockchain technology that underpins bitcoin can also benefit the climate, they say, by improving traceability of sustainable supply chains or carbon trading.

“In the current setup, everything to do with blockchain is pretty unsustainable,” Nick Beglinger, chief executive of Cleantech 21, a sustainable development foundation, told Climate Home News.

Bitcoins are created by “mining”, a complex computational process that demands a lot of energy.

Blockchain involves a decentralized network of computers that registers a bitcoin or other digital currency transaction, makes an encrypted copy and merges it into an uncorruptible file chain. It is growing so rapidly that it currently consumes 33 TWh a year, according to Digiconomist – equivalent to Denmark’s electricity consumption.

Clean Coin, a research group tracking the carbon footprint of bitcoin and its rival cryptocurrency ethereum, says they emitted 9.3 million and 3.4 million tonnes of CO2 respectively in November.

If half the population embraces digital coins by 2030, they will use the equivalent of today’s entire global electricity production, the organization claims.

Report: Macron summit touts green finance progress – despite Trump

In a white paper on to be published on Monday, Clean Coin will suggest ways to reduce bitcoin mining’s energy consumption.

“The paper analyzes the question of what makes a coin clean, how a digital currency has to be to make sense from an environmental viewpoint. It is a complex question with no simple answers,” said Beglinger.

Mining must be streamlined, he said – especially the “proof of work” component in which a miner solves a calculation to produce a new coin and show it is valid for the system. To save energy, the paper proposes a “proof of stake” method in which network stakeholders or owners automatically validate coin production, rendering the “proof of work” process unnecessary.

While Beglinger said miners have an incentive to find less energy-intensive methods, others say regulators need to step in.

“There needs to be more work to standardize the industry, raise awareness about its carbon footprint and commit the blockchain community to low carbon,” said Miroslav Polzer, secretary general of the IAAI, a development organization that does work on youth and climate finance. If that is done, “distributed ledger [a synonym for blockchain] can be a a more effective technology for fighting climate change”.

A faster clean energy transition is also required to offset blockchain’s rising demand for fossil fuels, said Rodrigo Andrade, director of Latin American advocacy group Dialogo Energia.

“I have my fears about blockchain because we don’t have enough renewable energy to meet its huge electricity demands,” he said. “The renewables transition is already underway but will need to be accelerated if we want this technology to be good for the climate.”

Report: ‘Tsunami of data’ could consume one fifth of global electricity by 2025

Climate-friendly applications of blockchain may include boosting trust in international carbon market transactions or sustainable commodity flows. Because blockchain creates an impermeable record of a transaction, it can make trading around the world more transparent.

At the climate summit hosted by president Emmanuel Macron in Paris on Tuesday, six international companies and four fintech startups launched a project using blockchain to reward sustainable practices.

Commodities giant Unilever, UK supermarket chain Sainsbury’s and bank Barclays are taking part in the £600,000 ($800,000) shared data pilot with tea farmers in Malawi.

Rhian-Mari Thomas, chair of Barclays’ Green Banking Council, said that lenders can offer finance on better terms if they have robust evidence of sustainability.

“You can’t link sustainability data with supply chain data at the moment – things like transport documents and delivery dates or farmer water usage,” she said. “Blockchain brings the advantage of giving us visibility of extraordinarily complex supply chains.”

The post Bitcoin reforms proposed to curb soaring carbon footprint appeared first on Climate Home News.

Youth unemployment averages 10.8% across sub-Saharan Africa, while nearly seven out of 10 young people earn less than $3.10 a day. Climate change impacts like drought and flooding are making it harder for farmers to get by, with large numbers making a risky journey to seek better opportunities in Europe.

In response to this challenge, the Climate Smart Agriculture Youth Network (CSAYN) is bringing young people together through digital and conventional means to share knowledge about climate-smart agriculture.

According to Amanda Namayi from CSAYN Kenya, the internet has helped the youth form alliances across 28 countries to promote sustainable farming. “This initiative started in Africa but it is now spreading to other parts of the world,” she said.

CSAYN is promoting activities associated with farming such as marketing, accounting and manufacturing to help the youth realise that agriculture can also be done by those with university qualifications.

“The youth is more engaged in social media and they’re into technology, which are the tools they’re using to get involved in farming,” said Catherine Mwangi, a researcher from Kenya.

That includes creating mobile applications to inform farmers about weather patterns and help them make decisions on what to plant and when.

Young people are also using online forums to share experiences and educate one another, Mwangi said. “We need to rethink the way we engage the youth in farming… The online forums have given us an insight into what challenges the youth faces and the solutions.”

Analysis: For Africans, America’s pledge is about more than pollution

The other problem that African youth in agriculture face is a lack of land rights. This, according to the African Union Commission (AUC) advisor in climate change and agriculture, Ayalneh Bogale, is caused by the complexity of land tenure systems in African countries.

“The AUC is helping African governments to come up with policies to make land more accessible to those who want to use it for farming,” he said.

He also encouraged the youth to engage in rehabilitating damaged land, which may be eligible for climate finance.

Climate Home News’ reporting at Cop23 is supported in part by the European Climate Foundation.

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The scheme aims to make sure the world’s poor have an informed voice in the debate over one of the most controversial solutions mooted for global warming.

Asfawossen Kassaye, a professor of earth sciences at Addis Ababa University, has been involved in Solar Radiation Management Governance Initiative (SRMGI) workshops and consultations since 2012. “We don’t know if [solar geoengineering] is good or bad for us,” he told Climate Home. “We really want to investigate.”

Andy Parker, project director at SRMGI, which is offering the grants, estimates tens of millions of dollars have been spent on solar geoengineering research in the past decade, in China and a handful of developed countries.

The Decimals fund will allow developing country scientists to re-analyse modelling data with their regional interests in mind. This might be rainfall patterns in Africa, monsoon intensity in South Asia and hurricane risk in the Caribbean, for example.

“Developing countries are concerned who will make decisions about this,” Parker told Climate Home. “Before research really gallops away in the global north, they need to think about what it means for them.”

Solar geoengineering is a theoretical way to limit global warming by reflecting more of the sun’s rays back into space. This might involve injecting aerosols into the stratosphere to mimic the effect of volcanic eruptions, or squirting seawater into clouds over the ocean to make them more reflective.

Report: US opens door for climate geoengineering research

Proponents say it is worth exploring this possibility because reductions to greenhouse gas emissions might not be enough to prevent dangerous climate change.

Harvard climatologist David Keith is preparing to conduct the first small-scale outdoor trials of stratospheric aerosol injection. He argues it is important to know whether or not this is feasible as a way to stabilise temperatures.

However, artificially cooling the atmosphere would have a range of effects on weather patterns, some of which might be detrimental to particular regions or populations. There are major uncertainties.

SRMGI is offering $400,000-450,000 to support between four and seven research projects through the Decimals fund. A request for proposals is due to be issued later in 2017, with beneficiaries expected to report their findings in 2-3 years.

“The problem with the existing models is they tell you about the global average,” said Kassaye, who intends to apply for a research grant. “What is important for farmers in my country [Ethiopia], for example, is not the global average temperature, it is whether it is going to rain this summer.”

Ethiopian farmers are already dealing with increased drought risk as a result of global warming, he added. “We are very vulnerable to climate change and we will be very vulnerable if [geoengineering] is going to happen.”

As well as scientific questions, solar geoengineering raises a number of political and governance concerns. A technologically advanced nation could act unilaterally in a way that disrupts weather patterns elsewhere.

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A draft innovation strategy seen by Climate Home ahead of its official launch on Wednesday prioritised a more open and accessible power system.

“The transition to a low-carbon and climate-resilient economy will require a more decentralised, open system with the involvement of all society,” said the Commission paper.

“The energy system has traditionally been marked by the dominance of large companies, incumbents and large-scale, centralised technological projects. But in future the consumer has to be at the centre of the energy system.”

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It is earmarking more than €2 billion for research into energy storage, electrified transport, nearly-zero energy buildings and integrating renewables, under the Horizon 2020 programme for 2018-20.

That represents a 35% annual budget increase on 2014-15 funding levels, according to the draft.

A separate €5-10m prize will reward breakthroughs in artificial photosynthesis, nearly-zero energy building design, community-based energy trading and social innovation in energy or transport for cities.

That research agenda contrasts with plans for the existing energy market, which green groups complained were skewed towards fossil-fuelled incumbents.

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Wind and solar power generators are set to lose priority grid access. Coal and gas plants, on the other hand, can get paid to be available for back-up under “capacity mechanisms” planned by several member states.

“The Commission’s draft proposals on renewable energy are baffling,” said Imke Lubbeke of WWF Europe.

“Less than a year since the Paris Agreement, and with investment in renewables in the EU falling behind the US and China, the Commission thinks now is the moment to weaken key elements of the EU’s renewable energy framework and open the door to subsidies for old coal plants?”

In its submission to the UN climate deal struck in Paris last year, the EU committed to cut emissions 40% from 1990 levels by 2030.

Report: EU needs clean transport drive to meet climate goals

Underpinning that goal, the bloc aims to improve energy efficiency by at least 27% and increase renewable energy’s share of the mix to 27%. The winter package fleshes out the path to those secondary goals.

With the EU set to overachieve on its 2020 carbon cuts, the targets represent a slowdown in the shift to a green economy next decade, according to Jonathan Gaventa of think tank E3G.

“We are seeing a moment of political caution in Europe,” he said. “But it is elements like the clean energy innovation strategy that are trying to put in place the upstream research and development structure to not only meet the targets but overachieve them.

“If this succeeds, it should cause quite radical disruption in the market.”

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Experiments show how electric vehicles could become a carbon negative way to travel (Pic: Flickr/Paul Krueger)

By Megan Darby

Cars could become carbon negative with a technology developed by American scientists.

Researchers from Vanderbilt and George Washington universities have shown how to convert carbon dioxide from the air into carbon nanotubes for use in batteries.

Those batteries can run electric vehicles, according to their study published in the journal ACS Central Science.

“This unlocks this whole space of research,” said co-author and mechanical engineer Cary Pint in a video explainer. “Now you can take CO2 and use it to make products to overcome big challenges in technology.”

Carbon dioxide taken from smokestacks or the atmosphere could make up around 40% of a lithium-ion battery, Pint added.

As well as demonstrating a way to clean up transport, the trials suggest carbon dioxide has an economic value. It is worth US$18 a kilogram as a battery material, the researchers estimate.

“Imagine a world where every new electric vehicle or grid-scale battery installation would not only enable us to overcome the environmental sins of our past, but also provide a step toward a sustainable future for our children,” said Pint.

“Our efforts have shown a path to achieve such a future.”

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(Pic: White House/Flickr)

By Ed King in Paris

The quest for clean technologies to replace fossil fuels will receive a huge boost today, with the Paris launch of two multi-billion dollar coalitions to drive research and development in green energy.

US president Barack Obama and Microsoft founder Bill Gates will spearhead the initiatives on the opening day of the COP21 UN climate summit, where over 150 leaders are expected to outline their plans to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions.

“Mission Innovation” will see the level of global R&D funding in the clean tech sector doubled to US$20 billion over the next five years, according to a White House briefing.

In total 20 countries, including the US, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, India, Japan and China have signed up to the plan to help drive the global economy away from oil, gas and coal.

Scientists say the world has under 30 years at current rates of emissions before warming above the 2C danger zone is unavoidable.

Report: Record number of leaders expected for COP21 opening

These governments “share a common goal to develop breakthrough technologies and substantial cost reductions to enable the global community to meet our shared climate goals,” said the White House.

Leading emerging economies like India and China say access to cheaper clean energy technologies is essential if they are to slow emissions growth and allow their growing populations access to power.

The separate “Breakthrough Energy Coalition” is a private sector push involving Bill Gates, Richard Branson, Tom Steyer, Mark Zuckerberg and George Soros, billionaires all.

They plan to invest heavily in risky technologies, aiming to span what they term the “valley of death” facing new entrants into global energy markets.

“Given the scale of the challenge, we need to be exploring many different paths—and that means we also need to invent new approaches,” said Gates, who will personally inject up to $2 billion.

“Private companies will ultimately develop these energy breakthroughs, but their work will rely on the kind of basic research that only governments can fund.”

Leading investors in India, China and Saudi Arabia are also set to participate.

Saudi Royal family member Prince Alwaleed bin Talal said the group would “aggressively address the dual challenge of satisfying increasing energy needs and combating climate change.”

According to the International Energy Agency, a Paris-based think tank, government spending on energy R&D as a share of spending fell from an 11% peak in 1981 to just under 7% in 2013.

Renewables funding is up but investments in nuclear have contracted by 75%.

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Scientists have developed technology to mimic photosynthesis (Pic: Flickr/@Doug88888)

By Tim Radford

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Smartphone devices are hidden in the trees, where they detect sounds of chainsaws (Pic: Rainforest Connection)

By Sophie Yeo

Indigenous people in Brazil have joined forces with a San Francisco tech start-up to protect the Amazon rainforest from illegal logging.

The company, Rainforest Connection, takes discarded smartphones and transforms them into solar-powered listening devices that register the sounds of chainsaws and trucks in areas where logging is illegal.

The phones then send alerts to rangers and officials, allowing them to respond and prevent deforestation occurring. Now, 30 members of the Tembé tribe are being trained as forest rangers, empowering them to stop unlawful incursions onto their land.

“The technology being developed by Rainforest Connection is an extremely powerful tool for the protection of rainforests, especially in our case, when combined with the on-the-ground presence and determination of local indigenous groups serving as guardians of their traditional lands which occupy over a quarter of the entire Amazon region,” said Vasco M. van Roosmalen from Equipe de Conservação da Amazônia, which is running the training programme.

The advantage of the project over traditional satellite monitoring systems is that it transmits real time information directly to those who are able to respond, offering the best chance to stop illegal loggers in their tracks.

Deforestation in the Amazon threatens the rights of indigenous people, biodiversity, and contributes to climate change by destroying a valuable carbon sink.

Pic: Rainforest Connection

The Tembé people, with a population of 1,500, have a strong incentive to stand up for the rainforest. They recently recovered their rights to around 600,000 hectares of lost land, but protecting the area has been a challenge, and they have reported massive illegal logging operations.

Despite measures by the Brazilian government to tackle illegal logging, a two-year investigation by Greenpeace released this year claimed that the problem was still “out of control”, and that in Para State, the country’s largest producer and exporter of timber, 78% of logging is illegal.

The black market for illegal timber puts indigenous people’s lands under threat, and drives climate change through cutting down these large stores of carbon.

Rainforest Connection is also planning an additional pilot project in the Mamoni Valley Preserve in Panam. Partnering with the Guna indigenous population of Panama, this would eventually protect thousands of acres of rainforest threatened by logging.

Musician Neil Young has supported the project. “Through the power of sound, this technology can give the forest a voice,” he wrote in a letter. “When the forest is threatened, the forest can speak. And for the first time, you can hear it.”

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Israel’s first solar field, located at Kibbutz Ketura in Israel’s Arava Valley (Arava Power Company Company/Flickr)

Israel is the best place for clean tech entrepreneurs to set up shop, according to a study released by Cleantech Group and WWF.

It says the country has the “culture, education and chutzpah” needed to breed innovation, citing the success of wastewater engineers Emefcy and Seed technology firm Kaiima.

Finland and the USA are rated the second and third best countries, while there are signs China, India and Brazil are starting to offer more attractive markets for new businesses.

“International climate change negotiations are not delivering sufficiently on the challenge to avoid catastrophic climate change, which make accelerated investments in solutions by business, financial institutions, countries and cities even more crucial,” WWF’s head of climate Sam Smith said.

“Understanding these innovation processes is important in order to accelerate increase of the “good” as a complement to the establishment of national climate targets and carbon caps that address a more rapid decrease of the “bad.”

The study covers 40 countries, including all of the G20. Compiled by the Cleantech Group, it is based on a country’s ability to create and commercialise innovation.

Other countries making the top 10 include Sweden (4), Denmark (5) the UK (6) and Ireland (10) which anticipates cleantech jobs will grow to 80,000 by 2020.

While China (19), India (21) and Brazil (25) scored relatively poorly, the report says their profile is likely to rise given the strong climate for growth and development, together with high levels of pollution.

Saudi Arabia (33) and Russia (40) also receive praise for early steps in helping young companies, a move the authors say is driven “to hedge against the realities of limited conventional energy sources in the long-term”.

Global renewable energy investment fell 14% in 2013 to $214 billion, figures analysts at Bloomberg say are linked to cost reductions and the impact of policy uncertainty.

Annual global project finance investment in renewables is projected to reach $400 to $500 billion by 2020.

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