Climate 411

Four ways to reduce climate pollution from shipping in the Belt and Road Initiative

By Catherine Ittner and Hongming Liu

Despite global efforts to address the climate crisis, the shipping sector is on track to increase its global greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions up to 10% by 2050 – unless countries take urgent action.

China’s effort to increase investment and economic collaboration by building the Silk Road Economic Belt and 21st Century Maritime Silk Road – otherwise known as the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – is a great opportunity for countries to cooperate on decarbonizing shipping. The sea routes that make up the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road, which sail through Southeast Asia to South Asia, the Middle East and Africa, are critical to the success of international trade in the region — but the ships that travel these routes are significant sources of greenhouse gases.

Environmental Defense Fund contributed to a new BRI report, which highlights innovative ideas and low-carbon technologies that can cut shipping pollution and help China and other BRI countries meet their climate goals.

Need to decarbonize

Despite an urgent need to reduce GHG emissions in the shipping industry, many countries do not prioritize climate policies for shipping. Twenty-three countries are part of the Maritime Silk Road – but only five of them have incorporated the shipping industry into their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDC), the efforts by each country to reduce national emissions.

The BRI International Green Development Coalition “aims to establish a policy dialogue and communication platform, an environmental knowledge and information platform, and a green technology exchange and transfer platform” to help ensure a green and sustainable BRI, including by decarbonizing shipping. EDF, along with Equitable Maritime Consulting, got the chance to contribute research to the BRI International Green Development Coalition’s new report on maritime connectivity and green development.

Policy recommendations

The report lays out four key policy recommendations to advance green shipping:

  1. Monitoring: Establishing a monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) framework for international shipping within BRI. A comprehensive, effective monitoring and evaluation system is critical to ensuring that efforts aimed at reducing GHG pollution achieve results. BRI countries involved in international shipping should jointly implement a framework and data-sharing platform to monitor, report and verify the data related to GHG mitigation programs. Countries could then leverage the data collected to gather support for environmental financing of the most cost-effective green shipping projects.
  1. Research: Setting up technical cooperation and a joint research program for assessing the potentials for zero-carbon alternative fuel production. To decarbonize fast enough, the shipping sector needs low-carbon alternative fuels that are economically viable. A joint research program should undertake a full life-cycle assessment of zero-emission fuels, as well as an analysis of the supply and demand of these fuels, that considers the specific conditions of BRI countries. With the aim to improve the economic viability of zero-emission fuels for BRI countries, further research can serve as a foundation for a long-term and cost-effective decarbonization strategy for maritime transport within BRI.
  1. Ports: Strengthening the research and application of low-carbon port technologies to promote the coordinated development of green port and green shipping. The development of green shipping is impossible without ports. Ports can adopt technology – like onshore power supply and ship-port interface – to reduce GHG emissions. Onshore power supply allows ships to turn off their engines and connect to the electricity grid, with the potential for significant reductions in climate and air pollution. Ship-port interface is a platform for data interconnection and communication that enables ports to improve the efficiency of terminals and reduce the turnaround time of ships at port. BRI countries can accelerate the decarbonization of shipping through the adoption of pollution-cutting port technologies like these.
  1. Incentives and carbon pricing: Develop a green shipping incentive program and explore carbon pricing mechanisms. The BRI can look into new ways to reduce emissions, like rewarding ships that have excellent operational carbon intensity ratings and considering a carbon pricing cooperation mechanism for international shipping. Both tools can promote more efficient and cleaner ships, as well as the use of alternative zero-emission fuels.

Given the urgency of the climate crisis, countries need to use every opportunity to collaborate toward decarbonizing shipping as soon as possible.

The well-designed policy suite outlined in BRI International Green Development Coalition’s new report drew a roadmap for BRI countries to spur innovation, deploy proven and cost-effective low-carbon technologies, and lead a green transition for the shipping industry. China and other BRI countries have an opportunity to model climate cooperation while pursuing economic success for the region, as well as having a ripple effect among the international community for facilitating multi-lateral cooperation.

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Maximizing the historic job creation opportunity waiting in our nation’s old and leaking oil and gas wells

By Adam Peltz, Senior Attorney, Energy

After over 150 years of boom and bust oil and gas development, there are over a million inactive, unplugged oil and gas wells across the country. A new study published in the journal Elementa describes how, when not properly plugged, these wells can contaminate groundwater and emit methane as well as harmful chemicals into the atmosphere that endanger the economy and public health in communities where they are found. It also provides suggestions for how to maximize the environmental benefits of efforts to plug these wells.

There are 57,000 documented “orphan” wells across the country, meaning they have no owner of record, at least not one that’s still in business, and hundreds of thousands more orphan wells that are not documented. State, federal and tribal governments are left with the responsibility of plugging these wells – some of which have been abandoned for decades.

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Climate action is a top priority in the 21st Century Latino Agenda

By: Sindy Benavides, CEO of LULAC, and Esther Sosa, Project Manager at EDF

In the United States, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed inequities in nearly every aspect of life, illustrating the frustrating reality that today, national crises affect everyone but do not impact everyone equally. Similarly, climate change poses a more devastating threat to Latino families. Threats are already felt and cannot be ignored: hurricanes displaced millions in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria, fieldworkers face job and food insecurity due to historic droughts, extreme climatic conditions pose a threat to our archaic energy system. In Texas, a winter storm left millions without power and clean water. These climate disasters disproportionately impact the wellbeing, health, and future of Latino families.

As the Biden-Harris Administration works with Congress to rebuild our economy, they must prioritize policies that address the health, economic, and environmental needs of the Latino community. That is why our organizations – the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) and the Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) – recently joined forces with Corazón Latino, Hispanic Access Foundation, Hispanic Federation, Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, and GreenLatinos to host one of a series of conversations to help us build a 21st Century Latino Agenda.

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Senators Manchin, Stabenow and Daines lay out plan to boost manufacturing and innovation

By Toby Short, Associate Vice President, Federal Affairs

My father and grandparents worked in the textile mills in North Carolina. When those mills closed, the once vibrant towns that housed the mills began to shut down as well. My father, being young at the time, ended up moving to find work. But my grandparents stayed because that was the life and the community they knew. And we’ve seen this same story all across America.

A bipartisan group of senators – including Joe Manchin, Debbie Stabenow and Steve Daines – is trying to reverse that trend.

America’s domestic manufacturing once formed the backbone of our country and was the envy of the world. Towns and cities flourished as manufacturing increased, not only lifting up the people that worked in these factories, but the local economies as well. Read More »

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A teachable moment: Zero-emission school buses are a winning proposition

By Larissa Koehler

Every pre-COVID school day, approximately 480,000 school buses carry more than 25 million children to school across the United States. Most of them run on diesel fuel and spew pollution that causes cancer, triggers asthma attacks and makes climate change worse. Indeed, of the over 40,000 school buses registered in the U.S. in 2019, only 240 were zero-emission (and only about 1% of school buses are electric). This picture will not improve without intervention — barring additional measures, only 27,000 of the projected 560,000 school buses that will be built in the next 10 years will be electric.

Luckily, that intervention is starting to arrive. Today Senator Cortez-Masto (D-NV), Senator Murray (D-WA) and Representatives Cardenas (D-CA)  and Hayes (D-CT) introduced the Clean School Bus Act a groundbreaking piece of legislation that will provide grants for infrastructure and vehicles, with an emphasis on deploying them in communities hardest hit by health-impacting air pollution.

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Posted in Cars and Pollution, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Health / Read 2 Responses

Five things to know about the Texas blackouts

1. Our first priority must be to help Texas families

Millions in Texas were without power and drinkable water for days on end, and families across the state are still working to find food and assess the damage from burst pipes. Helping them must be our first priority.

2. Climate change means all of our infrastructure may be more vulnerable to extreme weather. But Texas’ grid wasn’t ready for extreme cold and winter storms.  

While there will be much finger pointing in the days to come, it’s becoming clear that the biggest problem is that ERCOT, the state’s grid operator, as well as the Texas Public Utility Commission that oversees it, haven’t prepared the state’s electricity grid for more extreme weather, including winter storms which may become more common with climate change.

Leaders at all levels should make sure not only power facilities, but all of our infrastructure, is built with resilience in mind & factor climate change impacts in planning. We need policies from the state to ensure Texas is ready.

As the Texas Tribune said, “Texas officials knew winter storms could leave the state’s power grid vulnerable, but they left the choice to prepare for harsh weather up to the power companies — many of which opted against the costly upgrades.”

3. Fossil fuel lobbyists are trying to spin the truth, but natural gas and coal were the biggest part of the problem.
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Posted in Cars and Pollution, Energy, Greenhouse Gas Emissions, Health, News, Policy, Science / Comments are closed