COMPANIES SEIZE NEW MARKETS IN CLEAN ENERGY DRIVE TO CAP GLOBAL WARMING AT 1.5°C

A dramatic upsurge in demand for renewable energy from ambitious multinational companies is now shifting markets away from fossil fuels in more than 140 markets worldwide, a new RE100 report reveals.

RE100 is the corporate leadership initiative led by The Climate Group in partnership with CDP, bringing together the world’s most influential businesses committed to 100% renewable power.

Identifying Japan, Australia, Mexico, Turkey and Taiwan as growth hotspots, the RE100 Progress and Insights Annual Report Moving To Truly Global Impact shows a 41% increase in renewable electricity sourced by RE100 companies in 2017, compared to 2016.

With the falling cost of renewables strengthening the business case for switching, 37 companies are already over 95% renewable, and six members reached their 100% goal for the first time.

RE100 now has 155 members with a total electricity demand greater than Argentina and Portugal combined – 188 TWh per year. If RE100 were a country, it would have the 23rd largest electricity consumption in the world. With a combined revenue of US$4.5 trillion – 5% of global GDP – the companies represent a major source of finance for clean energy infrastructure.

Helen Clarkson, CEO, The Climate Group, said: “With so much depressing news at the moment, here we have a refreshing, positive story of how ambitious corporate action is changing the world for the better.

“We congratulate RE100 members on the progress they are making by building renewables into their growth strategies, and engaging policymakers and suppliers. This is what all leading multinationals should be doing.

“There’s no room for complacency – we’ve still some way to go – but this unstoppable momentum should give national governments the confidence to set more ambitious emissions reduction goals, in line with the latest science and no more than 1.5°C warming.”

Sam Kimmins, Head of RE100, The Climate Group, added: “Over the past year we’ve seen rapid geographic expansion of our membership that has transformed RE100 into a truly global movement. This is hugely exciting and has the potential to shift entire markets in places like Japan, where policymakers are taking note of the demand signal being sent by our members.

“2019 will be all about building that demand across sectors and geographies with the highest potential to effect change, accelerating the clean energy systems of tomorrow.”

Other key findings:

• More than three in four members are targeting 100% renewable electricity by or before 2030;
• Most members are based in Europe (77), followed by North America (53), Asia (24), and Oceania (1) – with 10 of the 37 new joiners in 2018 based in Japan;
• On average, members are sourcing over a third of their electricity from renewables (38% in 2017);
• Several members have surpassed interim targets – showing businesses can go faster than they first expect;
• IT companies lead on progress (averaging 73% renewable electricity in 2017), and there has been significant improvement from Health Care and Financials;
• The highest share of renewable electricity is still being sourced in Europe (62% in 2017), with Denmark (93%), the UK (82%) and Switzerland (81%) coming out on top;
• Renewable electricity sourced via power purchase agreements (PPAs) almost doubled in 2017, compared to 2016 – an increasingly popular sourcing method;
• As last year, companies see the economic case as a key driver for going 100% renewable, and policy barriers are the most commonly cited barrier;
• Increasingly, members are engaging with policymakers and suppliers to further increase the uptake of renewable electricity.

Nate Hurst, Chief Sustainability and Social Impact Officer, HP Inc., which made the most progress of all RE100 members in 2017, sourcing 50% of its electricity from renewables in 2017 (compared to 16% in 2016), and surpassing its interim target of 40% by 2020 three years ahead of schedule, said:

“In light of the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming issued in October 2018, it’s clear that businesses must accelerate their transition to renewable energy sources as a way to reduce the devastating consequences of climate change.

“We are committed to reaching our goal of using 100% renewable electricity in our global operations and urge other companies to aggressively set and pursue their own renewable energy goals, thereby ensuring a sustainable future for everyone.”

Climate change is making hurricanes even more destructive, research finds

Climate change worsened the most destructive hurricanes of recent years, including Katrina, Irma and Maria, by intensifying rainfall by as much as 10%, new research has found.

High-resolution climate simulations of 15 tropical cyclones in the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Oceans found that warming in the ocean and atmosphere increased rainfall by between 5% and 10%, although wind speeds remained largely unchanged.

This situation is set to worsen under future anticipated warming, however. Researchers found that if little is done to constrain greenhouse gas emissions and the world warms by 3C to 4C this century then hurricane rainfall could increase by a third, while wind speeds would be boosted by as much as 25 knots.

“Climate change has exacerbated rainfall and is set to enhance the wind speed,” said Christina Patricola, who undertook the study with her Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory colleague Michael Wehner. “My hope is that this information can be used to improve our resilience to the kinds of extreme weather events we are going to have in the future.”

The research, published in the journal Nature, used climate models to see how factors such as air and ocean temperatures have influenced hurricanes. Projections into the future were then made, based upon various levels of planetary warming.

The findings suggest that enormously destructive storms have already been bolstered by climate change and similar events in the future are on course to be cataclysmic.

In a world where temperatures were 3C warmer on average, Hurricane Katrina, which resulted in nearly 2,000 deaths when levees breached near New Orleans in 2005, would’ve been even worse, with around 25% more rainfall. Cyclone Yasi, which hit Australia in 2011, would have had around a third more rain, while the deluge during Gafilo, a huge storm that killed more than 300 people in Madagascar in 2004, would have been 40% more intense.

Jennifer Francis, a hurricane expert at Rutgers University, said: “This study adds exclamation points to the already clear message that we must slow global warming by conserving energy and switching from fossil to renewable fuels while preparing for more extreme weather to come.”

Hurricanes, or cyclones as they are known in the Pacific region, draw their strength from warmth in the upper layers of the ocean, while their rainfall is influenced by the amount of moisture in the atmosphere. Climate change, driven by human activity, is creating more favorable conditions for stronger hurricanes, with recent research finding that storms are intensifying more rapidly than they were 30 years ago.

Last year was the costliest hurricane season on record for the US, with $306.2bn in damage caused by a trio of category four storms – Harvey, Irma and Maria – which, respectively, drowned parts of Houston, rattled most of Florida, and decimated Puerto Rico. Two further major storms this year, Michael and Florence, caused widespread damage and dozens of deaths in Florida and North Carolina.

“Five or 10% more rain can make a big difference, the carrying capacity of stormwater systems in a town or city can be breached with that amount of extra rainfall,” said James Elsner, an atmospheric scientist at Florida State university.

Elsner said the study follows previous findings showing the climate change “fingerprint” on hurricanes. “There’s still discussion over the size of the affect but it’s clear,” he said. “We need to connect the dots after storms more than we have in the past. We know climate change is having an affect, the only real question is how much.”

Addressing impact of climate change on crops

According to Union Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare Minister Radha Mohan Singh, the programme is being taken up in 151 climatically-vulnerable districts across the country by taking one representative village in each district. The predominant climatic vulnerabilities addressed are drought, flood, cyclone, heat wave, cold wave, frost and hail storm.

The ICAR has conducted a climate change impact analysis on crop yields through various centres in different parts of the country using crop simulation models for 2020, 2050 and 2080. The results indicate variability in temperature and rainfall pattern with significant impacts on crop yields. These studies projected a reduction in yields of irrigated rice by about 4 per cent in 2020, 7 per cent in 2050 and 10 per cent in 2080.

Climate Change Made Recent Hurricanes Wetter. And They May Get Worse.

Due to climate change, heavy storms have occurred in recent years. It also resulted in heavy rainfalls. According to a study, storms can be even more wetter, windier and potentially destructive in the coming years. Researchers have done a study about some tropical cyclones and also done some modeling to know what will the storms might look like and should the Earth continues to warming or not. The study reveals that similar storms could deliver 30 per cent more rainfall. Researchers have done some simulations to know or study how much destructive the storms can be. It took a millions hours to compute the time.

 The researchers also investigated that warming climate could play in hurricanes and rainfall looking at factors such as greenhouse gases, humidity and temperature and variations in the air and ocean water. They found that due to climate change, hurricane Katrina, Irma and Maria producing 5 to 10 percent more rainfall than they might have generated in the preindustrial conditions.Warming oceans are also found as a major source of intense hurricanes.

CPCB asked to submit action report against ‘violator’ units

The National Green Tribunal (NGT) has directed the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) to submit a report on action taken against over 50,000 industries operating in residential areas without requisite approvals in the Capital.
The report received from CPCB shows that certain steps have been taken including constitution of a two-member committee. However, the report of the action taken has not been furnished. The CPCB may accordingly secure and furnish report from the said two-member committee within one month.

Drier, less predictable environment may have spurred human evolution

• Evidence of a variable but progressively drying climate coincides with a major shift in stone-tool-making abilities and the appearance of modern Homo sapiens.
•  Sediment cores obtained by the Hominin Sites and Paleolakes Drilling Project provide the first continuous environmental context for the diverse archeological evidence recovered from nearby localities in the East African rift valley.
• scientists have attempted to piece together the complex puzzle that is the history of our human origins, including the environmental context of that history.

SOURCE : SCIENCE DAILY

Hippos: Global change may alter the way that hippos shape the environment around them

• Community ecologists have found that global change may alter the way that hippos shape the environment around them.
• The average hippo weighs more than 3,000 pounds and consumes about 100 pounds of vegetation daily. This naturally results in large quantities of dung being deposited into the rivers and lakes where hippos spend their days.
• In general, the nutrients delivered via hippo dung to such aquatic ecosystems are perceived to be beneficial. 
• For millennia, they provided a natural source of fertilizer that appears to fuel life in aquatic food webs. That may be changing.

SOURCE : SCIENCE DAILY

Mekong River dams could disrupt lives, environment

• The Mekong River traverses six Southeast Asian countries and supports the livelihoods of millions of people. 
• New efforts to provide hydroelectric power to a growing and modernizing population include more than eight proposed main-stem dams and 60 or more existing tributary dams in the lower Mekong basin. 
• A new article lays out what dam construction could mean for residents and the environment in the region.
• The Mekong River presents a huge opportunity for hydropower to modernize Laos, but Olson and Morton argue human and environmental concerns are at risk.
•  They advocate for governments in Southeast Asia to empower the MRC to carry out its mission to mitigate the negative impacts of dam building while realizing the benefits.

SOURCE : SCIENCE DAILY

Natural refrigerant replacements could reduce energy costs and conserve the environment

• The 1987 Montreal Protocol and the 1997 Kyoto Protocol called for countries around the world to phase out substances that deplete the ozone layer, but many HVAC systems still use synthetic refrigerants that violate those international agreements and inflict environmental damage.
•  Recently, researchers investigated how natural refrigerants could be used in geothermal heat pumps to reduce energy consumption and operating costs.
• A solution to reduce energy consumption in heat pumps is using the earth as a renewable heat source/sink to both increase efficiency and create a diversity of energy sources

SOURCE : SCIENCE DAILY

90% of Pipeline Blasts Draw No Financial Penalties

A striking report has revealed that 90 per cent of the 137 interstate pipeline fires or explosions since 2010 have drawn no financial penalties for the companies responsible.

One of the country's largest natural gas pipeline accidents—the 2010 San Bruno, California pipeline explosion that resulted in eight deaths—fell under state jurisdiction rather than PHMSA. California authorities imposed a record $1.6 billion fine against Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E).

Although serious pipeline incidents are relatively rare—at least when you consider how much natural gas is transported every day by the country's 3 million miles of mainline and other pipelines—it's little solace to the people who have suffered from pipeline accidents.

The federal Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration's (PHMSA) weak authority over the fossil fuel industry for these disasters.

Orangutans Are Only Non-Human Primates Who Can 'Talk' About the Past

A new study published in the journal Science Advances revealed that when wild Sumatran orangutan mothers spotted a predator, they suppressed their alarm calls to others until the threat was no longer there.

This behaviour is called "displaced reference," or "the capacity to transmit information about something that is not present or about a past or future event," the authors wrote in the study. It's so rare that its only documentation in a non-human species is the dance of forager honeybees.

Predatory behavior of Florida's skull-collecting ant

• New research describes the behavioral and chemical strategies of a Florida ant, Formica archboldi, that decorates its nest with the dismembered body parts of other ant species.
• In aiming to figure out one unusual aspect of this ant's biology, this research has turned up another in the chemical data.
• Though this study was unable to find a direct link between chemical mimicry and predatory behavior, this chemical mimicry likely hints at a long evolutionary history between these ant species.
• "Now Formica archboldi is the most chemically diverse ant species we know of. Before this work, it was just a species with a weird head-collecting habit.

SOURCE : SCIENCE DAILY.

Not Enough Ice to Drill the Arctic! Offshore Oil Drilling a 'Disaster Waiting to Happen'

Last month, the Trump administration approved the first offshore oil drilling development in federal Arctic waters, which environmentalists fear will ramp up carbon pollution that fuels climate change.

 Hilcorp Alaska's project—which involves building a 9-acre artificial drilling island in the shallow waters of the Beaufort Sea—has been delayed because of the effects of climate change.

Hilcorp's Liberty Energy Project requires land-fast sea ice or ice that's attached to the coastline each winter, as a foundation for the artificial island. The process involves pouring gravel through holes in the ice and through the water column to the seafloor and building the island structure from the bottom up.

But the region's unusual warmth has caused ice to form later and break up earlier.

Smartphones and data centers harm the environment, study shows

• Data centres and smartphones will be the most damaging information and communications technologies to the environment by 2040, according to new research.
• For every text message, for every phone call, every video you upload or download, there's a data centre making this happen. Telecommunications networks and data centres consume a lot of energy to serve you and most data centres continue to be powered by electricity generated by fossil fuels. It's the energy consumption we don't see.
• Among all the devices, trends suggest that by 2020, the most damaging devices to the environment are smartphones. While smartphones consume little energy to operate, 85% of their emissions impact comes from production.

SOURCE : SCIENCE DAILY

Does our environment affect the genes in our brains?

• There a link between differences in IQ test performance and the activity of certain genes? Researchers have shown that modifications in the structure of a specific gene have a negative impact on individual test performance. 
•  This suggests that environmentally-induced epigenetic changes to our genetic material have a greater impact on intelligence than previously thought.
• Stress and adverse life experiences are examples of environmental factors that can affect gene activity, leading to structural changes in our genetic material (genome).
• The researchers are hoping to conduct more in-depth studies to determine the extent of environmentally-induced neurobiological modifications, as well as the degree to which these modifications affect IQ test performance.

SOURCE : SCIENCE DAILY

New light cast on fishing throughout history

• A new study has revealed new insights into ancient fishing throughout history, including what type of fish people were regularly eating as part of their diet.
• The study looked at fish bones unearthed in an archaeological dig on the Indonesian island of Alor -- home to the world's oldest fish-hooks ever found in a human burial site, dating back to about 12,000 years.
• People on Alor people were fishing for open water species about 20,000 years ago, then about 7,000 years ago they started to fish exclusively for reef dwelling species.

SOURCE : SCIENCE DAILY

Primates of the Caribbean: Ancient DNA reveals history of mystery monkey

• Analysis of ancient DNA of a mysterious extinct monkey named Xenothrix -- which displays bizarre body characteristics very different to any living monkey -- has revealed that it was in fact most closely related to South America's titi monkeys (Callicebinae). 
• Having made their way overwater to Jamaica, probably on floating vegetation, their bones reveal they subsequently underwent remarkable evolutionary change.
• Though the Galapagos Islands are famous for inspiring Charles Darwin's theory of evolution, the islands of the Caribbean have also been home to some of the most unusual and mysterious species to have ever evolved.
• The Caribbean has also experienced the world's highest rate of mammal extinction since the end of the last ice age glaciation, likely caused by hunting and habitat loss by humans, and predation by invasive mammals brought by early settlers.

SOURCE : SCIENCE DAILY

Massive impact crater from a kilometer-wide iron meteorite discovered in Greenland

• An international team has discovered a 31-km wide meteorite impact crater buried beneath the ice-sheet in the northern Greenland. 
• This is the first time that a crater of any size has been found under one of Earth's continental ice sheets.
• Researchers from the Centre for GeoGenetics at the Natural History Museum of Denmark, University of Copenhagen have discovered this.
• The researchers worked for last three years to verify their discovery, initially made in the 2015. 
• The research is described in a new study just published in the internationally recognized journal SCIENCE ADVANCES.

SOURCE : science daily

Room ACs to make India bigger climate villain than China;

• Air conditioners are making your room cooler and the Earth warmer And India could become a bigger climate villain than China by 2050.
•  A study has found that room ACs (RACs) will make the Earth 0.5 degree Celsius warmer by the 22nd century, while the highest RAC-related Co2 emission will come from Mexico and India by 2050.

Source : science daily