Cara Augustenborg
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Good-Bye, Gasoline Blues

2/21/2018

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On February 8th, Ireland’s parliament voted 78 to 48 to end future off-shore oil and gas exploration in Irish waters. Their decision mirrors the governments of Costa Rica, Belize and France, who have all banned the exploration of fossil fuels in their waters.

Ireland’s Climate Emergency Measures Bill will provide for the amendment of the Petroleum and Other Minerals Development Act of 1960 to ensure national and global environmental considerations, (including the annual average global temperature and the monthly mean level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere) are considered when issuing licences, undertakings, and leases under the Act. 
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In doing so, the Bill will prohibit further exploration and drilling for new fossil fuel resources anywhere in Irish territorial waters as an emergency measure to address the high levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

For Valentine’s Day, I could think of no better topic to discuss with Newstalk’s Ivan Yates on our new “Down To Earth” radio slot than Ireland’s exciting systematic break up from fossil fuels! 
Listen to our podcast or read the blog for more of my own opinions on saying good-bye to off-shore oil and gas exploration in Ireland. 

​The Beginning of The End

New Politics has stirred up some radical changes in Ireland’s Parliament since the 2016 General Election: 
  • Last June, the Irish Government unanimously banned onshore hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, as the first private members’ bill to pass both Houses during the lifetime of this Government, joining France, Germany and Bulgaria in banning the practice on land. When the final stages of the bill to ban fracking were debated, amendments to extend the ban to offshore drilling were parked to achieve consensus.
  • In a 90 to 53 vote last February, the Dail approved legislation to drop coal, oil and gas investments from the €8 billion Irish Strategic Investment Fund through a Bill introduced by an Independent politician, Deputy Thomas Pringle, who credited new politics with advancing this historic legislation. If passed into law soon, Ireland will become the first country in the world to divest from fossil fuels.
  • And now, in a record breaking eight weeks, the Dail has agreed to send the Climate Emergency Measures Bill through Committee Stage scrutiny and potentially stop the government from issuing any new licenses for the exploration and extraction of fossil fuels in the State.
To put this in context, it took eight YEARS to secure Ireland’s climate legislation to require Government departments to simply report their activities to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and eight months to get the fracking ban as far. Eight weeks is a miraculous achievement that puts Deputy Brid Smith of People Before Profit in this history books as the TD who led the Climate Emergency Bill through second stage post haste. 

​Leaders and Laggards

It’s not too surprising that People Before Profit, the Green Party, Labour, Sinn Fein, Social Democrats, and the Solidarity Alliance supported the Climate Emergency Measures Bill as it aligns generally with their ethe, but Fianna Fail’s 11th hour decision to support the Bill sends a significant message with respect to their new direction of travel.
Fianna Fail’s 2016 Election Manifesto was light on climate action and made no reference to oil and gas, but since then we’ve seen a “green lean” in their voting record and more engagement in environmental issues, including at their 2017 Ard Dheis where both myself and climate economist, Joseph Curtain, were invited to speak on climate issues. When I met Fianna Fail Leader Michael Martin at the Ard Dheis, he showed a lot of interest in air quality and told me climate change was a very popular issue among the younger Fianna Fail members in particular.
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Fianna Fail Leader, Micheal Martin, and I pictured at 2017 Ard Dheis with staff from Trocaire.
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In speaking in the Dail during the second stage hearing of the Climate Emergency Bill, Fianna Fail Environment Spokesperson TD Timmy Dooley leaned even further into the green by emphatically supporting the Bill, stating: 
“To continue business as usual is one of the greatest acts of moral negligence that we could commit”. 
It’s a good day for the planet when words that sound like they come from a Green Party manifesto start to make their way into traditional political parties!

The most surprising aspect of the Dail vote on the Climate Emergency Measures Bill was Fina Gael’s decision not to support the Bill even after Fianna Fail announced their own support. Even more surprising because Fina Gael’s decision came just weeks after Taoiseach Leo Varadkar admitted in European Parliament that his government’s response to climate change was inadequate, stating: 
“As far as I am concerned, we are a laggard. I am not proud of Ireland’s performance on climate change ... There are lots of things that we intend to do so that we can meet those targets.

​And it’s something that I am very committed to, and certainly, my generation of politicians is very committed to.”
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Even our “Independent” Minister for Climate Action, Denis Naughten, voted against the Climate Emergency Bill rather than lose his lovely cabinet seat. I know I shouldn’t be surprised by this in the nasty game of politics, but I genuinely hoped the likes of Naughten and Varadkar (also “MY generation of politicians”) would be better men and leaders than they appear.

​If you needed further evidence these guys are all talk and no real climate action, they’ve truly shown their cards on this one. 

“Twill bring you gain, or perish on the seas”

To give them some credit, Fine Gael’s 2016 Manifesto clearly stated support for oil and gas exploration so they’re sticking to their word in that respect, even if they’re simultaneously contradicting their own National Policy Position to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by at least 80% (compared to 1990 levels) by 2050.

There's a small possibility Fine Gael’s unwavering support of oil and gas exploration is not driven by vested fossil fuel interests but rather a desire for energy sovereignty and some hope of economic benefit from potential new reserves, but every new extraction site threatens our U.N. Paris Agreement commitment to keep climate change under 2°C of warming. The climate science tells us to have a chance of staying under that 2°C limit, we must keep 80% of the world’s known fossil fuel reserves in the ground so there’s no point in looking for more oil and gas because we can’t burn it anyway. This conclusion by expert group Carbon Tracker has been endorsed by the International Energy Agency and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Research published by Oil Change International in 2016 also found that the oil and gas fields and coal mines that are already in production contain enough CO2 to carry us past the 2°C limit.

​The Climate Emergency Measures Bill recognises and legislates for this scientific reality that we must stop looking for more fossil fuel-based energy and is in line with Ireland’s climate and energy obligations as part of the EU and UN. Ireland’s national and international climate commitments require almost complete decarbonisation of the energy, transport and home-heating sectors by 2050.

A vote to support continued exploration of oil and gas is a vote that rejects climate science and turns a blind eye to our international commitments.  

Left in the dust

Even if we park the climate science and UN commitments for a moment and consider Fine Gael’s argument on the importance of oil and gas as an indigenous natural resource which enhances our national energy “security”, our paltry oil and gas reserves don’t contribute to any sense of national energy security. According to the Sustainable Energy Authority of Ireland, 85 per cent of Irish energy is imported in 2016 at an annual cost of around €4.6 billion, with 91 per cent of this coming from fossil fuels so very little of our energy comes from Irish sources. We’re almost completely dependent on costly foreign imports.  Furthermore, there are no indications that any future gas finds in Irish waters are likely or economically viable. Corrib gas field project incurred losses of €2bn and Shell exited the project in 2017, after losing $900m.

The Corrib gas field currently meets 40% of our demand and this will increase to over 60% until the mid-2020s, but it's important to note that revenue from these gas supplies does not go to the Irish state and we pay the same as any other country would to purchase this gas. 
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IrishTimes.com
Exploration and extraction are dominated by major fossil fuel companies who sell their supplies at the market price with no discount or royality to us here in Ireland thanks to a deal made by Charlie Flanagan's government in 1989 which gave all the rights to our own oil and gas away. 
Despite this lack of benefits to the State, there are currently over 40 licenses granted for a range of fossil fuel, some of which have contracts up to the late 2020s. Any continued exploration and extraction of fossil fuels, if successful, locks Ireland into burning those fossil fuels when the State is already failing in its climate change commitments. The introduction of new gas sources would require the costly construction of new gas infrastructure which would remain in place for decades. New gas supplies also encourage increased gas usage by homes and businesses at a time when usage should be decreasing.

As part of its examination of the Onshore ‘Fracking Act’ in 2016, the Joint Oireachtas Committee on Communications, Climate Action and Environment produced a detailed report on fossil fuel supplies in Ireland, acknowledging that ‘further investment in exploitation of fossil fuels would in all likelihood reduce investment in sustainable sources of energy.’ It’s clear that a continued focus on oil and gas exploration, leaves us in the dust when it comes to the renewable energy transition we need to make. 

The Future Is Electric

Research by the Stop Climate Chaos Coalition shows that Ireland would be far better off investing in local renewables and warmer homes that use less fuel than looking for more oil and gas. Ireland has one of the highest levels of fossil fuel use in electricity generation in comparison with other European countries and disproportionality high electricity bills as a result . Real savings and benefits to Irish citizens arise where those is no purchase of fossil fuels, be that imported or indigenous, not to mention all the co-benefits of a healthier environment without the risks of drilling.

In 2016, renewable energy in Ireland reduced our national energy import bill by €342 million. Moving to a fossil fuel free energy grid based on Renewable sources has the capacity to create 100,000 jobs in Ireland. Real energy security comes in the form of clean, zero carbon, indigenous renewable resources, not fossil fuel sources with dangerous extraction processes and grave climate implications.

​Fossil fuel investment also now carries major financial risks. Financial analysts have highlighted the risks of fossil fuel assets becoming ‘stranded’ (worthless), a warning reiterated publicly by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney.
​
Enacting the Climate Emergency Measures Bill would create further impetus in Ireland to drive more Renewable Energy development and decarbonize transport and energy. This would be a positive step not only in reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but also in attracting companies like the big data centres looking for fossil-fuel free locations to set up premisis. In addition, it will be one of only a handful of laws like it internationally and thus a rallying call to others to act. 

Varadkar’s ambition to drop the “climate laggard” label could begin to be realized with no tangible cost to the Exchequer if only his party would agree to support the Climate Emergency Measures Bill.

But First...

​Perhaps I celebrated a bit prematurely when I heard the news that the Climate Emergency Measures Bill had passed second stage, but we get so few opportunities to celebrate victories in the environmental arena. 
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Not Here Not Anywhere protests outside Leinster House to support the Climate Emergency Measures Bill
​I was reminded by several colleagues after my happy dance that this was just one battle and the war is far from won. -The Bill could easily get stalled in Committee stage or watered down to a meaningless piece of paper. Climate Action and Environment Committee Chairperson, Fine Gael’s Hildegard Naughton, already hinted at this prospect during the Bill’s debate when she said pros and cons needed to be considered before legislation could be drawn up. 
If opponents have their way, climate change will drop to bottom of considerations in the Bill to squeeze a bit more oil money into their campaign coffers while they still can.
It’s important to note that the Bill will not disrupt Ireland’s current gas supply or jeopardise the energy demands of citizens and businesses in Ireland. The policy change proposed in the Bill will not ‘switch off’ any existing supplies and does not affect current exploration licences. Gas Networks Ireland have emphasised no new gas sources are required for Ireland to maintain its gas supply in the short, medium or long-term because Ireland is connected to the UK gas system and not reliant on natural gas exports from the Russian Federation but instead via Scotland from the North Sea and from continental Europe via England. Furthermore, the UK’s decision to exit the EU does not jeopardise gas flows to Ireland or Northern Ireland.

While the Bill can now proceed to Committee Stage, there are concerns the government could block the Bill at a later stage or water it down when amendments can be made to the wording. It’s critical that voters force their representatives to stick to the science and back the Bill as it stands as soon as possible to ensure it becomes a law that aligns with climate science and a sustainable Ireland.

You can make your voice heard on this issue by joining the newsletter at www.foe.ie.

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As always, keep fighting the good fight, and tune in to Newstalk FM on Wednesday's 6:45-7pm for more debate between Ivan Yates and I on the Down To Earth slot on the Hard Shoulder. 

-Cara

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Fly Me To The Moon

2/14/2018

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Growing up with a father who was an Air Force pilot and a mother who needed regular trips from the USA to her family in Ireland, I spent a lot of my childhood in airplanes. Perhaps I chose the environmental profession to make up somewhat for those sins of my past, but I’m still having a hard time letting go entirely of flying even though I know I should. 
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I look at my European colleagues with envy as they can travel most places in the relative comfort of a train while I find it difficult, living in Ireland, to travel entirely by land and sea. 
I found out recently that Newstalk Presenter, Ivan Yates, doesn’t fly himself. Exploring my own issues around aviation and environment seemed like an appropriate topic for our first chat as part of our exciting new weekly ‘Down To Earth’ slot on ‘The Hard Shoulder’.
Listen to our ten-minute chat here or read it about in much more detail in my Verdant Yank blog this week below. 

Is flying really so bad?

Airplanes emit particulates and gases, including carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, black carbon, oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, lead and water vapor while in flight, and as the popularity of air travel has increased, so too has the pollution. Even though there have been significant improvements in aircraft fuel efficiency, these improvements are eclipsed by the increase in air traffic volume. Since 1999, the number of people who fly globally has doubled and there are now 8.3 million people in the sky every single day! 
Back in 1999, the contribution of civil aircraft-in-flight to global CO2 emissions was estimated to be around 2%. Now it is closer to 3.5% and IPCC projections indicate aviation will contribute 5-15% of global human CO2 emissions by 2050 if action is not taken to reduce them. More than 82% of the world’s population has yet to ever set foot on an airplane and as the global middle class grows, the aviation sector is expected to grow in tandem with the number of commercial airplanes set to double in the next twenty years. 
Those numbers may not sound alarming, but the impact of air travel on a personal carbon footprint can be. Per passenger, a typical economy-class Dublin to New York round trip flight produces over 1.5 tonnes of CO2, 15% of the average Irish person’s carbon footprint of 12.8 tonnes, for just one trip. Figures released by Aer Lingus last March showed that Irish people fly on average almost seven times a year, so those flights can add up to a large carbon footprint for some people! And if you fly premium class over economy your impact is even worse because of the extra space you take up, with the carbon footprints of business class and first class three-times and nine-times higher than economy class, respectively. 
Not surprisingly, London is the most popular destination for flights leaving Ireland, costing us 0.15 tonnes of CO2 round trip. If we took the ferry and drove on our own instead, it we would emit double the CO2 because one person traveling in a 4-5 passenger car is really inefficient, but if we took the ferry and train to London, we’d expend 73% less CO2 than flying.

So what can we do about it?

Personally, I don’t believe technology is going to get us out of this mess we call climate change, but in an effort to be objective and recognize that technology has some positive role in reducing emissions, here’s where the technological advancements in aviation may help reduce emissions:

Tomorrow's Tech

  • Fly lower and choose smaller plans – At the high altitudes (8-13km) flown by large jet airliners, emissions of nitrogen oxides are particularly effective in forming ozone and these have a greater global warming effect. Emissions from jet flights are substantially higher than turboprop flights– probably in part because of their lower cruising speeds and altitudes compared to jet airliners
  • The Future is Electric - Adding an electric drive to the airplane's nose wheel may improve fuel efficiency during ground handling or integrating an Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System (EMALS) which would act as a catapult for take-off on the airstrips. Some companies such as Airbus are currently researching this possibility because as a lot of fuel is used during take-off in comparison to cruising.
  • Biofuels – Some companies are researching biofuel technology for use in jet aircraft and some aircraft engines can already run on vegetable oil or ethanol. since 2008, there have been a number of jet airline test flights conducted using biofuels but this has global environmental and social risks with respect to deforestation and converting farmland used for food production for production of biofuels for the aviation industry instead.​
  • Hyperloop – My personal favourite tech option is to ditch the flying cattle cars altogether and save lots of travel stress stress via Elon Musk’s Hyperloop, which uses an electromagnetically levitated pod and electric motor to travel through a low-pressure tube underground tube at speeds of over 1000kph. 
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A Hyperloop could get from Dublin to London in 36 minutes or Dublin to Cork in 20 minutes. The Hyperloop wars have already begun and one company aims to deliver a fully operational Hyperloop system in the next three years. ​

Policy Drivers

Talking tech is fun, but climate change is such a wicked problem that it requires international and national policies to drive emissions down. The EU has had an Emissions Trading Scheme since 2012 which requires flights within the EEA to monitor, report and verify their emissions and trade carbon credits to allow a certain level of emissions from their flights annually. The system has contributed to reducing the carbon footprint of the aviation sector by more than 17 million tonnes per year to date (approximately 8% of EU aviation emissions), but some argue the price of carbon credits is still lower than it should be. 
In 2016, the United Nations’ ratified an agreement to control global warming emissions from international airline flights and established airlines’ carbon emissions in the year 2020 as the upper limit of what carriers are allowed to discharge in the future.  Airlines will be involved in an offsetting scheme whereby forest areas and carbon-reducing activities will be funded, costing about 2% of the industry’s annual revenues. The aim is to offset 80% of the emissions above 2020 levels through a voluntary system. 
Personally, I wouldn’t hold your breath for a global aviation emissions trading and offsetting system. Trading emissions in aviation is complicated by its transient nature: If an airplane is made in country 1, owned by country 2, leased to country 3, takes off from country 4, flies over countries 5, 6, and 7, and lands in country 8, who is responsible for its emissions? Add a further complication of tree-planting to try and offset those emissions and the math gets even more complicated and far less likely to comply with the science to effectively reduce emissions. 
There are other smaller policy decisions that could make a difference. The most novel of these is to end frequent flyer programmes. I you think about their very nature, frequent flyer programmes are designed to encourage more flying. Typically, employees get to use the miles they accumulate from business trips for personal use. This can amount to thousands of euros worth of free travel, encouraging families to fly more for personal holidays to avail of this benefit. Norway is one such country that has banned frequent flyer programmes due to competition laws, but large corporations who want to reduce their carbon footprints and be more sustainable could consider this as one of many ways to address the increasing impact of business flying. 
Undoubtedly, the low cost of air travel is increasing its popularity and subsequent emissions. It’s only marginally more expensive to fly from Dublin to Cork than take the train, despite emission being 70% higher. We don’t incorporate the true environmental cost of flying into our ticket prices. In fact, aviation is highly subsidised so ticket prices can be kept artificially low out of the wallets of tax payers. There should be a tax or levy attached to ticket prices based on how much carbon is emitted from the flight. This would make rail travel more competitive, something we badly need as rail services like night trains struggle to survive in Europe. 
I was surprised to discover there is already a levy attached to airline tickets in eight countries, including the United States, to fund health initiatives in the developing world, drugs for HIV, malaria and tuberculosis. The UNITAID solidarity levy is a supplementary charge ranges from US$1 for economy class to in excess of $30 for first class, depending on the price of the ticket. If eight countries have been able to attach that levy to tickets for the past 12 years and raise over EUR 2.5 billion without most of us ever knowing, it seems like it would be quite easy to do something similar to address their greenhouse gas emissions. 
Ironically, Ireland could lead on solving the emissions problem from aviation. Over 40% of aircraft are now leased, not owned, by airlines and Ireland retains over 20% of global aircraft leasing operators, thanks to some vision from Tony Ryan of Ryan Air in the 1990s and some cushy tax breaks enacted by our Government to encourage this industry in Ireland.  Fourteen of the top 15 global lessors have operations in Ireland, including the four big Chinese state-owned banks. If aviation wanted to get serious about emissions reductions, they could build it in to their leasing models and the Irish aviation leasing sector could drive this change.

Getting Personal

Unlike some of my colleagues, I try to steer away from conversations about “what we can do at home” to solve climate change. I know this is what the media love to talk about, but I find that topic a bit fluffy and inconsequential, putting the onus once again on the lowly citizen instead of the Government. Behavioral change is hard to enact and takes a long time to have any impact, and my analysis (to be posted in a subsequent blog) has shown me that even if I make radical changes in my personal life, I still don’t get my carbon footprint anywhere near what it should be until my Government decarbonizes our energy system. However, flying is one place where personal behavior can make a big dent. A round trip flight from Dublin to New York can easily consume as many emissions has heating an average European home for one whole year, so if you really want to know what you can do at home to stop climate change, cutting out the flights is definitely on the list.
And it’s going to get bumpier anyway! - A report published in the science journal Nature Climate Change forecasts that increasing CO2 levels will result in a significant increase in in-flight turbulence experienced by transatlantic airline flights by the middle of the 21st century. Even today, runways at places like Regan National Airport in Washington D.C. have occasionally been closed because they’ve gotten so hot they’ve actually melted a bit! With air travel getting more uncomfortable for a variety of reasons, land and sea-based travel is looking more appealing.

Several of my colleagues now refuse to fly and I am always fascinated by their stories of “slow travel”. Climate scientist, Keven Anderson, once told me how much great work he got done on a 3-week train journey from the UK to China and back and how so many Chinese people turned out to see this “strange English man who had travelled by land to their country”. 
I still fly for work sometimes because I can’t justify the extra days away from my daughter to take the slow route, but increasingly, I’m avoiding flying for personal reasons – much preferring to holiday on my beloved Inishbofin island as much as possible than anywhere else in the world! It’s a life goal of mine to take a boat to the USA instead of fly there for family visits, but I’ll have to find an effective solution to my propensity for sea sickness first!
It’s hard for those of us in Ireland to avoid flying altogether, but there are creative ways to reduce how much flying we do or off-set the emissions from that flying through a charitable donation to an organization working on climate action. My favourite creative solution comes from my friend Eoin who wanted to go on a climate communication trip to Canada but felt guilty about the emissions, so he went vegan for 6 months beforehand to offset. That’s the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that makes personal change interesting. 
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To find out how much your flying impacts climate change and how it compares to other transport options visit  www.carbonfootprint.com.

And as always, keep fighting the good fight!
-Cara

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P.S. My new #DownToEarth slot with Ivan Yates on Newstalk FM airs Wednesday's approximately 18:40 GMT on 106-108fm in Ireland or online at newstalk.com. You can listen back on podcast and read complementary blogs on The Verdant Yank each week. Coming up... "Good-bye, Gasoline Blues". I'm celebrating our recently Dail victory to ban oil and gas exploration in Irish waters!   
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