CEP Newsletter

Arctic ice-free in a decade, Retrofit co-benefits and the Buzz over solar farms

In this issue:

The latest data from the IEA show that while energy-related emissions are still on the up, the rate of increase is slowing. Global energy-related carbon emissions rose by 410 million tonnes in 2023 (1.1%) and reached a record 37.4 billion tonnes. However, this increase was lower than the previous year’s 490 million tonnes increase. The increase was driven by increased demand and droughts in China and the US seeing a turn to fossil fuels to replace lost hydro generation. The increase was tempered by the proliferation of renewables in the mix of new generation.

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A dramatic headline but probably true according to scientists from the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research (University of Colorado Boulder). The definition of ice-free is having less than one million square kilometres of ice in the region and this is expected for brief periods at the end of August or early September either this or next decade. But the relatively low frequency of end of summer ice free days and the large definition shouldn’t detract from the severity of the problem. The one million square kilometre threshold is less than 20% of the lowest volumes seen in the 1980s and, equally worrying, is the threshold is expected to be hit under all warming scenarios.

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Building retrofits almost always stack up on the energy they save and emissions they reduce, but there’s more. The ACEEE (American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy) has taken a deeper dive into the co-benefits of a well thought through retrofit and the list is quite extensive, summarised here.

retrofit table

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The Green Building Councils of the US, UK and Australia have banded together to launch an initiative to unlock finance for sustainable buildings. The alliance is to develop practical guidance for investors, property developers, property owners and governments on financing the delivery of buildings certified in line with the world’s most popular certification schemes for sustainable buildings, Green Star, LEED and BREEAM.

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With this week’s primary results, it seems we’re in for another Trump v Biden election. Carbon Brief has aggregated some predictions about the relative impact of a Trump presidency and concluded it could cost an extra 4 billion tonnes of emissions by 2030 relative to a Biden administration. That 4bn tonnes can be expected to cause US$900bn (NZ$1,462bn) of environmental damage. Put another way, that figure is roughly equivalent to the combined annual emissions of the EU and Japan or those of the 140 lowest emitting countries. It is double the emissions savings from all the wind, solar and clean generation technologies deployed over the last five years.

trump chart

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Rarely does a week pass without news of emerging battery technologies that put new perspectives on which is best for different applications. The Polytechnic University of Turin has now done a comparison of different technologies and concluded that lithium-ion may not be the best life cycle option for EVs. In a comparison of lithium-ion against SiCPAN (silicon-polyacrylonitrile), SiNW (siliconnanowire), all-solid-state and lithium-sulphur cells the lithium-sulphur technology emerged as best because of the lack of rare earth metals in the make up. So, lithium-sulphur is best – until next week!

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Research from the UK has found bees and butterflies often flourish in and around solar farms and that local insect populations are often bolstered by properly planned farms. The significant factors underpinning population numbers are the surrounding landscape and variety of plants on sites. Farms with distracting features nearby, such as hedgerows, do not see consistently stronger populations, nor do sites with little variety of flowers. Variety is the spice of apian life, it seems.

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