Perhaps there’s more to this story that wasn’t revealed by 60 Minutes, but there are many companies out there working on this kind of fuel cell so I don’t see what’s particularly special or unique about Bloom Energy. More details are expected to be released on Wednesday, however, so maybe then my questions will be answered.

In the meantime, would someone out there please enlighten me?

Spin is in, but climate change still there
Hardcore climate skeptics smell blood and so do some in the mainstream media, adding momentum to a boisterous campaign to discredit and confuse

Tyler Hamilton
Energy Reporter

The following e-mail arrived last week from an instructor at Seneca College. He was gleeful, commenting on all the negative publicity recently directed at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

“How will the Star explain to her devoted believer’s (sic) why Al Gore and David Suzuki are being led away in handcuffs?” he wrote. “ClimateGate, ThermometerGate, GlacierGate, AmazonGate… Button up Mr. Clean – it’s real (sic) cold out there this winter.”

These taunting, often hateful e-mails arrive all the time from folks who don’t believe climate change (human caused or otherwise) is happening, and who believe their case is strengthened every time some libertarian pundit adds to their arsenal of doubt.

They mock the green economy and green energy. On climate action, they worship the status quo. Lately, they smell blood. And like underfed sharks at an annual seal gathering, they’re whipping themselves into a frenzy in hopes of turning a scratch into a fatal gorging.

Sarah Palin is now writing off all climate science as “a bunch of snake oil.” Fox News host Glenn Beck said last week that IPCC scientists have so dishonoured themselves they should perform hara-kiri – that is, commit mass suicide by plunging a sword into their bellies.

Here in Canada, the Financial Post’s resident libertarian Terence Corcoran wrote a column in late January with a headline that shouted “Climate agency going up in flames,” while the Globe and Mail’s Margaret Wente wrote early in February that “the science scandals just keep on coming” and that the entire climate-change movement has been discredited. Columnist Rex Murphy, who has fittingly moved on to the National Post is pretty much saying the same thing, only with bigger words.

Wishful thinking doesn’t make it so.

Interestingly, both Corcoran and Wente supported their arguments by mentioning how climate scientist Andrew Weaver from the University of Victoria is, in the words of Wente, among the many climate scientists who “sense a sinking ship” and are “bailing out.” Corcoran wrote that Weaver is “heading for the exits” and this is “firm evidence that the IPCC is in trouble.”

Here’s what Weaver had to say last Wednesday when asked by the Star about the recent coverage. “It would be nice if they actually called me,” he said, referring to Wente, Corcoran and some journalists in England.

He said his comments from an earlier CanWest story have been cherry picked and twisted. “It’s all utterly ridiculous. The way it’s being spun is that there’s this sinking ship and the rats are trying to leave.”

But the true sinking ship is the Earth’s climate system, he said. “It’s as if the Titanic is going down and we’re all arguing about the colour of the deck chairs. Surely there was an error in the IPCC report. It’s wrong, and it shouldn’t have been there. But this is being used as an attempt by those who are desperately trying to undermine the IPCC.”

First, it helps to understand what the IPCC really is. It is an international scientific body established by the United Nations in 1988 to publish regular reports on the state of the Earth’s climate. The IPCC doesn’t do its own research. Rather it gets more than 2,000 of the world’s top climate scientists to review the latest peer-reviewed literature. It then gets a few hundred of them to write up its reports.

Here we have a similar body called the Royal Society of Canada.

Those who participate in the IPCC, like Weaver, are volunteers. They work for free on an issue that consumes a huge amount of their time. As scientists, they’re not the greatest communicators or managers. This contrasts with the industry-backed lobbyists and spin doctors who are paid big bucks to scrutinize, bully and discredit these scientists and add noise to the skeptics’ echo chamber.

Take the controversy some are calling GlacierGate, which relates to information on Himalayan glacier melt buried in a 3,000-page IPCC report from 2007. The report said there was a very high chance the Himalayan glaciers would completely melt by 2035. The statement was indeed rubbish, being based on a WWF-International report from 2005.

As a result, we certainly should be combing the rest of the report for similar errors. The recent obsession with this one error, however, ignores the true peer-reviewed evidence that the Himalayan glaciers are, in fact, still melting. We just don’t know exactly how fast.

And let us not forget the Arctic, Antarctica, Greenland and even the Alberta glaciers. David Barber, a University of Manitoba professor who is an expert on Arctic sea ice, recently reported that the Arctic ice is melting “faster than our most pessimistic projections.”

University of Calgary climate scientist Shawn Marshall led a study published last month that found Alberta’s Rocky Mountain glaciers will lose 82 per cent of their ice by 2100 compared to 2005 measurements. Earlier, the University of North British Columbia had already concluded that the glaciers lost about 25 per cent for their cover between 1985 and 2005.

Weaver points out that the 2007 IPCC report was, in fact, conservative with its conclusions. At the time they didn’t have access to more accurate satellite data under NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission.

The new GRACE data, said Weaver, “has revealed that Greenland has been melting rather dramatically. Also, not only is Antarctica melting, but West Antarctica is melting quite rapidly.”

The GRACE data and Marshall and Barber studies are just some of the more recent developments. They reinforce hundreds, even thousands of climate-change studies from the past two decades that form pieces of this complex puzzle. But there are enough pieces in place that we’re starting to see an image, and it doesn’t look good.

Is this alarmism? Sure it is, and so it should be. Do climate change scientists sometimes get worried and show it? Sure they do, but apparently that’s bad. Do we really expect them to go about their scientific duties with Spock-like precision that’s void of emotion and human imperfection?

This is where the so-called ClimateGate scandal comes into play. Remember those e-mails that were illegally hacked from the computer servers at the University of East Anglia, home to the U.K.’s Climatic Research Unit? The comments revealed an attempt by a small group of scientists to withhold some information from climate skeptics and allegedly deceive the public by massaging data.

But on closer reading, even the U.K. Guardian newspaper, one of the IPCC’s biggest critics these days, admits the accusations are mostly baseless. “Almost all the media and political discussion about the hacked climate e-mails has been based on brief sound bites publicized by professional skeptics and their blogs,” wrote Guardian environmental writer Fred Pearce. “In many cases, these have been taken out of context and twisted to mean something they were never intended to.”

Now the skeptics are touting AmazonGate, which relates to an IPCC finding that small reductions in rainfall in the Amazon could devastate up to 40 per cent of the Brazilian rainforest. It was based on a WWF-International report. But was it wrong?

The report’s co-author, Andrew Rowell, is fighting back. In a letter to the U.K. Sunday Times, which first broke the story, Rowell said he was never called and the reporter failed to do proper research.

According to Rowell, the reporter “ignored evidence that the figure had been backed up by peer-reviewed research both before and after our publication.” One of the world’s top Amazon scientists, Daniel Nepstad, confirmed last week that Rowell’s report and the IPCC’s conclusion were both correct.

Yet the misinformation campaign continues. The skeptics say we’re cooling, pointing rather U.S.-centrically to the snowfall that has pummeled cities such as Washington, D.C. and ignoring record warming elsewhere – like in Vancouver, where snow is being flown in by helicopter so the Olympic ski events can be held.

By the way, snowfall is evidence of precipitation, not cooling, and climate science is about extremes – record snowfall and rainfall in one part of the planet, record drought in another. Same goes for temperature, where you’ll see record highs in one place and record lows in another.

It’s the rising frequency of records and higher global temperature averages we should be worried about. And that’s what we’re seeing. “In the Arctic, there have been parts that are 10 to 20 degrees C warmer this year,” said Weaver. “These are stunning temperatures.”

But why should we believe NASA, the World Meteorological Organization, and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which have each declared the 2000s as the hottest decade on record?

For the pundits, it’s far more interesting – and easier — to dwell on the colour of the deck chairs. This, and not the science, is the great global warming hoax.

On the acquisition front, two more promising Ontario cleantech ventures have been plucked up by U.S. firms. On Tuesday Toronto-based biogas maker Stormfisher Biogas announced it had been acquired by Virginia-based Greenhouse Gas Services. Despite having one of the most boring and uninspiring names, Greenhouse Gas Services is a venture of GE Energy Financial Services and AES Corp., so it has some serious backing. The company invests in and develops projects that reduce greenhouse-gas emissions, and it then sells the carbon credits. So here’s my question: If some of the biggest Stormfisher projects are expected to be in Ontario, and since the Ontario Power Authority doesn’t appear to be letting biogas projects keep carbon credits, then what’s in it for Greenhouse Gas Services? I can only speculate that the power authority has quietly decided to let developers keep credits from methane destruction. Something I’ll have to follow up on.

And just today, Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Calisolar announced it had acquired Vaughan, Ontario-based 6N Silicon, a maker of solar-grade silicon that will operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. “In addition, $22.5 million in funding was raised from existing Calisolar and 6N investors,” the companies said in a statement. “The new funds will be used to increase capacity at the Sunnyvale, California cell manufacturing facility and expand silicon purification operations in Vaughan, Ontario.” It’s sad to see 6N fall under foreign ownership so early in its life, but the good news is that Calisolar is likely to set up some module assembly in Ontario to take advantage of the feed-in-tariff program here. Given that its solar cells will contain 6N’s silicon, the company will be well positioned to meet Ontario’s local content requirements and even supply other cell/module makers.

Finally, I have a follow to my story about Vestas and the possibility it will lay roots in Ontario. I spoke Wednesday to the company’s head of global offshore markets, who spoke highly of the Trillium projects and called the opportunity to develop offshore wind in the Great Lakes “fantastic.” He wouldn’t say if Vestas plans to establish manufacturing in Ontario — which isn’t surprising — but given the potential in the Great Lakes, the liklihood of Trillium’s projects moving forward first, and the positive policy and regulatory environment in Ontario (including the feed-in-tariff program, which offers 19 cents per kilowatt-hour for offshore wind power), all the stars are aligned and it’s only a matter of time before Vestas makes its move.

I have an update on Ontario Power Generation’s biomass strategy in today’s Clean Break column. OPG will likely convert Atikokan to 100 per cent biomass by 2012, with some units at Nanticoke likely to follow a year later. Lambton and Thunder Bay plants are also being considered. The OPG executive heading up the transition, Chris Young, says the company is seriously investigating a fuel pellet mixture with both wood and agricultural residues (or dedicated crops, like switchgrass). OPG figures that coal plants converted to burning biomass will likely operate for another 10 years before decommissioning, at which point the pellet supply chain will be firmly established and the move to build a distributed fleet of newer biomass-burning plants can begin.

And what is U of T’s estimated cost of supplying electricity from an existing coal plant converted to burning 100 per cent biomass? Roughly 12 cents per kilowatt-hour, which excludes the impact of carbon prices. Given that natural gas won’t stay low forever and will eventually be subject to carbon pricing, this makes the biomass option competitive (also with wind and nuclear) and at the same time is a winner when it comes to local green-collar job creation.

If OPG can pull this off, it would be another Ontario first — and something other jurisdictions can learn from.

The problem with this conclusion? Clarens based the life-cycle analysis on data that was mostly 10 years old. For example, some current algae cultivation practices, particularly those based on wastewater or sea water, tackle the fertilizer issue head on. So the age of the data is an important bit of information that should have been made very clear in the study — even the abstract. Ten years in the world of technology, particular cleantech, is a long time. I mean, the big R&D push around algae-based fuels only began three or four years ago, and 10 years ago the “cleantech” sector didn’t exist in name. Ten years ago the world was still wrapping its head around Y2K, George W. Bush was just getting into office, Google was still a start-up years from going public, and the TV show CSI (the original one) had its world premiere. In other words, you can expect data about algae cultivation to be, well, rather useless as a reflection of current practices.

This isn’t to blame Clarens. As he told the New York Times’ Green Inc., the most current data out there is simply unavailable to academia. It’s proprietary. “I’d be happy to model it if somebody produces it,” he said. This, of course, is a general problem with a lot of studies looking into lifecycle analyses. Researchers can only go with the data they can get, and perhaps this explains a lot of the earlier controversy around ethanol from corn. It’s still something we want to move away from, but certainly not as bad as guys like David Pimental of Cornell University like to paint it. I’d argue these studies should do two things: make a greater effort of emphasizing data limitations; and make a clear distinction between technologies/processes already deployed and those in pre-commercial phase.

Look at it this way: Can you imagine a study coming out in 2010 comparing different Internet search engines, but basing it on data available in 2000? Now, the Internet isn’t cleantech, but in certain areas there’s no reason to believe that the pace of innovation is any different.

Life-cycle analysis is hugely important work, but if it can’t keep up with innovation then it can become dated before it’s even published.

Ontario is pulling its weight, largely as a result of its coal-phaseout strategy, renewable energy deployment and conservation initiatives. As of the end of October 2009, greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil-fuel (coal and natural gas) power generation is down 40 per cent compared to same 10-month period the previous year, according to Ontario’s Independent Electricity System Operator. What can we expect with the introduction of carbon prices and a cap-and-trade system?

A recent research brief of New Energy Finance looks to Europe for answers. It found that five years after the introduction of a greenhouse gas emissions-trading system the European power sector is factoring carbon prices into future investment decisions. It also found that carbon prices are pushing the sector toward lower-carbon sources of electricity and accelerating the closure of the oldest and dirtiest fossil-fuel plants. “The answer is clearly that European power generators see that the EU ETS is here to stay and that it is starting to affect how they make multi-billion euro investments in new generation capacity,” said Guy Turner, the research firm’s director of carbon market research. ”By 2020 the European generating fleet will be materially cleaner than it is today.”

Something to hope for? Let’s hope so. I’m more a fan of carbon taxes than cap-and-trade, but if the latter is designed correctly, and if we can learn off some of the early mistakes made by the Europeans, clearly it will drive emissions down. The question, then, will be how much it will drive them down, and whether it will be fast enough. That will ultimately depend on the price of carbon, and how many freebie carbon allowances are handed out to industry.

Obviously, this isn’t great news for the coal industry. What’s that expression — cry me a river? It doesn’t mean CCS can’t be put to good use in rich countries, but obviously that will come at higher cost. Will anyone want to pay developed-world prices to get the needed 100 or so clean coal and carbon sequestration projects working? Tough to say, but I doubt it. Developing-world projects were considered a way to get some volume deployment, and without that, it doesn’t look good for coal. But given what’s on the line for Canada, Australia, the U.S. and others, leaving out CCS doesn’t look good for Copenhagen either, so someone’s going to have to give.

Isn’t international politics fun?

According to the 44-country ranking, measured by cleantech sales as a percentage of GDP, the Top 3 countries are Denmark, Brazil and Germany. China ranked sixth. The U.S. ranked 19th, just one position behind the United Kingdom. On the bottom half of the list are Australia, ranked 28th, and Canada, ranked 31st. Keith Stewart at WWF said the results come as a warning to Canada. “This report shows that Canada is far behind countries like the U.S. and China in investing in green technologies, in real and relative terms,” he said. “You can be sure the Chinese economy will not sit still while we sit on our hands.”

Stewart said it doesn’t help that come the end of January 2010 a Canadian federal incentive program designed to promote renewable energy development will run out of budgeted funds. While there is talk of re-charging the fund next year there is still likely to be a major funding gap, creating the kind of bust-boom cycle that once held back the U.S. wind and solar markets. Have we not learned from past mistakes?

It’s good to see some movement on a U.S. climate bill, but it’s still far, far short of what’s really needed. One can only hope that as the big U.S. ship moves to meet even these weak targets, perhaps the momentum will be so great that businesses, industry and consumers find it all the more easier to embrace clean energy and move beyond the targets. Wishful thinking, I know, but you’ll never turn the ship if you don’t turn the steering wheel.

So says PricewaterhouseCoopers, which put out an analysis looking at how well the world is doing toward reaching emission cuts required by 2050. It concluded that, on average, the world is off track by 10 per cent with regards to staying within its carbon budget for the period between 2000 and 2050. This is based on a global carbon budget of 1,300 gigatonnes of CO2-equivalent emissions, which aims to limit the global temperature increase to 2 degrees C (relatively to pre-industrial levels). “At current rates of carbon intensity improvement, the world will already have exceeded its estimated global carbon budget for the first half of this century by 2034, 16 years ahead of schedule,” according to PwC. “Such a ‘business as usual’ scenario could result in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations exceeding 1000ppm CO2e by the end of the century with potentially disastrous implications for the climate system and the global economy.”

Just a reminder: the aim is to stay below 450ppm, and some believe that 350ppm is what’s really required. Translation: Yikes!

Based on this analysis, Canada needs to reduce its emissions roughly 90 per cent from today’s levels to get back on track toward the 2050 goal. On a global basis, PwC estimates that to get back on track the world must reduce its carbon intensity by 3.5 per cent a year by 2020, or 35 per cent “cumulatively” between 2008 and 2020.

We’ve got our work cut out for us… time to roll up our sleeves.