Transportation is the Biggest Source of U.S. Emissions | Climate Central

The busiest travel day of the year brings a renewed focus on transportation, and for the first time since the 1970s, U.S. carbon dioxide emissions from transportation have eclipsed emissions from electricity generation as the top source of greenhouse gases.

The change comes as U.S. electricity generation relies less on coal and more on renewables and natural gas (a less carbon-intensive fossil fuel). Transportation emissions have also declined from a peak in 2008 due to steadily improving fuel economies, although there has been a small uptick recently as a result of a drop in gas prices. The projected growth in electric vehicles suggests decreases in CO2 transportation emissions are on the horizon. Even when accounting for how electricity is generated, an electric vehicle emits less carbon dioxide than a comparable gasoline car in a majority of U.S. states. More

A world in transformation: World Energy Outlook 2017 | IEA

The resurgence in oil and gas production from the United States, deep declines in the cost of renewables and growing electrification are changing the face of the global energy system and upending traditional ways of meeting energy demand, according to the World Energy Outlook 2017. A cleaner and more diversified energy mix in China is another major driver of this transformation.

Over the next 25 years, the world’s growing energy needs are met first by renewables and natural gas, as fast-declining costs turn solar power into the cheapest source of new electricity generation. Global energy demand is 30% higher by 2040 – but still half as much as it would have been without efficiency improvements. The boom years for coal are over — in the absence of large-scale carbon capture, utilization and storage (CCUS) — and rising oil demand slows down but is not reversed before 2040 even as electric-car sales rise steeply.

WEO-2017, the International Energy Agency’s flagship publication, finds that over the next two decades the global energy system is being reshaped by four major forces: the United States is set to become the undisputed global oil and gas leader; renewables are being deployed rapidly thanks to falling costs; the share of electricity in the energy mix is growing; and China’s new economic strategy takes it on a cleaner growth mode, with implications for global energy markets.  More

ASX top 20 companies for climate change reporting in 2017 | Renew Economy

In this note RE briefly looked at the top 20 companies by market capitalisation listed on the ASX to see what they actually said in their latest annual report. Mostly this is 2017 but in some cases it's still 2016. Each company was rated out of 5 on disclosure.  

Climate and energy – appeasement does not work | Renew Economy

The current chaos around climate and energy policy brings to mind George Santayana’s caution that: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it”. That is exactly what we are witnessing, albeit with far more profound implications even than the advent of the Second World War.  More

Winning Slowly Is the Same as Losing | Bill McKibben

If we don't win very quickly on climate change, then we will never win. That's the core truth about global warming. It's what makes it different from every other problem our political systems have faced.  More

Banks Realise climate change is a banking issue | ANZ and Paul Fisher

Banks around the world are slowly beginning to realise the financial risks associated with climate change and sustainable lending, according to Paul Fisher, a former senior executive at the Bank of England who had direct involvement in the Financial Stability Board’s Taskforce on Climate-related Finance Disclosures (TCFD).

Speaking to (ANZ) bluenotes on video and podcast, Dr Fisher – Senior Associate of the Cambridge Institute of Sustainability Leadership and representative at the European Commission’s High-level Experts Group on Sustainable Finance – said the next step for banks was determining the extent of their own risk. Read more

Climate-related risks will jeopardise stability of banks, insurers: APRA | ABC

Banks and insurers are jeopardising their futures if they fail to prepare for climate-related risks, the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) has warned.

The stark advice from the industry watchdog was delivered during a speech last night to the Centre for Policy Development in Sydney.

APRA said it had a duty to warn the institutions that it regulates, like banks, superannuation funds and insurers, if it identified a risk that could threaten their stability.

Actuaries reminded of legal duty to recognise climate-related risks | The Actuary

It is increasingly likely that actuaries and investment consultants could face legal action should they fail to recognise the financial implications of climate risks.  That is the warning from environmental lawyers at ClientEarth, which argue that pension scheme advisors are delaying effective action and proper risk management in relation to the impact of climate change on investments.  Read more

Australian shareholders should be told of climate risk to profits, says thinktank | The Guardian

Australian companies need to start developing sophisticated scenario-based analyses of climate risks, and incorporating them into their business outlooks so shareholders know how climate change will affect profitability, a thinktank has said.

However, the Centre for Policy Development (CPD) said companies needed to do so in a standardised way, so investors and regulators were able to easily understand economy-wide risks to whole industries. More

TCFD and BoE Conference on Climate Scenarios, Financial Risk and Strategic Planning

The Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) held a two-day conference in collaboration with the Bank of England (BoE) discussing scenario analysis and how it can help companies assess climate risks in their strategic planning and risk management processes.

Day 1 provided a high-level overview of the TCFD recommendations with regard to the use of scenario analysis; what scenario analysis is and why it is useful for assessing climate-related risks; how climate-related scenario analysis works in practice today – who is using it; experiences; and available tools. Day 1 is was hosted by the FSB TCFD and was open to press.

Day 2 brought together business practitioners, leading researchers from academia, and finance professionals to discuss in more detail how climate-related scenarios can be used for strategic and financial risk analysis and how scenarios could be improved. The goal was to highlight successful approaches, and identify further work and collaboration needed in this area. Day 2 was hosted by the Bank of England and was held under Chatham House rules.

Stakeholder presentations, videos and photo gallery plus introductions can be found here.

A beginner's guide to China's steel and aluminium winter cuts | Andy Home

China’s winter heating season has just begun, heralding a titanic supply chain experiment as whole industrial sectors reduce capacity or close completely to comply with the leadership’s war on pollution.

The curtailments will take place across the four provinces adjacent to the cities of Beijing and Tianjin, lasting until the middle of March.

Coal is public enemy No.1 in China, making the steel and aluminium sectors -- both massive users of coal-fired power -- key targets for the winter cuts.

Neither sector has experienced supply-side adjustments of this speed and magnitude before and markets have struggled to price in expectations. Read more

Adani mine 'a financial house of cards' as coal meets its Kodak moment | ABC

The woman who led the world to a global climate change agreement has a message for Australia: "You really do have to see that we are at the Kodak moment for coal."

Christiana Figueres, until last year the executive director of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, doesn't mean happy snaps for the family album.

Rather, the decimation of the once dominant photographic company Kodak by digital change — in the same way that coal-fired power is being eclipsed by renewable energy.

She hopes to see coal, like those sentimental moments in time captured in photographs, confined to history — with the world remembering the contribution the fossil fuel has made to human development, while recognising the need to retire it as a fuel source because of its contribution to global warming.

And, she says, it's happening.

Read more

A Time Machine for Climate Risk: bringing the future forward with 2˚C scenario analysis | Carbon Tracker

It has been two years since the Bank of England’s Governor, Mark Carney, cautioned London’s insurance industry and the world’s capital markets concerning the “catastrophic impacts of climate change [that] will be felt beyond the traditional horizons of most actors”.[1]

Since then, Carney’s message has been echoed by a string of financial regulators. Under his chairmanship, the Financial Stability Board established a Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (hereafter Task Force), which scrutinised the ways in which the adverse impacts from climate change might ripple across sectors to become “systemic.”

The Task Force concluded that a key forward-looking tool is scenario analysis and recommended that companies analyse the potential business impacts from a reference scenario that results in a global average warming of 2°C or lower.

Companies’ scenario analyses are now entering the market and a two-day conference on the subject hosted last week by the Bank of England and the Task Force indicates the significance of issue for the financial community. Here, we explore how the use of 2°C scenario analysis by fossil fuel companies can be made useful for investors and regulators.

Read more or download the report here.

Ice Apocalypse | Grist

In a remote region of Antarctica known as Pine Island Bay, 2,500 miles from the tip of South America, two glaciers hold human civilization hostage.

Stretching across a frozen plain more than 150 miles long, these glaciers, named Pine Island and Thwaites, have marched steadily for millennia toward the Amundsen Sea, part of the vast Southern Ocean. Further inland, the glaciers widen into a two-mile-thick reserve of ice covering an area the size of Texas.

There’s no doubt this ice will melt as the world warms. The vital question is when.  More

India's Electricity Sector Transformation | IEEFA

IEEFA's latest report entails a comprehensive analysis of India’s electricity sector transformation with a focus on the coming decade.  

The report presents a sectoral model out to FY2027 that predicts dramatic market share gain by renewable energy with a sustained deflation in renewable tariffs, premised on 50% reduction already in last two years with a record low solar energy tariff of Rs2.44/kWh (US$38/MWh) in 2017. 

With record low renewable tariffs of US$18 and US$21/MWh set in Mexico and Chile respectively this past week, further Indian cost reductions are set to continue. This translates into likely peak power sector coal usage not more than 10% above the current levels by FY2027, subsequently, import thermal coal demand in India will continue to decline as a result. 

A combination of India’s ambitious energy policy and ongoing solar and wind energy tariff deflation will enable India to catalyse US$200-300Bn of investment in renewable energy infrastructure over the coming decade. Improvements in energy efficiency and reduction in technical and commercial losses will deliver better electricity production per coal tonnage. To conclude, the transformation will ensure India can support its economic growth while keeping GHG emissions in check.

Acciona aims to more than double Australian renewables capacity | AFR

The global head of energy at Acciona, the world's biggest green utility, is undeterred by the uncertainty of Australia's future energy and climate policy and is earmarking about $600 million for new solar, wind and storage plants over the next three to four years. More

New Finkel report finds no need to panic about energy storage | Renew Economy

A new report into energy storage commissioned by chief scientist Alan Finkel highlights the enormous opportunities for storage in Australia, but underlines how little is actually needed over the short to medium term, even at relatively high levels of wind and solar.

The report, The role of Energy Storage in Australia’s Future Energy Supply Mix, funded by Finkel’s office and the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA), says the required investment in energy security and reliability over the next five-10 years will be minimal (see graph above), even if wind and solar deployment moves far beyond levels contemplated by the Energy Security Board.  More

World’s biggest sovereign wealth fund proposes ditching oil and gas holdings | The Guardian

The Norwegian central bank, which runs the country’s sovereign wealth fund – the world’s biggest – has told its government it should dump its shares in oil and gas companies, in a move that could have significant consequences for the sector.

Norges Bank, which manages Norway’s $1tn fund, said ministers should take the step to avoid the fund’s value being hit by a permanent fall in the oil price.

The fund was built on the back of Norway’s hydrocarbon wealth, and around 300bn krone (£27.73bn), or 6%, is invested in oil and gas companies.

 More

China Is Over Coal, Bored With Oil as It Charts Green Future | Bloomberg

The world’s worst polluter is leading the clean energy revolution, according to the International Energy Agency.

China will account for a third of new wind and solar power installations and 40 percent of electric vehicle investments through 2040, the Paris-based agency said Tuesday in its World Energy Outlook. Meanwhile, the country’s coal use peaked four years ago and it will cede its role as the driver of global oil demand to India after 2025.  More

'Political watershed' as 19 countries pledge to phase out coal | The Guardian

A new alliance of 19 nations committed to quickly phasing out coal has been launched at the UN climate summit in Bonn, Germany. It was greeted as a “political watershed”, signalling the end of the dirtiest fossil fuel that currently provides 40% of global electricity.

New pledges were made on Thursday by Mexico, New Zealand, Denmark and Angola for the Powering Past Coal Alliance, which is led by the UK and Canada.

“The case against coal is unequivocal,” said UK climate minister Claire Perry, both on environmental and health grounds – air pollution from coal kills 800,000 people a year worldwide. “The alliance will signal to the world that the time of coal has passed.” The UK was the first nation to commit to ending coal use – by 2025 – but the electricity generated by coal has already fallen from 40% to 2% since 2012.  More