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THE REWILDING PROJECT

Aotearoa New Zealand’s braided rivers are internationally significant, but they’ve been systematically strangled, and in some cases, have left behind zombie rivers. As climate change threatens to make the problems worse, some academics and scientists are re-imagining what it means to live with rivers.

By the time it started raining high in the Southern Alps, it was already too late for those downstream.

It had been raining for several days in the headwaters of the Rangitata River, between Christchurch and Timaru, by the evening of December 6, 2019. A sudden downpour overnight brought the highest river levels observed in two decades, and made it inevitable the river would burst its seams. The question was where.

Like other braided rivers in the region, the Rangitata has been heavily modified. Roads, stop banks, and farmland flank its edges; an enormous line of ponds stapled to its side, designed to capture flood waters for irrigation, resemble an artificial second river.

Before human settlement, the river would have simply flooded, forging a new path for itself. But now it was barricaded with stop banks, its floodplain populated by people with lives and property. The river had been narrowed, giving the kinetic energy of the floodwaters little opportunity to disperse; it could only build strength as it barrelled down the plains.

When the floodwaters came, they breached the entrance to what used to be the South Branch of the river.

Long ago, the Rangitata river split in two. The Southern Branch has since dried up, and is now covered in irrigated pasture (the land between the two branches was Rangitata Island, a name which remains).

The floods revived the dead southern branch, which at its peak had more water flowing down it than the main river itself. Some of that water itself broke out, flooding state highway one and cutting off the bottom part of the country for several days. At least two more breaches in the main river added to the flooding.

Flood – Environment Canterbury: Flooding on farmland from the Rangitata river in 2019

From the ground, it would have seemed like chaos; floods of water rampaging over the plains, damaging anything in its path. But from above, a different picture was emerging. Environment Canterbury (ECan) staff were photographing the floods from the air, later stitching together the images to create a mosaic of the event.

It showed the floodwaters were following a predetermined pattern. The flood was itself a river, with twists and braids and tributaries, much like the Rangitata itself.

A zombie river, long ago buried beneath asphalt and housing and irrigators, had been revived.

Over thousands of years, the braided rivers of the Canterbury plains painstakingly sketched the landscape they now occupy.

There are more than 150 braided rivers in Aotearoa New Zealand, almost all of which are in the South Island. Their floodplains alone span around 250,000ha, more than double the size of Auckland City.

Most notable are the braided rivers that formed the Canterbury Plains, the largest area of flat land in the country: The Rakaia, the Rangitata, the Waimakariri, the Waitaki, the Ashley/Rakahuri, and the Waiau.

It is a privileged responsibility, given how few of the world’s rivers are braided. Most rivers, globally speaking, are meandering: They have a single channel, filled with water, that goes from one place to another. Think of the Waikato, the Clutha, the Avon.

Braided rivers are complicated, dynamic, destructive; they are three-dimensional, in that water also flows beneath the river, popping up as springs and wetlands which are periodically destroyed and recreated, as if the braided river system is creating its own universe.

Some say braided rivers are better seen as four-dimensional; they move across time, existing in different shapes and forms on the scale of millennia. Where a river ends now may be dozens of kilometres from where it ended centuries ago.

Several specific factors are required for a river to become braided. One is gradient: They must start at high altitude, tumbling steeply to sea-level over a short distance. They also need a constant supply of rock and sediment, which usually comes from young, rapidly eroding mountain ranges like the Southern Alps which are large enough to create their own weather.

Rain and snow strips the mountains of rock and sediment, as do the massive glaciers that emerge and recede over long time periods, cutting against the mountains, leaving more rock and sediment, all of which is swept downstream towards the coast.

Much of this rock settles on the river beds, forming shingle islands between small, twisting water channels. When it floods, the streams merge into a single channel, carrying the rock and sediment out to sea in a torrent, which is swept back towards the land by the tides to build beaches and protect against coastal flooding.

When the floodwaters recede, the river may have redesigned itself; shifted its islands, created new braids, destroyed old ones. Then the process begins anew.

Central to this process is flooding.

All rivers flood in the right conditions, but for braided rivers, floods are a defining aspect of their physical function.

Braided rivers are more complicated. They are incredibly wide, and contain a series of narrow channels that weave around mounds of rock. Where the river begins and ends is not always clear; they cut into the landscape, forming terraces, which can be indistinguishable from a traditional riverbank.

“The problem with braided rivers, like any other river, is they periodically break their banks,” says Sonny Whitelaw, manager of braided river conservation group BRaid (Braided River aid)​.

“The natural reaction is to say we’re going to put up these barricades to control the river and prevent them from flooding. And of course, the more you confine it, the more you risk flooding, because you’re trying to carry the same amount of water in a much narrower channel.”

We sometimes think of river flooding as abnormal; a departure from regular order, a river’s failure to fulfil its implied promise to neatly channel water from one place to another.

But flooding is a feature, not a bug. Floods create and destroy new habitat, and carry sediment from the mountains to the coasts. The tension comes when people, property, and infrastructure are put in the way, justifying further measures to control the river, which can themselves make the problem worse.

That was evident during the catastrophic Canterbury floods early this month, which caused widespread damage, mostly from braided river flooding.

For many, it was a lucky escape. The flooding was worst in the smaller braided rivers, namely the Ashburton and the Ashley/Rakahuri, largely because their headwaters are in the foothills, which are more influenced by northeasterly rain (the larger braided rivers, with headwaters higher in the mountains, are more influenced by traditional westerly rain).

Some, of course, were not so lucky. Lives and property were damaged; the rivers, unable to be controlled, revived their dead channels, indifferent to what had been built in the interim.

It shows when a braided river floods, even smaller ones, the consequences can be severe. It highlights a fundamental tension: Can humans and braided rivers peacefully co-exist, particularly given the expected impacts of the climate crisis, which, in some ways, will make the rivers more powerful than ever?

 

***

When the Waimakariri River north of Christchurch spilled its banks in 1868, it caused significant alarm in the city and its surrounds.

Water flooded much of Christchurch, including Cathedral Square. But the worst damage was done in Kaiapoi, on the northern bank of the river.

Waimakariri – Alden Williams: A wide section of the Waimakariri river.

As detailed by The Press: “Kaiapoi, in spite of all the protective works and cuttings constructed by the inhabitants in the hope of averting the attacks of their dreaded enemy, has, we fear, suffered terribly.”

The language used by the newspaper was instructive.

To some, the Waimakariri is a tupuna, a taonga, a provider of mahinga kai. To the settlers, it was a “dreaded enemy”, something to be protected from.

The settlers were not living with the river; they were at war with it. In some ways, they still are.

Communities have long been built along rivers. Floodplains are fertile, flat, and easy to develop; the rivers themselves can be harnessed as machines for economic growth.

“The first civilisations on our planet emerged in places like Mesopotamia – ‘between the rivers’ – so it’s not a new thing,” says Professor Gary Brierley,​ a river scientist and chair of physical geography at the University of Auckland.

“And just like those ancient civilisations fell over because practices were unsustainable, what we’re doing is unsustainable.”

The problems have become more pronounced as society has moved closer and closer to the rivers, emboldened by the idea they can be controlled.

We can build stop banks to prevent flooding, or capture floodwaters when they get too high; we can funnel rivers down a particular path, take the gravel out of the riverbed, stuff streams and tributaries back into the main channel when they break out.

But some of those practices have undoubtedly made the problem worse, and the costs have become increasingly hard to justify.

In Christchurch, efforts to protect the city from the Waimakariri River are costly. The most recent upgrade of the stop bank system cost around $40m. In 2020, insurers nationwide paid out nearly $170m in flooding-related damage (figures which include surface flooding from rain).

Between 1990 and 2012, around 12,000ha of river margin land in Canterbury was claimed by farmers, an analysis by ECan found. Some of this development has been in the riverbed itself, and has put productive land in the path of river floods and erosion.

Braided rivers have been tapped for water to irrigate farmland, and dammed to generate electricity. The flatlands cleared by the rivers have made way for quarries, housing, landfills and other infrastructure, further justifying engineering solutions to protect against floods.

We drive our cars through the gravel braids to fish introduced species like salmon and trout. Introduced predators feast on threatened native species that live in braided habitat, and exotic weeds and trees choke the river margins, further disrupting the river’s natural flow.

To manage flooding and use land for economic development, braided rivers have been narrowed significantly, which makes them more hydraulically efficient: They carry water faster, with more energy. At the same time, wetlands – a crucial buffer against flooding – have been systematically removed.

With climate change, heavy rainfall events are expected to become more severe, particularly in the headwaters of the major braided rivers. At the same time, drier conditions on the plains could increase reliance on water, particularly for farms, moving us closer to the rivers.

“We’ve got all these factors conspiring to make things more difficult for us, and where we’re at now is only going to be accentuated into the future unless we turn some of these things around,” Brierley says.

“We wanted the convenience of rivers, but at the same time, we wanted to turn our backs to them in terms of a lot of the practices that we undertook.”

Dead channels south of the Waimakariri River show its former path.

It has prompted a new way of thinking among some river scientists. As the relationship between rivers and humanity becomes more fraught, how do we co-exist?

Earlier this year, a group of New Zealand academics and scientists co-authored a piece arguing that rivers were being “strangled”, and actions were required to undo the damage.

It is a concept gaining favour internationally. Experts in the United Kingdom recently argued letting rivers run wild could significantly reduce flooding; In the United States, ageing dams are being systematically dismantled to allow rivers to flow more freely. Attempts to restore the Old Rhine River in Europe by allowing its natural functions to return have had promising results.

There are many names for this practice; rewilding, reanimation, redynamisation, integrated river management, decolonisation. In the simplest terms, it’s letting a river be a river.

It’s an idea that has gained favour in Aotearoa New Zealand over the last five years. It’s not limited to water scientists; a cross-disciplinary group including engineers, ecologists, and geomorphologists have made the argument for letting rivers be rivers.

It can cause questioning of standard practices within their respective disciplines

“There is often a tension between engineering and science,” says Dr Heide Friedrich,✓​ an associate professor of engineering at the University of Auckland.

“In engineering, we want to put everything in boxes – everything needs to go a certain way. Whereas in science, we understand complexity, holistic assessment, and so on.”

Engineers have played a significant role in river management. By one estimate, stop banks in Aotearoa New Zealand span around 5000km, more than double the length of the country itself. They protect many billions of dollars of assets – not to mention lives – from floods.

But the cost is not only financial. Some of the environmental consequences have not been well understood.

After modest rainfall near Franz Josef in 2016, the Waiho River breached a stopbank and took out a hotel. A few years later, the same river flooded again, destroying a bridge which cost $6m to replace.

It comes after a long period of trying to confine the river, but sediment build-up on the river-bed has increased water levels. The solution has been to build the stop banks higher, which is not financially sustainable. One option is to let the river reclaim its floodplain, which has been converted to pasture, or to move Franz Josef township entirely.

Another example, Friedrich says, is floodwater harvesting – taking water from floods that would otherwse flow out to sea to store for irrigation. It is used on the Rangitata River, where floodwaters are stored in enormous ponds beside the river.

While it may seem sensible, floods appear to have a significant role in transferring sediment, both out to sea and on the river-bed itself. Once a sediment regime is altered, it can take decades to reverse, and the impacts can be significant; sediment provides shelter to aquatic life, and builds up coastlines to protect against erosion, a growing problem with climate change.

It’s the sort of problem engineers need to grapple with, Friedrich says. Conventional systems don’t always work.

“In the past, often engineers did a lot of studies, came up with solutions and implemented them. But especially when it comes to water environments, we see there are a lot of unintended consequences,” she says.

“We need to ask critical questions of water processes before we sign off on an engineering solution. Just because there could be an engineering solution doesn’t mean we should use it.”

In one sense, the problem is simple to describe. Humans, particularly since colonial settlement, have operated under the assumption rivers are static, a strategic error that becomes harder to reverse the more time goes on.

“I think the first step is recognising we have created a problem,” says Dr Dan Hikuroa,​ an Earth systems scientist and a senior lecturer in Māori studies at the University of Auckland.

“A river has been a river mai rānō, since forever. We’ve created a problem by building on its banks or nearby, restricting it.”

Hikuroa advocates for a mixture of science and Mātauranga.

River management in Aotearoa New Zealand has been pre-occupied with a river’s component parts; setting acceptable levels for the likes of nitrogen, phosphorus and E. coli, each of which can be independently measured and controlled.

Much of the public (and political) debate about freshwater has centred on “swimmability” – whether rivers can fulfil the recreational needs of humans.

For some river scientists, mātauranga has clarified questions science has been unable to resolve. What if, instead of seeing a river as a machine to be controlled, something that can be deconstructed, we recognised its mauri and accepted it has a fundamental right to be a river?

The two forms of knowledge are not inherently in conflict, and can be complementary. It is an idea, appropriately, informed by the structure of a braided river itself: He awa whiria, two channels weaving and twisting, creating something stronger.

“If you can imagine two strands of knowledge, when you have woven them, they’ll be stronger than those individual strands were on their own,” Hikuroa says.

“Each maintains its own integrity within that new thing, whatever it is.

“It’s not just understanding the role of nitrogen, or phosphorus, or E. coli – Those are discrete pieces of information that are valuable and valid on their own, but make most sense when considered as part of that holistic system. It’s when we go right down on those small parts, as opposed to looking at the whole system, where things can go awry.”

24052021 photo Alden Williams
Water storage ponds on the banks of the Rangitata river.
File generic drone aerial

It is a view that has already moved beyond academia.

Te Awa Tupua, the law granting the Whanganui river legal personhood, recognises such values explicitly: “Te Awa Tupua is an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements,” the law says.

Similar wording is contained in Te Mana o Te Wai, the concept underlying the Government’s freshwater reforms in 2020: In its hierarchy of obligations, the health and well-being of the water comes first, ahead of human and economic needs.

A few years ago, at the Christchurch District Court, a farmer was charged with an unusual offence –building a wall in the Selwyn River.

The Selwyn River is braided over some of its length. Much of its observable span is dry, meaning the course of the river channel – particularly where it starts and ends – can be hard to determine.

What seemed like a standard prosecution would come to have significant ramifications.

The farmer acknowledged building the structure – a bund to protect his land from flooding – without permission, but disputed the claim it was in the riverbed, which would come with a harsher punishment.

He argued the wall was in the floodplain, not the riverbed itself. He was found guilty, but appealed.

The High Court sided with the farmer, as did the Court of Appeal.

It speaks to the confusing way in which rivers are defined. Under the Resource Management Act (RMA), a riverbed is: “[T]he space which the waters of the river cover at its fullest flow without overtopping its banks”.

Neither “fullest flow” nor “banks” are defined. So what does it mean?

In bringing the prosecution, ECan had interpreted it to mean where the river would flow in a one-in-20 or one-in-50 year flooding event, an argument it had successfully used before. Under this definition, a river’s floodplains would be considered part of the river.

The High Court, however, disagreed. It cited a 1905 case regarding the Hutt River, which defined a river in relation to normal seasonal flow. Under this definition, a river does not include its floodplain; it is a static channel. The court’s interpretation stands, radically changing the definition of some riverbed land.

The biggest consequences are for braided rivers, which are, technically speaking, mostly floodplain, and are clearly not static.

The regular flow of water – the channel – is a minor part of a braided river; it’s only after heavy rain, when the water swells and erodes the river’s banks, changing the river’s course, that the river operates how it should.

As other countries move further towards unstrangling their rivers, legally speaking, New Zealand’s are more strangled than ever (the Government has announced an overhaul of the RMA, but it’s unclear if the definition of a riverbed will change).

“Under the RMA, the definition of a braided river isn’t a braided river – it goes right back to this colonial attitude towards a river being just a channel,” says Sonny Whitelaw, of BRaid.

It’s part of a broader problem, she says. How do you define the position of something that constantly moves?

“The question is, what exactly is a braided river? Are we looking at a braided river as it was yesterday, or last year, or last century, or before people arrived?

“This is a conundrum we’ve got. The damn things don’t conveniently stay in one nice to find place – they’re prone, at a moment’s notice, to just sort of pickup and change location.”

 

If you’ve flown into Christchurch, you may have seen how this happens. Land around the braided rivers are covered in stretch marks.

They are dead channels and streams, left by the Waimakariri River as it shifted north to its current position (thousands of years earlier, the river likely flowed near Te Waihora, south of the city.)

With no intervention, the river would likely shift back, over a long enough time period. With the country’s second-largest city now in the way, protected by 100km of stop banks, that is unlikely to happen.

It is an issue across the lower stretches of every braided river, and the defining challenge for the river reanimation movement.

“We have already encroached on them too much, whether it’s from agriculture, or weeds, or our bridges and roads and wastewater treatment plants, cities, you name it,” Whitelaw says.

“I feel like I struggle with this every day. We either choose to take a holistic view and say okay, we need to withdraw, we need to enable the rivers to act more like living rivers rather than zombie rivers.

“But we need to know that we’re going to sacrifice things to do that, and the question is, who pays for it?”

Mātaraunga shows people can learn to live with rivers. When a flood damaged much of Mātata township in 2005, among the few buildings that weren’t damaged were marae.

The reason was a pūrākau, a narrative applied to the landscape. The river was said to house a taniwha in the form of a lizard, its tail flicking side to side, a sign that people should be cautious.

The story contains a basic geomorphological fact; the lower channel of the river laterally shifts after floods.

It is one reason for optimism. This is a problem that predates everyone alive today; Perhaps two forms of knowledge, braided, can help ease tensions in the long-standing war between humans and rivers.

“It comes from a way of knowing and being that sees you as part of that system, that sees waterways as ancestors, as tupuna, that says we would prefer to treat them like taonga, not as toilets,” Dan Hikuroa says about the move to reanimate rivers.

“That kind of thinking, combined with some cutting edge technical tools where we can be measuring real time E. Coli, nutrient loads, silt loads, rainfall modelling… I think there’s an approach where we can see rivers as more than just a bed, banks, and the water in it, and that’s definitely the way forward for us.”

For Gary Brierley, the river scientist, answers to some pressing questions have been there all along. It’s now time to put the solutions in place.

“A Mataraunga Māori lens is second nature to many groups across the country, and it’s frankly, the direction that we need to be going,” he says.

“To me, it’s an incredible paradox – We have a good idea from science as to where we want to be, and because of the Treaty obligations, if there’s any part of the world where it should be pretty easy to do this, to get on with it, it’s here. And yet we have fallen behind the rest of the world.”

 

This story, published by Stuff,  has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters.

Morir sin impactar al medio ambiente

En tiempos de pandemia, cuando hemos escuchado hablar de más de tres millones de muertes en el mundo ocasionadas solamente por el Covid-19, es preciso comenzar a pensar en el impacto negativo que tiene los decesos de los seres humanos en el medio ambiente.

Prácticas tan generalizadas que se han vuelto costumbres y tradiciones, como la sepultura o la cremación de algún ser querido, son poco cuestionadas sobre la cantidad de emisiones de carbono y otros contaminantes que contribuyen al calentamiento global.

Recompose, una empresa funeraria “progresista” ubicada en Seattle, estado de Washington, Estados Unidos, ha creado un nuevo ritual de despedida de los seres humanos de una manera mucho más sustentable y amigable con el medio ambiente, aunque tal vez escandalosa para muchos. Su meta, es dejar atrás los procesos convencionales y contaminantes y recibir al compostaje humano, para así hacer uso de la famosa frase “tierra eres y en tierra te convertirás”.

Por ahora, Washington es el único lugar en Estados Unidos en el que se realiza este método, pues en 2019 se legalizó a nivel local la reducción orgánica natural como una opción posterior a la vida.

“Conviértete en tierra cuando mueras”, anuncia en su página de internet Recompose mientras explica el innovador proceso para dar eterno descanso a las personas que han fallecido. La empresa utiliza un proceso llamado reducción orgánica natural para transformar suavemente los restos humanos en suelo, el cual se puede utilizar para regenerar la tierra de bosques, jardines, campos, etcétera.

“Con un enfoque que es tan práctico como significativo, Recompose conecta el final de la vida con el mundo natural”, asegura.

Con el proceso de reducción orgánica se utiliza los principios de la naturaleza para devolver los cuerpos a la tierra, reteniendo carbono y mejorando la salud de nuestro entorno natural.

Resultados presentados en la reunión anual de la American Association for the Advancement of Science, de acuerdo con la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, sugieren que el compostaje, también llamado reducción orgánica natural, es una forma fácil de manejar los cadáveres en la Tierra.

Lo anterior se debe a que los cuerpos humanos son un excelente alimento para los gusanos. Al menos a esa conclusión llegaron de los experimentos pilotos del proyecto ‘Urban Death, de la Universidad Estatal de Washington, con el que se estudiaron a seis cadáveres a los que se les dejó descomponerse entre astillas de madera y otros materiales orgánicos.

En conferencia de prensa, la presentadora del proyecto, Lynne Carpenter-Boggs, indicó que los seis cuerpos “fueron colocados en recipientes que contenían material vegetal y éstos fueron rotados rutinariamente para proporcionar condiciones óptimas para la descomposición”.

Bajo este proceso, tardó aproximadamente de cuatro a siete semanas en que los microbios en el material redujeron los cuerpos a esqueletos.

 

Descanso eterno y contaminante

De acuerdo con la empresa, las prácticas funerarias actuales dejan severas secuelas a nuestro planeta. En México, el último registro del Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Geografía (Inegi) indicó que en 2019 murieron 747 mil 784 personas; no obstante, y aunque las cifras no han sido especificadas aún, con la llegada de la pandemia, la mortalidad en México aumentó por lo que el presidente de la junta de gobierno del Inegi, Julio Santaella, estimó que en el 2020, por primera vez en la historia de nuestro país, podrían rebasar el millón de defunciones.

Lo anterior es relevante porque en México, los únicos métodos legales para despedir a un cuerpo humano son la sepultura y la cremación.

En torno a ello, Recompose asegura que la cremación es considerada agresiva para el medio ambiente porque quema combustibles fósiles y emite dióxido de carbono y partículas a la atmósfera.

Por su parte, el entierro convencional consume terrenos urbanos valiosos, contamina el suelo y contribuye al cambio climático a través de la fabricación y el transporte de ataúdes, lápidas y revestimientos de tumbas que requieren muchos recursos.

Por lo que concluye que el impacto ambiental general del entierro y la cremación convencionales es aproximadamente el mismo.

No obstante y lamentablemente, esta opción aún no es viable para todas las personas. / Foto: Sabel Roizen

Una alternativa amigable para el planeta

Por el contrario, la reducción orgánica promete ser una solución amigable con el medio ambiente. De acuerdo con Recompose, por cada persona que elige el compostaje humano en vez de un entierro o la cremación, se evita que una tonelada métrica de dióxido de carbono entre a la atmósfera.

Según señala, el compostaje humano requiere un octavo de la energía de un entierro o cremación convencional y, como una ventaja, fortalece al medio ambiente en lugar de agotarlo, lo que denomina como “salud del suelo”.

“La descomposición de la materia orgánica es un componente esencial en el ciclo que permite que la muerte de un organismo alimente la vida de otro. El suelo es la base de un ecosistema saludable. Filtra el agua, proporciona nutrientes a las plantas, retiene carbono y ayuda a regular la temperatura global”, detalla la empresa.

Aunado a ello, el suelo resultante del compostaje humano cumple con los estándares de seguridad establecidos por la Agencia de Protección Ambiental de Estados Unidos para contaminantes como los metales pesados.

En el proceso de la reducción orgánica tiene como beneficio adicional matar a los patógenos peligrosos, según el estudio de la Universidad Estatal de Washington, a lo que se le denomina como “esterilización automática”.

No obstante y lamentablemente, esta opción aún no es viable para todas las personas, pues de acuerdo con el estudio, el calor que se produce en el proceso no mata a los priones, unas proteínas mal plegadas extremadamente duraderas que pueden causar enfermedades.

Lo anterior podría significar que el compostaje “no estaría permitido para las personas que fueron diagnosticadas con encefalopatías espongiformes transmisibles (EET), como la enfermedad de Creutzfeldt-Jakob“, dijo la investigadora Carpenter-Boggs.

¿Cómo se lleva a cabo el compostaje humano?

Quizá este tema sea novedoso y desconocido para muchas personas. La empresa funeraria ha detallado que el compostaje humano se realiza a través cinco fases, en las cuales los microbios, el oxígeno y la materia vegetal se combinan para convertir los restos humanos en suelo. A continuación profundizaremos en las etapas:

  • Comienza el ciclo: la reducción orgánica natural (NOR), también conocida como compostaje humano, está impulsada por microbios beneficiosos que se presentan naturalmente en nuestros cuerpos y en el
  • La colocación: el personal de Recompose coloca el cuerpo en una “cuna” rodeado de astillas de madera, alfalfa y paja. La cuna se coloca en un recipiente Recompose y se cubre con más material vegetal.
  • El recipiente: el cuerpo y el material vegetal permanecen en el recipiente durante 30 días. Los microbios descomponen todo a nivel molecular, lo que da como resultado la formación de un suelo rico en nutrientes.
  • La tierra: cada cuerpo crea una yarda cúbica de enmienda de suelo, que se retira del recipiente y se deja curar. Una vez completado, se puede utilizar para enriquecer tierras de conservación, bosques o
  • La vida después de la muerte: el suelo creado devuelve los nutrientes de nuestros cuerpos al mundo natural. Restaura bosques, retiene carbono y nutre nueva vida.

Bells Mountain Forest.

Perdurar en un bosque

Una vez terminado el proceso en el que el cuerpo humano se integra al suelo, Recompose da la opción a la persona o a los familiares de donar el compostaje a Bells Mountain, un bosque ubicado en Washington en donde se contabilizan cerca de 700 acres.

Este bosque es un área natural protegida legalmente. Los cuidadores de la tierra utilizan el suelo donado por Recompose para apoyar la revitalización continua de los humedales, los hábitats ribereños, las plantas locales y las especies de vida silvestre vulnerables.

“Después de un siglo de abuso y abandono, las tierras despejadas azotadas por el sol y el viento quedan con suelos degradados y bosques atrofiados. El suelo que ofrece Recompose enriquecerá los campos talados en recuperación, ayudándolos a florecer una vez más”, expone la funeraria en su invitación a la donación de suelo.

Además, agrega que un suelo saludable potencia el manejo holístico de los pastizales y el desarrollo ecológico, con lo que se reduce los impactos climáticos negativos y contribuye a la regeneración de los ecosistemas naturales.

La despedida del ser querido: un ritual sumamente simbólico

La muerte sostenible a través del compostaje humano no solo es amigable con el planeta, sino que también lleva consigo una carga simbólica sumamente fuerte como la de cualquier otro ritual de despedida. Aún más allá de la idea de que nuestros cuerpos vuelven a la tierra y a la naturaleza, Recompose ha creado toda una ceremonia para marcar lo que ellos llaman el “proceso de transición” antes de llevar los cuerpos a las cunas de compostaje.

Usualmente, los familiares pueden decir el número de invitados al evento, aunque por motivos de la pandemia, actualmente todo el proceso se transmite en video.

En el momento de la instalación, es posible observar las vasijas blancas, plantas y una imagen proyectada del bosque de Bells Mountain. Todo ello rodea al cuerpo de la persona fallecida, el cual estará a la vista, acostado en la cuna y envuelto en una tela natural.

“La participación es opcional y puede verse y sentirse diferente para cada persona o familia. Algunas personas deciden tener un espacio para compartir recuerdos, mientras que otras usan este tiempo para aprender sobre la transformación de su persona en tierra”, expresa la empresa.

“Una colocación puede ser hermosa y completa”, asegura, y se pueden incluir velas encendidas, la compañía de un líder religioso u orador, la presentación de imágenes, lecturas, música, entre otras cosas más.

https://www.elsoldemexico.com.mx/doble-via/ecologia/natural-recompose-morir-sin-impactar-al-medio-ambiente-contaminacion-muertes-funerales-6651035.html

Este artículo fue compartido como parte del World News Day 2021, una campaña global que destaca el papel fundamental del periodismo basado en hechos a la hora de proveer noticias e información fiables al servicio de la humanidad. 

In Lisbon, yellow is the new green — and there’s no harm in that

In Lisbon, a city in southern Europe and the capital of Portugal, lawns are being replaced by meadows. In the summer, there’s no green in sight; only yellow. And that’s a good thing. In one of the city’s largest parks, Bela Vista Park, six million litres of water are saved each year.

Bela Vista Park, Lisbon

 

Man in pic: Rui Simão, head of the Lisbon City Council’s (CML) Green Space Maintenance and Requalification Department

A green city, full of well-watered and neatly trimmed lawns – the image we have come to associate with the quality of what is green in the city may be all wrong. Lawns come at a heavy price: costs and environmental consequences. Maintaining lawns requires intense water use, a scarce resource in a southern country, the proper management of which is particularly important in dry months, such as summer in the Portuguese capital.

In Lisbon, the concept of a green city is being challenged, even as regards the perception of the colour itself. Meadows are replacing lawns. Is the green in the city really green? Perhaps you need to readjust your vision and to rethink: perhaps “green” isn’t exactly “green”, in the ecological and sustainable sense of the word. In urban climate action, the colour green isn’t always the answer. The obsession with perfectly trimmed lawns may be interesting in temperate climates like that in the UK, but it’s not a healthy expectation for a septentrional city that strives to be sustainable today and prepared for a future affected by climate change.

Lisbon’s largest park is yellowing

The Bela Vista Park is a large urban park located in the eastern part of the city, recently won over from wastelands. Here, lawns are yielding. It’s summer and temperatures rise above 30ºC. Where once there was grass, today there are two fields of biodiverse dry meadow. Yellow dominates.

In autumn and winter green abounds. In spring we are gifted with a multi-coloured splendour. An explanation is provided on vertical signage, lest passers-by think the park is neglected. It isn’t. It’s just like that. A biodiverse dry meadow – a renaturalised space populated by “native species from our flora, adapted to our climate and that have a natural life cycle,” says Rui Simão, head of the Lisbon City Council’s (CML) Green Space Maintenance and Requalification Department.

They don’t need irrigation, they help hold water in the soil, and they attract insects that help control pests. They sprung up in 2020, the year in which Lisbon was named European Green Capital. These natural structures were first experimented with in 2012 in the Monsanto Green Corridor, behind the Palace of Justice.

A multi-coloured strategy

“The strategy is not only green, it’s also brown,” says Rui Simão. The biological cycle of dry meadows follows the seasons. “Seeds are produced in the summer. They then fall to the ground, start growing and then germinate in the spring.” These new green plants “bloom and then produce more seeds”, closing the cycle. 

In Bela Vista Park alone 20,000 sq.m – or 2 hectares – of water-hungry lawn was replaced with meadows. This resulted in an annual saving of 6,000 m3 – 6 million litres – of water, enough to fill two Olympic-size pools and with one million litres to spare, according to the International Swimming Federation (FINA).

The initiative is part of Life Lungs, a project led by Lisbon to adapt to climate change with EU funding, in partnership with the Spanish city of Málaga.

The threat of climate change in Lisbon 

“We are experiencing the effects of climate change and we must take action to effect change. Our green spaces, especially in the Mediterranean area, are bearing the brunt. Unfortunately, we live in an area that is gradually becoming a semi-arid climate. And we have to adapt,” says Rui.

According to C40 data, the major threats for Lisbon are linked to its location: 

The worsening of the magnitude of strong/gale-force winds;

Increased intense rain, both in frequency and magnitude;

High temperatures, the effects of which are made worse by decreased precipitation;

Cold waves, which are high-risk to an increasingly vulnerable elderly population;

Increase in mean sea level and extreme precipitation events, with ever growing land use, increasing the risk of flooding in Lisbon.

Despite being a quiet and peaceful city, there’s much to do: in terms of carbon emissions per capita, Lisbon ranks above London, Madrid, Rome and Paris, for example. A Climate Action Plan is in the process of being approved to prepare the city for these changes: by 2030, it must reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 70%, compared to 2002. By 2018, these emissions had already been reduced by 40%. The city, however, city aims to be carbon neutral by 2040, ten years ahead of the target set by the European continent. By 2030, an estimated €4 billion is expected to be invested.

Other actions include the Lisbon General Drainage Plan – a flood drainage network aimed at reducing the impact of floods in the city, the construction of which will cost an estimated €180 million – and a delay in the creation of the Low Emissions Zone (LEZ; or ZER in Portuguese) in Lisbon’s historic centre, aimed at reducing traffic by 40,000 cars a day and 60,000 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per year. 

Sow and then leave it to nature

Meadows are just one facet of the climate change adaptation plan. Since they are new meadows, the green isn’t artificial. It’s green when nature wants it to be green. “That’s what a dry meadow is. It doesn’t require irrigation maintenance. It doesn’t need scheduled irrigation to keep it greener for longer. It’s a perfectly adjusted meadow suited to our flora and climate,” clarifies Rui. The meadows are created by removing weeds and introducing native species, clovers and grasses, “using our flora and especially leguminous plants, because they provide the soil with nitrogen”. They are trimmed “two or three times a year, at the most”. Other than that, nature runs its course. 

Urban sheep used to cut grasses

Urban sheep instead of mowers

Something else is also being tried, using sheep to cut the grasses. A flock of about 20 sheep, watched over by shepherds, is left grazing in the meadows for three or four months, enclosed in a mobile electric fence. The animals help manage vegetation “and they trample the soil with their hooves”, thus mixing organic matter from their manure into the soil, Rui explains.

It’s expensive, and was criticised by the opposing party, but the outcome is positive. “We have to take into account everything that is involved.” These “20-odd” sheep help control the meadow, so just imagine what could be done with bigger flocks, he suggested. The hope is that the sheep can again help maintain these spaces “between 2022 and 2023”, explains Inês Freire, Director of Life Lungs.

“The first cuts enable other smaller plants that are sometimes overpowered by bigger ones to grow and have a chance to flourish and get stronger,” points out Rui Simão. “This helps ensure seed production without having to find other ways to produce them,” in order words, without the need for manual labour, or machines, to sow seeds.

Meadows also aren’t all the same: not many people notice, but they have water retention basins, a pit of sorts where excess water can be stored instead of running off into and flooding streets and land. They also promote rainwater infiltration. These basins, some larger than others, are hidden in gardens, like at the Bela Vista Park, Campo Grande Garden and Ribeirinho Oriente Waterfront Park, and only become visible after intense rainfall, forming lakes on the surface.

At the Bela Vista Park, before the current retention basin, there was a lake for artificial water catchment. “This is unthinkable,” stresses Rui Simão. “It’s a huge cost.” With a retention basin, there’s still a lake, but it only fills up when it rains. 

As part of the project around 52,000 trees and shrubs have already been planted, of an expected total of 240,000. Planned plantings include 4,000 trees being planted in the city’s neighbourhoods to help cool streets and provide shade, to reduce heat island effects. Planting will resume in October, in the parishes of Arroios, Campolide and Benfica.

Ladybirds control pests

At the Bela Vista Park, doing away with irrigation saw different colours emerge throughout the year, but the benefits of dry meadows aren’t only water-related. “These meadows are amazing: they generate life, they allow life to control itself.” They attract “new insects, pollinators,” such as bees. They also attract “pest controllers”, such as ladybirds, “an important predator of various insect pests that appear on trees”.

Basically, we need to change our mindset. There is more to what meets the eye, “besides an unkempt plant” or “nicely trimmed lawn”. Ladybirds help control scale insects and aphids that feed on the sap of plants and whose droppings are sticky and very high in sugars, “pure sugar” that falls from trees onto city streets and sticks to the ground.

But even nature needs a helping hand, some “positive input for trees and vegetation”. Without it, “trees start falling, breaking and dying”. If we don’t take action to balance the scales, “we won’t have a healthy and balanced green structure: the city and its plants are under pressure from pollution, from the water-resistant canopy”, explains Rui.

In other words, in Lisbon, yellow is the new green. 

This story, originally published by Mensagem de Lisboa, has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters.

Surviving the Sundarbans: Tales of the Delta’s Climate Refugees

(Video Editor & Animator: Rahul Sanpui)

A plastic sheet tethered under a banyan tree is what Prashanto Mondol, his wife and two young daughters call home. Prashanto, a resident of Ghoramara Island in the Sundarban delta of West Bengal, was once a self-sufficient farmer. As cyclone Yass ravaged the eastern coast of India on 26 May 2020, it took with it Prashanto’s home, all his money and rice grains that could’ve fed his family for the next year. It also took with it, a part of Ghoramara, an island now a fraction of its actual size, as rising sea levels and calamitic weather events frequented the Sundarbans over the last few years.

Ghoramara and Mousuni, another island in the Sundarbans delta, is slated to go underwater in the next 6 years or even sooner. Research by climate scientists that dates back to the 1980s have predicted that if climate change continues unabated, then soon, all of Sundarbans will be underwater. And like, Prashanto, about 4.5 million people living in the delta, will be soon be homeless, with no mitigation plan in sight.

The Sinking Islands Of Sundarbans

The Sundarbans delta – formed by the confluence of the Ganga, Bharamputra and Meghna rivers, as they flow into the Bay of Bengal – is spread over 40,000 hectares across India and Bangladesh.

Of this, about 10,00 acres form the Sundarbans Forest, the largest mangrove habitation in the world. In 1987, the Sundarbans was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The delta consists of 200 islands of which 54 are inhabited.

The mangroves in the Sundarbans act as key balance between humans and nature. The roots of the mangrove trees hold on to the soil, preventing it from being washed away by tides. The mangrove cover also acts as an ecological barrier that breaks strong cyclonic winds and storms.

However, rampant deforestation, faulty planning and land-use patterns have destroyed the mangrove cover of the Sundarbans. At the same time, global warming caused by climate change has increased the intensity and frequency of calamitic cyclonic events. Since cyclone Aila in 2009, the Sundarbans has been hit by devastating cyclones one after the other.

The area has dealt with 13 of the 23 most devastating cyclones in the world.

A 2007 study by Jadavpur University said that just in the last 30 years, the Sundarbans have shrunk by 80 square kilometers.

While at the time it seemed like abstract statistics, weather events in the past years have proved otherwise. For the people of the Sundarbans, doomsday is here and it is real.

In Ghoramara, A Tale of Loss & Despair

The Quint visited Ghoramara and Mousuni about a month after cyclone Yass. Even then, the residents of both these islands, depended entirely of charity for food and even drinking water.

Ghormara once had a population of 40,000 people. Now, it houses just about 2,000 people, most of whom are on their way out.

The only way to get to both these islands is by ferries, which are timed according to high tide and weather conditions.

As we get off our ferry and onto Ghoramara, it looks like one has stepped into an apocalypse. A man, who looked like he was in his 40s, and a not in the best mental state, caught hold of us soon after, unable to control his emotions. He showed us sacks of rice grains that had been abandoned by those in Ghoramara.

The stinking rice sacks still contain the blackened rice that was destroyed as Yass hit the island and broke embankments, submerging everything.

It was this man who led us to Proshanto.

Proshanto’s family has been living in Ghoramara for three generations. He tells us how his ancestors accumulated 50 bighas of land over the years. Now, he has a little over 7 bighas left. The water has consumed all else.

“I can see that Ghoramara is shrinking”, he tells us.

Prashanto also says that nature, once their best friend, has changed over the years.

“We didn’t realise that Yass would be this bad”, says Proshanto. “We thought it’d bypass the area.”

“We were prepared for a small quall, but soon we saw that the water had breached the village boundary. Soon, everything was submerged. We didn’t even have time to reach the shelter. There was a temple on the way. We climbed atop a tree next to it and tied our goats to the roof of the temple. We spent the night on top of the tree.” – Prashanto Mondol, resident of Ghoramara

Like most residents of Ghoramara, Proshanto is trying to salvage what is left of his belongings. The plan is to now look for a job in a state like Kerala where most young men from the Sundarbans go in search of work.

“I will have to go find work somewhere. Obviously staying here is not an option. I don’t know what I’ll do. Maybe a hawker or a daily-wage labourer. I have two small kids. I don’t know what to do about them or their education. I don’t know to get the money to settle elsewhere. I really can’t think of anyway to get out of this situation”, rues Proshanto.

Hotels For The Homeless In Mousuni

The island of Mousuni is more populated than Ghoramara. It is also a popular tourist location in the Sundarbans. However, since cyclone Amphan hit the Sundarbans in 2020, the pristine beaches of Mousuni have been deserted.

When the seas were friendlier, makeshift huts along the beaches served as hotels for tourists, promising to give them the “rustic Sundarbans experience”.

Now, these huts lie destroyed and empty, but still serve a purpose. They give refuge to the homeless in Mousuni after cyclones like Yass.

Sheikh Shah Alam, who we met during our visit to Mousuni, is one such person.

Alam, like Proshanto, has two daughters. The eldest of them is in class 12. During Yass, all her books were washed away and her school doubled up as a refugee camp. When Alam and his family got back to where his hut used to be once the cyclone abated, they found nothing but rubble.

“We have no option but to live next to the broken embankments now. No one can live here like humans. We have to live like animals, scavengers.” – Sheikh Shah Alam, resident of Mousuni

Alam points out an interesting trend from all the times him and his family have endured cyclones. While evacuation are done, he says, rehabilitation is very shoddy and never a part of the plan.

“No one will understand the plight of not having a home. We stay in one place for a few days, then another for a few days. People turn us away saying go back to your land. The schools we seek shelter in ask us to go away once the weather becomes clearer. But where do I go? There’s nothing to go back to”, says Alam.

“Cyclone Amphan ruined our home last year. We repaired it. Now its gone again”, he adds.

Sinking Sagar

As the islands in the Sundarbans were devastated by one cyclone after the other, a crucial policy question emerged. Where do the homeless go?

The answer, until now, was the Sagar Island.

Sagar is located higher from the sea than the other islands of the Sundarbans and has more jobs, better roads and a bustling economy. It also houses the famous Gangasagar Mela, a pligrimage festival that sees lakhs of devotees attend each year.

Those from Ghoramara, Mousuni and other such islands of the Sundarbans, once rendered homeless, move to Sagar. While some use their last chunk of wealth to make the move, others are rehabiliated by the government.

However, housing this refugee crisis has been expensive for Sagar, putting undue pressure on its land and resources. Since 2011, the population of Sagar has increased 20 percent and the island, in general, has suddenly become more vulnerable to natural calamities. After Yass, it was there for all to see – Sagar is sinking too.

This realisation has hit those like Sahadeb most.

Sahadeb was earlier a resident of Lohachura, an island in the Sundarbans which sank in 2006. It was the first human inhabited island in the world to go underwater. Sahadeb shifted to Sagar in 1977 after everything Lohachura was lost to the water.

Now Yass has destroyed Sahadeb’s second home too.

“We owned 55 bighas of land in Lohachura. Slowly, the river took everything. When we came here in 1977, we did odd jobs to make ends meet. We had a few years of happiness after we finally built our home. Now it’s all gone”, says Sahadeb, as he breaks down.

“Only God knows where we can go. If we can get some help, it will be great. Else, we are on our own. We have to survive. We are at the mercy of nature. We live with it. We will accept whatever good or bad it has to offer.” – Sahadeb, resident of Sagar

This story, originally published by The Quint, has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters.

 

China’s carbon neutral goal needs a lot of heavy lifting by industries

Airlines, shipping, buildings materials, chemicals and power producers, the biggest emitters of carbon dioxide, are expected to do the heaviest lifting over the next four decades for China to meet its carbon neutral goal by 2060.

Nine of every 10 vehicles on China’s roads will have to run on non-fossil fuel, while half of the aircraft fly on green hydrogen and 90 per cent of heavy industries will need to be retrofitted with carbon capture facilities to put the nation on track to cut carbon emission by 75 to 85 per cent, leaving the residual amount to be offset by removals, according to the Boston Consulting Group (BCG).

“Some of the technologies required, such as carbon capture and storage and [emission-free] hydrogen fuel are not [commercially] ready yet,” said Thomas Palme, who leads BCG’s social impact practice in China, adding that it can only be possible “with concerted effort and investment.”

The challenges underscore the technological and financial hurdles that must be overcome for China to deliver on President Xi Jinping’s surprise pledge in Septemberbefore the United Nations. If all the pieces can come together, the result could be a giant leap in technological capability for China to the top of global competitiveness, as the world grapples with strategies and policies to deal with climate change, one of the gravest problems to confront humanity.

Smoke belching from a coal-fuelled power station near Datong, in China’s Shanxi province on November 19, 2015. Shanxi, the largest coal-producing region in China, frequently ranks top among provinces with the worst air pollution. Photo: AFP

China’s coal and gas-fired power plants are responsible for almost half of the nation’s carbon dioxide emission, while heavy industries – including the world’s largest capacity for steel, aluminium, petrochemicals and cement – contribute one-third, BCG said.

With an average age of less than 13 years – out of a typical useful lifespan of 40 years – the use of some power plants could be extended even as climate policies clamp down on emissions.

Aviation has relatively low carbon impact compared to energy generation. SCMP Graphics

This is particularly important since 60 per cent of the world’s coal-fired plants could still be operating in 2050, as could 40 per cent of steel mills – mostly in China – unless they retire early, according to International Energy Agency (IEA) in Paris. That is not viable, as the cost of installing carbon capture facilities would triple the price of coal-fired power, said HSBC’s head of Asia utilities research Evan Li, citing data by the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in Ohio.

Change is on the way, as authorities in Xinjiang, Qinghai, Shanxi and Inner Mongolia have mandated that 5 to 20 per cent of the total capacity of solar farms must comprise energy storage, which would enhance the intermittent energy’s competitiveness against coal-fired power, said Frank Haugwitz, founder of Asia Europe Clean Energy (Solar) Advisory.

Solar power will surpass wind energy by the end of this month as China’s third-biggest source of electricity by capacity, and the rate of installing solar farms in the next five years will “much exceed” the pace in the previous five years, renewable energy officials said on Thursday.
Chinese firefighters evacuating residents during a flash flood at Pingxiang in eastern China’s Jiangxi province on 12 April 2006. Torrential rains and typhoons killed over 1,300 people in China in 2005 and destroyed 1.22 million buildings, causing direct economic loss of 155.8 billion yuan (US$19 billion). Photo: AFP

The prospect of shutting down mass coal-fired power plants could present a policy dilemma between climate change and economic stability. China’s banks could see their default ratio on loans to the coal-fired power sector surge from 3 per cent to over 20 per cent within a decade, according to a scenario analysis by Centre for Green Finance Development, Tsinghua National Institute of Financial Research.

Climate transition bonds are needed to fund the acquisition of coal-fired power companies in China, with clearly defined plans to inject renewable energy projects into them to gradually retire the plants within a set period, said the research centre’s director Ma Jun, who is also chairman of Hong Kong Green Finance Association.
This would avoid bankruptcies that spill over to bad loans and social risks, he said, adding that talks are ongoing in Shanxi, China’s largest coal producing region, to facilitate such bonds.
Compared to industry and power generation, transport is a smaller segment of total emissions. SCMP Graphics

Carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) – the capture of carbon dioxide from the emission source, or directly from the atmosphere – has been in use for 45 years, according to the consultancy Global CCS Institute in Melbourne. In the United States, large-scale CCUS projects involve injecting carbon dioxide into oil wells to enhance output.

The technology has been tested in China for about a decade, pioneered by coal mining giant Shenhua Group, now renamed as China Energy Investment Corporation. Carbon dioxide collected from coal-to-oil conversion projects in Inner Mongolia is trucked and injected into sealed underground caverns for permanent storage.

PetroChina has also been collecting carbon dioxide from a natural gas processing plant and injecting it into its Jilin oilfield since 2018.

PetroChina’s facilities in Jilin on May 24,2004. Photo Reuters

Retrofitting CCUS will have a greater chance of success for power plants and industrial facilities that are young, efficient and located near places with opportunities to store or use carbon dioxide, IEA said. When CCUS can be commercially viable in China is unclear, as details of the national mandatory carbon dioxide emission quota – critical for putting a market price on emissions – have not been announced.

“China has some successful CCUS pilots, but their applications have been rather restricted, the volumes rather limited and [they are] commercially uncompetitive,” said Yang Fuqiang, China programme senior adviser on climate and energy, at The Natural Resources Defence Council in New York.

The technology must be deployed in large scale to reach carbon neutrality, IEA said.

“Reaching net zero [carbon emission] will be virtually impossible without CCUS,” IEA said in September. “Alongside electrification, hydrogen and sustainable bioenergy, CCUS will need to play a major role.”

CCUS may be ready for industrial application by 2030 in China, with a cost reduction of between 40 per cent and 50 per cent by 2040, according to a technology development road map by the Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) last year.

“Hurdles to faster CCUS deployment in China include the lack of a legal and policy framework, limited market stimulus and inadequate subsidies,” the IEA said. “Public understanding and awareness is relatively low.”

Global pandemic conditions have reduced emissions by aviation by around half. SCMP Graphics

“Green” hydrogen, the other key technology for fighting climate change, has made significant progress towards commercial deployment due to a drastic fall in renewable energy cost. Production of this virtually emission-free fuel involves using renewable electricity to split water into oxygen and hydrogen.

The world’s first wind-generated green hydrogen power project, scheduled for commission in January, may be expanded into a large plant for deployment around 2025, according to Siemens Gamesa, the dominant European turbines producer.

Hydrogen and ammonia are touted as the mainstay clean fuel to replace coal, diesel, petrol, bunker and jet fuel in a few decades, with potential applications in heavy industries such as iron and steel, chemicals and glass.

China’s carbon footprint is trending up. SCMP Graphics

“The pathway to emission-free electricity is wind and solar, and the pathway to emission-free everything else is green hydrogen produced from wind and solar,” said Alex Tancock, co-founder and managing director of InterContinental Energy, one of the growing list of developers pushing for hydrogen projects.

A consortium led by InterContinental proposed a US$36 billion solar and wind-powered hydrogen production project aimed at East Asia. Located in the Pilbara Desert in Western Australia state on a site six times the size of Hong Kong, it comprises 26 gigawatts of wind and solar farms, 2.3 times Hong Kong’s power generating capacity.

The consortium is in talks with Asian buyers of hydrogen and ammonia, including power and shipping firms, besides technology, energy, and asset management companies for investments by 2025 for construction to start.

Global hydrogen production could surge sevenfold by 2070 from last year’s 75 million tonnes, IEA said.

A computer-generated image of three prototypes of zero-emission hydrogen-powered aircraft made by Airbus. Photo: AIRBUS / AFP

Direct use of hydrogen by ships and vehicles may take up 30 per cent of demand in 2070, while synthetic aircraft fuel will account for 20 per cent. Liquid hydrogen can be used for short-haul flights, while synthetic fuel can be used in existing jet engines, Tancock said.

Airbus revealed three concepts in September for the world’s first zero-emission commercial aircraft, with modified gas turbine engines that use hydrogen instead of jet fuel, which could enter service by 2035.

Transport accounted for 9 per cent of China’s estimated carbon emission of 11.7 billion tonnes last year, BCG said.

Commercial aviation accounts for 2 to 3 per cent of global carbon emission, according to the International Air Travel Association (Iata), the industry guild. It has committed to cap members’ carbon emissions this year, and halve them by 2050 from 2005 levels.

An Airbus A380, the largest commercial aircraft in service, with 555 seats in standard configurations, taking off from the Toulouse-Blagnc Airport in southern France for delivery to China Southern Airlines on 14 October 2011. Photo: EPA

China has included domestic aviation among eight sectors to be subjected to carbon emission caps and quotas trading.

Domestic flights grew 7.5 per cent to 83 billion tonne-kilometre last year, while the entire industry’s carbon emission per tonne-km fell 16 per cent from 2005, according to the Civil Aviation Administration of China. Some 74.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emission could potentially be subject to a cap-and-trade regime.

China Southern Airlines, the nation’s largest fleet operator, said its 2019 carbon emission grew 6.4 per cent to 28.6 million tonnes. The Guangzhou-based carrier tested a 10 per cent blended bio-jet fuel made with sugar cane in a flight last year, emitting 73 per cent less carbon dioxide than conventional jet kerosene.

The CMA CGM Group’s container ship Jacques Saade at the Shanghai Jiangnan-Changxing Shipyard in September 2019. With the capacity to carry 23,000 TEUs of containers, this is the world’s largest ship to be powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG). Photo: Handout

The shipping industry is also looking to hydrogen, although huge research and development investments will be needed before this can become commercially viable, according to London-based International Chamber of Shipping.

“After a long history of wind, coal and oil-fuelled ships, a fourth propulsion revolution is needed if shipping is to decarbonise completely … an entirely new generation of fuels and propulsion systems will need to be developed,” it said in a report last month.

The task facing the industry is daunting. Long-term growth in maritime trade means even if the average carbon emission by the entire global fleet is slashed by 90 per cent, it would only cut the industry’s carbon emission by half by 2050, the chamber said. The global vessel fleet – consuming 4 per cent of oil output and contributing 2 per cent in carbon dioxide emissions – must be retrofitted, while new fuel supply networks must be developed if hydrogen and ammonia are to be adopted, it added.

The shipping industry proposed a levy on marine fuel sales to provide US$5 billion over 10 years for research to turn the “propulsion revolution” into reality, the chamber said.

For InterContinental, exporting ammonia to China is more viable, due to the high costs needed to ship hydrogen at minus 253 degrees Celsius, if the project takes off.

“I would expect China to have a big industry producing hydrogen, unlike Japan and South Korea which have little resources and would have to import,” Tancock said. “Projects like ours will supplement China’s production by providing lower-cost green alternatives like green ammonia.”

Additional reporting by Iris Ouyang and Echo Xie.

This story, originally published by South China Morning Post, has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters.

Carbon neutrality: China sowing seeds of change to meet 2060 target

China’s renewable energy industry is poised to lead an unprecedented industrial transformation that would turn the world’s largest greenhouse gases emitter into a carbon neutral country in less than four decades, at an estimated cost of US$5 trillion.

The nation, already the biggest global producer of hydro, wind and solar power, will have to curtail most fossil fuel production and drastically install more equipment to harness nature’s energy to meet the 2060 carbon neutrality goal pledged by President Xi Jinping to the United Nations General Assembly in September.

The uncertain journey to carbon neutrality – where residual emission is fully offset by amounts captured from the atmosphere – will be a gradual and at times painful process, because it transforms livelihood in the tens of millions, involving trillions of dollars in funding, analysts said.

“The most challenging part of the shift is not the investment or magnitude of renewable capacity additions but the social transition,” said Prakash Sharma, head of Asia Pacific markets and transitions at resource consultancy Wood Mackenzie in London. “[Slashing] coal capacity will result in loss of coal mining jobs, affecting provinces that depend on its revenues and employment generation.”

A worker clears a conveyor belt used to transport coal near a coal mine in Datong, in China’s Shanxi province on November 20, 2015. Photo: AFP

To meet the goal, China must cut its reliance on fossil fuel to 25 per cent by 2050 from the current 85 per cent, removing much of the rest with carbon capture and storage technology, according to Sanford Bernstein’s analysts Neil Beveridge and Wang Lu.

In the makeover scenario, natural gas – with a carbon footprint half of coal and a quarter less than petroleum – is the only fossil fuel that will grow in the energy consumption mix to 14 per cent from 8 per cent. Coal’s contribution will shrink to 3 per cent from 57 per cent, while oil will decline to 8 per cent from 20 per cent.

Solar energy is forecast to be the biggest winner, rising from 1 per cent to 22 per cent and become the biggest energy source, followed by wind power at 17 per cent from 3 per cent. Nuclear energy’s weighting could quadruple to 8 per cent, and hydrogen will grow from almost zero to 11 per cent.

Solar panels arranged to form the picture of a giant panda by Panda Green Energy Group in Datong city in Shanxi province on July 21, 2017. Photo: Panda Green Energy Group

William Shen, a Chinese journalist, paid 200,000 yuan in 2017 to install a 100-square metre (1,076 square feet) solar panel on his roof in Wujiang city in Jiangsu province. He sells the power generated from his 15-kilowatt solar panel to the local electricity grid, receiving between 1,000 yuan and 2,000 yuan every month, based on the local tariff rate of 0.42 yuan for every kilowatt-hour

“It was not a good deal in business terms,” Shen said. “But I still think the money is worth of it because using clean-energy is of great social value.”

China’s energy transition will create millions of jobs in renewable energy. Already the leading equipment producer and the largest market, China employs 2.2 million people in solar power, more than half of the industry’s jobs worldwide, according to the China National Renewable Energy Centre. Chinese wind farms and factories making wind mills and turbines employed 518,000 workers, or 44 per cent of the global total.

Millions of jobs are at stake for coal mines, where the top 10 miners typically employ between 80,000 to 160,000 workers. China’s largest 50 miners, producing 71 per cent of the nation’s coal, had 4.15 trillion yuan (US$634 billion) in combined revenue last year, according to China Coal Industry Association.

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Shanxi province, the hardscrabble, landlocked region in northern China, is the nation’s largest coal production area, earning more than half of its state-owned industrial sector’s output from coal-related activities over the past three years. Coal-related assets make up 36 per cent of Shanxi’s state-owned assets, Guosheng Securities said.

Over the next four decades, many coal mines and thermal power plants may have to shut, unless the industry can slash the cost of capturing the carbon dioxide emissions.

The capture, usage and storage of carbon, a potential game-changer for the long-term decarbonisation in fossil fuel industries, is still nascent in China and is uneconomical, said HSBC’s head of Asia utilities research Evan Li. These carbon capture facilities would triple the cost of coal-fired power, he said, citing data from the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis in Ohio, which said in July that there is “no commercially viable examples of … [such projects] … anywhere in the world.”

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The world will have to look to the Chinese government’s 14th Five-Year Plan from 2021 to 2025, due to be published next year, for details of how every energy-intensive industrial segment should work toward the 2060 target. A necessary first step is the long-awaited nationwide plan for pricing, allocating and trading carbon emission quotas, which will affect the biggest emitters – most notably the power sector – when it starts within the next five years.

“I expect the change to be gradual in the next 10 to 20 years, and there will still be expansion in coal-fired power capacity in the range of 15 to 25 gigawatts over five years, similar to recent years but down from the 40 to 50GW in 2014 to 2016,” said Lucas Zhang Liutong, director WaterRock Energy Economics in Hong Kong. “The Chinese electricity system needs to get a lot of things right before participants can move aggressively on much larger wind and solar power expansion.”
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Despite the fanfare around Xi’s pledge, China’s transition to an economy with low energy intensity is in danger of stalling, as the government doubled down on stimulus policies this year and in 2021 to avert a stalling economy, especially with the coronavirus pandemic still raging around the world.

About 31GW of power plant capacity was approved in the 12 months until October, according to the China Electricity Council, while 19.7GW of coal-fired power plants were given the green light by local authorities in the first half, the biggest investments in recent years.

“Investments in renewables continue, but signs of a return to coal are emerging, a tendency that could strengthen as post-pandemic geopolitics push energy security up the policy agenda,” said S&P Global Ratings in September. “To dig the economy out of its Covid-19 low, planners are approving more infrastructure. Policymakers are stimulating heavy industry, leading to greater energy intensity.”

An array of Sinovel’s 3-megawatt wind turbines at the Shanghai Donghai Bridge Offshore Farm Project on February 22, 2011. Photo: Chinatopix Via AP

The growth prospect for renewable energy will face short-term bottlenecks. The wind power equipment industry urged the Chinese government in October to raise the average annual wind farms installation target in the next five years to 50GW, rising to 60GW after 2025, more than double the 24GW installed last year.

Such a pace may be beyond reach, as Beijing will stop subsidising new onshore wind farms and solar projects from 2021, said Daiwa Capital Markets’ analysts Dennis Ip and Anna Lu. There are also limits in the ability by power grids to absorb the intermittent and variable output from these sources.

“It is hard to achieve such an aggressive target at least in the next five years, as wind power has yet to achieve large-scale grid parity while China will halt subsidies for new installations from next year,” they said. Parity, where the cost of generating wind power matches benchmark coal-fired electricity tariffs in most regions, won’t be reached until 2022 or 2023, they said.

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For solar farms, the generation cost could drop 40 to 50 per cent by 2025, enabling grid parity to become the norm, said HSBC’s Li. Still, a wrench has been thrown into the works by the shutdown of GCL-Poly Energy’s plant in Xinjiang, disrupting the production of polysilicon used in solar panels, causing the price of the raw material to soar 60 per cent in two months. A lack of new capacity until 2022 will put a limit to solar equipment, he said.

“We invest for the future, but it is apparent that there is a long way to go before solar energy is widely used in China,” said Shen, who has solar panels on his roof in Wujiang. “Few people are able or willing to spend 200,000 yuan as an initial investment. A lot more public money needs to be poured into solar energy to encourage wide use. The government should invest for the future too.”

Smoke stacks at a coal-fuelled power station near Datong, in China’s Shanxi province, which regularly ranks near the top with China’s worst air quality, on November 19, 2015. Photo: AFP

Another constraint reining in growth has to do with financial resources.

The government’s decision to stop subsidising wind and solar tariff – financed by a surcharge on electricity bills – was intended to shift the cost burden of renewable energy to coal and gas-fired power producers. The shortfall in the state fund that pays for the subsidies is expected to triple to 300 billion yuan this year from 2018, said China Wind Energy Association’s secretary general Qin Haiyan, who proposed special government bonds to plug the hole.

Developers of renewable projects have to wait between three to five years to receive their subsidy payments, severely constraining their capacity to invest in new projects, especially for privately-owned firms that lack the deep pockets of state-owned companies.

GCL New Energy, a unit of the Jiangsu province-based GCL, was owed 9.2 billion yuan of state subsidies in June, forcing it to appoint a financial adviser to find funds to repay US$500 million of debt due in January 2021. The privately owned company was forced to sell 1.7GW, or a quarter of its projects, for 2.9 billion yuan, as its net debt surged to nearly four times its shareholders equity.

A coal worker on a goods train in the Shanxi provincial capital of Taiyuan in northern China on July 31. Photo: AP

Help may be on the way. An incentive called the “green certificate” trading system, tried on a voluntary basis since 2017 to fund carbon reduction projects, may be rolled out soon, said Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC) strategy director Zhao Feng.

If implemented, renewable energy quotas would be imposed on power generators and major energy consumers, which must buy certificates from renewable energy generators to make up for any production or consumption shortfalls. It was intended as a replacement for subsidies.

Meanwhile, the rush in installing wind farms is expected to continue until year-end to meet the deadline to qualify for subsidies, bringing onshore installations to 30GW this year, GWEC said.

“There are challenges in the supply chain, but … these can be overcome by finding new ways of doing things and new sources of supply,” said GWEC’s chief executive Ben Backwell in Brussels.

With additional reporting by Daniel Ren in Shanghai.

This story, originally published by South China Morning Post, has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters.

Has the fuel cell’s day in the sun arrived on China’s road to 2060?

Qingliqingwei, a two-year-old start-up, wagered last year that its business in hydrogen fuel cells was about to pay off.
China’s government was increasing its drumbeat of policies to direct the nation to go green, cut carbon dioxide emissions and reduce gaseous pollution. Tens of billions of yuan were offered in subsidies, incentives and tax breaks to wean drivers, carmakers and fleet operators in the world’s largest automobile market off petrol-guzzling vehicles.

The Shenzhen-based company rolled out a fleet of 600 lorries in June 2019, each fitted with a hydrogen fuel cell engine, capable of travelling as far as 350 kilometres (217 miles) before refuelling. The vehicles, comprising light delivery trucks and 4-ton lorries, were leased to couriers, logistic companies and garbage collectors.

“It is a near certainty that the government will allocate a huge sum of additional funds to subsidise of hydrogen-powered vehicles,” the company’s vice-president Li Junzuo said in an interview with South China Morning Post in Shanghai. “An increased financial support will facilitate our expansions.”

A hydrogen fuel cell delivery truck showing its fuel cell power train. Photo Qingliqingwei

A little more than a year later, China’s President Xi Jinping pulled a surprise at the United Nations, setting a 2060 target for the country to attain carbon neutrality, becoming the second major economy in the world to put a date on the ambition.

As the world searches for the fine print of Xi’s plan – the implementation details are to be outlined in the country’s next five-year plan in March 2021 – Qingliqingwei is doing a roaring business. Its story underscores how far the Chinese government has put its considerable financial resources behind projects with very long-term, and often uncertain commercial viability.

China offers up to 400,000 yuan (US$60,836) in subsidies per fuel-cell vehicle (FCV) once it runs at least 20,000 kilometres. Fleet operators like Qingliqingwei – a pun on “do it yourself”” that replaces the “self” with hydrogen – get 30 per cent of the subsidies.

For a monthly fee of about 5,000 yuan, the trucks are leased mostly to couriers, deliverers and retailers like JD.com and Alibaba Group Holding‘s Cainiao logistics unit. JD.com, one of China’s largest online retail platforms, operates 150 FCVs around Shanghai. The trucks, bought for 830,000 yuan each, comes from local manufacturers like Nissan Motor’s Chinese partner Dongfeng Motor, each fitted with a fuel cell engine.

“We serve as a bridge between the upstream vehicle manufacturers and downstream clients using trucks for logistics use,” Li said, adding that Qingliqingwei plans to expand its fleet to 3,500 trucks. “The government policies play a decisive role in the promotion of hydrogen-powered vehicles. Without cash subsidies, none of us can survive the lofty costs on purchases and running.”

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Fuel cells produce power through an electrochemical reaction of hydrogen with oxygen, generating heat and water as the by-products. They are a cleaner alternative to internal combustion engines (ICEs) that burn petrol and spew carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and other noxious gases. They are also considered more environmentally friendly than electric vehicles that run on lithium-ion batteries, which are hard to dispose of.

Colourless, odourless, non-toxic but highly combustible, hydrogen’s versatility and cleanliness have long made it a desirable alternative energy, except for its high cost since a lot of energy is required to produce the gas sustainably.

The first hydrogen fuel cell was created in 1839 by British lawyer and physicist William Grove, by splitting water into different cells containing hydrogen and oxygen. Hydrogen was also used in the 1960s by the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Nasa) to supply power during space flights, since it did not emit heat or pollution into sealed spacecraft.

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Global assemblers of passenger vehicles, sports-utility vehicles, sports cars and luxury sedans have been slow to embrace hydrogen fuel cells, mostly over concern of their limited driving range, and the shortage of hydrogen refuelling stations. Almost all of the 7,200 fuel cell vehicles on China’s roads in July were retrofitted commercial trucks.

That may be about to change, as the European Union, Japan and South Korea – each with a robust car assembling industry – are also looking to hydrogen to help their commitment to carbon neutrality by mid-century.

Toyota Motor, the world’s second-largest carmaker by volume, was the first to launch a commercially viable FCV with its Mirai midsize sedan, first unveiled at the 2014 Los Angeles Auto Show. The 2016 model Mirai could go as far as 502 Km on a full tank, comparable to an electric vehicle. As of December, Toyota sold 10,250 Mirais, 60 per cent of them in the US, and a third of them in Japan.

In September,

SAIC Motor launched its EUNIQ7, a seven-seat multi-purpose vehicle that runs on fuel cells, selling it for between 299,800 yuan and 399,800 yuan after subsidies of up to 400,000 yuan.

“After several false starts, the hydrogen economy has reached prime time,” according to a Sanford Bernstein report. “While hydrogen is not yet cost competitive with other energy sources, the anticipated over 50 per cent reduction in hydrogen production cost to less than US$2 a kg and 80 per cent reduction in fuel cell costs [in the next 30 years] will be a game changer.”

A Mirai fuell cell vehicle (FCV) produced by Toyota Motor. Photo: Wikipedia

Fuel cells could make up 10 per cent of China’s energy consumption by 2050, according to the projection by the China Hydrogen Alliance, an industry guild. Bernstein puts it at 11 per cent. To reach that goal, China is aiming to have 1 million fuel cell vehicles on the roads by 2030, served by 1,000 refuelling stations around the nation, according to a road map published in 2016 by an advisory committee of the Society of Automotive Engineers of China.

Such an expanded network would be a game-changer for Wu Dong, who drives fuel-cell trucks for Qingliqingwei.

“The biggest drawback of driving hydrogen-fuelled trucks is the range,” said Wu. “We have to visit the refuelling station frequently. Otherwise, the truck runs as smoothly as one running on an internal combustion engine.”

An undated photograph of a hydrogen refuelling station at Anting in Shanghai’s Jiading district. Photo Handout/Archetype Group

In China’s commercial hub of Shanghai, an experiment has been ongoing for more than a decade to promote fuel cells. At the Anting refuelling station in Jiading district, first set up in 2007, five trucks were queuing up on a recent Wednesday to top up their tanks with liquid hydrogen. Each refuel took about 10 minutes to complete.

Shanghai’s government plans to expand its network of fuelling stations to 100, from the current four, capable of serving as many as 10,000 vehicles by 2023, People’s Daily reported in September, citing Zhang Jianming, deputy director of Shanghai Economy and Information Technology Commission.

And the government is throwing more subsidies at the sector, offering 240,000 yuan for every fuel-cell passenger car, and up to 400,000 yuan per truck. These direct subsidies came to halt in April. To better incentivise the industry to work harder on cost reduction to make hydrogen vehicles more affordable, the government announced a four-year programme in September to subsidise up to 1.7 billion yuan to teams of companies involved all along the chain, from materials to refuelling stations. To qualify, the minimum target is annual sales of 1,000 vehicles, each travelling 30,000 km on average, with annual output of 5,000 tonnes of hydrogen at no more than 35 yuan per kilogram.

The world’s largest carbon dioxide emitters. SCMP Graphics

“This policy offers extra support for domestic technological breakthroughs and manufacturing of core components,” said Western Securities’ analysts Wang Guanqiao and Yu Jiaying. “It especially favours the development of the long-distance and mid-to-heavy duty truck segments that electric vehicles can hardly penetrate.”

Hydrogen is currently produced mainly through chemical processes that break down coal or natural gas, at around US$1.5 for each kilogram of the gas. Once carbon emission quotas are handed down, costly facilities will have to be installed to store carbon dioxide.

It can also be produced through electrolysis, using electricity to split water into hydrogen and oxygen. If renewable power is used, the so-called “green hydrogen” produced is almost free of carbon emission, costing about US$3 per kilogram using renewable energy.

“Existing subsidies and the rental income are not enough to support a wide use of hydrogen-powered vehicles,” said Qingliqingwei’s vice-president Li. “We are expecting the governments to make more preferential policies [to promote hydrogen-powered vehicles].”

China’s annual carbon dioxide emission has picked up after flattening between 2013 and 2016. SCMP Graphics

The average global production cost of green hydrogen is around US$4.7 per kilogram, with China as the cost-leader in the nascent industry, Sanford Bernstein’s analysts said. They estimated the global cost to fall to US$2.3 by 2030 and US$1.4 by 2050.

China is already the world’s largest hydrogen producer with annual output of 21 million tonnes, just over half used by oil refineries mainly to lower the sulphur content of diesel fuel. Output could triple to 60 million tonnes by 2050.

China is not the only country pursuing green hydrogen, whose global production could surge seven-fold by 2070 from last year’s 75 million tonnes, according to the International Energy Agency.

Several companies – most notably with projects in coastal desert regions in Australia and Saudi Arabia – are studying feasibility of green hydrogen and ammonia plants with targets to start production by the mid-2020s. They include the oil and gas giant BP and US industrial gas giant Air Products & Chemicals.

Battery cost and range of electric vehicle projections. SCMP Graphics

Fuel cells may also benefit from a mandatory nationwide carbon emission quota and trading scheme due in the next few years, which will result in higher costs of diesel and petroleum used by trucks.

For the pioneers and early adopters of hydrogen fuel cells, their day in the sun has finally arrived. Yu Zhuoping, dean of the College of Automotive Engineering at Shanghai-based Tongji University, was a partner with the Shanghai government in developing the city’s first refuelling station a decade ago.

“It was only a pilot programme to develop hydrogen-powered vehicles and refuelling stations at a rudimentary stage,” he said. “But since clean energy use is of strategic importance now with massive government support, we will naturally see a rapid growth of the industry soon.”

Still, subsidies are needed to promote the use of the clean energy.

“Without a scale, no businesses will be able to make profits or break even,” he said. “It will be some time before government subsidies to support the operation of the vehicles and stations are cancelled.”

This story, originally published by South China Morning Post, has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters.

China looks to capitalism to turn 2060 carbon neutral goal into reality

China’s President Xi Jinping pulled a surprise at the United Nations in September when he committed the world’s biggest energy user and greenhouse gases emitter to a “carbon neutral” goal by 2060, becoming only the second major economy to do so.

China emits more carbon dioxide, a by-product of fossil fuels and industries, than the United States and Europe combined, at a rate that tripled in the past two decades amid the country’s breakneck economic growth as a World Trade Organization member. The 2060 goal, along with a target for carbon emissions to peak before 2030, is critical to put the world on track to meet the 2016 Paris Agreement of capping global warming at 1.5 degrees Celsius by 2100.

To reach Xi’s target, China must wean the planet’s second-largest economy – which burns half of the world’s coal, and imports more oil and natural gas than anywhere else – off fossil fuels. It’s an ambition that may cost US$5.5 trillion over the next few decades as carbon is removed or offset in energy production, heavy industry, buildings, transport and agriculture, involving technology barely used today, according to Sanford C. Bernstein’s estimate.

“Although this is a 40-year [goal], the target is so ambitious that we will have to start immediately,” said Thomas Palme, who leads Boston Consulting Group’s social impact practice in China. “China is already doing a lot, but it needs a step-change to get on the path of what President Xi has announced.”

A man doing his morning exercises in front of chimney stacks across the Songhua River in Jilin province on February 24, 2013. Photo: Reuters

The next key step would be for China to launch a long-awaited national carbon emissions quota trading scheme, a cornerstone policy that can turn Xi’s pledge into a deliverable reality. It is one of the most effective tools, besides green financing products, that uses market forces to put a price, or financial penalty, on carbon emission. A carbon futures exchange is due for commencement this year in Guangzhou, augmenting the brisk transactions of emission certificates that had been ongoing in the Guangdong provincial capital since 2013.

“While many policies have been implemented and proven to produce effective results in certain sectors, few [have] effects across sectors,” wrote Beijing-based consultancy SinoCarbon Innovation & Investment’s analysts Chen Zhibin and Yu Jiahui. “Emissions trading system (ETS) stands out, as it covers all major sectors [that] have the strongest cross-sector abatement potential.”
China generated more carbon dioxide in 2019 than the United States and the European Union combined. SCMP Graphics

ETS directs polluters to find the most cost-efficient way to cut emissions. China’s national ETS will initially cover coal and gas-fired electricity generators, before expanding to seven pollution-prone industries: petrochemical, chemical, construction materials, steel, non-ferrous metals, paper and domestic aviation.

Nearly 1,700 of these carbon emitters, each with at least 26,000 tonnes of annual carbon dioxide emissions, will initially be allocated free quotas based on their historical volumes. Companies that need to surpass their emission quota must buy additional permits to discharge, and such payments can be used to finance government initiatives in emission abatement.

China’s annual growth rate in carbon dioxide emission has already flattened since 2013 at less than 2 per cent, down from the 8.2 per cent average in the previous 10 years, according to the Our World in Data website in the UK. Still, the Chinese ETS is likely to cap an estimated 3.3 billion tonnes of annual carbon dioxide emissions as soon as it is launched, 80 per cent more than the 15-year-old peer by the European Union, the world’s oldest and largest such system.

China’s annual carbon dioxide emission has picked up after flattening between 2013 and 2016. SCMP Graphics

Yet, Beijing has not given a launch date, raising concern that the ETS’ 2020 launch date – set three years ago – may be delayed again due to the coronavirus pandemic and its debilitating effect on the global economy.

“The 14th five-year plan (2021-25) will be a landmark period for the establishment of China’s nationwide carbon market, with regional pilots transitioning to a unified national market, single-industry participation expanding to multiple sectors,” said Li Gao, head of the climate change department at the Ministry of Ecology and Environment.

China’s national ETS incorporates lessons learned from pilot schemes set up in 2013 in Beijing, Shanghai, Tianjin, Chongqing, Shenzhen, Guangdong and Hubei.

Together, the pilots involved close to 3,000 enterprises from over 20 industries trading more than 400 million tonnes of carbon emission permits valued at 9 billion yuan (US$1.36 billion).

Data accuracy is vital in an effective carbon market because the financial penalty for emission has to be high enough to drive abatement.

“Collecting and aggregating the right data accurately is not simple because different facilities may have different carbon intensities, depending on where you buy the coal and its energy content for example,” said Chan Wai-Shin, HSBC’s global co-head of environmental, social and governance research.

China is issuing more green bonds than ever before. SCMP Graphics

The data accuracy challenge is not unique to China. South Korea gave companies five years to set up a data collection system before rolling out carbon trading.

Another linchpin for the ETS is the methodology for allocating emissions quotas. On this score, the Chinese government has given few details, with the consultation circular on the provisional trading rules saying it would take into account the national emission goals, economic growth and industry structure adjustments.

The ETS may gradually transition from allowances based on a polluter’s production level to one with an absolute cap, said Ma Jun, director of the non-profit Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in Beijing.

“The cap should be clear for each plant’s emissions, so that we can effectively promote carbon trading and cut emissions,” Ma said.

The impending transitioning of trading currently imposed on certain firms – and done on a regional basis via pilot exchanges – to the new industry-wide national trading platform will be a policy challenge.

“Participating companies in cities with pilot ETS programmes are facing an increasingly higher bar for free emission quotas and limited room for further reduction, while non-participating players may have advantages as later comers,” said a spokesperson at the Shanghai office of German chemical firm Covestro which faces the transition.

The world needs to price carbon at more than US$40 a tonne to reach the tipping point for greenhouse gas abatement to pick up pace, said Richard Mattison, CEO of Trucost, the environmental risk analysis unit of S&P Global. That bar would rise to between US$50 and US$100 per tonne next decade, 13 leading economists supported by the World Bank said in a 2017 study.

For now, carbon emissions are changing hands at below the consensus price, with the ETS permits trading at €27 (US$32) per tonne, while prices among China’s seven pilot schemes ranged between US$1.4 and US$11 per tonne, according to the inter-governmental initiative International Carbon Action Partnership.

“There is a very big gap between the price that carbon emissions are currently traded at, and the effective carbon price needed to drive emissions reduction in line with the commitments under the Paris Agreement,” Mattison said.

Initial emission quotas need to be aggressively handed out to achieve the tipping point, he said, adding that Europe’s allocation equivalent to 90 per cent or more of companies’ emission volumes had resulted in modest reductions over 15 years.

“The EU aims to halve its carbon emissions in four decades by 2030, while China has pledged to cut it to near zero in the next four decades,” he said.

The Best & Worst Countries for Climate Change Policy. Sources: New Climate Institute, the Climate Action Network and German Watch. Statista Graphics

If investors, speculators and traders are allowed to trade futures and derivative products, they can play a role in setting carbon price and boosting trading volume, said Zhang Jianyu, chief representative of the China programme of New York-based environmental non-government organisation Environmental Defense Fund, which advises China on the launch of its national carbon market.

“The Chinese government intends to use futures to promote investment and financing to indirectly facilitate efforts to reduce carbon emission,” said Cai Yongmei, a partner of international law firm Simmons & Simmons who advises on derivatives and structured products deals.

Green bonds, green loans and carbon tax could also play a big part in financing low carbon energy and manufacturing technologies and infrastructure.

China was the world’s biggest green bonds issuer last year, printing 386 billion yuan of papers, a third higher than in 2018, although only around half met international standards, according to London-based non-profit Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI).

To narrow the gap, the People’s Bank of China this year revised issuance guidelines to remove “clean utilisation of fossil fuels” from the list of projects that can qualify as “green,” but the central bank still allows up to half of the proceeds to be used as “general working capital” not earmarked for specific green projects, well above 5 per cent of the CBI’s standards.

Chinese guidelines are expected to converge with global standards in the long term, which will open up domestic green bonds to foreign investors, said Fitch Ratings. Some foreign firms issued green bonds linking interest payments to attainment of sustainability targets, which could have showed a different way for Chinese utility-sector green paper issuers to improve sustainability achievement, said Andy Chang, fixed income credit analyst at JP Morgan Asset Management.

Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury Christopher Hui Ching-yu, at the Central Government Offices, Tamar on 5 June. 2020. Photo: Jonathan Wong

Hong Kong is well placed to seize the opportunity to act as a bridge between international investors and mainland Chinese firms seeking to raise funds for low carbon projects, said Christopher Hui Ching-yu, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury.

“Hong Kong, as a comprehensive international financial centre and a global yuan business hub, is well-equipped to develop into a leading regional hub for green and sustainable finance,” he said in written comments to South China Morning Post.

The city’s rules on environment, social and governance matters for listed firms would also put it in good stead as a green finance hub, said Deloitte China’s risk advisory director Herbert Yung.

Although Hong Kong has yet to set a long-term goal to cap carbon emission, when it does, there will be demand for quotas trading.

Due to the small size of the local market and a lack of carbon trading infrastructure, it should consider joining forces with neighbouring mainland cities to create a common market, said Ma Jun, chairman of Hong Kong Green Finance Association.

The city’s Environment Bureau is working with stakeholders in “setting the direction” for carbon neutrality by 2050, Joseph Chan Ho-lim, Under Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury told a green finance forum hosted by the association this month.

As the coronavirus pandemic continues to curb global economic activities and carbon emission, the urgency to deploy market-based tools to bolster efforts to fight climate change has not changed, according to HSBC’s Chan.

“Globally, carbon emissions are expected to fall 4 to 7 per cent this year amid the pandemic,” he said. “However, what matters for climate change is the cumulative emissions in the atmosphere … this pandemic may just be a blip in atmospheric concentrations of emissions and will not change the tools used to transition towards a low carbon economy.”

This story, originally published by South China Morning Post, has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters.

Saving the Arctic

This graphic story, originally published by Junior Lens, has been shared as part of World News Day 2021, a global campaign to highlight the critical role of fact-based journalism in providing trustworthy news and information in service of humanity. #JournalismMatters.