Air Pollution, Among Top Global Killers, Is Critical Climate Target

Combined Benefits for Health, Crops, and Climate Promote Sustainable Development

Washington, DC 8 March 2013 – Indoor air pollution is the fourth leading global risk factor for death according to the Global Burden of Disease study produced by 488 researchers from 50 countries. This puts air pollution behind poor diet and high blood pressure, and about the same as tobacco smoke as a preventable risk for early mortality, globally.

The study was published online this week by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation at the University of Washington with interactive graphics that allow policymakers and public health officials to compare “modifiable” causes of death and disability among countries, and over time. The effort was funded by the Melinda & Bill Gates Foundation.

In South Asia, which includes India, indoor air pollution was the leading risk factor for burden of disease in 2010, while in Eastern, Central, and Western Sub-Saharan Africa it ranked second, and in South East Asia it ranked third. The study calculates that indoor and outdoor air pollution together are responsible for more than six million deaths annually, including 3.5 million deaths from household air pollution from solid fuel pollution, 3.1 million deaths from the ambient particulate matter pollution, and 0.2 million deaths from the ambient ozone pollution. In addition, the percentage of global disability-adjusted life years (DALY’s) attributed to air pollution is 4.5% from household air pollution from solid fuels, 3.1% from ambient particulate matter pollution, and 0.1% from ambient ozone pollution in 2010.

“Reducing air pollution, which includes black carbon soot pollution, can save millions of lives a year, reduce crop losses significantly, and cut the rate of global warming in half and the rate of warming in the Arctic by two-thirds over the next few decades,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development. “With this combination of benefits—healthier citizens, higher crop yields, and half the rate of climate change—reducing air pollutants should be a top priority for sustainable development.”

Black carbon soot, which is one of a group of four climate pollutants known collectively as short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs), due to their relatively short atmospheric lifetimes, is the second leading cause of global warming behind CO₂. The other three SLCPs are methane, tropospheric ozone, and hydrofluorocarbons. Fast action to reduce SLCPs has the potential to cut the rate of climate change in half, slowing global temperature rise by up to ~0.6°C by 2050, while preventing 2.4 million air pollution-related deaths per year, and avoiding around 30 million tonnes of crop losses annually.

Due to the heightened effects of black carbon and tropospheric ozone near their emissions sources, these benefits, including much of the climate mitigation benefits, are enjoyed largely by the regions making the cuts. For example, eliminating emissions of black carbon from traditional solid biomass stoves with improved cook stoves would have a major impact in reducing black carbon direct climate effects over South Asia (by about 60%).

The Global Burden of Disease study published in The Lancet is here.

The IGSD’s Primer on Short-Lived Climate Pollutants is here.

Washington, DC 13 February 2013 – SAE International (formerly known as the Society of Automotive Engineers) has reconfirmed that R-1234yf is a safe and acceptable alternative to the super-greenhouse gas HFC-134a now used in automobile air conditioners in a recent announcement. R1234yf has a global warming potential (GWP) of just 4 compared to the 1,430 GWP of HFC-134a.

HFC-1234yf has been approved as a refrigerant in motor vehicle AC by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Japan Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry (METI) and the European Commission (EC).

SAE International is an independent, global association of more than 133,000 engineering experts in the aerospace, automobile, and commercial-vehicle sectors.

The SAE announcement is the second response to claims by Daimler that their engineers were incapable of designing Mercedes Benz cars to safely use the refrigerant (The first response can be found here). Daimler has not committed to use non-flammable CO2 air conditioning. The SAE technical committee coming to these decisive conclusions includes representatives of automakers from France, Italy, Japan, Korea, United Kingdom, and the United States (Chrysler/Fiat, Ford, General Motors, Honda, Hyundai, Jaguar Land Rover, Mazda, Peugeot Citroën, Renault and Toyota). The committee plans to complete its work and publish the final report in the second quarter of 2013.

This week SAE reconfirmed their earlier findings that R-1234yf poses no greater risk than other engine compartment fluids such as hydraulic fluid, antifreeze, brake fluid, and windshield wiper fluid. SAE concluded that Daimler had ignited R-1234yf in an experiment with unrealistic combinations of temperature, air velocity and turbulence, and refrigerant distribution and atomization, which are highly improbable to occur in real-world collisions.

“The fact that R-1234yf is mildly flammable has been known for years,” said Dr. Stephen O. Andersen, Director of Research at the Institute for Governance and Sustainable Development (IGSD) and former co-chair of the U.S. EPA Mobile Air Conditioning Climate Protection Partnership. “Following SAE standards, auto manufacturers throughout the world are designing vehicles to use this refrigerant safely.”

Daimler has notified the European Commission that they will defy the regulation prohibiting HFC-134a in new cars sold in Europe by 2017 (2006 Directive 2006/40/EC). HFC-134a is also proposed for phaseout in the United States on a similar schedule [link to NRDC/IGSD/EIA story on petition to un-SNAP]. BMW, Audi, and Volkswagen have joined Daimler in questioning the flammability of R-1234yf, but have not been as brazen as Daimler in flaunting the law.

IGSD and the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) have urged the European Community to stick to its schedule for the refrigerant transition required to be complete by 2017.

“NRDC and IGSD recommend that European environmental authorities act quickly to make it clear that Daimler or any other company violating the F-gas Directive will be required to pay appropriate penalties,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of IGSD “In addition to the climate damage Daimler is causing, the EC should investigate the damage Daimler caused to their suppliers of R-1234yf components and systems as well as the loss of business by companies supplying service equipment, training, and other support for R-1234yf technologies.”

For example, Daimler could provide offsetting carbon pollution reductions, which could be accomplished by accelerating fuel economy improvements.

“The science is clear that super-greenhouse gases like HFC-134a must be phased-down as fast as possible,” said Zaelke. “It’s not acceptable to have a car company thumbing its nose at the EC regulations and ignoring the welfare of ours and future generations.”

Mobile air conditioning is the largest use and emission source for HFC-134a. In addition mobile air conditioners use from 3 percent up to 20 percent of motor fuel, depending on the regional climate where the vehicles are driven.

The First SAE announcement is here. The Second SAE Announcement is here.

The Mobile Air Conditioning Society Action magazine with MACs, EC, and NRDC/IGSD is here.

Sea ice loss and permafrost melt are self-amplifying feedbacks causing further warming

Arctic Ministers urge “urgent action” to avoid irreversible global impacts

Washington, DC. 6 February 2013 – Arctic Environment Ministers are calling for “urgent action” to reduce black carbon, methane, and HFCs in order to help protect the Arctic and reduce the risk of setting off self-amplifying feedback mechanisms that accelerate warming and lead to irreversible impacts. The Ministers’ call to action is presented in the Chair’s conclusions released today at the end of the two-day meeting in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden.

The Arctic Ministers acknowledged “the worrying scientific findings identifying large-scale tipping points in the Arctic, such as collapse of the Arctic summer sea-ice, accelerating melting of the Greenland ice sheet, releases of methane from melting permafrost, all of which, if crossed, may have substantial global effects.” If the Greenland ice sheet were to disintegrate, it could lead to up to seven meters (23 feet) of sea level rise.

Ministers concluded that “decisive action” on black carbon, methane, and hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) is needed, and “encouraged coordination and support for international and global efforts to address emissions.” The Ministers also encouraged the Arctic Council to consider a new “instrument or other arrangements to enhance efforts to reduce emissions of black carbon from the Arctic States” for decision at the 2015 Arctic Ministerial meeting.

“Reducing black carbon and the other short-lived climate pollutants can cut the rate of Arctic warming by two-thirds. We need a crash course that starts today with black carbon, which is responsible for half of the Arctic warming,” added Zaelke. “We need to reduce HFCs under the Montreal Protocol, as this is the single biggest, fastest, and cheapest climate mitigation available to the world today, avoiding the equivalent of 100 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide.”

International efforts to limit global climate increase to 2°C above pre-Industrial level would still have “major and irreversible impacts on the environment and on the livelihood in the Arctic”, according to Arctic Environmental Ministers. The Ministers also “emphasized that substantial cuts in global emissions of carbon dioxide and other long-lived greenhouse gases are the backbone of any meaningful global climate change mitigation efforts.”

The “Discussion note” for the Arctic Environment Ministers Meeting is here.

Current HFC coolants are super greenhouse gases

Washington, DC 6 February 2013 – The US can use existing authority to help meet its pledge to reduce emissions by 17% below 2005 levels by 2020, although Congressional action will be needed to meet the steeper emission cuts needed to avoid the worst impacts of climate change. This is the conclusion of a report issued today by the World Resources Institute, Can the U.S. Get There From Here? Using Existing Federal Laws and State Action to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions.

The WRI report concludes that “Eliminating HFCs [hydrofluorocarbons] represents the biggest opportunity for GHG emissions reductions behind power plants” and recommends that the U.S. Administration reduce HFCs using both the Montreal Protocol and the Clean Air Act.

“The WRI report confirms our finding that phasing out HFCs, methane, and other short-lived climate pollutants are necessary though not sufficient for meeting both US and international climate targets, which in turn are needed to prevent runaway climate change,” said Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development.

The US, along with Canada and Mexico, has proposed phasing down HFCs under the Montreal Protocol. In addition to support from US industry, more than 100 countries have shown support for the proposal, although China and India and a few remaining countries have yet to agree to launch formal negotiations on a phase down schedule.

“HFCs have been the fastest growing climate pollutant in the US, and phasing them down globally would provide the biggest single piece of climate mitigation available to the world today,” said Zaelke.

In the US, the biggest HFC target is the car market, where up to half of the HFCs are used in car air conditioning systems. General Motors is already shifting to climate-friendly alternatives and getting credit under the CAFE standards. GM is using a new car coolant from Honeywell and DuPont that has little impact on climate.

“The car sector can eliminate the current climate-damaging HFCs fast. The last coolant switch was done by US carmakers in three years (1990-1994), and protected both the stratospheric ozone layer and the climate system,” said Zaelke.

The US EPA is currently reviewing petitions from environmental groups to cancel approval for specific uses of HFCs, when there are clear alternatives, including for car air conditioners. The US EPA also is actively assisting the Climate & Clean Air Coalition to Reduce SLCPs with HFC projects, including organizing workshops to show that alternatives to HFC are already available in many sectors already, and many others will soon be commercialized.

WRI’s report is here.

Double previous climate change estimates

Even stronger in Arctic, darkening snow and ice

and accelerating warming; may also change Asian Monsoons

Diesel engines best mitigation targets,

followed by residential cook stoves, brick kilns, other sources

Washington, DC 15 January 2013 – Black carbon is the second most powerful climate pollutant behind only carbon dioxide, according to a landmark four-year assessment lead by T.C. Bond, S. J. Doherty, D. W. Fahey, and P. Forster, and a multinational team of 27 other experts, including prominent scientists from China and India. The results, Bounding the role of black carbon in the climate system, are scheduled to be published online Tuesday in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

The direct effects of black carbon are nearly double the 2007 IPCC’s Fourth Assessment, according to the assessment, confirming select earlier studies once considered outliers such as Ramanathan and Carmichael (2008). “This study confirms and goes beyond other research that suggested black carbon has a strong warming effect on climate, just ahead of methane,” said co-lead author David Fahey from the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The potential to slow warming by cutting black carbon is even more important than previously understood,” added Durwood Zaelke, President of the Institute for Governance & Sustainable Development, who served as a reviewer of the assessment.

Reducing diesel black carbon emissions along with other key sources including brick kilns and residential solid fuel burning will quickly reduce warming, according to the assessment.

The assessment also calculates that BC causes significantly higher warming over the Arctic and other vulnerable regions, and can affect rainfall patterns in areas where emissions are high, such as the Asian Monsoon system, confirming earlier studies by Ramanathan et al. (2005) and Meehl et al. (2007). In addition, the assessment establishes that black carbon is a significant cause of the rapid warming in the Northern Hemisphere at mid- to high-latitudes, including the northern United States, Canada, northern Europe, and northern Asia.

“This new research provides further compelling evidence to act on short-lived climate pollutants, including black carbon,” said Achim Steiner, UN Under-Secretary-General and UN Environment Programme Executive Director. “I would urge more countries, companies and organizations to join the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, which is leveraging several key pathways and new partnerships to manage down these climate, health and crop-damaging emissions.” The Coalition is already pursuing projects to reduce black carbon emissions from heavy-duty diesel vehicles and engines, brick production, and municipal waste disposal, and is considering several new initiatives, including for residential cook stoves.

Since its founding February last year, the Coalition has grown from six to 25 State partners from both developed and developing countries, including Nigeria, Ghana, Bangladesh, Mexico, Norway, Japan, and the U.S. In May the G8 countries agreed to join, and commissioned the World Bank to prepare a report on ways to integrate reduction of near-term climate pollutants into their activities. Pending completion of the report, the World Bank has already pledged significant increases in funding to reduce black carbon and the other short-lived climate pollutants. Other members include the UN Environment Programme, which houses the Coalition’s Secretariat, the UN Development Programme, and the European Commission, as well as several NGOs, bringing the total membership to 49.

“The Coalition is the first global effort to address black carbon and the other short-lived climate pollutants and is an essential platform for action,” said Romina Picolotti, former secretary of environment for Argentina. “States interested in doing more to reduce their black carbon emissions should not miss the opportunity to join.”

“Black carbon is not only more important for climate than we thought, it also kills over a million people every year who contract deadly respiratory diseases by breathing air polluted by black carbon,” said Zaelke. “That number could be up to 3.6 million deaths by 2050. This is bad for development, which depends on a healthy population.”

Over the past decade “the speed of Arctic climate change and glacial melt has increased the demand for mitigation options which can slow near-term warming,” according to the assessment, and reducing black carbon along with other short-lived climate pollutants, “especially methane and tropospheric ozone (O3), could quickly decrease positive climate forcing and hence climate warming.”

Black Carbon is one of the short-lived climate pollutants targeted by the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, along with methane, and HFCs. Fast action on black carbon and methane has the potential to cut the rate of climate change in half for the next several decades, reduce air pollution-related deaths by as much as 2.4 million a year, and annual crop losses by 30 to more than 100 million tonnes, according to a previous assessment of black carbon and tropospheric ozone by UNEP and the World Meteorological Organization.

The new assessment is being released at the same time as the US’s draft third climate assessment report by 240 scientists, which concludes that climate change is already a major threat, “largely because society and its infrastructure were designed for the climate of the past, not for the rapidly changing climate of the present or the future,” with longer periods of extreme heat in summer, longer wildfire seasons in the Western US, increasing coastal erosion, and more frequent flooding.

“Fast cuts to black carbon and other short-lived climate pollutants are critical for both mitigation and adaptation,” said Zaelke, “because they can quickly reduce the rate of warming by half and reduce impacts significantly over the next several decades.” “Success also builds the momentum and confidence we need to address carbon dioxide from energy production, which is essential for a safe climate,” he added.

The new assessment and the Coalition are clear that cuts in black carbon and the other short-lived climate pollutants alone cannot alone protect the Planet and its people from dangerous levels of climate change over the 21^st century unless aggressive reductions are also made in carbon dioxide, the primary greenhouse gas.

• The assessment will be available Tuesday 15 January at 13:00 GMT here.
• A Primer on Short-Lived Climate Pollutants (2012) by IGSD is here.
• Wallack, J. S., & Ramanathan, V., The Other Climate Changers: Why Black Carbon and Ozone Also Matter, Foreign Affairs (2009), is here; and Clare, D., Pistone K., & Ramanathan V., Getting Rid of Black Carbon, Georgetown Journal of International Affairs (2010) is here.
  The following are major findings of the scientific assessment, generally presented as quotes:

BC Second Only to CO₂

• Black carbon is the “second most important human emission …; only carbon dioxide is estimated to have a greater forcing…” (Abstract)
• The total climate forcing of black carbon is 1.1 W m^-2, with the high end of the range at 2.1 W m^-2, which would put black carbon far above carbon dioxide, which is 1.7 W m^-2.
• The “direct radiative forcing of +0.88 W m^-2 … is similar to the +0.9 W m^-2 given by Ramanathan and Carmichael [2008].” (Section 9.6.28.2)
• “[T]otal climate forcing of black carbon is greater than the direct forcing given in the fourth Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report.” (Section 0.2.3.2)
• [This is also higher than the direct forcing estimates from the 2011 UNEP&WMO Integrated Assessment of Black Carbon and Tropospheric Ozone, which calculated direct forcing from BC between 0.3 and 0.6 W m^-2.]

Stronger Regional Warming in Arctic and Over Ice and Snow

• Black carbon has an even more powerful effect in some regions, including the Arctic, where deposition on snow and ice causes positive climate forcing. This is true even for aerosol sources that have high co-emitted cooling aerosols; even these “can produce positive climate forcing in the Arctic because of their effects on snow and ice.” (Section 0.2.6.1)
• “The best estimate of climate forcing from black carbon deposition on snow and sea ice in the industrial era is +0.13 W m-2”, although at the high end, it could be as much as +0.33 W m^-2. (Section 0.2.6.2)
• “Black carbon forcing concentrates climate warming in the mid-high latitude Northern Hemisphere.” [This includes the northern US, Canada, Northern Europe, and Asia.] “It is also likely to be one of the causes of Arctic warming in the early 20th century.” (Section 0.2.12.2)
• In particularly vulnerable regions, direct radiative forcing from BC can be more than ten times greater that the global average, “on the order of +10 W m^-2, for example, over regions of East and South Asia.” (Section 5.1.2)

BC May Shift Monsoons

• “Regional circulation and precipitation changes may occur in response to black-carbon climate forcings. These changes include a northward shift in the Inter-Tropical Convergence Zone and changes in Asian monsoon systems where concentrations of absorbing aerosols are large.” (Section 0.2.7.2)

BC Emissions Have Been Underestimated in Many Vulnerable Regions

• “Black-carbon emission rates from both energy-related combustion and biomass burning currently appear underestimated. Underestimates occur largely in Asia and ” (Section 0.2.9.3)

Diesel and Residential Best Mitigation Targets

• Some black carbon sources co-emit cooling aerosol pollutants, and the best climate mitigation opportunities are generally those with the highest black carbon ratio.
• “Mitigation of diesel-engine sources appears to offer the most confidence in reducing near-term climate forcing. Mitigating emissions from residential solid fuels also may yield a reduction in net positive forcing. The net effect of other sources, such as small industrial coal boilers and ships, depends on the sulfur content, and net climate benefits are possible by mitigating some individual source types.” (Section 0.2.11.2)
• “In prioritizing potential black-carbon mitigation actions, non-science factors, such as technical feasibility, costs, policy design, and implementation feasibility play important roles.” (Abstract)

BC Harms Public Health

• “Regardless of net climate forcing or other climatic effects, all BC mitigation options bring health benefits through reduced particulate matter exposure.” (Section 12.1.2)