Global Climate News - April 20-22
European State of the Climate 2023; Denmark's offshore wind tender allows overplanting; The Amazon Free-Air CO 2 Enrichment (FACE) Project;
European State of the Climate 2023
Europe’s Copernicus Climate Change Service and the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) have jointly published the European State of the Climate in 2023.
Selected findings:
2023 was the warmest year on record, both on land and sea
the year saw - highest number of days of extreme heat stress, largest wildfire, warmest marine heatwave in northeastern Atlantic
flooding affected 1.6 million people - severe floods in Italy, Greece, Slovenia, Germany, Norway, Sweden
lower soil moisture across the region - affects agricultural yield
fewer days of snow than average
In 2023, glaciers in all parts of Europe saw a net loss of ice. Following record ice loss in 2022, it was another exceptional year of loss in the Alps, due to below-average winter accumulation and strong summer melt. Over these two years, glaciers in the Alps lost around 10% of their volume
Arctic is warming at rates higher than global average
What’s working?
43% of Europe’s power came from renewable sources in 2023
What can help?
Improving health services for Climate-related events, especially heat stress
Out of 27 WHO European Member Countries surveyed, 17 have a fully-operational heat-health warning system as part of their Heat Health Action Plans (HHAPs)
The Guardian | ESOTC 2023 Summary (PDF) | ESOTC 2023
The Amazon Free-Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) Project
Higher levels of CO2 in the environment make photosynthesis in plants more efficient, especially in their use of water. This is called CO2 fertilisation.
Under higher CO2, plants do not lose so much water through their leaves, so can be less impacted by drier conditions.
To understand how plants and ecosystems would respond to rising CO2 levels, a new group of experiments exposes natural forest areas to very high levels of CO2 - around 550 parts per million, the level expected by 2050. Towers that release CO2 continuously are erected around a designated area in the forest.
The FACE methodology involves releasing CO2 into the air around an area of ecosystem or crop under study. The plots can be a few metres or tens of metres in diameter. There are usually several such plots on one site, some with elevated CO2 and a number of control plots in which CO2 remains at normal background levels.
Existing climate change models account for the effect of CO2 fertlisation in their predictions, but the data they use to do so is based on small-scale experiments conducted in 1980s and 1990s. The FACE approach aims to study this in the natural environment at the ecosystem level.
The earliest of these - EucFACE in Australia - was launched in 2012. The BiFOR FACE has been set up in a mature oak forest in the UK. And now the Amazon FACE, which will help understand whether there’s a threshold of atmospheric CO2 beyond which rainforests stop being carbon sinks, is set to be launched.
Scientific American | Amazon FACE
News from governments
Denmark has launched a tender for 6GW offshore wind capacity across 6 wind farms. The tender allows more capacity to be setup within the designated areas.
The offshore wind farms must deliver at least 6 GW, and as a new element, there will be freedom to establish as much offshore wind as possible on the tendered areas (with the exemption of Hesselø with a max. capacity of 1.2 GW). If the market utilizes this freedom to optimize the usage of the areas, it could result in the construction of 10 GW offshore wind or more.
There are no state subsidies for setting up these offshore projects and developers will be required to pay yearly concessions to the Danish state for 30 years. The state will also own 20% of the farms. Reuters | Ministry Press Release | Sustainability Requirements (PDF)
India is also running a bid process for allocation of sea-bed lease rights for 4GW offshore wind power projects. SECI
US has designated two PFAS chemicals, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), as hazardous substances.
Under the rule, entities are required to immediately report releases of PFOA and PFOS that meet or exceed the reportable quantity of one pound within a 24-hour period to the National Response Center, State, Tribal, and local emergency responders. The designation of PFOA and PFOS as hazardous substances under CERCLA enables the agency to use one of its strongest enforcement tools to compel polluters to pay for or conduct investigations and cleanup, rather than taxpayers.
…The final rule also means that federal entities that transfer or sell their property must provide notice about the storage, release, or disposal of PFOA or PFOS on the property and guarantee that contamination has been cleaned up or, if needed, that additional cleanup will occur in the future. It will also lead the Department of Transportation to list and regulate these substances as hazardous materials under the Hazardous Materials Transportation Act.
EU has launched the European Energy Efficiency Financing Coalition.
The Coalition will operate at three different levels: a political level, an expert group and national hubs that will have the role to identify energy efficiency financing solutions for each market. This framework is expected to help EU countries and the Commission in the green transition, reduce the gap between available public financing and financial needs for energy efficiency investments and scale-up private investments.
Top Stories
The Bourne Tidal Test Site in the US has received an 8-year license to test different tidal turbines.
The Bourne Tidal Test Site, is the only permanent test stand designed specifically for tidal devices in the world. This is a partial scale test site that allows a transition from testing in university tanks to full scale, avoiding some of the failures that have happened with deploying larger prototype turbines too quickly. It is also more cost effective costing as little as $30,000 for a test versus several million at full scale sites.  The BTTS offers testing at Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of 5/6, partial scale in relevant conditions, at a secure and easily accessible site.
The ZeroF project is an EU-funded collaboration of multiple research institutions to find alternatives for PFAS-free food packaging and upholstery textiles. This includes research on coating formulations, improving processing conditions for coatings, developing safe prototypes, and developing criteria for sustainable coatings.
Belgium will host Europe’s largest battery energy storage project - the 600MW/2.4 GW MWh GIGA Green Turtle, with 20 batteries. Construction is planned 2025 onwards and completion expected in 2028. Power Technology
The Global Warming Potential - energy absorbed per ton of gas - of methane (CH4) is 81 times that of CO2 over a 20-year period. So converting methane in the atmosphere to CO2 is one way to reduce the amount of energy (heat) trapped. MIT scientists have found that mixing a small amount of copper in zeolite, a naturally occuring clay-based material, makes an inexpensive catalyst that can be used to reduce methane in the atmosphere.
The process has several advantages over other approaches to removing methane from air, Plata says. Other methods tend to use expensive catalysts such as platinum or palladium, require high temperatures of at least 600 degrees Celsius, and tend to require complex cycling between methane-rich and oxygen-rich streams, making the devices both more complicated and more risky, as methane and oxygen are highly combustible on their own and in combination.
They’re now testing this in methane-rich environments such as dairy farms. MIT News | WEF
US’ Federal Aviation Agency recently granted $27 million to research projects in a wide range of areas - reducing use of aviation fuel, emissions and noise; development of sustainable aviation fuels and supply chains for these; models to understand effects of aircraft emissions and noise; supersonic research and more. FAA Press Release | List of Projects
Scotland is planning a commercial 560MW floating offshore wind project in the North Sea that will provide renewable power to oil & gas platforms. Recharge | Green Volt | North Sea Transition Authority - OGA Plan on emissions reduction (March, 2024)
How US airports are shifting to electric vehicles for ground support fleets by Facilities Dive
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Soumya Gupta
Founder, Telborg.com | SummaryWithAI.com
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