Today the fourth and final assessment from the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), “Mitigation of Climate Change,” will be released. More than 400 scientists and experts from 120 countries are in Bangkok, Thailand this week to finalize the report. The summary of Mitigation of Climate Change will be posted here; go here for a live webcast around 1PM local time. The full report will be released in September.

The report will lay out ways to cut global warming emissions and prevent the worst impacts without seriously hurting the global economy. In fact, it is expected to show that the cost of doing nothing is far higher than the cost of taking action now.

On Wednesday, the Taipei Times reported that talks were stalled by China, India, and Brazil, who insisted that industrialized nations take more responsibility for their pollution contribution. The stalemate took up other time meant for discussion on how to best tackle global warming. One European delegate reported:

"Progress is slow…Brazil, India and China are trying to put on the shoulders of industrialized nations the historic responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions in order to clear their own emissions [of blame] and to protect themselves in any discussion.”

The report will assess not only the long-term options available for the next 100 years, but a range of economic, technological, and institutional solutions and covering short and medium-term timelines up until 2030, explained Dr. R.K. Pachauri, Chairman of the IPCC.

Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
Taipei Times
World Wildlife Fund

In a report released on Monday and on the heels of the first debate in the United Nations Security Council on the issue, 11 retired U.S. military leaders assert that climate change raises risks and tensions in the world’s most volatile areas, and the U.S. needs to start planning and cooperating with other nations to mitigate and respond to those risks. From the Associated Press:

“The report warns that in the next 30 to 40 years there will be wars over water and increased instability from hunger, worsening diseases, rising sea levels and global warming-induced refugees. ‘The chaos that results can be an incubator of civil strife, genocide and the growth of terrorism,’ the 35-page report predicts.

‘Climate change exacerbates already unstable situations,’ former U.S. Army Chief of Staff Gordon Sullivan said. ‘Everybody needs to start paying attention to what's going on. I don't think this is a particularly hard sell in the Pentagon. … We're paying attention to what those security implications are.’

Gen. Anthony Zinni, President Bush's former Middle East envoy, said in the report: ‘It's not hard to make the connection between climate change and instability, or climate change and terrorism.’”

The leaders urged the U.S. to take action now, without waiting for a total certainty on global warming’s impacts. Extreme weather like drought, flooding, rising sea levels, and shifts in habitat for plant and wildlife are some of the expected consequences. Any of these could prompt U.S. military involvement; for example, the U.S. and Europe may have to accept environmental refugees from Latin America and Africa as drought increases and food production declines. Climate change impacts could also make life more difficult in unstable locales like parts of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East, perhaps driving the U.S. more frequently to provide stability before conditions are exploited by extremists.

Although the U.S. is the planet’s biggest emitter of global warming pollution, the report stressed that it does need to develop strong partnerships with other nations like China and India, who will be contributing significantly to the global economy and to its emissions.

The report was published by the non-partisan CNA Corporation think tank.

Associated Press, via the Atlanta Journal-Constitution
CNA Corporation
Globe and Mail

Cross section of nanotube tower: Photo credit: Georgia Tech Research InstituteThe Georgia Tech Research Institute has come up with a solar panel design that could revolutionize the solar industry.

The new design features many nano-towers - think of microscopic blades of grass - that capture more sunlight because they have a larger surface area than the traditional flat design of photovoltaic (PV) cells. These three-dimensional panels produce about 60 times more current that regular solar cells. Because of this leap in efficiency, the coatings on the PV cells can be made thinner, and the overall size, weight, and mechanical complexity of the systems are reduced. From the news release:

“The GTRI photovoltaic cells trap light between their tower structures, which are about 100 microns tall, 40 microns by 40 microns square, 10 microns apart — and built from arrays containing millions of vertically-aligned carbon nanotubes. Conventional flat solar cells reflect a significant portion of the light that strikes them, reducing the amount of energy they absorb.

Because the tower structures can trap and absorb light received from many different angles, the new cells remain efficient even when the sun is not directly overhead.”

But although the new design can produce a current much more efficiently, photovoltaic cells have to generate a voltage too. So far there’s too much resistance within the solar cell to produce the type of electricity that’s needed. Researchers say that hurdle will be the next phase of development.

The United States Air Force funded part of the research, seeking a smaller, more efficient solar panel that could eventually be used to power satellites and spacecraft. Researchers at Georgia Tech believe solar power would see a large jump in residential and commercial use as well if this lightweight and more efficient design is proven effective.

Georgia Tech Research News
International Business Times via the Green Report

Pacific Gas & Electric, California’s largest electricity utility and one of the largest in the nation, is showcasing a Toyota Prius that it has converted into a plug-in hybrid at the Silicon Valley Leadership Group Alternative Energy Solutions Summit in California this week. The utility may be the first in the U.S. to demonstrate that a plug-in hybrid can power a home.

Like a traditional hybrid, plug-in hybrids have both an electric motor and a gasoline engine. But their larger batteries and ability to be charged with any 120-volt outlet allows for even better gas mileage than the 55 mpg average of a regular Prius. Since plug-in hybrid batteries can power the vehicle for up to 60 miles, about half of the cars in America could go everywhere they needed to go in a day without using any gas. Some estimates set the average fuel economy at 100 miles per gallon.

So what’s different about PG&E’s plug-in hybrid? Unlike most plug-ins that take in electricity from the grid and then are driven around during the day, the PG&E concept car demonstrated that any plug-in can also be used as a two-way generator.

These “vehicle-to-grid,” or V2G, cars are charged by plugging into a three-prong, 110- to 120-volt outlet. But if a home needs energy, like during a blackout or during high demand when electricity prices increase, a switch can be flipped to send the charge the other way, from the car to the home.

PG&E’s plug-in hybrid car powered a small electric heater and lights. The car could supposedly even run home appliances for several hours with a full battery charge. The utility hopes that the new concept car will demonstrate new ways to use hybrids and increase the demand for the cleaner vehicles. California’s renewable energy laws are pushing utilities to cut global warming emissions. Plug-in hybrids help them reach that goal by allow ing homeowners to use more energy at night – when wind power and cleaner fuels are available - and less energy during high-demand days when natural gas and coal plants produce the energy.

Prices for plug-in hybrids are expected to range from $3,000 to $5,000 more than typical hybrids, and it’s unclear how much money a homeowner would save by charging a hybrid with electricity. Although they would be buying more energy from their utility, they would save on gas costs. And although many areas of the country would be powering their plug-in hybrids with coal-fired power from the grid, governoment studies have shown that powering cars with electricity creates much less global warming pollution than power them with gasoline.

CalCars, a nonprofit organization that has converted about 20 hybrids to plug-in hybrids in the past three years, expects the two-way generator technology to be about 5-6 years away.

CalCars
PG&E
Plug-In Partners
Reuters
San Jose Mercury News, via Green@WorkToday

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the U.S. and Canada have enough geological storage capacity to sequester about 3500 billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) underground. That’s about 900 years worth of CO2 emitted by power plants.

Carbon sequestration is the process by which CO2 is captured from a source (like a power plant) before it’s released into the air and pumped into an underground rock formation. This is called geological sequestration. Another type of carbon sequestration is terrestrial sequestration, where the carbon is stored in long-lived sources like trees or soils, for example.

A new Carbon Sequestration Atlas reports that 4,000 power plants and other stationary CO2 sources are located above sequestration sites. Dawn Deel, a carbon sequestration manager at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) said that most power plants would have the capacity to store CO2 nearby or directly underneath them. She told Reuters: “The capacity sites are very widespread. They cover the majority of the area in the United States and a good bit of Canada.”

But one of the major hurdles of sequestration – the enormous cost – was not included in the study. The equipment to capture the CO2 at the power plant, transport it, and then bury it underground could add up to 20 percent to our electric bills, according to a study done by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this year. That’s also what a 2005 United Nations study found.

Carbon sequestration is not commercially available yet in the U.S., but other nations have been moving forward with it. Norway has been pumping CO2 into a natural gas field for a decade, with no leaks detected so far. And in February 2007, the largest experimental carbon sequestration project began in Australia with the drilling of a 6000 foot well. If there are no leaks, researchers will begin injecting CO2 into the well in July.

I’d like to hear from readers on this one (not that you’d hold back!). I’m personally a bit up in the air on carbon sequestration. It’s incredibly expensive, so why not first push forward with efficiency measures and renewable energy? Or, because global warming is such a threat, should the U.S. push forward with this technology at the same time we increase renewable energy and efficiency, despite the cost?

Mongabay.com
Oak Ridge National Laboratory Ecosystems
Reuters, via AlertNet
Technology Review
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

ExxonMobil was recently scorched in the spotlight when an article in the UK newspaper the Guardian tied the planet’s largest corporation to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a vehemently free-market, right-leaning organization that tried to pay scientists and economists to author articles casting doubt on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) global warming report. This didn’t surprise many people, as Exxon has never had a reputation of being green or progressive on global warming solutions.

But can Exxon defend itself? Has it joined the rest of the world in recognizing global warming is happening? If so, what are its plans to slow it?

I had the privilege of participating in two telephone news conferences with ExxonMobil’s Vice President of Public Affairs, Ken Cohen, to answer some of these questions. Other bloggers on the call were Jesse Jenkins from Watthead, Tom Yulsman from Prometheus, Susan Smith from the Environmental Law Prof Blog, and Stuart Staniford from The Oil Drum. One call took place on January 26, a week before the IPCC report was released. The next happened on February 2, the day the IPCC report and the Guardian article came out. This post is the first of a 2-part series on Exxon’s response to the allegations in the Guardian, its position on global warming, and what it thinks should be done about it.

I went in with an open mind: To be sure, Exxon was making a concerted effort to reach out to the blogosphere and discuss its position on global warming – that in itself was big news. But I also expected some real answers that would give me at least a glimmer of hope that this behemoth was taking decisive action.

“The IPCC report is the best compilation of the thinking on the subject,” Cohen told us, insisting that Exxon takes global warming very seriously and has in fact recognized the problem for twenty years. He spelled it out further:

Is the climate warming? Yes. Are CO2 emissions up? Yes, they’ve never been as high as they’ve been [now]. Man’s use of fossil fuels and land use changes and other human activity contribute to that CO2 rise.

So did ExxonMobil fund AEI to muddle the dialogue on global warming?

“We had no knowledge that this was going on,” insisted Cohen. He explained that Exxon funds a lot of different groups, and “when we fund them, we want good analysis." Exxon does not condone what AEI did, but Cohen confirmed that it does continues to fund AEI, although other groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute are not funded by them anymore.

Cohen assured us that Exxon is “trying to be a constructive player in the policy discussion and not associate [themselves] with those that are marginalized and are not welcome in that discussion.” The IPCC report “is what it is,” and Exxon does not believe in engaging in scientific research that preordains an answer. Cohen:

…that's the issue with AEI: Are they preordaining an answer?…I can understand taking a market approach or a government interventionist approach, but this is not a question of trying to find who’s right or who’s wrong. Let’s let the process work.

But, I asked, how can you grant AEI nearly two million dollars and not know what they’re doing with the money? Turns out that Exxon conveniently funds the “general operations” of AEI, not specific programs that would allow them to track how the money is being used. Perhaps Exxon needs to think hard next time before it funds an organization so clearly disinterested in constructive solutions.

Cohen was consistently explicit in Exxon's position that global warming is happening and mainly caused by human activities. If that is true, then how will Exxon fight the huge misperception that it’s still the planet's largest naysayer? Cohen conceded that the company needed to do a better job of communicating its position on global warming, rather than allowing a fact sheet or news release on their website to do the work.

Jesse Jenkins asked whether it would consider joining the new U.S. Climate Energy Action Partnership, a coalition of major corporations and environmental organizations calling for federal carbon dioxide regulation. When Cohen answered this question in our first conference call, he seemed cool to the idea, pointing out that Exxon is already part of many global warming discussion groups and that some of their scientists participate in the IPCC. However, Cohen brought the idea up himself on our second call, this time saying that the Partnership is a group “…that we might join and participate in the discussions – if they’ll have us.”

Coming up Thursday: What is Exxon doing to mitigate its contributions to global warming? Which policies and market-based solutions does it think would be the most effective? How is Exxon staying market-competitive in a shifting energy system?

CBS News.com
News Release: ExxonMobil's response to publication of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report of Climate Science
News Release: Addressing the Risks of Climate Change: ExxonMobil's Views and Actions
The Guardian: Scientists offered cash to dispute climate study