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Last month, the United Nations Environment Programme agreed on the first major environmental treaty in over a decade. Its focus was reducing mercury pollution. There to participate in the events were ten MIT students and their instructor Noelle Selin, a researcher with the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change and an assistant professor of atmospheric chemistry and engineering systems.

To share their experiences and lessons learned from witnessing international environmental policy-making in action, Selin and the students hosted a panel discussion on Wednesday, February 6.

Selin kicked off the event by describing the problem of mercury in our environment and why an international treaty was essential to curbing the environmental and public health effects.  She explained that mercury levels in the Earth have increased greatly due to the burning of fossil fuels, cement production, and more. Mercury then rains down into oceans, where it contaminates fish as toxic methylmercury.

"The health risks to consumers of fish include neurological effects, particularly in the offspring of exposed pregnant women," Selin explained. “Over 300,000 newborns in the U.S. each year are at risk of learning disabilities due to their elevated mercury exposure."

Mercury is an element that cycles in the environment, meaning that once it’s released into the atmosphere it can take decades to centuries for mercury to make its way back to ocean sediments.

“This becomes a global issue, this becomes a long term issue, and thus an issue for international cooperation,” Selin said.   

There were five student teams on the trip that covered topics including: governing institutions, products and processes, emissions, waste/trade/mining, and finance.  A member from each team presented on their issue at the panel and shared their thoughts and observations on the international negotiation process.

Philip Wolfe, a PhD candidate in the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, discussed the institutions and policy process of the negotiations. He explained that the treaty has to work on two levels: globally and domestically.

“Individual countries engage in regional, domestic, or bilateral agreements and they’ll only really sign on to a global convention if it also meets their own domestic goals,” Wolfe said. 

The treaty, if nations decide to sign it, would require tightly controlling emissions – a major area of discussion during the negotiations.

Leah Stokes, PhD candidate in Environmental Policy and Planning, discussed the challenges with regulating emissions from the burning of fossil fuels and artisanal small-scale gold mining.  She explained that when individuals want to mine gold and don’t have any equipment they use mercury because it binds with gold. When burned together, the mercury burns first, leaving gold behind. This process is estimated by the United Nations to be the largest global contributor of mercury emissions.  

“We also come into contact with mercury through a lot of the products we use,” explained Ellen Czaika, a PhD candidate in Engineering Systems Division.

Examples of products with mercury that will be phased out under the treaty include some types of compact fluorescent light blubs, dental fillings, pesticides, thermometers, and batteries. There were important discussions at the conference about weighing the benefits of some of these products versus their mercury risks, Czaika said.

Mercury mining is another source of concern, and a major piece of the treaty. Danya Rumore, a PhD student in Environmental Policy and Planning, explained that this was expected to be a big area of contention, but an agreement was reached that gave time for a ban to come into effect over a 15-year period.

Julie van der Hoop, a PhD student in the MIT/Woods Hole Oceanographic Joint Program, followed financial and technical assistance issues at the negotiations. She discussed how the strength and effectiveness of the treaty will be shown through the technology transfer programs, a new funding mechanism for developing nations, and implementation plans.

Ultimately, she said, “We’re looking for a treaty to be effective…If you make a treaty and it’s not effective then what’s the point?”

Many of the panelists said that the treaty has relatively weak requirements, but that this is still a historic and impactful international environmental treaty. Selin recognized that it had to be an agreement that all 140 countries would be able to sign on to and that any limits on mercury will have long-term impacts because of the nature of the mercury cycle.

“This isn’t a thing that ends today,” Stokes, of Environmental Policy and Planning, said. “This is just something that keeps going and going and going. Even though we have a treaty—really, we’re going to decide everything [about implementation] at the next meeting.”

The students attended the conference as part of a National Science Foundation grant, with the idea being to train a cohort of graduate students for science policy leadership through a semester-long course and an intensive policy engagement exercise.  The group had UN observer status and was able to observe all of the negotiations, breakout sessions, and meetings. The students also presented their latest scientific information about mercury through a poster presentation, and shared their experiences and observations through a blog and twitter feed.

View their blog here

As Massachusetts and communities throughout the country face the realities of a world where severe weather events like Super Storm Sandy could become more common, smart adaptation strategies are needed. MIT students and researchers brought their latest ideas and findings to the table at an event on January 29. The interdisciplinary group of young researchers presented to officials from the Commonwealth’s Executive Office of Energy and the Environment, in hopes that the state would be able to leverage the information for future planning and implementation.

Going forward we will need to be thinking out-off-the-box, creatively for future planning ” Massachusetts Energy Undersecretary Barbara Kates-Garnick said at the event. “So much of what you’re doing is totally relevant to what we’re working on…I’m sure that we will be back in touch."

The student showcase was part of a series of events the MIT Energy Initiative organized during the MIT independent activities period to highlight what is being done – and what needs to be done – to face the realities of a post-Sandy world.

Included in the series of events was a panel discussion on January 23 featuring Massachusetts’ officials and MIT Professors Kerry Emanuel and Michael Greenstone. Learn more about the event, and watch the video of the panel, here.

The MIT Energy Initiative also organized a tour of the MBTA’s tunnels. Participants learned what the MBTA is doing to modernize and adapt to change. Read the MIT Tech story here.
 

Carri Hulet, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, presented on work she and Danya Rumore are doing on the New England Climate Adaptation Collaborative. As part of the effort, she and her partners engage stakeholders in communities throughout the region to devise creative adaptation ideas.	Sebastian Eastham, Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics, presented on the health impact of geoengineering strategies and the moral consequences of choosing this approach.

Megan Lickley, Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, presented on the need to protect coastal infrastructure under rising flood risks. She measured the costs associated with adding a sea wall to protect power plants off the coast of Galveston as an example of how her research could be applied.	Rebecca Saari, Engineering Systems Division, presented on the co-benefits of a climate policy. Her research found that current ozone health costs fall hardest on the poor, but even a modest climate policy brings improvements.

Dr. Tammy Thompson, Center for Global Change Science, expanded on Saari’s work and went into more detail on health benefits from climate change policy options.  She compared the costs and benefits of several policy options and advised that policymakers should focus on both the costs and benefits when evaluating policies.	Chris Mackey, Department of Architecture, presented on ways to counter the heat island effect by adding vegetation and reflective roofs to cool urban microclimates. His research showed the success such strategies could have, using the city of Chicago as an example.

Jennifer Morris, Engineering Systems Division, presented on the added costs that come when combining a renewable portfolio standard (RPS) and a cap-and-trade policy. Her research showed that an RPS shifts investment away from least-cost emission reduction options and toward specific renewable technologies that could be more costly.	Linda Shi, Department of Urban Studies and Planning, presented on local adaptation strategies in the Philippines as examples of how poorer countries have for many years been learning to adapt. One of her conclusions, however, found that short-term adaptive behavior may worsen long-term vulnerability.

Dr. Justin Caron, MIT Energy Initiative, presented on emissions leakage from sub-national climate initiatives using California’s new cap-and-trade system as an example. He found that energy imports from neighboring states are the main cause of this leakage. To counter this, energy importers to California are now required to pay for a permit to sell their energy within the state.	Daniel Chavas, Department of Earth, Atmosphere and Planetary Sciences, presented on the science of hurricane size, as larger storms (such as Sandy) can cause significantly more damage than smaller storms of comparable intensity.

Dr. Noelle Selin of the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change has been selected as one of 20 Leopold Leadership Fellows for 2013. She is the first fellow to be selected from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
 
Based at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, the Leopold Leadership Program provides outstanding academic environmental researchers with skills and approaches for communicating and working with partners in NGOs, business, government and communities to integrate science in to decision making.
 
Selin is among the 20 mid-career academic environmental researchers named as fellows this year. The group was selected through a highly competitive process on the basis of their exceptional scientific qualifications, demonstrated leadership ability, and strong interest in sharing their knowledge beyond traditional academic audiences. The fellows will take part in intensive leadership and communications training designed to hone their skills in engaging with decision-makers, media, and the public. They also become part of a network of past fellows and program advisors who are working with leaders, both within and outside academia, to solve society’s most pressing environmental and sustainability challenges.

The 2013 fellows are doing innovative research in a wide range of disciplines, including ecology, marine science, economics, behavioral science, entomology, engineering and planning. They join a network of 175 past fellows who areengaged in broad-based efforts to solve society’s most pressing sustainability challenges.

MIT researchers, Massachusetts officials highlight strategies to adapt to climate change.

Just days after President Obama called for action on climate change in his second inaugural address, members of Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s administration joined energy and environment researchers at MIT to discuss strategies for adapting to climate change. The panel discussion on Jan. 23 fostered a continued partnership between MIT and the Commonwealth to advance energy and environment innovation.

“We are so pleased to have the opportunity to utilize one of the Commonwealth’s greatest intellectual resources — MIT — to tackle this global challenge,” said Massachusetts Undersecretary for Energy Barbara Kates-Garnick, the moderator of the panel.

MIT professors Kerry Emanuel and Michael Greenstone kicked off the event with a discussion on the clear realities of climate change.

“When we’re talking about global climate change, no one really cares if the temperature goes up a few degrees. On a day like today it would seem to be a good thing,” said Emanuel, the Cecil and Ida Green Professor of Atmospheric Science. “What we really care about … is the side effects of that global warming.”

Side effects include increases in sea levels of as much as three feet by the end of the century, increased incidence of heat waves and drought, and more intense rain and snow storms and hurricanes.

When asked by MIT Energy Initiative Director Ernest Moniz how long we have to prepare, Emanuel said the time scale is negative. But he pointed out that part of the problem is policies that encourage people to live and build in risky places. “People are moving into hurricane-prone regions, including right here in Massachusetts,” Emanuel said. “For these people, this is bad news.”

Emanuel's colleague, Greenstone, then laid out some of the ways to confront the challenges of climate change.

Mitigation — i.e., reducing greenhouse gas emissions to reduce the severity of climate change effects — is one course of action. But, Greenstone noted, a comprehensive mitigation strategy hasn’t generated much enthusiasm around the world. “I say that as someone who listened to the president’s inaugural and thought, ‘This is fantastic. The president is making a big effort on this,’” said Greenstone, the 3M Professor of Environmental Economics. “Unfortunately, I’m not sure everyone in the country agrees with the president, and the politics have proven to be a little harrowing.”

Like President Obama, Greenstone believes the United States should be a leader, encouraging other countries to also confront climate change. Acting through adaptation measures can complement both mitigation initiatives and funding of basic research and development for low-carbon energy sources in the United States and abroad.

Greenstone said that in addition to contributing to the science of climate change, researchers can partner with policymakers and planners to try to find successful adaptation strategies. This collaboration is important because “the playbook of successful adaptation strategies I think is rather small,” Greenstone said.

Fortunately, Massachusetts is playing a key role in developing that playbook. Two years ago, the Commonwealth released the Massachusetts Climate Change Adaptation Report, which lays out strategies to help prepare for and respond to the impacts of climate change. Stephen Estes-Smargiassi, director of planning for the Massachusetts Water Resources Authority (MWRA), and the Department of Agricultural Resources Commissioner Gregory Watson spoke about some of their efforts.

Estes-Smargiassi used the Deer Island treatment plant as one example of their work to make adaptation part of their long-term strategy.

When the department began designing the plant in the 1990s, its engineers realized that if sea level rose, the plant's capacity would be compromised. To ensure they would have the capacity needed for the future, the MWRA decided to raise the design of the plant almost two feet. Estes-Smargiassi called this move the first significant and concrete effort at climate adaptation nationwide.

“When we’re making a renovation, we’re going to make sure climate change is a part of it. It’s built into our thinking,” Estes-Smargiassi said.

The department is also taking steps to be more efficient. Just this week, the MWRA was nationally recognized by the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy and the Alliance for Water Efficiency for its exceptional efforts to save both energy and water. The MWRA’s work contributes to the Commonwealth’s overall effort to reduce emissions by 25 percent by 2020 and by at least 80 percent by 2050 below statewide 1990 emissions. Mandated by the Massachusetts Global Warming Solutions Act of 2008, these emission reduction targets are the most ambitious in the nation.

With a third of global greenhouse gas emissions coming from the food system, Watson spoke on his department’s work. Calling large commodity-based agriculture “a thing of the past,” Watson said his department is turning to new, more sustainable techniques: composting, enriching soils with nutrients, increasing fertility with biochar (charcoal substitute made from organic material) and encouraging "grow local" campaigns.

“We’re creating a sustainable agricultural economy in Massachusetts,” Watson said. And that’s “the direction agriculture in this country is headed.”

While there are substantial efforts underway in Massachusetts, Kates-Garnick concluded the discussion by highlighting the need for continued work.

“We have a piecemeal approach. One administration leaves, another comes in. And while we may all be committed … what we really have to do now is put in place long-term consistent solutions ... I think we’re really focused on doing this in our administration,” Kates-Garnick said.

MIT researchers and Massachusetts officials will come together again next week to learn about cutting-edge strategies students are developing.

Watch the video of the event

Karplus, Paltsev recieve award for study on the impacts of vehicle efficieny stanards

Valerie Karplus, Research Scientist, and Sergey Paltsev, Assistant Director for Economic Research with MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, were awarded the 2012 Pyke Johnson Award at a ceremony last night during the annual meeting for the National Research Council's Transportation Research Board. The Pyke Johnson Award recognizes the best paper in the area of planning and the environment.

Published in November in the journal Transportation Research Record, the study looks into the new vehicle efficiency standards. The standards are considered one of the landmark environmental achievements of President Obama’s first term, and have been touted as a way to save consumers more than $1.7 trillion at the pump and cut vehicle emissions in half. Karplus and Paltsev look behind the numbers to understand the full energy and economic impacts.  

“Common thinking in Washington holds that any policy that seems to advance technology without creating new taxes must be a no brainer for the country. That misses the broader economic impact,” says Karplus. “As my colleague says, you may see more money in your front pocket at the pump, but you’re financing the policy out of your back pocket through your tax dollars and at the point of your vehicle purchase.”

Of the research, University of Maine environmental economist Jonathan Rubin, chair of the Transportation Energy Committee of the Transportation Research Board, says, “The research of Dr. Karplus on the energy and climate impacts of the nation’s fuel economy standards for our cars and trucks makes an important contribution to policy-making based on science.”

The new fuel standards require automakers to install pollution-control technology to improve the fuel efficiency of cars by 5 percent and light trucks by 3.5 percent with each new model year starting in 2017.  Karplus and her colleague simulated the proposed standards, and found that while drivers of these more efficient vehicles will no doubt save at the pump, they could spend several thousands of dollars more when buying their new car. Even more troubling, diverting efforts toward improved vehicle efficiency distracts attention away from policies that would target the broader economy and reduce fuel use or emissions more cost effectively, such as a carbon tax.

Estimates of how costly the policy would be – in terms of both direct costs to consumers and the larger rippling costs to the economy – hinge on the relative cost of the technology available to improve efficiency. The shorter the time frame automakers are given to develop the technology and produce more efficient vehicles, the less time there will be for technological progress and other factors to drive down costs  and the more consumers will need to pay upfront. Emissions and oil imports will drop – both due to increased fuel efficiency and as the higher vehicle costs weighs on consumer budgets – but will be offset as consumers face lower costs per mile traveled, incentivizing more driving.

Karplus hopes her results will help policymakers make more informed decisions going forward. She credits that to the innovative method she used, which weaves engineering and technology constraints into a broad economic framework and allows researchers to test the cost and other impacts of a policy at different levels of stringency. This method inherently takes account of life-cycle emissions, as well as impacts that transmit across fuel markets by affecting prices. For example, a policy might only consider gasoline use by plug-in electric hybrids, but that “tailpipe measure” doesn’t take into account the emissions created from building, transporting and recharging those batteries. Her approach does.

“There are a lot of hidden costs to a policy like this,” Karplus says. “This model doesn’t allow you to ignore other important aspects of the economy and energy systems. It requires you to be explicit about your technology and cost assumptions.  It provides a framework that allows lawmakers to look at all the available information on costs and the state of the technology and decide how to best create or update policies.”

Harvard, MIT researchers map future trends of mercury and ways to reduce it on eve of international negotiations.



International negotiators will come together next week in Geneva, Switzerland for the fifth and final meeting to address global controls on mercury. Ahead of the negotiations, researchers from MIT and Harvard University are calling for aggressive emissions reductions and clear public health advice to reduce the risks of mercury.

The researchers’ commentary, published this week in the journal Environmental Health, is in response to a study on the costs associated with mercury pollution in Europe. That study showed that as many as two million children in European Union nations are born each year with long-term IQ deficits due to unsafe levels of mercury exposure. These lower IQs can have spiraling effects on the earning potential of those impacted down the road, resulting in as much as 9,000 million euros in lost revenue a year.

But the authors of the commentary, Elsie Sunderland of Harvard and Noelle Selin of MIT, say mercury’s impact — and that of its toxic form methylmercury — extends far beyond the EU.

“Mitigating the harm caused by methylmercury requires global-scale cooperation on policies and source reductions,” Sunderland says.

Fish and other species, such as polar bears, can be harmed by mercury exposure. Once entered into the food chain, this exposure harms humans. In the near term, the public health community can advise changes in seafood consumption to control the risks, the researchers say. The critical action, however, comes in making significant progress in reducing mercury emissions to prevent an even greater increase in cycling “legacy” emissions.

“Most analyses forecasting mercury levels underestimate the severity of the situation because they don’t take the entire picture into account when looking at future mercury levels,” says Selin, an assistant professor of engineering systems and atmospheric chemistry.

Selin and Sunderland explain in their commentary that most mercury exposure comes from eating fish. Coal-fired power plants and other sources such as industrial activities emit mercury to the atmosphere. This mercury eventually rains down to the land and sea. In the ocean, mercury can convert to toxic methylmercury, and accumulate in the marine food chain. Mercury pollution settles deep within the ocean and circulates for decades and even centuries, continuously posing dangers to humans and the environment.

When considering future emissions, these “legacy” emissions are often not taken into account, but should be, the researchers say, because they make up a substantial amount of future emissions and could make already-dangerous levels of mercury even more threatening.

For example, mercury in the North Pacific Ocean — a large player in the global seafood market — is expected to double by 2050, from 1995 levels, due to new emissions. With the substantial “legacy” emissions that will circle back into the atmosphere, that amount is much greater. This increase in mercury could have dire impacts on fish from the Pacific Ocean.

“Not only will we see these ‘legacy’ emissions circle back up,” Selin says. “But with energy demands growing worldwide, we’ll see more new mercury entering the atmosphere, unless we act now to control this mercury at its source — and that’s largely coal-fired power plants.”

Sunderland and Selin say the United Nations Environment Program’s negotiations represent a sure step in the right direction. The question is: Will the talks produce real results?

In an interview with MIT News just prior to the first negotiating session in 2010, Selin said U.S. domestic politics would likely be a challenge to international cooperation on mercury. But last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency finalized Mercury and Air Toxics Standards that require coal-fired power plants to install scrubbing technology that will cut 90 percent of their mercury emissions by 2015. With these standards — now the most stringent mercury standards of their kind in the world — Selin says the country has proven its leadership and provided some hope.

“These standards show that the U.S. is taking leadership at home to address a widespread and substantial global problem,” Selin says.

Selin, along with ten MIT graduate students, will present recent scientific results to negotiators in Geneva next week.

By: Vicki Ekstrom

MIT researchers enhance model to assess the risks of water stress.

A conflict over water management has intensified along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers. Downstream states argue water should be released from the Missouri’s upstream reservoirs into the Mississippi to allow shipping to continue in the record low-level waters. Upstream states are fighting to keep the water to irrigate their crops and prevent the drought from getting even worse next year. To add to the tension, still others want to move a portion of the Missouri River Basin’s water to the Colorado Basin—which will see demand outstrip supply in the coming decades, according to a federal study released last week. 

These are the stakes in the conflict over water, and the impacts could be profound and widespread. Agriculture, river navigation, energy and other industries all stand to lose as populations increase and the possible side effects of climate change emerge. To measure future changes on water resources, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have enhanced their global model to include a new tool that assesses the risks of water stress.

“As fresh water sources throughout the world experience considerable stress because of an increasing population, economic growth, and droughts, floods and other climate effects, this tool will provide valuable insights to industries and communities competing for water,” says Ken Strzepek, a researcher at the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, who helped design the tool.

Strzepek and his colleagues Adam Schlosser and Élodie Blanc take population, GDP and other socio-economic factors and combine them with hydro-climatic information such as precipitation and runoff from their earth system model. They then combine this information to estimate changes in demand across sectors such as public and private water use, agricultural use and thermoelectric cooling used in energy production. The result is an expanded model that can forecast if and where there could be stresses within water basins, along with the risks surrounding those changes.

“Globally, the tool is helping us see where the hot spots for water stress are and where might that stress increase in the future due to human growth and climate change—two factors that are coming together and exacerbating the problem of water management,” says Schlosser, the assistant director of science research at the Joint Program on Global Change.

While the new model paints the picture globally, it can also be applied at a regional and even local scale to help communities make important decisions about their future energy investments, infrastructure plans and adaptation strategies. Uniquely, by incorporating risk and uncertainty, the model helps policymakers evaluate the question: What investments do we need to make to be better prepared?

“When looking at different climate models, not only do they show different results, they show different directions—one shows a positive change where another might show a negative change,” Schlosser says. “However, our technique allows us to quantify this uncertainty as risk to help decision makers formulate more robust investment plans.”

The researchers have already begun to apply their model to the U.S. While their findings are still being written, the researchers agree that critical water management issues will arise—and in some areas are already emerging. They are finding that the areas that will see the greatest stress going forward are the same places where very rigid water management laws already exist, such as around the Missouri, Mississippi and Colorado rivers.

“Our model framework is able to account for water management and allocation policies,” Schlosser says. “This allows us to take a situation like transferring water from the Missouri to the Colorado Basin and assess the impacts to both basins going forward.”

Drawing from this measure of risk, the researchers warn that decision makers in developing countries should make their adaptation plans both flexible and efficient.

“If we don’t know how much water will come down the river, we should design dams to be constructed in stages. For example, we should make provisions to add hydropower generation capacity easily and accordingly. ” Strzepek says. “We need to have flexible designs, and also efficient designs, so we’re building in a way that the structure will perform well under a variety of climates.”

Read more about the new tool here.

By: Alvin Powell, Harvard Staff Writer

Benefits, risks of using geoengineering to counter climate change.

If they wanted to, nations around the world could release globe-cooling aerosols into the atmosphere or undertake other approaches to battle climate change, an authority on environmental law said Monday. He recommended international discussions on a regulatory scheme to govern such geoengineering approaches.

Under international law, nations can research and deploy such approaches on their own territory, on that of consenting nations, and on the high seas, said Edward Parson, a law professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. Despite that freedom, research into climate engineering remains stalled while opposition from environmental groups, fearful of unintended consequences, is growing,

Parson gave an overview on the policy challenges of climate engineering during a talk titled “International Governance of Climate Engineering” at the Science Center Monday evening. The session was part of a new series co-sponsored by the Harvard University Center for the Environment and the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

Although several geoengineering approaches are feasible, Parson focused on one he said could be deployed most rapidly: spraying cooling aerosols high into the atmosphere. Nature has already proven such an approach to be effective. When volcanoes erupt, they spew sulfur compounds that reflect the sun’s radiation. Large eruptions can result in global-cooling events, volcanic winters lasting up to several years.

The approach would be fast and cheap but imperfect, Parson said. Aerosols could be sprayed from airplanes relatively inexpensively, for billions of dollars, with costs dropping. It would be an imperfect approach, Parson said, because although spraying aerosols would cool the Earth, it would not be a permanent fix. The effort would do nothing to stop the driving forces of warming: the emission of greenhouse gases. Also, the tactic would last only a year or two, and it wouldn’t address climate change’s other effects, such as acidification of the oceans and ecological changes.

Still, Parson said, the effort could mitigate climate effects that are rapidly worsening, or, more strategically, it could “shave the peak” from the worst warming while the world transitions to low-carbon energy, or it could be employed on a regional scale to mitigate localized problems, such as limiting the melting of sea ice during the Arctic summer or reducing sea surface warming in the regions where hurricanes form.

Of course, the prospect of such offbeat approaches also raises the specter of incompetent, negligent, or even malicious uses, Parson said. One of the largest potential threats involving climate engineering could come from nations’ militaries looking to ease domestic conditions at a neighbor’s expense.

International regulations could be drafted by the dozen or two dozen nations capable of carrying out such programs, Parson said. He suggested that such regulations should ban research that might have large-scale impact while allowing more responsible, smaller-scale work to proceed. He also advocated requirements for transparency and disclosure of results.

Parson said it is important to find out whether climate-engineering techniques can have a regional or global impact, and how much they might be fine-tuned to address local or regional problems. It also will be important to determine where nations’ interests lie. If their goals are aligned, he said, creating and executing a regulatory scheme will be far easier to do.

Though it may be difficult to get intransigent nations to the table, as their fear over climate change rises, so will their willingness to negotiate, he suggested.

“Nothing is politically impossible, contingent on the current level of alarm,” Parson said.


View picture from the event on our facebook page here.
Stay tuned for the next event here.
 

By: Vicki Ekstrom

Fatih Birol, chief economist of the International Energy Agency (IEA), visited MIT on Wednesday, November 28 to present this year’s World Energy Outlook. While on campus, Birol met with researchers at the Joint Program on Global Change to learn about the latest developments on climate change policy and MIT’s Emissions Predictions and Policy Analysis (EPPA) model. The model is used by MIT researchers to make their own world economic and emissions projections.

“We had a very productive discussion about the future of the world’s energy system development and advances in modeling alternative pathways. We also shared information about our current projects and future directions,” said Sergey Paltsev, assistant director for economic research at the MIT Joint Program on Global Change, after the meeting. “IEA’s World Energy Outlook is one the most comprehensive and authoritative sources in energy projections and related carbon emissions.”

Birol also commented on the usefulness of the exchange:

"As our World Energy Outlook 2012 shows, the global energy system is undergoing fundamental, rapid change. MIT's proven, interdisciplinary approach to research and education in energy and climate issues will be even more important in the years to come,” Birol said.

Named by Forbes magazine as one of the most influential people on the global energy scene, Birol chairs the World Economic Forum’s Energy Advisory Board and is often called on to brief high-level political figures — including President Barack Obama.

Birol’s meeting with Paltsev, along with MIT Global Change researchers Henry Jacoby and Valerie Karplus, came prior to an MIT Energy Initiative-hosted event on the IEA’s World Energy Outlook. The Outlook projects that the United States will become the world’s leading oil producer within a few decades, while gas will continue to be a major player. It also turns attention to climate change.

“As each year passes without clear signals to drive investment in clean energy, the ‘lock-in’ of high-carbon infrastructure is making it harder and more expensive to meet our energy security and climate goals,” said Birol when IEA released the Outlook on November 9.

The Outlook finds that four-fifths of the total energy-related carbon emissions permitted under a scenario that limits warming to 2°C, the globally-agreed goal, are already locked-in by existing capital stock such as power stations, buildings and factories. It warns that without further action by 2017, the energy-related infrastructure in place would generate all the carbon emissions allowed up to 2035. Delaying action is a false economy, the report says, noting that for every $1 of investment in cleaner technology that is avoided in the power sector before 2020, an additional $4.30 would need to be spent after 2020 to compensate for the increased emissions.

Read more about the Outlook in a special MIT News interview with Fatih Birol here.

Watching the Arctic Melt: Adventures in Polar Oceanography

by Genevieve Wanucha

One hundred people packed into the Whitehead Institute on November 19^th to attend the Oceans at MIT special symposium, entitled ‘Watching the Arctic Melt: Adventures in Polar Oceanography.’ Most people there already knew that the Arctic Ocean’s ice cover goes through a cycle of seasonal growth and decline. Everyone had already heard that the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover hit a record minimum this fall. More surprising was the news that the Arctic, which has warmed twice the global average, may experience ice-free summers before 2050.

WHOI’s Hanu Singh suprises the audience with stunning images of an autonomous underwater vehicle. Singh and his lab members send these robots down through holes in Arctic sea ice to explore the underside of sea ice.

“This melting has enormous implications for shipping, fishing, Arctic ecology, oil and gas exploration, national security, and geopolitics,” said John Marshall, professor of oceanography at MIT, who kicked off the afternoon. “There is likely to be a ‘Gold Rush’ as the oil and gas resources in the Arctic become more available as it thaws.”

The event was a quintessential example of the close and longstanding collaboration between MIT and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, bringing together Arctic experts who are all pushing technical frontiers to study the high-stakes Arctic ice loss.

Their ultimate goal, as it soon became clear, is to be able to predict and model the behavior of the Arctic melting. However, that’s far from straightforward. As Patrick Heimbach, a principal research scientist in EAPS, emphasized, scientific prediction requires understanding—an understanding of, for instance, how ice sheets break apart and how ice interacts with the warming air above and water below. And understanding requires observation.

Fortunately, these speakers are bringing observation in the Arctic to the next level, especially John Toole, a senior scientist and chair of physical oceanography at WHOI who studies how the shrinking ice cap affects Arctic Ocean circulation. “Satellite data is useful, but it’s only skin deep,” he said as he took the stage. “It doesn’t give you information about the ocean interior.” So, he’s created tools to figure out what goes on below the ice.

Toole’s innovation, the “ice-tethered profiler,” is a buoy that sits atop the ice sheet, sending a wire down through the ice. A vehicle crawls up and down the wire, sending high-resolution data up to a satellite. His team has deployed 60 profilers since 2004 and will launch more next year. The huge amounts of data the profilers collect are allowing any researcher to track seasonal patterns in Arctic through measures of salinity, oxygen, water velocity, and photosynthetic radiation.

Satellite image of the new record low Arctic sea ice extent, from Sept. 16, 2012, compared to the average minimum extent over the past 30 years (in yellow). Credit: Credit: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio

Art Baggeroer and Henrik Schmidt, both professors at MIT’s Ocean Seismo-Acoustic Laboratory MIT, reported on their efforts to observe the Arctic using sound. By recording the sound and seismic waves traveling in the Arctic Ocean, they can infer exactly how and why the sea ice is breaking up.

Carin Ashjian, a senior scientist in the biology department at WHOI, uses a range of acoustic and video methods to study the surprisingly active ecosystem alive under the ice sheet. She’s spent day traveling aboard icebreakers in harsh weather to collect data on zooplankton, the preferred food of Arctic fish and whales, in hopes of modeling how temperature changes will lower their reproductive success. One big issue stand in her way.

“We don’t have a whole lot of long term records, and this makes it difficult to detect changes in the ecosystem,” she pointed out. “We need to continue our ongoing efforts to understand the natural variability of the Arctic so we can detect change.”

Admiral Richard Pittenger (Ret.), former leader of WHOI’s Marine Operations Division, suggested that the US Navy will be central to providing the infrastructure for this research effort, more for national security reasons than the ecosystem. It’s been a long road to acceptance of climate change within government institutions, but, he noted, “The Navy is one hundred percent on board. They know there are many strategic disadvantages if we aren’t preparing for the effects.”

Perhaps the most memorable moment of the afternoon came when WHOI’s Hanu Singh and MIT’s John Leonard revealed video of robotic vehicle swimming through icy blue water, mapping the moving Arctic Ocean sea ice and floor. The audience now saw what scientists see in this footage: not beautiful, exciting images of adventure, but a glimpse at the first, slow steps in one of the most challenging research endeavors of our time.

MIT researchers show merits of a carbon tax.

New standards to strengthen vehicle fuel efficiency are considered one of the landmark environmental achievements of President Obama’s first term. Passed with the backing of automakers and autoworkers, the measure has been touted as a way to save consumers more than $1.7 trillion at the pump and cut carbon emissions from passenger vehicles in half. While the standards have many good merits, a more effective approach might be an economy-wide carbon tax, say researchers at MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change.

The researchers look at the full energy and economic impacts of the efficiency standards, which in their finalized form now require automakers to install pollution-control technology to improve the fuel efficiency of cars by 5 percent and light trucks by 3.5 percent with each new model year starting in 2017.  Published this month in the journal Transportation Research Record, the study won this year’s Pyke Johnson Award for the best paper in the area of planning and the environment. 

“Common thinking in Washington holds that any policy that seems to advance technology without creating new taxes must be a no brainer for the country. That misses the broader economic impact,” says Joint Program Research Scientist Valerie Karplus, the lead author of the study. “As my colleague says, you may see more money in your front pocket at the pump, but you’re financing the policy out of your back pocket through your tax dollars and at the point of your vehicle purchase.”

Instead, Karplus says a gasoline or carbon tax makes more sense economically by providing consumers a direct incentive to either reduce their driving or buy more efficient vehicles.

“From an economic perspective that’s very clear, but from a political feasibility perspective it’s very different,” she says. Unlike fuel standards that hide the true costs, “a tax on gasoline has proven to be a nonstarter for many decades in the U.S., and I think one of the reasons is that it would be very visible to consumers every time they go to fill up their cars.”

The one hope, Karplus and some of her colleagues at the Joint Program say, is that in the midst of deficit talks a tax on carbon emissions might be considered to help raise the money needed to slash the deficit and avoid some tax hikes and spending cuts. The program published a study in August that looked at the effectiveness of this approach. That study showed that with a carbon tax the economy could overall improve, other taxes could be lowered and pollution emissions would be reduced.

“Congress will face many difficult tradeoffs in stimulating the economy and job growth while reducing the deficit,” says John Reilly, the co-director of the Joint Program and an author of the carbon tax study. “But with the carbon tax there are virtually no serious tradeoffs.”

Conversely, when Karplus and her colleagues simulated the proposed fuel economy standards, they found that while drivers of these more efficient vehicles will likely save at the pump, they could on average spend several thousands of dollars more when buying their new car, consistent with EPA estimates. Even more troubling, diverting efforts toward improved vehicle efficiency distorts overall economic activity, adding to the indirect cost of the policy.

Estimates of how costly the policy would be — in terms of both direct costs to consumers and the larger rippling costs to the economy — hinge on the relative cost of the technology and other strategies available to improve efficiency. The shorter the time frame automakers have to develop the technology and produce more efficient vehicles, the less time there will be for technological progress and other factors to drive down costs — such as the cost of batteries — and the more consumers will need to pay upfront. Emissions and oil imports will initially drop, both due to increased fuel efficiency and as the higher vehicle costs weigh on consumer budgets. But as consumers face lower costs per mile traveled, they may drive more, offsetting reductions in emissions and oil imports.

Karplus hopes her results will help policymakers make more informed decisions going forward. She credits that to the innovative — and award-winning — method she used, which weaves engineering and technology constraints into a broad economic framework and allows researchers to test the cost and other impacts of a policy at different levels of stringency. This method inherently takes account of life-cycle emissions as well as impacts that transmit across fuel markets by affecting prices.

For example, a policy might only consider gasoline use by plug-in electric hybrids. But that “tailpipe measure” doesn’t take into account the emissions created from building, transporting and recharging those batteries. Her approach does.

“There are a lot of hidden costs to a policy like this,” Karplus says. “This model doesn’t allow you to ignore other important aspects of the economy and energy systems. It requires you to be explicit about your technology and cost assumptions.  It provides a framework that allows lawmakers to look at all the available information on costs and the state of the technology and decide how to best create or update policies.”

Of this approach, University of Maine environmental economist Jonathan Rubin, says “The research of Dr. Karplus on the energy and climate impacts of the nation’s fuel economy standards for our cars and trucks makes an important contribution to policymaking based on science.”

Rubin is the chair of the Transportation Energy Committee of the Transportation Research Board, which will honor Karplus with the Pyke Johnson award at a ceremony in January.

MIT researchers develop tool to assess regional risks of climate change, potential impacts on local infrastructure and planning.

Climate scientists cannot attribute any single weather event — whether a drought, wildfire or extreme storm — to climate change. But extreme events, such as Hurricane Sandy, are glimpses of the types of occurrences the world could be more vulnerable to in the future. As the devastation left by Sandy continues to reverberate, decision-makers at every level are asking: How can we be better prepared?

MIT researchers have developed a new tool to help policymakers, city planners and others see the possible local effects of climate change. Its regional projections of climate trends — such as long-term temperature and precipitation changes — allow local planners to evaluate risks, and how these risks could shape crops, roads and energy infrastructure.

“As we see more extreme events like Sandy, the importance of assessing regional impacts grows,” says lead researcher Adam Schlosser, assistant director for science research at MIT’s Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change. “Our approach helps decision- and policy-makers balance the risks … so they can better prepare their communities for future impacts climate change might bring.”

For example, Schlosser says, if a community is planning to build a bridge, it should look at — and plan for — the expected magnitude of flooding in 2050.

“In areas devastated by Sandy, the rebuilding of lost property and infrastructure will come at considerable cost and effort,” Schlosser says. “But should we rebuild to better prepare for future storms like these? Or should we prepare for stronger and/or more frequent storms? There remains considerable uncertainty in these projections and that implies risk. Our technique has been developed with these questions in mind.”

Schlosser’s research partner, Ken Strzepek, a research scientist at the Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change, notes policymakers are now often given little more than a set of extreme circumstances to consider.

“Policymakers don’t like extremes or worst-case scenarios,” Strzepek says, “because they can’t afford to plan for the worst-case scenarios. They like to see what is the likelihood of different outcomes. That’s what we’re giving them.”

Getting results

In this new method, the researchers quantify the likelihood of particular outcomes and add socioeconomic data, different emission levels and varying degrees of uncertainty. Their technique combines climate-model projections and analysis from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the MIT Integrated Global System Modeling (IGSM) framework. The MIT framework is itself a combined computer model that integrates an economic, human system with a natural, earth system.

“This approach allows us to widen the scope and flexibility of climate analysis,” Schlosser says. “It provides us with efficient capabilities to determine climate-change risks.”

The initial study using this approach — accepted by the Journal of Climate and available on the journal’s website — compares a business-as-usual case with a scenario that reduces emissions. The researchers find that lowering emissions reduces the odds of regional warming and precipitation changes. In fact, for many places, the likelihood of the most extreme warming from the business-as-usual case could be eliminated almost entirely.

The study finds diverse climate-change outcomes: southern and western Africa, the Himalayan region, and the area around Hudson Bay in Canada are expected to warm the most; southern Africa and western Europe see the greatest chance of drier conditions. Meanwhile, the Amazon and northern Siberia may become wetter.

Putting the method to work

Schlosser and Strzepek are pursuing partnerships with communities to put their method to work. But while it’s important for every community to begin building climate adaptation into its infrastructure plans, developing countries could reap the greatest benefits.

Malcolm Smart, senior economic adviser for the U.K. Department for International Development, who was not involved in this research, says, “This is not only an innovative and multidisciplinary approach to the problem of deep uncertainty, but also a potentially very valuable tool to help vulnerable developing countries cut the cost of damages from climate change.”

Strzepek explains why: In the United States, infrastructure plans are designed based on a high standard of risk, while in developing countries projects are typically built to a lower standard of risk. “But if we find that [a developing country] will see greater flooding, and if we’re fairly certain of this, then they would save money in the long run if they built roads to withstand those flooding events,” Strzepek says.

Schlosser and Strzepek traveled to Finland earlier this fall to present their research at a United Nations University-World Institute for Development Economics Research conference. They’ve partnered with this organization to inform developing countries of this new tool for assessing climate change.

“Our approach allows decision-makers to cut down on the level of risk they’re taking when allocating their limited funds to development projects,” Schlosser says. “This can help them see where there are economic benefits to taking a risk-averse approach today, before the damage is done.”

Related research: Climate Change: A Developing Challenge for Poor Nations