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Jun 18, 2012
Posted by Mike Rann
Until the global financial crisis diverted
attention there was the strongest international
focus by the world's political leaders, public
and media on global warming. There were the
strongest calls for sacrifices to be made for
future generations, although more often than
not people preferred those sacrifices to be
made by others. Euro zone crises, a continuing
recession in the United States and turbulent
stock markets, have not diminished the climate
perils facing our planet.
Let me recap.
If the current rate of increasing emissions is
maintained the world is on track for a 4c
increase in average temperatures by the end of
the century. An increase of more than 2c is
considered by the United Nations to be
intolerably dangerous.
Along with 'cap
and trade' programs (and I'm proud that
Australia has now set a price on carbon) and a
big drive on renewables and energy efficiency
projects, there has been some attention given
by governments, mining and energy sectors to
'geological sequestration'. This involves
capturing CO² from coal and gas fired power
stations and other industrial sources, pumping
it to suitable sites and then injecting the CO²
deep underground where it would be stored
permanently. Suitable repositories would
include the vast geological cavities left over
from oil and gas exploitation.
A
substantial impediment to a much larger
deployment of 'carbon capture and storage' is
the often massive infrastructure costs of
pumping and piping compressed CO² from cities
to remote areas.
Here at Rio+20
conferences and events, there is real interest
in the technologies and rewards involved in
ecological sequestration. With this different
approach, CO² emissions are seen as a rich
resource rather than a costly waste to keep a
lid on. Ecological sequestration involves
capturing the CO² from industrial processes,
including power plants, but then transforming
it into fertiliser to help make local farm
lands more fertile.
Ecological
sequestration is not some theoretical model.
Indeed, the 'farming of CO²' is occurring right
now in Australia with huge opportunities for
millions of hectares of farmlands to sequester
countless millions of tonnes of CO² as soil
carbon each year. Soil carbon sequestration at
Clover Estate in the south east of South
Australia has demonstrated that this approach
can be a win-win for the Australian economy,
for farmers and for the environment, as well as
producing more and healthier foods by reducing
the use of chemical fertilisers while at the
same time improving soil fertility.
The
global champion of ecological sequestration is
Peter Head, an award winning engineer and
leader of the sustainable cities movement.
Until recently he was a senior executive with
Arup in London and directed work in China's
ambitious Dongtan Eco City planning project. In
2008 he was named by Time magazine as one of
the world's eco-heroes and by Britain's
Guardian as one of the 50 people who could save
the planet.
What is exciting for so many
industrialists and policy makers about
ecological sequestration is that it doesn't
involve shutting down power stations. Instead
CO² is harvested and transformed through
technologies such as algal bioreactors into
fertiliser and bio-fuels. This concept also
embraces urban agriculture linked to water
capture, compost and nutrients from waste
digestion, including hydroponic greenhouse
growing. The aim is to produce better quality
local food and create jobs in a struggling
community.
Through UK based NGO, the
Ecological Sequestration Trust, Peter Head's
team is actively pursuing a series of large
scale demonstration projects in India, Africa,
China and elsewhere to prove that resilient
urbanisation can progress using coal and gas
for base load power but with very low net
carbon emissions. The Trust wants to accelerate
the deployment of integrated new technologies
to sequester carbon and advanced anaerobic
digestors to produce valuable new revenue
streams.
Through a series of
'demonstrator cities' the Trust wants to
establish low carbon exemplars for
sustainability and resilience. Already project
sites have been selected at Chongming Island,
Shanghai, China; Surat in Gujarat, India and
Kigali, Rwanda in Africa. Each demonstrator
location will involve a new Eco-City
development, a new industrial zone as well as
an area of rapid urban development close to an
existing mega city. There is already high level
political backing for these projects and I was
pleased to join the Trust in discussions over
Surat with Gujarat's Chief Minister, Narendra
Modi, in Ahmedebad in February.
The
Trust is ambitious. It has to be. In the past
120 years the world's population has increased
five fold but our resource consumption has
grown twenty fold. By 2050, 75% of humanity
will live in cities compared with just over 50%
now. Cities still only occupy 2% of the world's
surface but require vast 'footprints' to
sustain them. Sprawling London, my birthplace,
is said to require 125 times its own area to
keep it functioning.
I believe the
health and design of cities-trying to make them
work better for people- will be a central
policy challenge of this century for every
level of government. Integrated design will be
the engine of innovation for
cities.
Through its regional projects
the Ecological Sequestration Trust wants to
demonstrate how to build cities with:
• Energy demand
reduced by 50% over today's business as
usual
• 30% of power
station energy obtained from local
biomass
• 40% of power
station emissions harnessed
productively
• Local food
production increased by 30%
•
Greenhouse gas emissions reduced by 80%
over business as usual
•
Improved health and well being
indices.
I am not an engineer but smart
policy makers embrace, and test, innovation.
They measure results. They also see
opportunities in challenges, even crises. I am
convinced we will be hearing a lot more about
ecological sequestration and its mission to
turn CO² into a resource for good rather than
our planet's poison.
The views expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the Center for National Policy.
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