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Climate change

2009 CISAC Zukerman Fellows announced

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Emily Meierding and Michael Sulmeyer have been awarded Zukerman Fellowships for the 2009-10 academic year. The fellowships are awarded to "exceptionally promising young scholars" working in the field of security studies at CISAC.

Meierding, a predoctoral fellow, studies territorial dispute dynamics, international conflict mediation and the political implications of climate change. She is pursuing a doctorate in political science at the University of Chicago. Her dissertation examines how the presence of petroleum resources affects the initiation and escalation of international territorial disputes and, to support this work, she has conducted research in Syria, Morocco, Nigeria and Cameroon. Meierding earned a bachelor's degree in history from the University of California at Santa Cruz and a master's in political science from the University of Chicago.

Sulmeyer, this year's teaching assistant in CISAC's Honors Program in International Security Studies, graduated from the program himself in 2002. He applied after taking one of the center's signature courses, International Security in a Changing World. "I hadn't a clue about international security, but I was blown away listening to Dean Wilkening describe the three different layers of a national missile defense system," he recalled in an interview for CISAC's 2007 annual review. "I didn't know you could study something like that. This was a real treat. I went on to take as many courses as I could from CISAC-affiliated faculty and was first in line to sign up for the new CISAC undergraduate honors program."

Sulmeyer went on to spend a year working at the Pentagon and, later, as a Marshall Scholar, began a doctorate at Oxford University. His dissertation is titled, "Weapons under Fire: Terminating Major Weapons Contracts for the U.S. Military." While finishing his doctoral research, he is a second-year student at Stanford Law School where he has written about the legality of targeting killings in U.S. military operations. Sulmeyer is Oxford Analytica's U.S. defense budget and procurement writer and is a consultant at the Center for a New American Security in Washington.

The Zukerman Fellowships are funded through a gift from Stanford alumna Karen D. Zukerman and Morris E. Zukerman, president of M.E Zukerman & Co. in New York and chairman of M.E. Zukerman Investments in London.

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PESD releases new working paper on the real drivers of carbon capture and storage in China and implications for climate policy

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Varun Rai
Gang He
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The capture and permanent storage of CO2 emissions from coal combustion is now widely viewed as imperative for stabilization of the global climate.  Coal is the world’s fastest growing fossil fuel.  This trend presents a forceful case for the development and wide dissemination of technologies that can decouple coal consumption from CO2 emissions—the leading candidate technology to do this is carbon capture and storage (CCS). 

China simultaneously presents the most challenging and critical test for CCS deployment at scale.   While China has begun an handful of marquee CCS demonstration projects, the stark reality to be explored in this paper is that China’s incentives for keeping on the forefront of CCS technology learning do not translate into incentives to massively deploy CCS in power plant applications as CO2 mitigation scenarios would have it.  In fact, fundamental and interrelated Chinese interests—in energy security, economic growth and development, and macroeconomic stability—directly argue against large-scale implementation of CCS in China unless such an implementation can be almost entirely supported by outside funding.  This paper considers how these core Chinese goals play out in the specific context of the country’s coal and power markets, and uses this analysis to draw conclusions about the path of CCS implementation in China’s energy sector. 

Finally, the paper argues that effective climate change policy will require both the vigorous promotion and careful calculation of CCS’s role in Chinese power generation.  As the world approaches the end of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 and crafts a new policy architecture for a global climate deal, international offset policy and potential US offset standards need to create methodologies that directly address CCS funding at scale.  The more closely these policies are aligned with China’s own incentives and the unique context of its coal and power markets, the better chance they have of realizing the optimal role for CCS in global climate efforts.

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Kieran Oberman

Program on Global Justice
616 Serra St.
Encina Hall
Stanford, CA 94305-6055

(650) 723-0145
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PGJ Fellow 2009-2011
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Kieran Oberman completed his PhD at Oxford University.  His thesis,  "Immigration and Freedom of Movement," argued that people have a human right to freedom of movement that entails a right to cross international borders. He thus concluded that immigration restrictions could not be justified outside of emergency situations.

In his post-doctoral workat Stanford, where he divides  his time between The Program on Global Justice and the Center for Ethics in Society, Kieran is continuing to focus on the ethical issues surrounding international migration.  While at Stanford he has completed an article, "Immigration, Global Poverty and the Right to Stay", that argues against using migration as a means to address the problem of global poverty.  The article is forthcoming in Political Studies.  He has also written an article that explores the question of whether the brain drain of skilled workers from poor states could justify the imposition of immigration restrictions.  He is currently working on a publication, based upon his dissertation, entitled "Immigration as a Human Right". 

In the spring Kieran will teach a class entitled Introduction to Global Justice. The course is designed to encourage students to think critically about some of the most important issues in international politics including global poverty, terrorism, war, development and climate change.

Meeting addresses need for adapting crops to new climate conditions

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Development of new crop varieties that are more heat and drought tolerant will be critical for successful adaptation to a warmer world. A recent 3 day meeting of international climate and crop experts at Stanford University focused on specific needs and promising approaches for improving crops. A meeting synopsis and recommended priorities can be found in a summary report, Climate Extremes and Crop Adaptation.

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Rai and Victor's paper published in Economic and Political Weekly

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In a paper released in the 1 August 2009 issue of the Economic and Political Weekly Varun Rai and David G. Victor outline a strategy to inform which efforts in India offer the most leverage on emissions warming gases and which are most credible because they align with India's own interests.
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Energy, Environment, and Economic Growth in Asia

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This dialogue will bring together distinguished experts from Stanford and Silicon Valley, top specialists from around the region, and leaders in various fields such as business, politics, academia, and media.  We will begin with an exploration of the influence of energy competition on international relations in Asia.  After establishing the geopolitical context the group will explore new ideas on how to promote energy efficiency, clean technology, and the reduction of carbon emissions.

Experts will look closely at the Japanese experience in the development and dissemination of energy efficient and pollution-control technologies, critical elements of meeting growing demands for energy without causing greater harm to the environment.  We will discuss how the United States, under the new Obama administration, may contribute more to the reduction of carbon emissions and the advance of alternative energy technologies.  And we will analyze how the growing energy consumers in developing Asia can join a post-Kyoto Protocol that effectively mitigates the environmental impact of energy use and reduces the tensions arising from competition for energy resources.

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Kyoto International Community House Event Hall
2-1 Torii-cho,Awataguchi,
Sakyo-ku Kyoto,606-8536
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Stanford Kyoto Trans-Asian Dialogue

Burton Richter in Roll Call: US climate bill needs more support for energy R&D

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PESD affiliated faculty Burton Richter argues in Roll Call that the climate bill passed by the US House of Representatives misses the mark on several fronts, especially in its inadequate funding for long-term research. The Senate must do better.

Will climate change finally wake us from our energy lethargy? Three times in the past 36 years, our nation has suffered from oil shocks and done little to implement lasting policies that could avoid them in the future. We took some small steps in the 1970s and 1990s, but ultimately we failed to close the deal.

Today, we are more dependent than ever on imported oil - two-thirds of our total consumption in 2008 came from other nations compared to one-third in 1973. And today we face the recognized threat of climate change, which will affect the entire world dramatically in the coming decades - unless we and other nations reduce the production of greenhouse gases, primarily carbon dioxide.

For our oil dependence, we took half-measures. Will we do better on climate change? The House version of the climate bill, which passed by a narrow margin, offers some hope, but it misses the mark on several accounts. To satisfy various interests - some legitimate, others selfish - drafters of the legislation compromised away a number of crucial provisions. The big question now: Will the Senate make it better or worse?

The House gives away too many of the emission allowances that are central to cap-and-trade; places too much emphasis on renewables, which are not as ready for the big time as their advocates claim; gives too little emphasis to natural gas and nuclear power, both of which could play a large role in replacing coal; does not fund the necessary long-term research, development and demonstration program that President Barack Obama proposed; and places far too little emphasis on energy efficiency, which is easy to implement and saves money in the long run.

The Senate can do better. It should start by including in the legislation the president's Clean Energy Technology Fund, an investment of $15 billion per year over 10 years to develop affordable, low-emission energy technologies that could be used by the developing world as well as by rich countries. The provision wasn't included in the House bill, and I am one of 34 Nobel Laureates who recently wrote to the president, urging him to try to get Congress to include the fund in a final climate bill.

A stable funding mechanism for basic and applied research, development and demonstration is critical to developing the technologies we will need to greatly cut emissions in a cost-effective manner. The Senate should set aside at least 5 percent of all emission allowances for the Clean Energy Technology Fund, and for purposes of stability of funding, provide support for the full lifetime cost of a competitively selected project at the time the award is made.

Current technologies are a good start, but they are not up to doing the entire job. For example, we have no effective way to store energy from intermittent sources to smooth out the variations of wind and solar output that hugely complicate their use on a large scale.

Another challenge is the use of hydrogen fuel cells to store energy from intermittent sources and use it for transportation. The present cells use so much platinum as a catalyst that the entire yearly world supply of platinum is not enough to supply the fuel cells needed for U.S. auto production, much less the world's.

Our very expensive corn ethanol program is at best a marginal reducer of emissions, and if the effects of land-use changes are included, is positively harmful. There are more advanced biofuels that might actually do some good, but they, too, need more research and a lot more development and demonstration.

Nuclear power, a safe source available 24/7, is being slowed by concern about the lack of a permanent repository for spent nuclear fuel. There is no intermediate-term problem because spent fuel can be stored safely at reactor sites for many years. In the interim, we can do the research and development that might allow us to reduce the volume of waste in a way that is proliferation-resistant.

Energy efficiency is an easy, low-cost way to reduce emissions. There are many ways to improve efficiency in power generation, transportation and buildings that would benefit from the president's fund. Some things don't even need research and development, like an energy audit before the sale of any building that would tell the buyer how to save with simple upgrades that pay for themselves through reduced utility bills. Unfortunately, the House failed to include a provision for the audits, bowing to the National Association of Realtors, which seems to want buyers to know as little as possible.

Tackling climate change is not mission impossible. Deploying today's technologies and supporting the research and development for tomorrow's will put us on the right path toward achieving energy security and mitigating climate change.

Burton Richter is a Nobel Laureate (Physics, 1976), member of the National Academy of Sciences, and a past president of both the American Physical Society and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics. He is the Paul Pigott professor emeritus at Stanford University and the former director of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, one of the Department of Energy's science laboratories.

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El Nino-Southern Oscillation impacts on rice production in Luzon, the Philippines

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This study uses regression analysis to evaluate the relationships among sea surface temperature anomalies (SSTA) averaged over the Niño-3.4 region (5°N-5°S, 120°-170°W), rainfall, and rice production, area harvested, and yield in Luzon, the large island on which most Philippine rice is grown. Previous research on Philippine rice production and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has found negative associations between El Niño events and rice yields in rainfed systems. This analysis goes further and shows that both irrigated and rainfed ecosystems are impacted. It also compares impacts on area harvested and yield. Variations in average July-September Niño-3.4 SSTAs explain approximately 29% of the interannual variations in the deviations of total January-June (dry season) rice production from a polynomial trend for 1970-2005. In contrast, no impact was found on July-December production in either year t or t + 1. The impact of ENSO on dry-season rice production in Luzon appears to be primarily due to changes in area harvested rather than yield. Production declines for rainfed ecosystems are relatively larger than for irrigated ecosystems: a 1°C increase in average July-September Niño-3.4 SSTA is associated with a 3.7% decrease in irrigated dry-season production but with a 13.7% decline in rainfed dry-season production.

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Journal of Applied Meteorology and Climatology
Authors
Rosamond L. Naylor
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Real Drivers of Carbon Capture and Storage in China and Implications for Climate Policy

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The capture and permanent storage of CO2 emissions from coal combustion is now widely viewed as imperative for stabilization of the global climate.  Coal is the world’s fastest growing fossil fuel.  This trend presents a forceful case for the development and wide dissemination of technologies that can decouple coal consumption from CO2 emissions—the leading candidate technology to do this is carbon capture and storage (CCS). 

China simultaneously presents the most challenging and critical test for CCS deployment at scale.   While China has begun an handful of marquee CCS demonstration projects, the stark reality to be explored in this paper is that China’s incentives for keeping on the forefront of CCS technology learning do not translate into incentives to massively deploy CCS in power plant applications as CO2 mitigation would have it.  In fact, fundamental and interrelated Chinese interests—in energy security, economic growth and development, and macroeconomic stability—directly argue against large-scale implementation of CCS in China unless such an implementation can be almost entirely supported by outside funding.  This paper considers how these core Chinese goals play out in the specific context of the country’s coal and power markets, and uses this analysis to draw conclusions about the path of CCS implementation in China’s energy sector. 

Finally, the paper argues that effective climate change policy will require both the vigorous promotion and careful calculation of CCS’s role in Chinese power generation.  As the world approaches the end of the Kyoto Protocol in 2012 and crafts a new policy architecture for a global climate deal, international offset policy and potential US offset standards need to create methodologies that directly address CCS funding at scale.  The more closely these policies are aligned with China’s own incentives and the unique context of its coal and power markets, the better chance they have of realizing the optimal role for CCS in global climate efforts.

 

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Working Papers
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Program on Energy and Sustainable Development Working Paper #88
Authors
Varun Rai
Gang He
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Finesses and Game-Changers in Frontier Project Development: The Case of Carbon Capture and Storage

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Project development is particularly challenging in “frontier” environments where alternative technologies, conflicting laws and agencies, and uncertain benefits or risks constrain the knowledge or decisions of participants.  Carbon capture and storage (“CCS”) projects by means of geologic sequestration are pursued in such an environment.  In these circumstances, entrepreneurs can seek to employ two distinct types of tools:  the game-changer, being an improvement to the status quo for all those similarly situated, generally achieved through collective or governmental action; and the finesse, being an individualized pursuit of an extraordinary project that is minimally affected by a given legal, business or technological obstacle.  These techniques are illustrated in the case of CCS as to ownership of property rights, carbon dioxide (“CO2”) transportation economics, liability for stored CO2 following the closure of injection wells, inter-agency and federal-state conflicts, competing technologies, and uncertain economic or legal incentives.  The finesse and the game-changer should also be useful concepts for creative solutions in other applications.

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Program on Energy and Sustainable Development, Working Paper #87
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