Major emmitters set carbon goals post Copenhagen

The Copenhagen Accord that was negotiated on the last few days of the Copenhagen Summit in December ’09, set a 31 January deadline for countries to commit to national targets for curbs in emissions until 2020.

The UN recently announced that fifty five countries, responsible for almost 80% of world greenhouse gas emissions have pledged various goals to combat climate change.

Most countries, including China and the US, mostly reiterated commitments unveiled prior to the COP 15 in Denmark. These include:

• President Obama’s plans for a 17% cut in US emissions from 2005 levels or 4% cut from 1990 levels.
• The European Union’s goal of a 20% cut from 1990 levels or 30% if other nations step up.
• China’s “endeavour” to cut carbon intensity (carbon produced per unit of economic output) by 40%-45% from 2005 levels
• South Africa’s commitment to a 34% reduction below business as usual

Jennifer Morgan of the World Resources Institute commented: “Following a month of uncertainty, it is now clear that the Copenhagen Accord will support the world in moving forward to meaningful global action on climate change.”

According to Yvo de Boer, head of the UNFCCC, “greater ambition is required to meet the scale of the challenge. But I see these pledges as clear signals of willingness to move negotiations towards a successful conclusion.”

South Africa announced its pledge of  34% emission reduction below business as usual by 2020 and 42% by 2025 in early December.  This would enable South Africa’s emissions to peak between 2020 and 2025, stabilize for 10 years and then decline in absolute terms. The business as usual ‘baseline’ is as per the government’s Long Term Mitigation Scenarios.

Original article: Mail & Guardian. 3 February 2009. Read here…

‘Green Tax’ on imported vehicles to be implemented

South Africa’s National Treasury has confirmed that they intend to go ahead with the implementation of a carbon emission tax on imported vehicles from the 1st of March 2010.

The tax will be levied at the following rates:

• 8% on vehicles emitting greenhouse gasses of 240 grams per kilometre
• 10,7% on 280 grams per kilometre
• 12% on 300 grams per kilometre
• 0% for emissions of less than 120 grams per kilometre.

These taxes will be partly offset by a reduction in the import duties of vehicles.

There is big unhappiness from the National Association of Automobile Manufacturers of SA (NAAMSA) about the tax, partly because the fuel sold in South Africa does not comply with the new technological requirements necessary to avoid the green tax.Importers are aware of this shortcoming in South Africa’s fuel and subsequently do not fit the vehicles with the latest technology.

About R40bn will have to be invested in local refineries to make production of cleaner fuel possible. Once a final decision has been taken on the issue it will take about another five years before the fuel will be available across the market.

Original article: Fin24.com on 17 January 2010. Read here…

Direct Carbon Fuel Cells

The Direct Carbon Fuel Cell (DCFC) converts fuel to electricity directly rather than burning it to boil water to make steam to turn a turbine, to turn a generator, to produce electricity. The DCFC can convert solid fuels to electricity at 70% efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions by 50% without sequestration.

A Fuel Cell is an electrochemical device that efficiently converts a fuel’s chemical energy directly to electrical energy without burning the fuel. However, instead of using gaseous fuels, as is typically done, DCFCs use aggregates of extremely fine (10- to 1,000-nanometer-diameter) carbon particles distributed in a mixture of molten lithium, sodium, Yttrium-stabilized zirconium or potassium carbonate at a temperature of 600 to 850°C. The overall cell reaction is carbon and oxygen forming carbon dioxide and electricity.

The reaction yields 80 percent of the carbon–oxygen combustion energy as electricity, yet no burning of the carbon takes place. DCFCs provide up to 1 kilowatt of power per square meter of cell surface area — a rate sufficiently high for practical applications.

The overall process of producing electricity in a DCFC from biomass gains efficiency by its simplicity. It involves only two steps: (1) drying (and/or pyrolysis, or hydrothermal carbonization) to obtain char, and (2) feeding the resulting fuel directly to the DCFC.

If the carbon feedstock for the fuel cell were to be derived from biomass, and the CO2 captured and sequestered, super-efficient carbon-negative electricity would be generated. That is: electricity the use of which results in the active removal of CO2 from the atmosphere

DirectCarbon, a company spun out of Stanford University in 2006, are currently trying to commercialise this technology. Great progress has also been made at the Max Planck Institute in Germany and the University of Queensland in Australia.

For more information read here orhere.

Sustainable petroleum product

In the early 1990’s an Australian engineer had an idea: ‘What if we can stop consuming oil and better use the resources we have without compromising quality and reliability?’ Many years of research and development later, this idea has transformed into Hydrodec Group plc.

The company provides advanced oil and chemical process technology, products and services to industry. Their advanced technology specialises in environmentally sustainable, small carbon footprint chemical processing and high performance oil refining, in a closed loop, de-minimus emission process.

Hydrodec’s key technology application allows Transformer Oils to be re-refined an indefinite number of times into Superfine™ transformer oil, which has specifications equivalent to or better than that of new transformer oil. This allows the electricity industry to reduce its exclusive reliance on new oil supplies without having to make compromises in quality and performance. The annual global demand for transformer oil is about 5 billion litres and the production thereof emits about 20 million tons of CO2. Each tonne of transformer oil refined through the Hydrodec system represents a direct saving of several tonnes of CO2 emissions. With the prevalence of low levels of PCB (polychlorinated biphenyl) in used transformer oils, each ton of transformer oil refined through the system represents significant reduction in the background emission to atmosphere of PCB, PCB like chemicals and Dioxin.

Hydrodec also owns patented and unique processes that enable ‘re-manufacture’ of hazardous persistent organic chemical materials, wastes and by-products into valuable products. This breakthrough creates a paradigm shift in the sustainable management of many hazardous chemicals, both at the source of production and in the environment.

Read more…

The Cement that Eats Carbon Dioxide

Cement, a vast source of planet-warming carbon dioxide (making the 2bn tonnes of cement used globally every year pumps out 5% of the world’s CO2 emissions – more than the entire aviation industry), could be transformed into a means of stripping the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere, thanks to an innovation from British engineers.

Making traditional cement results in greenhouse gas emissions from two sources: it requires intense heat, and so a lot of energy to heat up the ovens that cook the raw material, such as limestone. That then releases further CO2 as it burns. But, until now, no one has found a large-scale way to tackle this fundamental problem. Novacem’s cement, based on magnesium silicates, not only requires much less heating, it also absorbs large amounts of CO2 as it hardens, making it carbon negative.

According to Novacem, its product can absorb, over its lifecycle, around 0.6 tonnes of CO2 per tonne of cement. This compares to carbon emissions of about 0.4 tonnes per of standard cement. The company is confident the material will be strong enough for use in buildings but acknowledged that getting licenses to use it will take several years of testing.

Original article: Alok Jha. The Guardian. 31 December 2008. Read more…