This column is sponsored by ESRI
Carbon emissions trading is a market-driven means to reduce and control pollution by providing economic incentives. It’s often referred to as cap and trade, because the idea is for the government to set a limit, and then companies are required to meet that limit either by reducing emissions or purchasing credits from others in order not to exceed the cap. There are active trading programs underway right now, with the largest market in the European Union. The money in the system predominantly goes toward environmental issues, so it’s often seen as a win-win for issues of sustainability.
There are many critics of carbon trading, and most fault difficulties related to: assessing pollution levels, ongoing monitoring, enforcement, and the overall complexity of the system. Geospatial technologies are ideally suited to each of these four issues, providing a credible and science-based means for assessment, monitoring and enforcement, and lending some transparency to help reduce the complexity of the systems.
Ecological Services
There’s growing interest in the role that forests play in combating global warming. The ecological services of forests to process and store carbon makes forests an important component of any carbon reduction strategy. An alliance of businesses, governments and conservation groups recently joined together as The Forests Dialogue on a joint-statement regarding the important role of forests to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and capture carbon. There’s a parallel effort underway in the agricultural community to assess and benefit from greenhouse gas offsets for farms.
With deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries (REDD) contributing roughly 20% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, an idea that’s gaining ground is to pay poorer countries to preserve their forests in order to offset pollution from wealthier developed countries. The carbon brokers are looking at this scenario, and a United Nations climate treaty could greatly validate the idea. The Forests Dialogue Group cautions that any cap and trade for reducing deforestation needs to benefit those countries that are currently doing a good job with conservation as well as those that are seeing rapid deforestation. And the system needs to factor in poverty reduction and macroeconomic development plans in order to reduce the pressures on forests.
The greatest difficulty for this scenario to come about is the need to closely monitor forests for preservation. Geospatial technology will be a critical tool to both evaluate the baseline carbon contributions of a given forest or country, and the tools will provide the means to monitor forests to ensure that they’re long-term carbon reduction contribution stays stable.
Carbon Capture and Storage
There are ongoing efforts to develop technology to capture carbon as it is emitted from smokestacks and other sources and to store that carbon for the long term. Carbon storage or sequestration is typically accomplished using geological formations such as coal seams or depleted oil reserves as reservoirs to hold carbon emissions that are pumped underground. There are a large number of such projects worldwide, and ongoing research into the efficacy of this soltuion.
Carbon sequestration requires detailed knowledge of geological formations. The knowledge of where to store carbon is a geospatial problem, and the monitoring of the storage facilities requires a sensor and location-based approach. Researchers at MIT have developed a Carbon Management Geographic Information System in order to take a detailed systems-based approach to understanding the cost-effectiveness of storage and overall efficiency of competing options.
Geospatial technologies are ideally suited to bring together disparate data such as the locations of power plants, industrial sites, potential storage sites, and infrastructure along with socioeconomic data in order to perform in-depth analysis that provides transparency into the process.
The issue of carbon emissions is a complex problem that requires detailed measurement and analysis. The geospatial toolset will play a large role in assessing pollution sources and sinks in order to apply equitable and fair measures for this emerging market. The global carbon trading market has been doubling in size every year, with more than $40 billion carbon-dioxide permits traded this year. This puts the market on pace to be a $200 billion market by 2010, and the geospatial community can profit greatly by providing needed services.
REFERENCES
Focus Sharpens on Forests for Climate Fix, Reuters, Wed., Oct. 8
International Consensus on Forests’ Vital Role in Fighting Climate Change
Agriculture’s Role in Mitigating Climate Change, American Farmland Trust
Carbon Storage Project Map, Scottish Centre for Carbon Storage
Global Carbon-Trading Market Enriches World’s Energy Desks
Tax vs. Trade, noted economist Jeffrey Sachs favors a climate tax
See what Jeff Thurston has to say on this topic here.
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