Shell, Gasunie and Groningen join forces for mega wind and hydrogen plant

DutchNews, February 27, 2020 

An offshore wind farm. Photo: Depositphotos.com

Oil giant Shell, gas group Gasunie and Groningen’s port authority are joining forces to build a massive offshore wind farm and hydrogen plant in the northern province, Dutch media reported on Thursday. 

The plan, dubbed NortH2, will be formally presented on Thursday afternoon but will, the companies say, be one of the ‘biggest renewable energy projects in the world’. 

The project is still at the planning stage and definitive investment decisions still have to be taken. 

A feasibility study will completed at the end of this year but the project will require government support, the Financieele Dagblad said. More partners may also be brought on board. 

The electricity would be brought onshore at Eemshaven where it would be used to produce hydrogen for northern European industry and distributed via Gasunie’s current network. 

The factory will have capacity to produce 800,000 tonnes of hydrogen a year. ‘Green hydrogen, produced via renewable sources such as wind and solar power, is central in the Dutch climate agreement and in the European Green Deal,’ the three companies say. 

Hydrogen is widely used in industry but is currently mainly produced with gas. 

Last October, Groningen hosted a major conference on developing a hydrogen based economy. 

Economic affairs minister Erik Wiebes said at the time the region has everything it needs, including infrastructure (gas pipelines, deep-sea port), the space and the knowledge to make the transition to a hydrogen economy a reality. 

Households 

The offshore wind farm will kick off with production of some three to four gigawatts by 2030, expanding to 10 gigawatts by 2040. This would be enough to supply 12.5 million households, or more than the total number of households in the Netherlands, the project group said. 

Dutch offshore wind farms currently generate just under one gigawatt of power.

Bushfires burned a fifth of Australia's forest: study

Yahoo – AFP, Patrick GALEY, February 24, 2020

Australia's annual average forest loss to wild fires is typically well below 2 percent --
but a study has shown around 21 percent was lost between September and January
(AFP Photo/SAEED KHAN)

Paris (AFP) - Australia's wildfires have destroyed more than a fifth of the country's forests, making the blazes "globally unprecedented" following a years-long drought linked to climate change, researchers said Monday.

Climate scientists are currently examining data from the disaster, which destroyed swathes of southeastern Australia, to determine to what extent they can be attributed to rising temperatures.

In a special edition of the journal Nature Climate Change, Australian researchers examined several other aspects of the blazes, including investigations into their extent and possible causes.

One study showed that between September 2019 and January 2020 around 5.8 million hectares of broadleaf forest were burned in New South Wales and Victoria.

This accounts for roughly 21 percent of the nation's forested area, making this fire season proportionately the most devastating on record.

"Halfway through Spring 2019 we realised that a very large part of the eastern Australian forest could be burned in this single season," Matthias Boer, from the Hawkesbury Institute for the Environment at Western Sydney University, Penrith, told AFP.

One study author warned the data almost certainly underestimates the extent of

forest loss as the island state of Tasmania was not covered by the research (AFP 

Photo/PETER PARKS)

"The shock came from realising that this season was off the charts globally in terms of the percentage of the continental section of a forest biome that burned."

Boer said his study almost certainly underestimates the extent of forest loss as the island state of Tasmania was not covered in the data.

Australia's annual average forest loss to wild fires is typically well below 2 percent.

Droughts linked to sea temperature

Another study published Monday looked at the conditions that made the fires so damaging -- a years-long dry spell in Australia's Murray-Darling Basin.

Droughts create more fuel for wildfires and make it harder for forests to recover after each blaze.

Andrew King, from the University of Melbourne, and colleagues looked at a phenomenon known as the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), which has a direct effect on rainfall levels in Australia and elsewhere.

Since 2017 much of Australia has experienced widespread drought, something the study attributed to a relative lack of negative IOD events -- when there are warmer than normal sea surface temperatures in the east Indian Ocean with cooler waters in the west.

Climate scientists are currently examining data from the disaster, which saw swathes 

of southeastern Australia destroyed, to determine to what extent they can be attributed

to rising temperatures (AFP Photo/TOM BANNIGAN)

These events tend to shift weather patterns and typically bring greater rainfall to southeast Australia, and are made less frequent as global sea temperatures warm.

King and the team examined rainfall statistics and found that the winter of 2016 saw extremely heavy precipitation and a corresponding negative IOD event.

Since then, the Murray-Darling Basin has experienced 12 consecutive seasons with below-average rainfall, the longest period on record since 1900.

"With climate change there have been projections that there will be more positive IOD events and fewer negative IOD events," King told AFP.

"This would mean that we'd expect more dry seasons in Australia and possibly worse droughts."

Boer said that climate change was all but certain to make Australia more prone to wildfires and urged the government to strengthen fire readiness measures and "take urgent and effective action on climate change."

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Netherlands in EU top three for recycling, says circular economy report

DutchNews, February 21, 2020

Plastic waste awaiting collection in Amstelveen. Photo: DutchNews.nl

The Netherlands is in Europe’s top three for recycling, according to the latest figures published by the Dutch statistics office. 

A report on the ‘circular economy in the Netherlands’ – looking at the extent to which the country uses raw materials and recycles what it uses – shows that it is apparently improving. 

In 2018 the country consumed around 20% less in materials than in 2000 – including goods that are used in production. On average, each resident used 10,000 kilos of materials in 2018 – however another 21,500 kilos per head were produced, intended for export. 

The report says that the Netherlands’ material use ‘footprint’ is relatively low, partly because it is small and densely populated so less material is needed for infrastructure such as roads. 

The Dutch produce more rubbish per head than the European norm, at 2,500 kilos in 2016, compared with an average 1,800 kilos – partly due to packaging from goods that are imported and then exported, according to the report. 

However, it is third for recycling rates, after Luxemburg and Belgium – sending 1,698kg of rubbish for reuse per head in 2016, the most recent year for which there are comparative figures. 

The government is aiming to build a ‘completely’ circular economy by 2050, in which material is used sparingly, products are designed with reuse in mind and everything possible is recycled.

As nations bicker, a greener future evolves in finance

Yahoo – AFP,  Jitendra JOSHI,February 9, 2020

Analysts believe that green finance could help save the planet and make
money for investors (AFP Photo/Philippe HUGUEN)

London (AFP) - Away from the toxic atmosphere at climate summit talks, in boardrooms, banks and trading houses, a transformation in green finance is under way.

Its backers hope it could profitably help save the planet.

Regardless of the politics of climate change, there is real money to be made today in the exploding market for bonds and other instruments invested in environmentally sustainable projects.

But in the final analysis, uniform regulation derived from collective political action will be vital both for the markets and for the planet itself, observers acknowledge.

Hard-nosed US investors in fields such as solar panels are not necessarily driven by anxiety about global warming, Climate Bonds Initiative chief executive Sean Kidney said.

"Most of them are Republicans for god's sake," he said at a conference on climate finance organised by the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in London.

"They care only about price," he added, predicting the transition to a low-carbon future would generate $90 trillion investment by 2050 in areas including low-energy cooling, urban farming and greener transport.

Kidney's independent organisation certifies "green bonds" issued by governments, municipalities and companies whose proceeds are devoted to sustainable development.

Notable issuers last month included the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in New York, one of a slew of US cities unwilling to wait on President Donald Trump's climate-sceptic administration as they vie to adapt their creaking infrastructures to a low-carbon future.

Tipping point

The investment community more broadly is running ahead of climate politics, which have been stymied by the refusal of the United States and other major economies to chart a way forward on the 2015 Paris accord.

BlackRock, the world's biggest asset management fund, shook the industry last month by announcing it would transition out of coal-based investments.

"Climate risk has become mainstream (for investors). It does feel we have reached a tipping point," said Nick Anderson, board member of International Financial Reporting Standards, which is crafting new climate guidance for company accountants.

Democratic presidential candidate and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg
 set up a task force on climate-related financial disclosures in 2015 (AFP Photo/
JEFF KOWALSKY)

In 2019, the green bonds market worldwide expanded by more than half to about $258 billion, and further breakneck growth is expected this year, according to the Climate Bonds Initiative.

Departments at major banks in charge of environmental, social and governance (ESG) matters, once a backwater in high finance, now have real teeth as banks get serious about profitable alternative investments and their wider public image.

Environmental finance is "absolutely real and tangible", said Alexandra Basirov, global head of sustainable finance for financial institutions at French bank BNP Paribas.

Banks such as BNP and ING have pioneered lower-interest loans that give greener projects an edge over more carbon-intensive ones.

But Basirov also cautioned at last week's EBRD conference: "Ultimately markets don't operate efficiently without adequate data."

Therein lies the rub for many engaged in the ESG business: how to tally assets at risk from climate change, and how to quantify the risk itself given the array of catastrophic outcomes in store as temperatures rise.

Green for greenbacks

Credit risk agencies have been writing new models that seek to calculate corporate exposure, such as the weight of assets that companies already hold in potentially obsolete carbon investments.

Green investments are already turning into greenbacks for firms, according to James Leaton, vice president for climate risk at Moody's Investors Service.

Sustainable projects show a "lower default rate" because investors see them as more future-proof and creditworthy, he said.

The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures, an initiative launched by former New York mayor and now US presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg, aims to rationalise what companies must report to investors on their climate exposure.

In the acronym-heavy field of climate finance, central banks are also getting in on the act.

One initiative derived from the Paris accord is the Network for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a platform for central bankers to examine the global financial risks of climate change.

A notable holdout has been the US Federal Reserve, hobbled by Trump's vocal objections to climate action. Fed chief Jerome Powell hinted last month that it might soon sign up.

Morgan Despres, head of the NGFS secretariat and deputy chief of the financial stability department at the Banque de France, told AFP that network staffers were in contact with Fed counterparts "on a regular basis".

"Any action does need to be global," he added, echoing environmentalists who say that policymakers must in the end bury their differences and catch up with financiers on climate change.

For investors, the EBRD conference heard that the most meaningful policy action would be for governments to agree a true market price for carbon that properly reflects its climate impact.

"Without carbon pricing, you can only go so far," Eric Usher, head of the UN Environment Programme's finance initiative, said.

Bumble bee numbers tumble with climate change: study

Yahoo – AFP, Marlowe HOOD, February 7, 2020

One-in-six species of bees have gone regionally extinct somewhere in the world
(AFP Photo/Odd ANDERSEN)

Paris (AFP) - Climate change has contributed to a sharp drop in bumble bee populations across North America and Europe in recent decades, scientists said Friday.

Compared to the period 1900-1974, bumble bee numbers across dozens of distinct species dropped, on average, 46 percent during the first 15 years of the 21st century in Canada and the United States.

In Europe, the corresponding decline of the pollinators was 17 percent, they reported in the journal Science.

Many species of bees and other insects are in a downward spiral, previous research has shown.

Nearly half of all insect species worldwide are in decline and a third could disappear altogether by century's end, scientists concluded last year in a landmark study, warning about dire consequences for crop pollination and natural food chains.

But the main drivers of extinction are thought to be habitat loss and pesticide use, and teasing out the possible impact of climate change -- a more recent threat -- "has proven exceptionally challenging," researchers led by Peter Soroye, a biologist at the University of Ottawa, said in the new study.

To get around that problem, the scientists analysed more than half-a-million geo-localised bumble bee sightings mapped onto a 100-km2 grid in each continent.

They analysed population changes over time in each grid and matched those to average increases or decreases in temperature, as well as heat peaks beyond the threshold of bumble bee tolerance.

As expected, areas most affected by global warming showed the most acute declines in bumble bee density, while populations rose in regions that had previously been too cool for the bees to thrive.

But the numbers did not offset each other -- even after taking into account the new bee colonies in cooler climes, total population were way down.

The results, the scientists concluded, "suggest that recent climate change has driven stronger and more widespread bumble bee declines than have been reported previously.

"Climate change-related local extinction among species greatly exceeded those of colonisation, contributing to pronounced bumble bee species decline across both Europe and North America."

Insects are the world's top pollinators -- 75 percent of 115 top global food crops depend on animal pollination, including cocoa, coffee, almonds and cherries, according to the UN.

One-in-six species of bees have gone regionally extinct somewhere in the world.

Wind farm shuts down turbines to protect birds and bats

DutchNews, February 6, 2020 

Photo: DutchNews.nl 

A wind farm in the province of Zeeland is the first to fit a system to switch off turbines automatically to guarantee the safety of nearby birds and bats, Omroep Zeeland reports. 

Wind farm Krammer is situated near the Krammersluizen in the middle of three Natura 2000 protected nature reserves. 

A number of the park’s 34 turbines have been fitted with cameras, microphones and loudspeakers, and mainly cover the area where the rare sea eagle hunts and breeds. 

If the camera spots a sea eagle at a distance of 600 metres the turbine is stopped automatically. The detection system also cuts the power when other birds venture too near, such as cranes, spoonbills and great egrets. 

The wind farm loses between €120,000 and €180,000 a year because of the stoppages. ‘It’s quite a lot of money. But we really want the birds to stay in the area, particularly the sea eagle,’ project manager Gijs van Hout told the broadcaster. 

Not all birds manage to steer clear of the turbine blades but they are not dying in great numbers. The tip of the blades is 60 metres from the ground which means most birds pass underneath, ecologist Roland-Jan Buijs said. ‘But sea eagles mostly look down from higher up and the system was designed for them,’ Buijs explained.

Bats are detected by recording the ultrasonic sounds the animals make. Three such indications of the bat’s presence will stop the turbine until no ultrasonic sound is heard for the duration of 15 minutes. 

It is rare for the park’s turbines to be working simultaneously on any given day and the park is keen to reduce energy loss. It may also employ loudspeakers to keep the birds from coming too close to the blades. 

‘But we are still exploring that possibility. The question is what the effect of the sound will be on the birds which look for food and rest up at the foot of the turbines. If it chases them off we shouldn’t use it,’ Buijs said.