UKH

Can someone explain how this country will achieve net zero emissions by 2030.

I'm genuinely interested. It would be great if we could.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Quiet_Earth_(film)

Or, more to the point - I'm not sure I believe 'net zero emissions' is actually possible, without achieving it through accounting tricks. Under current technology anyway. Well, OK, massive planting of deciduous trees might achieve it for a while, for the medium term.

Humans haven't had net zero emissions since before the widespread use of fire and agriculture. Possibly not even then.

Obviously we could do a lot to reduce our emissions to a less damaging level, though.

This has prompted me to think about what are the short term implications of going net zero by 2030.  Of course the best approach is to massively reduce consumption across the board making an indisputable reduction in emissions. 

However, in reality the push is to change what we currently do, i.e. move to electric cars, massively increase renewable energy production etc.  The problem with this (and therefore Labour's policies on electric cars and wind) is that this will lead to a massive increase in emissions in the short term due to all the additional extraction of resources, manufacturing etc needed.  Whilst longer term benefits are gained in the end, I am interested in what the effect of the short term spike will be.  Does that bring us to the tipping point quicker?  I wonder if anyone has analysed the various time scales of cost vs benefit in moving to clean transport and energy etc.  I can imagine there is some compromise between doing it to quickly and not quickly enough.

What really needs to happen is a massive change in human behaviour - focus on reduce.

As far as I understand it Labour's plan does not include carbon capture or nuclear and in order to reach net zero massive amounts of electricity storage will be required. Unfortunately the technology to store this amount of energy doesn't exist in any viable form.

Surely to get to net zero we need to be sequestering carbon out of the atmosphere faster than we're creating it?   The average carbon footprint of someone in the UK is ten tonnes apparently - I assume that's per year. So we're going to have to grow twice that weight in trees a year per person, or do some major CCS stuff.

Why the sarcastic reply?

I honestly believe the plan as I understand it, is not practical. If you disagree with me then simply explain why you think it is possible.

A mature Sitka spruce grows a cubic meter of timber a year, call that a ton of carbon.  So 20 trees per person or ~1.5 Bn.  That’s a square of ~40,000 trees per side.  With a linear spacing of 8 meters to accommodate their full size, that’s a block of land ~300 km x 300 km planted with forest, or 90,000 km^2.  We have about 250,000 km^2 of land.  

Moorland, roadsides, fancy ornamental gardens, golf courses, fields for non-working pets (mainly horses and donkeys), plant it all.  We got 2 scrappy acres with our house and I’ve been covering it with locally grown trees.  Every time a 1,000 acre ground moor goes up for sale I wish I had a million of two to throw at it...

The plan is 100% practical as long as you understand the reason behind it. It has nothing to do with hitting zero emissions in 11 years time. 

It's a pipe dream designed to capture the green vote and that is very powerful at the moment. Exactly like the 4 day week (without a loss in pay) is designed to win the workers vote and the free care for all pensioners is designed to win the gray vote. Oh and the free prescriptions as well. 

Not sure where all the money will come from to pay for all this but they all sound like vote winners to me. 

Aren't you talking about the existing Labour policy which gives no date for achieving net zero emissions?

I'm no expert but I think spruce might emit quite a bit of methane (a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide). It might make more sense to go for something slower-growing that doesn't.

Planting lots of trees is a nice, seductively simple-sounding solution, but I think there are likely to be a lot of problems with it too.

I wonder whether it might not be more realistic to capture carbon by encouraging phytoplankton growth in the oceans, then somehow gathering and storing the resulting organics. BUt there are risks there from methan emissions, too.

Interesting - I’ll do some reading.  I’m gradually felling our spruce and planting oak, rowan, ash and the like.  

Yes, like upsetting the landed gentry.  Perhaps I’m hopelessly naive but it seems somewhat obvious. It’s not an indefinite solution as forests become more carbon neutral when thoroughly mature.  

Not to mention unintended consequences.  We know that a much more heavily forested world was a happier world (climate wise).  The last time photosynthesising bacteria got out of control they wiped out almost all life on Earth in the Great Oxygenation Event...

I do think there's a big danger in pretending we can fix this, rather than acknowledging that, in all likelihood, the best we can achieve is merely to reduce the scale of the coming catastrophe.

We should be doing that - but also not kidding ourselves, and preparing to deal with the rapidly-warming future that almost certainly is coming.

But with the right actions now, perhaps it can still be less of a rapid change. That just doesn't make for a good soundbite -  "actually, we probably can't fix this; vote for us to try to make it a bit less bad".

I do think massive reforestation is probably going to be a big part of what we have to do - I'm just cautioning (and not necessarily you) against imagining it to be a silver bullet.

There are carefully drafted plans in place to achieve net zero by 2050. I'll post a link when I get home. They would involve planting loads of trees, carbon capture and nuclear generation. The cost would be between 1&2% of GDP.

It would of course be good to go faster but I'd like to know how that can be achieved, both practically and politically.

Presumably if the trees catch fire anytime in the future then it might as well have been left as moor ?

Creative accounting.

Too many valuable long lived petrol and natural gas assets still earning their keep and too much carbon in the food supply to realistically do it any other way. So we'll be ignoring the embodied energy of import goods/commodities and pushing a massive short term offsetting drive, likely funding programs elsewhere rather than reforesting the UK.

Realistically we won't get anywhere close by 2030, we'll still be mired in the brexit fallout.

jk

It's totally doable but it's but a million miles from a true and sustainable 'nett zero'.

jk

Only if they all burn where they stand (which they won't) rather than in a in a CO2 capturing/sequestering power plant. 

jk

As I understand it the plan is to ban all petrol engined cars.

Not really.  A lot of the carbon is sequestered underground by trees (and so untouched by fire) and a lot more inside the main trunk which in many sorts of “natural” forrest fire emerges unscathed.  Some trees even drop resin packed bark chipping as a form of warfare to burn out competitors. 

There have been some bad fires in California in recent years, likely because management prevents natural fires burning the accumulation of sufficient underbrush in regular “cleansing” fires that don’t disturb the main trees.  End result is that so much builds up near the ground that when a fire breaks through management it’s catastrophic.

That'd be ban all new fossil fuel cars by 2030 I presume? That should be technically achievable and worthwhile.

jk

Yes, hence we have oil, coal, and gas.  But mostly over huge timescales.  The advantage of steady state forest seems minimal in an emergency situation.  JK's carbon capture seems to be a solution, except it doesn't really exist much yet.  Are trees the best option anyway ? 

No.  Trees sequester carbon underground from day 1 - what do you think the root systems are made from?  

Yes, I said as much earlier.  You seem confused however -  if I plant a new forest now it will not be steady state for a century or more, it will be growing.

 >JK's carbon capture seems to be a solution, except it doesn't really exist much yet. 

It is orthogonal to planting trees. From a CO2 viewpoint...  If we have a carbon capture power plant it doesn’t matter if it’s burning oil or trees. If we have a power plant without carbon capture it doesn’t matter if it’s burning oil or trees.  

Better than grouse moors.  It’s possible some other intensively grown, harvested and sequestered crop is pulls more CO2 out, but that needs a lot of maintenance and ongoing energy spend.

That's not what I understand.

Ban all petrol driven vehicles and limit travel in electric ones.

The better option, grow trees, build from wood. You lock carbon away for centuries, plus save the carbon that would have been used making bricks, concrete etc. This of course is more long term. 

Given the life of a car, you'd have to ban sales of internal combustion engine vehicles now. So by 2030 every vehicle is electric. Trucks, cars, trains, vans, ferries, container ships... a truly massive challenge in all respects even with a 2040 or 2050 deadline. 

Yes, obviously.

No confusion.  My statement "The advantage of steady state forest seems minimal in an emergency situation." was about steady state forest.

That was the point I was making.   Along with the following.

No not obviously.  You said trees sequester carbon “mostly over huge timescales” in response to me saying they sequester it from day 1, and then say “obviously” when I point out that I was talking clearly about the here and now.

Again, I was talking with abundant clarity about planting new trees here and now on denuded land.

I was not .

Then I’m afraid I still see confusion in your 14:19 post as you talk about steady state forest and geological timescales in response to posts clearly talking about planting trees now to create new growth forest now to sequester carbon now. So apart from your comment wondering if trees are the best plant for the job, I have no idea how you view the comments you made on my post as relevant, or what their contribution to anything is - you posted these comments in response to me challenging your comment that a forest fire releases most of the sequestered carbon - a point you have not yet justified in any way. 

Part of the solution. In July Ethiopa planted 350 million trees in a single day.

Why couldn't we do the same next Easter Monday?

Trees grow on land we have that doesn't produce food, they stabilise soil, mitigate flooding, provide shelter, shade, habitat, recreation space, raw material, energy and jobs. Plus people like them. They strike me as a pretty good option really but not a complete solution, far from it.

Carbon capture from biomass will produce expensive, carbon negative energy and it also gives forested land economic value. The problems are political and economic more than technical but on those fronts we're now in full retreat.

jk

Via QE. My understanding was that resources, not money, were the limiting factor, particularly with relation to a Green New Deal.

It does matter what we burn and how.

Biomass CC with geological storage: Carbon negative (good). Expensive.

Biomass releasing CO2: Slightly carbon positive. Fairly Cheap.

Fossil CC with geological storage: Slightly carbon positive. Expensive.

Fossil releasing CO2: Very carbon positive. Cheap for now.

It's probably not the most efficient way to capture CO2 but the power and the increased value of woodland is a bonus worth having.

And is likely bad for the soil.

jk

I think we are both oversimplifying.

It matters what we grow.

It matters how much carbon we burn.

What we burn only matters if there’s a link between the two above - and the link doesn’t have to be that we burn what we grow.  In theory if we burn what we grow, it promotes growing trees and sequestering some carbon in the growth process and more in the burning process,  As it stands burning biomass is so horrifically inefficient it seems criminal compared to rolling out more solar electric in its place.

Really? It may not release previously sequestered carbon (fossil fuel), but it's not reducing what's in the atmosphere is it?

Potentially, yes.

CO2 & H20 & Light > Wood & O2 > Heat & H20 & CO2 > Concentrated CO2 stripped off and stored geologically

Done perfectly (simplistically!) atmospheric CO2 and sunlight are the fuel, water is the emission.

The 'potentially' caveat relates to the energy used to harvest/dry/transport/chip the wood for burning and the fraction of the produced CO2 permanently captured. Stripping and compressing the CO2 for well injection reduces plant efficiency driving up energy unit cost but if those losses are tightly controlled there is potential for nett carbon negative energy.

jk

....and how long does it take for a Sitka spruce to mature? Do we have time for that? Will it grow in the south of the country? Will they simply be chopped down and burnt after 20 years, thus releasing much of that sequestered carbon back into the atmosphere?

There's a tree (many) for every climatic zone. No we, probably don't have the time but the same or worse will be true in the future too and unless planting trees now (which have many other benefits) is actively preventing us delivering a significantly better (partial) solution it's hard to make a case against them.

Combustion CO2 (whatever the source) doesn't have to go to the atmosphere, that's largely a political and economic choice.

jk

Not very long - they’re seriously chunky within 15 years.  About 3 meters tall by 8 years going off the young ones we have...

Hopefully.  The sooner we start planting the better.., 

I would have thought so, but there’s plenty of other fast growing trees as well.

Well, that’s up to us.  Even burnt something like 50% of the carbon remains sequestered underground in the root systems and the soil.  Then more trees are planted etc etc.

Ah. Now that doesn't look remotely deliverable.

New cars today will still be nice in 2030, 99+% of UK sales are still combustion powered. Even if we somehow definitively cauterise the brexit mess by 2020 then focus almost exclusively on environmentally focused economic transformation I doubt we'd be at 50/50 for electric sales by 2025.

jk

If you plant a tree and later cut it down.  Does 50% of the carbon really remain in the ground ?  Will the roots not decay, get eaten by insects and fungus, to eventually oxidize back to  CO2 ? 

As I said before I am talking about planting new forest now to sequester carbon now.  

When a tree dies 400 years hence that’s another issue.  Should we not take measures now because 400 years hence someone might do something releasing the carbon? Literally anything we do with the carbon has a chance that it will be returned to the atmosphere…

Having said that, no – a fraction of the carbon in the roots is never returned to the atmosphere, and that fraction is partially under our control by how we manage the land.  As you are likely aware, soil gradually compacts and converts to clay.  Organic carbon is sequestered in that clay, and if left alone is so sequestered in indefinitely.

As another poster has said, we can sequester forest carbon by using the word for construction instead of manufactured materials. One could also imagine burying it sufficiently deep underground in clay that it ends up becoming geologically preserved - as you yourself noted eventually happens to a fraction of organic carbon anyhow if we don’t burn it...

I was questioning the statement you had just made "Even burnt something like 50% of the carbon remains sequestered underground in the root systems and the soil."   I don't think it is correct.

The correctness of the statement depends on what happens in the long term future – you put forward one example and there are other examples. It depends on the species, the location, the forestry management, 101 different factors. 

Also, at the risk of sounding like a broken record I am talking about planting new forest now to sequester carbon now.  Very early on I acknowledged on this thread that mature or steady-state forests are not good at sequestering carbon by themselves.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out how to make a mature forest sequester carbon when that time comes...

I’m not sure when and where you are living, but I am living in the here and now in the UK where there are vast amounts of carbon neutral or carbon negative land going to waste, that would rapidly start to sequester carbon for up to half a millennia starting today if we planted trees on it today.

Yes, in 500 years time someone might chop all the trees down and burn them.  At least some form of decent society still exist in 500 years time to do that…

If you chopped down a full grown tree and just left it on the ground, it would take so many years to rot and decay, that by that time young saplings in it's place would be absorbing vast amounts if carbon. 

Apart from in the biggest and worst fires, many trees like pines that have thick bark and high branches survive, others that die  aren't all burnt to ash and the slow cycle of rotting begins. 

Normal natural fires from lightning are part of a natural cycle. Just like storm damage. 

My estimate would be that only something like 1% of the carbon remains in the ground if they are "chopped down and burnt after 20 years".

You are not qualifying your statements well enough for me to engage with them.

Do you mean immediately after the trees are cut down that 1% is left in the ground? If so you have incredibly bad knowledge of the amount of roots a tree has.  Going off my limited experience digging on my turf, root hang around for a long, long time after a tree is gone.

Or do you mean if the tree is cut down in 20 years time, that several centuries later it will be as if the tree had never been?

As I keep repeating, I am proposing much forestation now to sequester carbon now.  Consider a policy of aggressive reforesting until things are back in balance with the atmosphere and green energy technology has moved on, and atmospheric carbon capture has become cheaper.  It’s difficult I know but try and imagine imagine a crazy world where part of that policy included not cutting down and burning the trees after 20 years? Madness.

Yes, perhaps in 300 years of 500 years time the forest is steady-state.  It’s not removing any more carbon from the atmosphere. Job done – a large amount of carbon has been pulled out of the atmosphere and things got less bad.  We could speculate until the cows come home on what happens then, but chances are everything is fusion powered, cheap energy is in excess, and the trees will be converted into houses for a population of 100 billion people wondering what to do with their lives...

Further, what relevance does cutting the tree down in 20 years have if we are planting them for sequestrate carbon? You might as well say what happens if someone opens the valve to an underground cavern full of sequestered CO2.  We have loads of forest in the UK that isn’t been cut down every 20 years and burnt, why is it so hard to imagine that we could have some more?

This

I am not engaging with your complex waffling, only your previous statement

I’m sorry if you view it as complex waffling.

I don’t think I have said anything complex and I’m sure you’re a smart chap and can understand it all without difficulty.

If I keep my posts short, you reply with disagreements so far out of context as to be invalid.  When called out on this you stick to terse out of context posts.  When I take the time to try and overcome your apparent confusion on my view you accuse me of complex waffling.  I’d almost think you were being deliberately obtuse.

I still think you are confused - if we forest now to sequester CO2 why on earth would we cut it all down in 20 years?  What’s that, three times you’ve not answered this question? 

I can only assume that you know your statement was wrong.  But don't want to admit it.  I don't care.  I shall leave it it that.  Have a good evening.

No.

No.

See my 16:51 post - how much carbon stays locked away in the long term depends on many factors.  I have repeatedly said I am talking about the short term.  

Sure you don’t.  You care so little you are spending your time using ambiguity over the timeframes being discussed to endlessly try and convince anyone else reading this (probably 0.0 people as it’s another “Wintertree goes off on one derailment”) that I’m wrong.  

Your original post to me intimated that a forest’s carbon is returned to air in the event of a forest fire. You didn’t qualify timescales as “>500 years” so I assumed a timescale of “soon” given the context of your post.  I stated that a load remains in the ground when you burn a forest.  I stand by that.  You stated - with a lot of opaqueness to begin with -that on a long enough timescale the carbon in the ground returns to the air.  I don’t disagree with that – if people don’t take steps to keep it in the ground and don’t allow the forest to naturally recover, as it would.

You seem to think you have scored some victory here, but I see only posts that are not sufficiently well explained or qualified to be capable of being deemed “right” or “wrong” and both of us making different unstated assumption on timescales.

What is this now, the fourth time, but you haven’t explained why people will cut and burn down all the trees in 20 years? It’s an oddly specific concern…

Here's an alternative to planting trees: https://newatlas.com/environment/algae-fueled-bioreactor-carbon-sequestrati...   although I suspect it might be vapourware.

Here's another possible alternative, seaweed: https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_flannery_can_seaweed_help_curb_global_warming...

Here's the plan to be carbon neutral by 2050: https://www.carbonbrief.org/in-depth-the-uk-should-reach-net-zero-climate-g...

Doesn't matter, if you have 20 hectares, wood chip and burn 1 hectare annually on rotation. You are in effect carbon neutral, apart from harvesting fuel etc.  

But you will have leaf litter that has rotted down and added to the soil. Roots will eventually rot, although pine takes an exceedingly long time due to the levels of tar in them. 

Fuel for harvesting.  Fuel for chipping.  Fuel for drying.  Fuel to ship if across the Atlantic.  Fuel to drive or train it to Drax...

It might make sense if used on site and in rotation but it’s a bit bananas how it’s actually used.  Near us is field after field of willow that grows 3 meters tall after its annual coppicing.  I dread to think what it’s doing to the soil...

Mankind will (or will not) manage to reset the carbon balance. Not the Labour Party. The conceit of these people. I nevertheless understand the desperation for popularity.

And of course this all happens by people doing f*ck all.

? I don't thing its economically achievable, at least not in the time frame they are talking about. It needs massive investment in infrastructure and as we all know pretty much every project runs massively over budget and then you have to factor in the NIMBIES, we all want green energy but no one wants it spoiling their view. 

It's just sound bites designed to win votes. 

I didn't listen to the debates yesterday, I'm not that sad, but I did listen to Jeremy on R4 this morning. He was very vague about dates. The Green Deal plan I read had been put together by someone who still had acne. It may have been an extension of his A level project, who knows. I suspect that some grown ups got round to reading it in the last few days and have quietly explained to Jeremy why the plan is nonsense and the difficulties it would present.

It's frustrating though. A party who could be governing this country by the end of the year have nailed the 2030 flag to the mast and will have to be seen to be implementing something that at least pays lip service to the date.

How much better it would have been if they had instead pledged that if elected they would ask the Climate Change Committee, government's independent advisor, to come up with a plan that achieved net zero emissions in the shortest possible time while keeping cost to GDP less than X percent, did not restrict an individuals rights to their own transport or impose hard restrictions on air travel etc. I think that that approach would have been sensible and less accident prone.

Not exactly a headline grabber though. Government going to take climate advice from scientists and impliment a sustainable low impact plan to slow global warming over an indeterminate time frame. 

UK carbon neutral by 2030. When they don't deliver assuming they get in to power they will just blame a lack of investment by thr tories and and affluent torie NIMBIES blocking their every effort for renewable energy. 

Look there’s plenty happening on emissions regardless of your pet politicians issuing unachievable targets. You could actually make a difference yourself, starting today. Stop being a sheep.

What's my ovine tendencies got to do with climate change? You could make a difference, by stopping production of so much hot air

You like one of these bloke moaning about Greta, telling all and sundry she should be in school.

Everyone should be doing there bit, and everyone should have far reaching aspirations. You didn't get very far sitting non your arse moaning about what everyone else is trying to achieve.

It only needs a little bit of water for you to germinate

Standard pattern of engagement from David when he needs to not understand something to preserve some preconceived idea.

jk

The number doesn't stand much scrutiny but it's an interesting project.

Obtaining the land is the issue, nature will re-seed it in no time once the land use changes and the sheep/deer/burning is removed/stopped.

jk

I thought this was interesting and positive

https://phys.org/news/2018-11-algae-sustainably-carbon-dioxide-atmosphere.h...

and to the point of obtaining the land 

 "Saltwater algae thrive in sunny areas. In North Africa, for example, there are ample stretches of land where agriculture makes no sense."

That's not to say obtaining land would be easy, but it might address sequestration of productive land to some degree

Good plan.  Perhaps out at sea ?

I had a good look in Google and couldn't find anything that disputes the numbers. Do you have a link?

I'm not aware of any plans to change land use, do you have a link? I'd have that it was possible to plant millions of trees in Britain in books and crannies in every town and in unused bits of the countryside, old quarries, riverbanks that sort of place before any change in land use need be invoked.

You missed out the bit about needing an area the size of Algeria but yes, there are new ideas being developed all the time.

At the moment though, I see the only prudent course of action is to employ all working and available technologies to tackle climate change and as better solutions become available, modify our plan to accommodate them.

Radio4's More or Less ran a short piece on it about 4 weeks ago IIRC.

That is a change of use. People own 'nooks and crannies', if they don't have trees now then it is mainly because people don't want trees there for one reason or another or the present use suppresses their growth. If we're going to plant anything like enough to make a difference it's going to be in the hills, everywhere where only sheep, game birds or deer are currently viable.

jk

I agree - although some very crude estimates suggest there’s a million lowland acres devoted to horses and at least 100,000 to golf courses...  These tend to never come up in discussions of carbon footprint.  To my book keeping, carbon footprint includes the amount of forest sequestration displaced by the activity and these two are red lining that number on a per-person basis.

Golf courses,  I recently picked up a contract to look after the shoe cleaning compressors for a company that supplies golf equipment. I have been amazed at how many courses there are tucked away. Obviously very green places with their perfectly cut greens, car parks full of oversized luxury cars and air compressors to blow the grass clippings off rather than wipe them down. To those that don't know 85% of the energy a compressor uses is lost in heat, its one of the least energy efficient forms of power going. 

There is a lot wrong with golf courses, particularly in those hotter parts of the world where they plough through obscene amounts of water just to maintain that beautiful manicured green.

However in the uk, although they are far from perfect, the areas of rough provide some valuable interconnecting habitat missing from intensive agriculture. A surprising amount of the midlands heathland is to be found between the greens!

Golf courses never stand out as excessively large grassy areas, around here at least they are thin strips of grass buried in woodland and scrub, often hard to spot from the air and too broken up to land safely. Airfields, sports fields and racecourses (auto and equine) are notably big patches of managed/mowed grass (something we always have one eye on!).

jk

It's not possible, not in 10 years. Not unless the UK switches to a war footing and immediately redirects all economics efforts to achieving it.

The big CO2 emitters in the UK are transport and energy production.

At present roughly 50% of UK energy is from low carbon sources (wind/nuclear mainly), so you need to firstly replace that capacity with other low carbon sources. How many new nuclear power plants or wind farms can you build in 10 years? Not enough to replace half the generating capacity of the UK!

Then you have to deal with transport, which means rapid switch to EV vehicles, including the actual vehicles themselves, plus all associated infrastructure, and a subsequent increased electricity generating capacity to cope with demand.   

Residential heating and cooking will be another big one, with majority of UK currently using either gas or oil for both, so switching would need another large increase in electricity generating capacity, including new heating systems for large percentage of UK housing stock.

All in 10 years....