Sustainable Arlington

Brazil’s Presidential Election Could Mean Billions of Tons of Additional Greenhouse Gases

Policies leading to more destruction of the Amazon and Cerrado would have a huge impact on climate change. Environmentalists and scientists fear that Brazil’s newly elected president, the far-right politician Jair Bolsonaro, will accelerate the destruction of the nation’s Amazon rainforest and Cerrado savanna, which rank among the world’s largest storehouses of carbon. Both absorb massive amounts of greenhouse gas from the air, stocking it away in trees, grasses, roots, and soil.  Bolsonaro’s campaign rhetoric and ties to agribusiness have led observers to fear he’ll push to loosen environmental rules and monitoring, says Tica Minami, coordinator of Greenpeace Brazil’s Amazon campaign.  That could embolden farmers to burn down or otherwise clear more land for soybeans, sugarcane, and cattle, releasing vast quantities of carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. Already, as much as 15% of global climate emissions come from “deforestation and degradation of tropical forests,” studies have found. Read more at Brazil’s Presidential Election Could Mean Billions of Tons of Additional Greenhouse Gases

Natural Climate Solutions Could Cancel Out a Fifth of U.S. Emissions, Study Finds

Low-tech, time-tested forest, farm and land management techniques are effective, cheap and carry benefits well beyond tackling climate change. Conserving and restoring American forest, farm and natural lands could cut a substantial chunk of the country's emissions, helping meet greenhouse gas reduction goals without relying on undeveloped technologies, a new report finds. A team of 38 researchers spent more than two years looking at "natural climate solutions"—a range of strategies that includes planting trees in cities, preventing the conversion of natural grassland to farmland and shifting to fertilizers that produce less greenhouse gas emissions.   In a study published Wednesday in Science Advances, they report that these solutions, if deployed across agricultural lands, forests, grasslands and wetlands, could mitigate 21 percent of the country's net annual greenhouse gas emissions, getting the U.S. closer to meetings its goals under the Paris climate agreement. "It's the same as if every car and truck in the country stopped polluting the climate," said Joseph Fargione, the study's lead author and, the science director for  The Nature Conservancy North America region.  "There's much bigger potential than most people realize." Read more at Natural Climate Solutions Could Cancel Out a Fifth of U.S. Emissions, Study Finds

Electricity Is the ‘New Fuel of Choice’ Says IEA

According to the International Energy Agency, “2018 is the year of electricity” and global electricity supply “is being transformed by the rise of renewables”. “Electricity has been the fastest growing element of final demand and is set to grow much faster than energy consumption as a whole over the next 25 years,” said Dr Fatih Birol, the IEA’s Executive Director. Speaking yesterday at the launch in London of the IEA’s annual World Energy Outlook (WEO), Birol noted that the power sector now attracts more investment than oil and gas combined – a major shift for the energy market.  And it also marks a similar shift for the IEA itself – for the first time, it devotes several chapters in the weighty WEO to electric power.IEA launches WEO and says “2018 is the year of electricity”  The WEO states that global electricity supply “is being transformed by the rise of renewables, putting electricity at the centre of the response to a range of environmental challenges”. It stresses that “increasing digitalization of the global economy is going hand-in-hand with electrification, making the need for electricity for daily living more essential than ever.  Electricity is increasingly the ‘fuel’ of choice for meeting the energy needs of households and companies.” In what it calls its New Policies Scenario, the IEA forecasts that between now and 2040, nearly 90 per cent of electricity demand growth will be in developing countries, while demand in advanced economies will come on the back of policies promoting the electrification[…]

Tuesday 12

VW Could Build Up to 50 Million Electric Cars:  Automotive News

Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) could build up to 50 million electric cars on its new electric vehicle platform and is looking at expanding its manufacturing footprint in the United States, Chief Executive Herbert Diess told Automotive News. “We set up the plant in Chattanooga always with the idea to be able to grow it, to mirror it,” Diess was quoted as saying. “The plant is still too small, and we are considering different options - it might be electric cars, it might be a different derivative of the Atlas (SUV) - it’s still open.” Volkswagen (VW) and Ford are looking at expanding cooperation, mainly in commercial vehicles, Diess added.Read more at VW Could Build Up to 50 Million Electric Cars:  Automotive News