The Eyjafjallajökull ash cloud of 2010 exposed serious weaknesses in the ability of governments across Europe to prepare for an aviation crisis and implement effective responses.

One year on considerable efforts have been made to improve scientific understanding, reform the risk management approach and improve coordination at the European level. A major scenario exercise in April this year even took Grimsvötn - the volcano now erupting - as its case study. Successful management of this eruption would have five characteristics:

European countries take a consistent approach

In 2010, European countries made different decisions, based on the same scientific advice, leading to widespread confusion. This is the first test of a new set of guidelines which allows planes to fly in low and medium concentrations of ash, and puts much of the risk assessment decision-making in the hands of the airlines. Ultimately, the responsibility for aviation safety remains with individual countries. Yet a single Europe-wide system for submitting the safety assessments is not yet in place, and Eurocontrol has confirmed that some European states are not yet ready to implement the new approach - especially those who did not take part in the recent scenario exercise.

Decision-making is decisive and transparent at European level

Last time round, European-level organisations took a back seat for nearly a week. A clear structure of decision making across key bodies must emerge if public confidence in decision making is to be maintained - including Eurocontrol, the European Aviation Safety Agency and the European Commission. Coordination will be undertaken through the European Aviation Crisis Coordination Cell (EACCC), an emergency mechanism that has been activated for the first time since Eyjafjallajökull. Transparency at European level is another key test. The detailed remit and composition of the EACCC - including the level of industry participation - remains cloudy.

The aviation industry supports the best available scientific information

The accuracy of Met Office ash maps was a major point of contention between airlines and engine manufacturers on the one hand, and aviation safety regulators on the other. A new ash measuring station in Iceland (still undergoing calibration) and refinements to the modelling has reduced uncertainty, but this can never be an exact science. Tension should have been reduced by the shift of responsibility towards airlines.

Governments provide clear information to the public

Scientific and technology uncertainty is notoriously difficult to communicate, especially when it comes to articulating risks and probability. Yet this is crucial to maintain public confidence in evidence-based decision making. During the last crisis, there was scant public defence of the precautionary principles or safety.

Governments also failed to establish a clear public understanding of passengers' rights when flights are delayed. Instead the media discourse was dominated by airlines duelling through the airwaves to step up pressure to remove the flight ban. Already, it is clear that stakeholders have chosen very different media strategies to last time - notably Eurocontrol which has been lauded online for its activity on social media.

The knock-on consequences of the disruption are managed effectively

A prolonged disruption to aviation would have widespread economic and social impacts. How to manage these impacts has received much less attention over the last twelve months than the issue of when to fly in ash. If Grimsvötn erupts for longer than currently anticipated, similar challenges for cross-border transport management will emerge, followed by questions about appropriate state support for struggling businesses.

In the aftermath of the recent Rio+20 conference, James Bacchus will discuss the potential for establishing new trade, investment and other international rules and arrangements to promote sustainable growth. In particular, he will explore the interconnections and the international arrangements relating to food, energy, water, climate and other issues affecting global sustainable development.

Attendance is strictly by invitation only. To enable as open a debate as possible, this event will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

About Director's Breakfast Briefings.

The European Union has reached agreement on its 2030 climate and energy package in preparation for the next major international climate summit in Paris in December 2015. In the agreement member states have signed up to reducing greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by at least 40% by 2030 – compared to 1990 levels. Currently emissions are approximately 20% below 1990 levels and so the 2030 target represents a continuation of current decarbonization trends, but it is below the rate of reductions required to meet the longer term objective of cutting emission by 80-95% by 2050.

However, the overall 40% reduction will still drive structural changes in Europe’s economy and the energy sector. This could and should be seen as an opportunity for the EU to become a world leader in the innovation of both the new technologies and systems, such as electricity storage, dynamic demand responses and the deployment of electric vehicles, all of which are experiencing a rapid increase in the size of their global markets.

But there are some concerns. The climate and energy package has put forward a collective target to double the current level of renewables so that it will provide at least 27% of energy by 2030. However, the target is binding on the EU as a whole but not on individual member states, which creates uncertainty and is further complicated by a lack of clarity on the enforcement mechanism, which remains vague. To avoid loss of investor and industrial confidence a transparent process needs to be rapidly developed that ensures compliance. 

The EU has also failed to give energy efficiency the priority it deserves, downgrading it to an indicative target (i.e. one that is aspirational only) of a 27% reduction in energy use from business as usual. However, this is equivalent to, at most, a 19% reduction from Europe's pre-recession trajectory. The weaker energy efficiency and renewable energy elements of the package reflects the resistance of a relatively small number of countries to further EU-wide legal commitments, either because they prefer market inducement or due to their reluctance to reform their energy sectors. The package also makes clear that the a reformed Emissions Trading Scheme will be the main instrument to achieve the GHG reduction target and proposes to accelerate the reduction of the cap on maximum permitted emissions. However, this would only kick in after 2021, meaning the scheme will remain relatively ineffective for at least another five years. 

The crisis in Ukraine and the potential implications for security of supply once again highlights the importance of both domestic energy production and common European approaches to energy suppliers. Every 1% of energy saved across the EU reduces gas imports by 2.6%, and a stronger target would do more to reduce dependence on Russian gas imports. The EU’s failure to adopt a more far reaching and binding target on energy efficiency is a missed opportunity given that it is one  of the only approaches that delivers on the three pillars on energy policy, namely environmental protection, competitiveness and security of supply, simultaneously.

It is important to note the progress that the EU has made in both meeting its climate targets over the last decade and the impact that this has had on its other energy policy objectives. Currently, the EU’s 2020 target for reducing GHG emissions by 20% has or is very close to being met, in part due to the economic downturn, but also due to efficiency, renewable energy and changing industrial patterns and technologies. Furthermore, the use of renewable energy is now estimated to save around €30 billion per year in imported energy, improving balance of payments and improving security of supply. Likewise improvements in energy efficiency have been shown since the turn of the century to have contributed to a 1% annual reduction in energy consumption in the EU.

But the EU is not alone in preparing national carbon reduction targets for the UNFCCC conference in Paris 2015. Both China and the US, the world’s first and second largest emitters, are preparing their own emission reduction plans. China announced in September that it would put forward a new target for the peaking of its carbon dioxide emissions as early as possible. It is suggested that this might be as early as in 2025, with the potential for peak coal use coming even earlier in 2020. The US has proposed to set limits on the emissions from new coal-fired power stations and a 30% reduction in US power sector emissions by 2030 (relative to their 2005 baseline), and President Obama is expected to go further with new climate measures next year.

In the year ahead all countries that are party to the UNFCCC are expected to put on the table their national carbon abatement plans for 2030.  Some will be conditional upon further international assistance and commitments. The package agreed by Europe has scope to respond to increased efforts by other countries. This could include increasing the EU’s own domestic target (currently framed as ‘at least 40%’) or through international offsets and climate finance. How the EU responds to other countries efforts will be a test of its global leadership on climate issues.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback 

It has long been argued that if we are to limit the effects of climate change, some fossil fuel reserves must stay in the ground. But how much of each fuel; and which locations must remain untapped? A new study, recently published in Nature finds that a third of oil reserves, half of gas reserves and over 80 per cent of current coal reserves globally should remain in the ground and not be used before 2050 if global warming is to stay below the 2°C threshold. The speaker will discuss the methods used to generate these estimates, the key findings of the paper, and the implications that they may have in this milestone year for addressing climate change. 

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

The Liberal Party likes to think of itself as ‘Canada’s natural governing party’. Though they have been out of power for 10 years, and newly elected prime minister Justin Trudeau is relatively inexperienced, the party has deep and old networks across the country. The backroom is full of experienced old hands, including former prime ministers who have known Trudeau since he was a toddler. With a number of bold shifts promised in Canadian foreign policy, and a willingness to be fiscally expansive (Trudeau has said he is willing to run deficits for three years to implement their policies), the change is likely to be dramatic, fast and unrelenting.

International engagement

The Liberals’ proposed new Canada has a hint of nostalgia for a time when Canadians thought of themselves as a force for good in the world. There is likely to be a large-scale reengagement with the international community, especially the United Nations, not only on climate policy, but also peacekeeping and disaster response. Canada’s French-speaking experts make it well placed to engage in crisis-hit French-speaking countries while carrying somewhat less colonial baggage. Meanwhile, the Liberals have promised to withdraw Canadian forces from the combat mission against ISIS in Iraq, pledging instead to reorient their focus towards aid.

Science-based policies

Trudeau has the backing of a very deep bench of experienced parliamentarians, some of whom have been waiting a long time to get back in the governing game. They include Stéphane Dion, the former environment minister who gained respect for his chairing of the 2005 UN climate change conference in Montreal, and Marc Garneau, former astronaut and president of the Canadian Space Agency. This will be a government that understands and values (and has promised to restore funding for) scientific research.

This means more investment in climate resilience, renewables and other forward planning policies, but also a reexamination of some of Canada’s long-standing strengths, including Canada’s fisheries. Under the previous government, over half-a-dozen critical fisheries research libraries were shut down, in some cases with large-scale loss of data. A more science-based fisheries policy, combined with the promised funding to the Royal Canadian Navy, may result in a reinvigorated and coordinated Canadian fisheries policy. This would become particularly important in a time of global food constraints.

‘Nation-to-nation’

Trudeau’s stated goal of establishing ‘nation-to-nation’ relations with Canada’s indigenous peoples has potentially global implications.

Through treaties, Canada’s First Nations can stake a claim to about a third of Canada’s landmass, including resource rich areas. They own or control access to land that contains oil, gas, uranium, gold, diamonds and much more. China, for one, realized the potential power of First Nations as far back as 2008, when Beijing invited over two dozen indigenous leaders to China to talk business. During that trip, Peguis Chief Glenn Hudson explained that the trip was ‘an important step for us in moving forward. Our future is not only in Canada, but partnering with other countries.’

Trudeau’s ‘nation-to-nation’ statement acknowledges the strengthening role of First Nations in Canada’s resource policy. Indigenous communities have been among the most adversely affected by oil sands development and, in other parts of Canada, have successfully blocked resources extraction or transit. For example, in May, the Lax Kw'alaams Band refused to allow a proposed multi-million dollar Petronas LNG project to be developed on their land over concerns it would affect their economically and culturally important salmon runs.

Real First Nations engagement with resource management has the potential substantially change Canada’s energy, environment and resources profile. First Nations in eastern Canada have already blocked hydro development that could power much of the northeastern United States and, in a time of pipeline expansion, First Nations might become instrumental in deciding if more pipelines will run north-to-south, towards the border with the United States, or east-to-west, towards the Pacific and the markets in Asia.

Energy sector

At the same time, while Trudeau said he was against the Northern Gateway pipeline, in large part because of how it would affect the people of the Pacific coast, he backed Keystone XL. However, he is unlikely to push for it in the face of a veto by President Obama. Also, low fossil fuel prices contributed to the election in May of a left-leaning provincial government in the badly hit oil heartland of Alberta. If prices stay low, that could very well combine with Liberal campaign promises to put a coordinated national price on carbon and to phase out fossil fuel subsidies, additionally reshaping Canada’s energy landscape..

Agriculture and the Trans-Pacific Partnership

The Liberals also have a stated goal of investing in a more innovative and safe agricultural sector, while defending the interests of Canadian farmers. This dovetails with their promise to openly examine and discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) before ratification. Canadian dairy farmers in particular were concerned about some of the TPP provisions but, without access to the details of the text, it was difficult to estimate how the sector would be affected.

One proposed agricultural policy that may have widespread economic implications is the legalization, regulation and taxation of marijuana. As some states in the United States have found, this has the potential to be economically beneficial and, for Canada, a possible major boon to cross-border tourism.

In a myriad of small ways, and a few big ones, the new Liberal government plans to change Canada’s international role and domestic landscape. This is one to watch.

To comment on this article, please contact Chatham House Feedback 

Summary

• The Paris Agreement, reached at COP21, was a triumph of diplomacy. The deal can be characterized as: flexible, combining a ‘hard’ legal shell and a ‘soft’ enforcement mechanism; inclusive, as it was adopted by all 196 parties to the UNFCCC and is therefore the first truly global climate deal; messy, as the bottom-up process of creating nationally determined contributions means the system is unstandardized; non-additive, as the contributions do not currently deliver the agreement’s stated long-term goal of keeping the rise in global average temperature to ‘well below 2˚C’; and dynamic, as the deal establishes a ratchet mechanism that requires more ambitious contributions every five years.
• The next five years are critical for keeping the below 2˚C goal within reach. A ‘facilitative dialogue’ starting in 2018 will give states the opportunity to revisit their contributions in advance of the agreement entering into force in 2020. International forums, such as the G7 and G20, can play a crucial role in kickstarting these efforts.
• The ‘coalitions of the willing’ and clubs that were launched under the Lima-Paris Action Agenda provide an innovative space for state and non-state actors to unlock transformational change. However, it is important that these groups set specific and measurable targets to ensure effective delivery of objectives.
• The post-Paris regime implies a significant role for civil society organizations. However, in many countries the ‘safe operating space’ both for these organizations and for the media is shrinking. Expanding the capacity of civil society and the media in areas such as communications, litigation, project implementation and technical expertise will be important if they are to support the regime effectively.

In May 2016, Chatham House published a research paper that assessed the options for the UK’s climate and energy policy in the event of a British vote to leave the EU. It determined that:

• The UK’s energy market is deeply integrated with that of its European neighbours and that it would be neither possible nor desirable to ‘unplug’ the UK from Europe’s energy networks. A degree of continued adherence to EU market regulations, energy efficiency standards of appliances, environmental and governance rules would be inevitable. 
• The EU’s collective negotiation on international climate issues has given the UK greater political weight than any member state has alone.
• The EU’s coordinated approach in engaging with major fossil fuel producers such as Russia and countries in the Middle East has helped support price stability and security of supply, including through infrastructure investment to make existing pipeline systems more efficient and improve storage and capacity.   

In light of the decision to leave, Chatham House is hosting a roundtable to reassess the options for a future UK-EU energy and climate change partnership. The meeting will bring together those experienced on UK and EU policy in both climate change and energy and explore the short and medium-term climate and energy policy considerations. 

Attendance at this event is by invitation only.

The US Department of Defense regards climate change as an ‘accelerant of instability and conflict’. A former head of the US Pacific Command described it as the most significant long-term security threat in his region. US federal agencies have recently been mandated to fully consider the impacts of climate change in the development of national security policy. This step-change in the US approach reflects the Pentagon’s conclusion that climate impacts are a ‘threat multiplier’ for security concerns – not just for the future – but which pose ‘an immediate risk to national security’.

A new documentary from the US, The Age of Consequences, explores the links between climate change and security, including in current events in Syria, Egypt, the Sahel and Bangladesh. Our high-level panel will reflect on key sections from the documentary, which will be screened during the event, and explore whether security strategists, militaries and policy-makers in nations other than the US are fully cognisant of the risks posed by a changing climate, and whether they are ready to anticipate and respond to its potentially destabilizing effects.

The panel discussion will be followed by a Q&A.

THIS EVENT IS NOW FULL AND REGISTRATION HAS CLOSED.

Summary

• The use of wood for electricity generation and heat in modern (non-traditional) technologies has grown rapidly in recent years, and has the potential to continue to do so.
• The EU has been, and remains, the main global source of demand, as a result of its targets for renewable energy. This demand is largely met by its own forest resources and supplemented by imports from the US, Canada and Russia.
• Countries outside the EU, including the US, China, Japan and South Korea, have the potential to increase the use of biomass (including agricultural residues as well as wood), but so far this has not taken place at scale, partly because of the falling costs of competing renewables such as solar PV and wind. However, the role of biomass as a system balancer, and its supposed ability, in combination with carbon capture and storage technology, to generate negative emissions, seem likely to keep it in contention in the future.
• Although most renewable energy policy frameworks treat biomass as though it is carbon-neutral at the point of combustion, in reality this cannot be assumed, as biomass emits more carbon per unit of energy than most fossil fuels. Only residues that would otherwise have been burnt as waste or would have been left in the forest and decayed rapidly can be considered to be carbon-neutral over the short to medium term.
• One reason for the perception of biomass as carbon-neutral is the fact that, under IPCC greenhouse gas accounting rules, its associated emissions are recorded in the land use rather than the energy sector. However, the different ways in which land use emissions are accounted for means that a proportion of the emissions from biomass may never be accounted for.
• In principle, sustainability criteria can ensure that only biomass with the lowest impact on the climate are used; the current criteria in use in some EU member states and under development in the EU, however, do not achieve this as they do not account for changes in forest carbon stock.

Also see Woody Biomass for Power and Heat: Impacts on the Global Climate, which assesses the impact of the use of biomass for energy on greenhouse gas emissions, how these are accounted for under international climate accounting rules, and analyses the sustainability criteria currently in use and under development to minimise negative impacts.

Chatham House’s recent paper, Woody Biomass for Power and Heat: Impacts on the Global Climate, highlights how the use of wood for electricity generation and heat in modern (non-traditional) technologies has grown rapidly in recent years, and has the potential to continue to do so. EU member states’ national targets for renewable energy generation agreed in 2009 have helped ensure that the EU is now the world’s largest producer and consumer of wood for energy. And although other member states use wood more extensively for heat, the UK is the EU’s largest user for electricity generation, mostly sourced from the US and Canada.

Wood for energy often has a positive image: a natural product of growing forests. The biomass energy industry, which has grown rapidly on the back of government subsidies, likes to contrast it with dirty coal or oil. They point to the government’s sustainability criteria, which notionally guarantee a reduction of at least 60 per cent in greenhouse gas emissions compared to the fossil fuels the biomass replaces.

The problem with this happy picture, however, is that in fact biomass, when burnt, emits more carbon per unit of energy than most fossil fuels. The exact amount varies with the type of biomass and the type and age of the power plant, but figures from the Drax power station, Europe’s largest consumer of wood pellets, show that in 2013 it emitted about 13 per cent more carbon dioxide per unit of energy generated from biomass than from coal.

How is this consistent with meeting the government’s requirement for a 60 per cent reduction in emissions? Only by completely ignoring the carbon emitted when the wood is burnt; the sustainability criteria measure only supply-chain emissions from harvesting, processing and transporting the wood. (Direct land-use change – for example, clearance of the forest for agriculture or urban development – also falls outside the criteria, but biomass for energy generally originates from existing forests.)

This treatment of combustion emissions as zero – and thus, the awarding to wood the same kind of financial and regulatory support as other renewables such as solar PV and wind – is justified on the basis that the carbon contained in woody biomass is part of the natural forest cycle. The carbon released during combustion was absorbed by forest growth in the past and will be reabsorbed by forest growth in the future; in contrast, fossil fuels originate outside this cycle and their combustion adds carbon to the atmosphere.

But this argument rests on a basic fallacy. Carbon is carbon, wherever it comes from, and if you burn wood for energy, you increase carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere (by more than if you had used fossil fuels), and thereby contribute to climate change. The fact that the carbon emitted was absorbed by growing trees in the past is simply irrelevant. After all, when it’s harvested you don’t have to burn it; you could use it for construction or furniture or window frames or a host of other uses, fixing the carbon in wood products rather than emitting it to the atmosphere.

Climate impacts

It is true that continued forest growth will absorb carbon in the future, but the process is a long one, taking decades or even centuries if whole trees are harvested and burnt. Replacing large mature trees, with plentiful leaf cover absorbing large volumes of carbon dioxide, with small young ones mean that the rate of carbon uptake will be far lower for years. On top of that, the impact of harvesting itself releases soil carbon into the atmosphere, further accelerating climate change.

The impact on the climate of using sawmill or forest residues for energy rather than whole trees is undoubtedly lower, since these tend to be wastes from other industries which harvest trees for their own purposes, and do not imply any additional harvesting. Sawmill wastes which, if left to themselves, would rot and release their stored carbon into the atmosphere in a matter of months or years, are in many ways the ideal feedstock; it makes sense to use them for energy rather than leave them to decay. However, mill residues are already intensively used and there seems little room for expansion; a survey in the US in 2011 found that over 99 per cent of mill residues were already used, mainly for energy and wood products such as particleboard.

Forest residues are the parts of harvested trees that are left in the forest after log products have been removed, including stumps, tops and small branches, and pieces too short or defective to be used; these can amount to as much as 40–60 per cent of the total tree volume. Their impact on the climate if used for energy varies significantly. While the smallest pieces tend to rot and release their stored carbon into the atmosphere quite quickly, if left in the forest, they are generally not suitable for use for energy, as they contain too much dirt and ash to be burnt cleanly. Larger pieces are more suitable but take much longer to decay; burning them for energy instead of leaving them in the forest thereby increases carbon concentrations in the atmosphere for years or decades. And on top of that, a portion of the carbon and other substances contained in the residues is transferred to the soil as they decay; their removal from the forest for energy may reduce both soil carbon and the levels of the nutrients trees need to grow, again with negative impacts on the climate.

The biomass industry generally likes to claim that it uses mainly mill and forest residues, though on closer inspection the categories they report often contain whole trees, perhaps classified as ‘unmerchantable’ or similar. (This is not helped by the fact the categories used by Ofgem, for example, to whom UK biomass users have to report, are confusing and potentially overlapping.) Several independent studies, however, have concluded that the use of mill and forest residues is in reality substantially lower; pellet plants in the US – the UK’s main source of supply – in fact source about 75 per cent whole trees.

Setting aside these arguments about feedstock, however, can it be safely assumed that future forest growth allows us to treat biomass as carbon-neutral? If the trees would have grown anyway, even in the absence of the biomass energy industry, it cannot be assumed that their future absorption of carbon cancels out the carbon emitted when wood is burnt. If the rate of carbon absorption in forests remains the same whether or not some of the harvested wood is burnt, then clearly, the best outcome for the climate in the short and probably medium term is not to burn it, but to use it for wood products or leave it to decay slowly in the forest. This is not an academic argument: the current global rate of emissions of greenhouse gases is incompatible with the aims of the Paris Agreement and may risk triggering irreversible tipping points in the Earth’s climate system. We need to reduce carbon emissions now, not in several decades’ or centuries’ time.

The biomass industry likes to point to the expansion of US forests in recent decades to show that forests overall have been absorbing more carbon even while increasing volumes are burnt for energy – sometimes implying that this forest growth has been encouraged by the demand for energy. But in fact US forest expansion started in the 1950s, decades before European subsidies stimulated the expansion of the modern biomass industry. And there is little evidence of recent overall forest growth in the US southeast, the location of almost all the pellet plants supplying European demand. In any case, the point is not whether US (or European) forests are expanding, but whether they would have grown at a different rate if part of their wood had not been burnt for energy. If they would have grown at the same rate, or faster, in the absence of biomass energy use then it cannot be assumed that using wood for biomass is good for forests, or the climate.

Redirecting public money

There is no question that renewable energy policy and forest policy both have a critical role to play in the mitigation of climate change. But governments have limited resources to deploy in their support, which is why the Chatham House paper questions whether it is really a good use of public money to subsidise activities which release stored forest carbon into the atmosphere, thereby increasing carbon emissions and accelerating climate change.

I argue instead that support should be limited to those feedstocks which genuinely reduce carbon emissions over the short term – i.e. mill residues and post-consumer wood waste. This would not only have a positive direct impact on the climate but would also release more resources for genuine zero-carbon technologies, such as solar, wind or tidal – and perhaps also for programmes encouraging afforestation and the more extensive use of wood in buildings and products. Use it, don’t burn it.

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