Hi! Welcome to the latest edition of Climate Focus.
Despite the holiday season, there’s not a lot to celebrate with this week’s climate news.
There is only one thing on my mind - the Thwaites Glacier. I will try to put the information we have in perspective, explain the specific risks we are currently aware of, and talk about what’s to come by way of potential new information.
Before I get into that, a couple of worthwhile developments from this past week.
Coal isn’t going anywhere anytime soon
The International Energy Association published their in-depth, annual report on global coal demand, supply, and trade, very aptly called Coal 2021
After a drop in 2019 and 2020, global coal consumption is on course to increase by 9% in 2021 to 10,350 terawatt-hours (TWh). That’s a new all-time high, thanks to a surge in demand in the US, China, and India.
This is despite both India and China suffering a significant coal shortage earlier this year, thanks to a myriad of reasons. I wrote about this here. Do consider reading it.
Here are a few pertinent excerpts about what we can expect in the coming years:
Beyond 2021, global coal consumption is set to revert to the pattern seen over the previous decade: declines in advanced economies offset by growth in some emerging and developing economies. After its brief rebound in the United States and the European Union in 2021, coal demand will resume its decline through 2024.
At the same time, countries such as Viet Nam, the Philippines and Bangladesh, where very strong growth in coal demand had been expected a few years ago, are now set to show more modest increases as they shift more towards sources of electricity that are less carbon intensive.
However, global coal trends will be shaped largely by China and India, who account for two-thirds of global coal consumption, despite their efforts to increase renewables and other low-carbon energy sources
In China, coal demand growth is expected to average less than 1% per year between 2022 and 2024. In India, stronger economic growth and increasing electrification are forecast to drive coal demand growth of 4% per year.
India’s growing appetite for coal is set to add 130 million tonnes (Mt) to coal demand between 2021 and 2024. For most industrial purposes where coal is used, such as iron and steel production, there are not many technologies that can replace it in the short term
Here’s an excellent Twitter explainer about the new report.
My $0.02
While the results don’t come as a surprise, this will likely renew a global call asking China and India to reduce their coal reliance. The response will likely be along the lines of ‘coal = energy security’.
Despite their continued reliance on coal, both China and India are slated to and will add significant renewables capacity in the coming decade. The troublesome part is that it will not outpace the rate at which new coal plants come live. New coal plants have a useful life of at least 30 years, and that sends mixed signals.
China has committed to peaking its coal consumption by 2030, but the increase in annual rate of coal consumption up until that point will concern many.
India has committed to add 500 GW of renewable energy capacity by 2030. It hit the 100 GW mark earlier this year, and that’s double that of the United Kingdom. It will continue to rely on coal as a cheap source of energy. How it balances the two will be carefully watched.
If the US Financial Sector were a country…
A groundbreaking study published just this last week by the Center for American Progress and the Sierra Club found that 18 of the largest American banks and asset managers alone were responsible for 1.968 billion tons of CO2 in 2020.
If the US Financial Sector were a country, it’d be the fifth-highest emitter with a similar emissions profile as Russia, and sitting just above Indonesia.
While the analysis clearly demonstrates the scale of impact from financial institutions in driving climate change, it likely represents a gross underestimate, as it relies on public disclosures that exclude crucial data, including emissions related to advisory services and underwriting and estimations of Scope 3 emissions for bank clients.
To put Scope 3 emissions in perspective, 88% of the emissions from oil and gas companies are Scope 3. And it is only going to be similar, if not higher for financial institutions (Here is a simple infographic on different scopes of emission).
The analysis uses a market-leading carbon accounting methodology to estimate the aggregate emissions from the lending and investment activities of 8 banks and 10 asset managers, considered an indicative sample.
You can read the executive summary here and download the report from the same weblink.
My $0.02
This report will join a long list of similar reports that apportion huge responsibility and attribute large-scale emissions to the financial sector, without resulting in any significant change in matters.
Why? I can give you plenty of reasons, but here are three to begin with:
The financial sector’s principal role is to make money, and there is money to be made in some of the highest polluting sectors
There is high friction in overhauling a portfolio from a high emissions one to a low emissions one; and you need incentives to overcome friction. Let us temporarily exclude the fact that it is the right thing to do, there are no ‘right’ incentives to do it
Outside of public naming and shaming, there is no punitive action or penalty on firms that continue to finance high emissions sectors
(I could go on, but you get the point)
Doing something about the following lines might possibly fix the situation.
Make alternatives to coal more lucrative; fix incentives to do the right thing; penalise poor planetary performance
Glacier On My Mind
The giant cracks in the Thwaites glacier has dominated news cycles this past week. Despite my best efforts to see a sliver of optimism in the news and the research published, I have to say I have come short (but not empty).
I have attempted to explain what we know and what we don’t about the Thwaites Glacier specifically, and ice shelves in the Antarctic in general. I hope you find it useful.
Thwaites Glacier is referred to as the ‘Doomsday glacier’ and the ‘most important’ glacier on earth for the same reason.
The glacier is huge. It is roughly the size of Great Britain or the state of Florida. Along with the Pine Island Glacier, it is a part of the weak underbelly of the West Antarctic ice sheet.
Scientists have been studying both these glaciers for the last 50 years because of the vulnerable structure of its ice sheets, and its potential to dramatically increase sea levels.
Back in February 2020, a team of scientists studied used sensors and a robotic submarine for the first time to study underneath the Thwaites glacier. Data gathered indicated warm waters from the deep ocean accumulating from three different directions right below the glacier.
So, unfriendly wind directions and a warmer Pacific made for bad news in 2020
What happened this past week?
Here’s the context.
[…] the latest finding from the five-year, US$50-million International Thwaites Glacier Collaboration, an initiative funded by the US and UK governments to study how Thwaites might contribute to rising sea levels in a warming world, and to understand the threat that this might pose.
“We have been expecting that ice shelf to fail, and that’s one of the reasons that there has been such a coordinated international effort to study Thwaites — it’s big and important, but it’s also been clearly poised on the brink of change,” says Kirsty Tinto, a geophysicist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, New York, who has studied the glacier. The latest work, she says, reveals more about how ice shelves fail. “Understanding those processes helps us to understand not just Thwaites, but also all the rest of Antarctica — past, present and future,” she says.
What’s changed now is the rate at which giant cracks are occurring on the floating ice-shelf which is about 50 kms off-shore (Refer to the screenshot from the press conference below. The text in blue is my addition).
Thwaites Glacier is the widest glacier there is at about 120 kms across. Ice from about two-thirds of this expanse flows into the ocean quite briskly (The Thwaites is already responsible for 4% of the rise in global sea-level. That’s not to alarm you. It is just the way it is, although the rate at which it melts has increased over the last 30 years).
Ice from the remaining one-third of this expanse flows relatively slowly, thanks to the floating ice-shelf, which acts as a dam between the glacier and the ocean.
The fractures are propagating through the ice at speeds of several kilometres per year. They are heading into weaker and thinner ice, where they could accelerate and lead to the demise of this part of the ice shelf within five years, Pettit estimates.
The shelf in itself is a story of two halves.
The more stable eastern side of the shelf flows into the ocean approximately at 600 metres per year. While the western side, impacted by the warm currents rolling in is moving more rapidly at 2 kilometres per year.
All this means that the floating ice-shelf will look dramatically different and may break into multiple icebergs at the current rate of change, and significantly affect sea-levels.
I mentioned at the start of this post that things don’t look good. Having said that, despite the struggle, I found something that is slightly reassuring, but it is a tough sell.
Everything that I have just written and what researchers have observed so far are just that - observations.
We do not know or understand enough about ice shelves, or more importantly, how it falls apart. We do not have enough data to model what aggravates the problem or what could potentially offset some of the damage.
For example, we know that high tide and low tide moves the floating ice shelf up and down. This allows a lot more warm water to flow over the pinning point (refer to the screenshot), melting the ice from below.
Is there a way to use geo-engineering to reduce the effects of this tidal pumping? May be. We do not know for sure.
Thwaites’s underbelly is a landscape unto itself, complete with channels, ridges and cliffs, all crafted by warm currents, […[ “It’s not just a flat sheet of ice that is melting uniformly. It’s more complex than we thought.”
But understand, we must.
About that reassuring factor. The international scientific community is fully committed to model and understand the interaction between ice, land, and water on the Thwaites Glacier. There are currently eight commissioned research projects with millions of dollars in funding to understand the risks better.
I’d say understanding risks is the first step to finding if there are ways to mitigate it.
Bonus
— Biden’s Policies come with a Lead Time
— Earth’s very own Climate Black Box
You know how an airplane has a Black Box that is a log of everything that has taken in the airplane? That’s exactly what the newly installed Climate Blackbox in Tasmania does for our planet.
Hundreds of datasets, measurements, and interactions relating to the health of our planet will be continuously collected and safely stored for future generations
Read more here and here. (You will want to! It’s so cool)