After 20 years of protecting the ozone layer with a new generation of chemicals, governments are confronting the fact that these ozone-friendly substitutes for chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) also happen to be greenhouse gases that contribute to global warming.

To assess the extent of the problem and the available solutions, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in collaboration with the Technology and Economic Assessment Panel (TEAP), has produced a Special Report entitled “Safeguarding the ozone layer and the global climate system: issues related to hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs)”.

The result of two years of work by 145 experts from 35 countries, the report was finalized at a meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 6 - 8 April and is being released today.

Taken together, the various solutions identified by the report could cut the global warming contribution of CFCs and their replacements in half by the year 2015.

The IPCC was established in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). The TEAP was set up under the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer and is administered by UNEP.

“Although climate change and ozone destruction are essentially different issues, our use of certain chemicals links them together,” said WMO Secretary-General Michel Jarraud. “We must continuously monitor, undertake research and improve how we manage this group of extremely useful substances, which is implicated in not one, but two of the major environmental problems we have ever known.”

Under the Montreal Protocol, the world�s governments are phasing out CFCs, halons, and other destructive chemicals and replacing them with safer alternatives. However, like CFCs themselves, some of these alternatives, such as hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) and perfluorocarbons (PFCs), are also powerful greenhouse gases.

For this reason, governments included HFCs and PFCs in the 1992 Climate Change Convention and in its 1997 Kyoto Protocol, under which most developed countries are to reduce their emissions from a basket of six greenhouse gases by the period 2008 � 2012.

“There can be no trade-offs between saving the ozone layer and minimizing climate change,” said UNEP Executive Director Klaus Toepfer. “This report demonstrates that it is in our power to maintain the Montreal Protocol’s momentum while achieving the Kyoto Protocol’s targets. It also reveals that many available win-win solutions are cost-competitive when compared with options for reducing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases.”

According to the report, emissions of CFCs and their replacements can be minimized by:

• improving the containment of chemicals to prevent leaks, evaporation and emissions of unintended by-products;
• reducing the amounts needed in any particular type of equipment;
• promoting more end-of-life recovery, recycling and destruction of substances;
• increasing the use of ammonia and other alternative substances with a lower or zero global warming potential; and
• using various emerging technologies that avoid gases that deplete ozone or contribute to climate change.

The transition to ozone-friendly chemicals

The problem of ozone depletion arose from the wide-scale application of stable, non-flammable chemicals to refrigeration, air conditioning, foams, aerosols, fire protection and solvents starting in the middle of the last century. By the 1980s, scientists had demonstrated that these chemicals drift up into the stratosphere where they help to destroy the ozone molecules (O3) that protect life on earth from excess solar radiation.

As confirmed by today’s report, rapid action by governments to adopt and implement the Montreal Protocol has reduced the global production of ozone-depleting gases and essentially stabilized the ozone layer.

HCFCs were successful in meeting the early CFC phase-out goals but are generally considered undesirable for most new equipment because they do have some ozone-depleting potential; they will eventually be phased out under the Montreal Protocol.

Because HFCs and PFCs contain no chlorine or bromine (the main culprits in ozone depletion), they have been among the substitutes considered for the long-term. Unfortunately, they are also greenhouse gases.

The contribution to global warming

Molecule for molecule, CFCs and many of their replacements are much more powerful greenhouse gases than carbon dioxide, but emission levels are lower. The contribution that CFCs, their replacements and other ozone-depleting substances currently make to global warming is estimated to be about 10% of the contribution from fossil-fuel-related carbon dioxide emissions, or around 5% of humanity’s total greenhouse gas emissions.

Since virtually all ozone-depleting substances and their replacements are now used in closed systems, they are generally not emitted until years or even decades after being produced. For instance, large amounts of CFCs still exist in current refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment and in insulating foams, from which they can leak or evaporate. Later, when the equipment is decommissioned, they are often simply released into the atmosphere.

For CFCs and HCFCs, there are no regulations under the Montreal or Kyoto Protocols to prevent such emissions. Meanwhile, the stored amounts of HFCs and HCFCs continue to increase.

About 65% of today’s total emissions from this group of chemicals still come from CFCs, mainly from existing refrigeration and air-conditioning equipment. Consequently, reducing leaks from these sources could substantially reduce greenhouse gas emissions, benefiting both the ozone layer and the climate system.

HCFCs and HFCs are estimated to currently contribute 20% and 15%, respectively, of emissions from this group of chemicals. However, by 2015 as much as 50% may derive from HFCs, with 40% from HCFCs, depending on which substitutes and technologies are used. CFC emissions will likely decline to around 10% due to the phase-out of new uses and reduced releases from stored amounts.

Estimating the costs

Efforts to minimize emissions of CFC replacements will cost money. Estimated costs vary widely and depend on the type and size of a particular piece of equipment and the solution employed. For example, replacing HFCs in a household refrigerator could cost from zero to US$30, while replacing HFCs in an automobile air-conditioning unit could cost from US$48 to US$180.

The costs for bigger equipment, such as large-scale supermarket systems, would be much higher. Incinerators for destroying the HFC byproducts of HCFC manufacture, for example, could involve hundreds or thousands of dollars.

However, when compared to other ways of reducing greenhouse gas emissions, these costs are relatively low. The costs for HFC incineration, for example, are lower than US$0.2 per tonne of CO2 equivalent.

In addition, many solutions will also reduce energy use, and thus yearly energy costs and associated carbon dioxide emissions. For example, the cost of reducing emissions from residential and commercial refrigeration, air-conditioning and heating units could be zero to about 170 US$/ton CO2 equivalent. If energy efficiency improvements are included, in some cases net savings of 75 US$/tonne CO2 equivalent can be achieved.

Original press release: New Report on How to Save the Ozone Layer While Combating Climate Change (UNEP)

Researchers at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and the University of California, Santa Cruz have discovered that Earth’s last great global warming period, 3 million years ago, may have been caused by levels of CO2 in the atmosphere similar to today’s.

Reporting this week in a leading Earth Science journal, Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems, the scientists describe how they tested two widely held ideas that attempted to explain the balmy conditions on Earth at that time. Their findings clearly demonstrate that studying past climates can help us to understand the likely impact of greenhouse gas emissions and global warming.

BAS Principal Investigator Dr Alan Haywood said,
“There are two schools of thought about past warm intervals. Many scientists suggest that they were caused by ocean currents (like the Gulf Stream) moving greater amounts of warm water from the tropics to the polar regions. Others speculate that increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere initiated warming all over the planet. We used the latest supercomputing technology combined with chemical analysis of seabed sediments to make a sophisticated reconstruction of past sea temperatures. If the warming was caused by ocean currents, we would expect to see cooling at the tropics and warming at the poles. Conversely, if CO2 was the cause then we would expect both the tropics and the poles to warm. The sea temperature pattern we found points the finger squarely at CO2 rather than the ocean currents. This is a real breakthrough for those of us investigating past climate; we’ve made a major contribution to a long standing argument and our findings are critical to understanding how climate may respond to emissions of greenhouse gases in the future.”

Clues to past sea-surface temperature come from tiny marine algae that live near the surface. They produce chemicals called alkenones that record the sea temperature. When the algae die they sink and become part of the seabed. Therefore, a record of past sea temperatures is stored within the sediments. Sea-surface temperatures were also predicted using a climate model running on a sophisticated supercomputer based at Manchester. This is capable of billions of calculations per second.

Original press release: Carbon Dioxide Role in Past Climate Revealed (BAS)

A new University of Colorado at Boulder study indicates Earth in its infancy probably had substantial quantities of hydrogen in its atmosphere, a surprising finding that may alter the way many scientists think about how life began on the planet.

Published in the April 7 issue of Science Express, the online edition of Science Magazine, the study concludes traditional models estimating hydrogen escape from Earth’s atmosphere several billions of years ago are flawed. The new study indicates up to 40 percent of the early atmosphere was hydrogen, implying a more favorable climate for the production of pre-biotic organic compounds like amino acids, and ultimately, life.

The paper was authored by doctoral student Feng Tian, Professor Owen Toon and Research Associate Alexander Pavlov of CU-Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics with Hans De Sterck of the University of Waterloo. The study was supported by the NASA Institute of Astrobiology and NASA’s Exobiology Program.

“I didn’t expect this result when we began the study,” said Tian, a doctoral student in CU-Boulder’s Astrobiology Center at LASP and chief author of the paper. “If Earth’s atmosphere was hydrogen-rich as we have shown, organic compounds could easily have been produced.”

Scientists believe Earth was formed about 4.6 billion years ago, and geologic evidence indicates life may have begun on Earth roughly a billion years later.

“This study indicates that the carbon dioxide-rich, hydrogen-poor Mars and Venus-like model of Earth’s early atmosphere that scientists have been working with for the last 25 years is incorrect,” said Toon. In such atmospheres, organic molecules are not produced by photochemical reactions or electrical discharges.

Toon said the premise that early Earth had a CO2-dominated atmosphere long after its formation has caused many scientists to look for clues to the origin of life in hydrothermal vents in the sea, fresh-water hot springs or those delivered to Earth from space via meteorites or dust.

The team concluded that even if the atmospheric CO2 concentrations were large, the hydrogen concentrations would have been larger. “In that case, the production of organic compounds with the help of electrical discharge or photochemical reactions may have been efficient,” said Toon.

Amino acids that likely formed from organic materials in the hydrogen-rich environment may have accumulated in the oceans or in bays, lakes and swamps, enhancing potential birthplaces for life, the team reported.

The new study indicates the escape of hydrogen from Earth’s early atmosphere was probably two orders of magnitude slower than scientists previously believed, said Tian. The lower escape rate is based in part on the new estimates for past temperatures in the highest reaches of Earth’s atmosphere some 5,000 miles in altitude where it meets the space environment.

While previous calculations assumed Earth’s temperature at the top of the atmosphere to be well over 1,500 degrees F several billion years ago, the new mathematical models show temperatures would have been twice as cool back then. The new calculations involve supersonic flows of gas escaping from Earth’s upper atmosphere as a planetary wind, according to the study.

“There seems to have been a blind assumption for years that atmospheric hydrogen was escaping from Earth three or four billion years ago as efficiently as it is today,” said Pavlov. “We show the escape was limited considerably back then by low temperatures in the upper atmosphere and the supply of energy from the sun.”

Despite somewhat higher ultraviolet radiation levels from the sun in Earth’s infancy, the escape rate of hydrogen would have remained low, Tian said. The escaping hydrogen would have been balanced by hydrogen being vented by Earth’s volcanoes several billion years ago, making it a major component of the atmosphere.

In 1953, University of Chicago graduate student Stanley Miller sent an electrical current through a chamber containing methane, ammonia, hydrogen and water, yielding amino acids, considered to be the building blocks of life. “I think this study makes the experiments by Miller and others relevant again,” Toon said. “In this new scenario, organics can be produced efficiently in the early atmosphere, leading us back to the organic-rich soup-in-the-ocean concept.”

In the new CU-Boulder scenario, it is a hydrogen and CO2-dominated atmosphere that leads to the production of organic molecules, not the methane and ammonia atmosphere used in Miller’s experiment, Toon said.

Tian and other team members said the research effort will continue. The duration of the hydrogen-rich atmosphere on early Earth still is unknown, they said.

Original press release: Colorado University Study Shows Early Earth Atmosphere Hydrogen-Rich, Favorable To Life (Colorado University)

Tapethok, Nepal - A solar lighting system has been installed for villagers in north-east Nepal, thanks to efforts by WWF.

WWF Nepal, together with the Kadoorie Agricultural Aid Association, coordinated the distribution of solar panels to 193 households in the village of Tapehthok, which lies within the Kangchenjunga Conservation Area.

The majority of the rural poor living in the more remote parts of the country still depend on kerosene lamps. For those who can�t afford kerosene, they collect pinewood to burn.

“The solar lighting system has not only enabled us to work late but also help our children to do homework at night,” said Bishnu Kumari Limbu, one of the villagers who received a solar panel. “Now there is also no discomfort from the burning wood and kerosene smoke.”

The aim of the solar lighting system project is to encourage local people living in the conservation area to use alternative energy and to reduce biotic pressure on the surrounding forests. The solar panels have been provided to the poorest households of the area who are largely dependent on forest resources for energy.

“The local villagers have a positive attitude towards the project and are highly appreciative of our efforts,” said Ang Phuri Sherpa, project manager of WWF’s Kangchenjunga Conservation Area project.

“We will train some sixteen locals of Tapethok and other villagers to facilitate the installation of another 333 sets of solar panels.”

The success of WWF Nepal’s work in the social mobilization for biodiversity conservation, capacity building, and improving the socio-economic condition of local peoples is evident from the decision of the Nepalese government to hand over the management responsibility of the conservation area to the local communities.

Communities in Kangchenjunga will be the first in the country to have the management responsibility of their conservation area.

The Kangchenjunga area in Nepal, an area of 200,000ha including the world’s third highest peak, was declared a WWF Gift to the Earth in 1997. The area possesses high biodiversity, including such species as the Himalayan black bear, red panda, and snow leopard.

Original press release: Solar Panels Light Up Rural Nepal (WWF)

Launched today, the Greenpeace report “Offshore Wind - Implementing a new Power House for Europe” is a strategic blueprint that outlines how offshore wind farms will be able to supply about 10% of Europe’s electricity sector by 2020. The report represents a crucial tool in the race to cut greenhouse emissions. It also highlights the urgency for political, technical and environmental actions to build up an environmentally friendly powerhouse.

The report explains how an electricity grid in Europe is needed to integrate offshore wind farms into the power system. According to the report, one of the critical parts of the energy solution in Europe will be to integrate 70.000 MW offshore-wind capacity - equal to 70 coal power plants - into the existing electricity grid. This will require a power grid at sea, as there is none at the moment.

“Climate change is the biggest threat we face. It represents a key challenge that needs to be tackled by competitive eco-technologies and help defeat global warming. Planning and preparation must start now if we want to guarantee the construction of an electricity grid at sea. We urge governments to support the planning and construction of an offshore-wind electricity grid within EU waters.” says Sven Teske, Greenpeace International energy expert.

Europe is facing a profound transformation of its energy system over the next few decades. In this time frame, governments and utilities will decide on the next generation of power plants, replacing fossil fuels with renewable energies and dramatically increasing energy efficiency. The Greenpeace report, which was written by Deutsche WindGuard GmbH, shows that wind energy is a critical part of the solution.

“European Governments have to redirect subsides from fossil and nuclear energy projects to offshore-wind energy implementation. These first offshore wind projects are needed to unlock further the cost reduction potential of this new technology. Time is running and the infrastructure must be ready by 2015,” Teske concluded.

Greenpeace demands the adoption of ambitious, legally binding long-term targets for renewable energy sources and for the decrease of energy consumption. All subsidies to fossil and nuclear fuels on the EU and member states level should be phased out and redirected to renewable energies immediately.

Greenpeace is an independent campaigning organisation that uses non-violent, creative confrontation to expose global environmental problems and to force solutions that are essential to a green and peaceful future. Deutsche WindGuard is an independent service and consulting company for wind energy.

Original press release: Offshore wind energy could supply 10% of electricity in Europe by 2020 (Greenpeace)

MARTINSBURG, NY - PPM Energy, ScottishPower’s (NYSE: SPI) competitive U.S. energy business, and Zilkha Renewable Energy today announced the start of construction of the Maple Ridge Wind Farm (formerly called Flat Rock Wind Power Project). Maple Ridge is expected to be commercially operational by the end of 2005. Zilkha and PPM are equal partners in the venture. The Goldman Sachs Group (NPSE: GS) recently announced plans to acquire Zilkha Renewable Energy, subject to regulatory approvals.

Located near the towns of Martinsburg, Lowville, Watson and Harrisburg about 75 miles northeast of Syracuse, the Maple Ridge project has been named to honor the maple sugaring tradition in Lewis County, the leading maple syrup producing county in New York. The first phase of Maple Ridge is expected to be 198 megawatts (MW), using 120 1.65 MW Vestas turbines. The site also has expansion potential.

Phase I of Maple Ridge will more than quadruple the amount of wind power in New York, a state with a 25 percent Renewable Portfolio Standard (RPS) designed to be in full effect by 2013, one of the most aggressive such policies in the nation.

“The community has given the Maple Ridge project a warm welcome, and we thank the citizens, as well as local and state authorities, for their enthusiasm for clean, renewable, locally produced wind energy,” said Michael Zilkha, co-owner of Zilkha Renewable Energy. “And we congratulate Governor Pataki and the Public Service Commission for their environmental stewardship, exemplified by their development of the RPS. We also congratulate the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority for their long-term support of renewable energy.”

“PPM is pleased to be part of this landmark project that will more than quadruple the total installed wind capacity in the state of New York, helping the state meet its renewables goals,” said Terry Hudgens, PPM Energy’s CEO.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) has announced that five power generation producers, including the Maple Ridge Wind Power Project, have been selected to provide power in the form of renewable energy, or “green” power, in the first phase of the Renewable Portfolio Standard Program.

“Increasing the amount of renewable energy that is produced in New York is one of the key components of the State’s energy policy,” said Peter R. Smith, President of NYSERDA. “The Maple Ridge project is a shining example of how we can promote economic development, improve our energy security, and provide a cleaner and healthier environment for all New Yorkers.”

The project will support the local economy through royalty payments to about 100 landowners and property tax payments to seven local tax jurisdictions; construction will create up to 300 jobs at the peak of building. While the entire project spans approximately 21,000 acres, the actual footprint of the turbines uses less than one percent of the total acreage. Landowners will continue using the remainder of the land for pastures, timberland, farming, and leisure activities.

The first phase of the Maple Ridge Wind Farm will provide clean electricity to 59,400 New York homes, according to the American Wind Energy Association’s calculation.

The Maple Ridge project is situated near Martinsburg, Lowville, Watson, and Harrisburg in Lewis County on Tug Hill, the ideal location for New York’s largest wind farm. With an average elevation of 1600-1800 feet, Tug Hill is an ancient geologic formation that lies just downwind of the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, separated from the Adirondacks to the east by the Black River Valley. At a maximum elevation of 2000 feet above sea level, the Tug Hill plateau experiences strong lake-effect weather patterns and has long been known for its exceptional wind resource.

According to Terry Thisse, Supervisor of the Town of Martinsburg, “The social and economic benefits from this project are many. A large increase in the tax base for the county, towns, and schools is just one of them. The positive effects from an environmentally friendly project of this size will be enjoyed for many years to come. The Town of Martinsburg is proud to be the primary host for this important project.”

Original press release: PPM and Zilkha Announce Maple Ridge Wind Farm Landmark Project Will Quadruple New York Wind Energy Capacity (PPM Energy)