Canada’s 2023 wildfires produced nearly a decade’s worth of blaze emissions

 

 

The health impacts from last year’s fires will also continue to be felt for decades. Photograph: Noah Berger/AP

 

 

 Fires made at least three times more likely by climate crisis and emitted about 2bn tonnes of CO2, data reveals.

 

Canada’s “record-shattering” wildfires last year produced nearly as much greenhouse gas emissions in one season as would be expected over a decade of fires in normal circumstances, data has shown.

The fires, in Canada’s “wildest season ever”, were made at least three times more likely by the climate crisis, and produced about 2bn tonnes of CO₂, about a quarter of the total global emissions from wildfires last year, according to data in the State of Wildfires report, published on Wednesday.

The health impacts from last year’s fires will also continue to be felt for decades.

Carbon dioxide from wildfires is a growing source of greenhouse gas emissions globally, reaching about 8.6bn tonnes last year, considerably more than the 4.8bn annual emissions of the US from all sources. However, the net impact of fires is likely to be reduced by the regrowth of vegetation taking up carbon from the atmosphere.

Matthew Jones, a research fellow at the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research at the University of East Anglia, and lead author of the report, warned that damage from intensifying wildfires would continue to increase unless the world succeeded in bringing down greenhouse gas emissions. Wildfires not only kill people, wildlife and livestock, and devastate trees and other landscapes, but can cause widespread and dangerous air pollution.

They are also an increasingly important contributor to the climate crisis, through their greenhouse gas emissions and destruction of carbon stored in vegetation and soil.

“These fires are something we should all be concerned about,” he said. “The full effects of last year’s fires will not be seen for a long time.”

Huge wildfires sweep across British Columbia 

 Canada’s fires, with a burned area that was six times greater than the average year, were some of last year’s worst. Brazil’s Amazonas state also had record highs, owing to a severe drought, while fires in Hawaii and Texas killed more than 100 people. The biggest single fire ever recorded in the EU burned 900 sq km of Greece.

However, lower than usual levels of burning in African savannah meant the greenhouse gas emissions from wildfires last year were only 16% above average – if savannahs had burned at their usual rate, rather than experiencing such relative calm, last year would have set a new record.

Separate data from the World Resources Institute showed that in 2023 nearly 12m hectares were burned by forest fires, an area roughly the size of Nicaragua, which was about a quarter more than the previous record in 2016. Between 2001 and 2023, the area burned has increased by about 5.4% a year, with the result that forest fires now result in nearly 6m more hectares of tree cover loss a year than they did in 2001 – an area roughly the size of Croatia.

Fires require not just high temperatures, but also an abundance of dry vegetation, and some form of ignition – either human or natural – to start and to continue burning fiercely. Cutting greenhouse gas emissions must be the biggest priority to prevent more wildfires in future, the authors said, but better land management and early warning systems could also help.

Banning people from setting fires, creating fire breaks and boundaries, and managing agricultural and forested areas in such a way as to reduce the amount of dry brush that provides fuel for fires, are also important. Providing masks and ventilation can also reduce the air pollution impact.

Early warning systems can be limited, however – in many hot areas there is a high likelihood of fire for most of the summer season.

“Wildfires are becoming more frequent and intense as the climate warms, and both society and the environment are suffering from the consequences,” said Jones.

Although wildfires occur naturally in many of the world’s hot regions, the effects of the climate crisis on their frequency and severity are now clear, according to the report. Human-driven changes to the climate made fires three times more likely in Canada, 20 times more likely in western Amazonia, and twice as likely in Greece.

As greenhouse gas emissions continue to mount, bigger fires can be expected. The researchers found that a Canadian born today would be more likely than not to experience another fire of similar magnitude to last year’s inferno within their lifetime, compared with a one in 10 chance of seeing such a fire for someone born in the 1940s.

Even wetlands and moist rainforests are now at high risk of fire, as unprecedented drought has taken hold. Brazil’s Pantanal region was devastated in June by record-breaking fires, which laid waste to globally important wildlife habitats.

Although regrowing forests can absorb carbon dioxide from the air as they develop – creating a “delayed carbon sink” – the shifts to more frequent fires are creating a worrying trend, where vegetation has less chance to recover, Jones added. This is making fires an increasing source of carbon in the atmosphere.

“The real problem begins when you have a shift in the fire regime away from its natural state and towards more frequent and severe burning. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what we’re seeing in forests, and it’s resulting in an imbalance – immediate emissions from forest fires this decade are increasingly outweighing the delayed sinks from fires in previous decades,” he said.

The State of Wildfires report 2023-24, published in the journal Earth System Science Data, was led by the University of East Anglia, the UK Centre for Ecology and Hydrology, and the Met Office, with the help of a broad network of researchers and institutions around the world. Scientists used global satellite observations, computer models and research from regional experts to compile the data.

Biomass power station produced four times emissions of UK coal plant, says report

 

Drax was responsible for 11.5m tonnes of CO2 last year, or nearly 3% of the UK’s total carbon emissions. Photograph: SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images

 Drax received £22bn in subsidies despite being UK’s largest emitter in 2023, though company rejects ‘flawed’ research

 

The Drax power station was responsible for four times more carbon emissions than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired plant last year, despite taking more than £0.5bn in clean-energy subsidies in 2023, according to a report.

The North Yorkshire power plant, which burns wood pellets imported from North America to generate electricity, was revealed as Britain’s single largest carbon emitter in 2023 by a report from the climate thinktank Ember.

The figures show that Drax, which has received billions in subsidies since it began switching from coal to biomass in 2012, was responsible for 11.5m tonnes of CO₂ last year, or nearly 3% of the UK’s total carbon emissions.

Drax produced four times more carbon dioxide than the UK’s last remaining coal-fired power station at Ratcliffe-on-Soar in Nottinghamshire, which is due to close in September. Drax also produced more emissions last year than the next four most polluting power plants in the UK combined, according to the report.

Frankie Mayo, an analyst at Ember, said: “Burning wood pellets can be as bad for the environment as coal; supporting biomass with subsidies is a costly mistake.”

The company has claimed almost £7bn from British energy bills to support its biomass generation since 2012, even though burning wood pellets for power generation releases more emissions for each unit of electricity generated than burning gas or coal, according to Ember and many scientists. In 2023, the period covered by the Ember report, it received £539m.

 The government is considering the company’s request for billpayers to foot the cost of supporting its power plant beyond the subsidy scheme’s deadline in 2027 so it can keep burning wood for power until the end of the decade.

 

Drax has won the support of the government thanks to claims that its generation is “carbon neutral” because the trees that are felled to produce its wood pellets absorb as much carbon dioxide while they grow as they emit when they are burned in its power plant.

The company plans to fit carbon-capture technology at Drax using more subsidies, to create a “bioenergy with carbon capture and storage” (BECCS) project and become the first “carbon-negative” power plant in the world by the end of the decade.

A spokesperson for the company dismissed the thinktank’s findings as “flawed” and accused its authors of ignoring its “widely accepted and internationally recognised approach to carbon accounting”.

“The technology that underpins BECCS is proven, and it is the only credible large-scale way of generating secure renewable power and delivering carbon removals,” the spokesperson added.

A government spokesperson said the report “fundamentally misrepresents” how biomass emissions are measured.

“The Intergovernmental Panel for Climate Change is clear that biomass sourced in line with strict sustainability criteria can be used as a low-carbon source of energy. We will continue to monitor biomass electricity generation to ensure it meets required standards,” the spokesman said.

Climate authorities, including the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee, which provides official advice to ministers, have included BECCS in their long-term forecasts for how governments can meet their climate targets.

The government’s own spending watchdog, the National Audit Office, has warned that ministers have handed a total of £22bn in billpayer-backed subsidies to burn wood for electricity despite being unable to prove the industry meets sustainability standards.

Mayo said: “Burning wood for power is an expensive risk that limits UK energy independence and has no place in the journey to net zero. True energy security comes from homegrown wind and solar, a healthy grid and robust planning for how to make the power system flexible and efficient.”

The FTSE 100 owner of the Drax power plant made profits of £500m over the first half of this year, helped by biomass subsidies of almost £400m over this period. It handed its shareholders a windfall of £300m for the first half of the year.

 

 

The Chinese Government Is Telling Its Citizens To Eat Less Meat

(via Co.Exist)

The global impact of 1.3 billion Chinese people reducing their meat consumption could be enormous.

Notwithstanding our collective cultural obsession with all things bacon, you might be surprised to learn that American and European meat consumption has actually been declining, per capita, over the last decade. That’s a good thing for both our health and the planet’s, but these positive trends are canceled out by Asian and African nations that are adopting more American-style diets. In China, meat consumption has quadrupled since the 1970s.

So it’s important news that the Chinese government has adopted new dietary guidelines that encourage its 1.3 billion citizens to eat less meat. Citing health concerns, it has suggested a person should eat a daily value of 40 grams of meat and poultry a day, down from 50 grams in its previous guidelines. In total, the government suggests meat, fish, and dairy consumption should be limited to 200 grams daily. If followed, according to Climate Progress, this would decrease global greenhouse gas emissions by 1.5%.

The key phrase is, of course, "if followed." The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization says China’s per capita meat and dairy consumption is currently 300 grams daily, so the new value would require people scale back by 33%. That’s unlikely to happen entirely, but at minimum the guidelines could slow the growth of China’s animal cravings.

Animal agriculture has a major cost to the planet, responsible for nearly a fifth of global greenhouse gas emissions. A recent Oxford University study suggested that if people ate their recommended doses of fruits and vegetables, by 2050, premature deaths would drop by 6% to 10%, greenhouse gas emissions would slow by anywhere from 30% to 70%, and trillions of dollars would be saved.

Though these are probably pie-in-the-sky numbers, China should be given credit for taking action, which is more than the United States has been able to do. A committee of scientists and health experts recently recommended to the U.S. government that American dietary guidelines should urge reduced red and processed meat consumption. But that suggestion was nixed in the USDA final  dietary guideline decision, after a lobbying frenzy by the meat industries. The government can take away America’s hot dogs out of its cold, dead-from-heart-disease hands.