This program focuses on:

- Methodologies for projecting long term energy use and carbon dioxide emissions

- The relationship between macroeconomic performance and energy use

- The role of relative prices in energy demand and macroeconomic outcomes

- The macroeconomic consequences of alternative energy polices

- The macroeconomic consequences of alternative climate change strategies

- The design and impact of alternative emission permit trading systems

Director: Professor Warwick McKibbin (ANU)   Members’ List

For more information see…

http://cama.anu.edu.au/programs.asp#climate

Mills Room, The Chancelry

 Introduction and Overview – Ken Baldwin

With contributions from Janette Lindesay (co-chair Climate Initiative) and Quentin Grafton (co-chair Water Initiative) on their potential role in an ANU Climate Change Institute (CCI).

Research Areas (Click on research area for presentation) 

• Solar Photovoltaics -  Dan McDonald, Andrew Blakers, Andres Cuevas
• Solar Thermal – Keith Lovegrove
• Nuclear Science  -  George Dracoulis, Aidan Byrne
• Fusion Energy  -  Boyd Blackwell, Matthew Hole,
• Fuel Cells  -  Cormac Corr, Christine Charles, Rod Boswell
• Artificial Photosynthesis  - Elmars Krausz, Ron Pace
• BioSolar  - Graham Farquhar
• Enhanced oil extraction – Mark Knackstedt
• Power Distribution Stability - David Hill
• Global projections of energy use and emissions trading - Warwick McKibbin
• Policies for low-carbon energy supply– Frank Jotzo, Ralf Steinhauser
• Policies for energy efficiency - Richard Denniss
• Regulatory Systems – Tim  Bonyhady, Andrew Macintosh, James Prest

 Discussion session 

Prospects for forming an Energy grouping under the umbrella of a Climate Change Institute

• synergies in energy researchrelationship between energy, climate and water groupingsgovernance of the CCI and the Energy groupingcreation of an Energy teaching programme, starting with a Masters degreepotential bids for funding, including the next round of KAUST proposals

Fluorescent organic dyes can be incorporated into PV modules.  They are being investigated at the ANU in collaboration with Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, and funded by BASF Germany. These dyes have two interesting properties:  (i) they absorb light at one wavelength and emit at a longer wavelength, and (ii) the emission is in a random direction.The first property can be exploited to make conventional PV modules more efficient.  These modules do not respond well to short-wavelength light because the encapsulation—glass and EVA—absorb this light before it can reach the solar cells.  Thus, if the appropriate fluorescent dyes were incorporated into the front of a module, the short-wavelength light could be converted to longer-wavelength light before it is lost to the encapsulation.

The second property of the dyes makes it possible to concentrate diffuse sunlight at the edge of a perspex sheet.  When a sheet of perspex containing fluorescent dyes is exposed to sunlight, the dyes absorb and re-emit light in a random direction.  Since the refractive index of perspex is significantly greater than air, much of the re-emitted light is total-internally reflected at the perspex–glass interface.  It therefore propagates from the point of emission to the edge where solar cells can be placed to absorb the light.  In this way, an approximately 4-times concentration of diffuse sunlight can be attained from a single sheet of Perspex, without sun-tracking.

Lead Researcher: Dr Keith McIntosch, ANU Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems.

World-first study finds 3 time more carbon in Aussie forest than previously known.  South-east Australia’s natural forests are among the most carbon dense in the world and store three times more carbon than Australian and international climate change experts realise, a world-first study released today at The Australian National University revealed.

The largest stocks of carbon are found in the tall wet eucalypt forests of Victoria and Tasmania. These forests support trees up to 80 metres tall and can contain more than 1200 tonnes of carbon per hectare, which is up to 10 times more carbon per hectare than previously realised.

ANU scientists have calculated that the average amount of carbon stored in unlogged natural eucalypt forests is about 640 tonnes per hectare. According to the leading worldwide climate change scientific body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the average carbon stock in temperate forests is only 217 tonnes of carbon per hectare.

The findings represent a breakthrough in understanding the role of forests in long term carbon storage and in helping solve the climate change problem. The authors – Professor Brendan Mackey, Dr Heather Keith, Dr Sandra Berry and Professor David Lindenmayer – found that a new approach is needed to account for carbon stored in natural forests.

“Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries has been the focus for the international community since the United Nations climate change conference in Bali last December, but this is also an issue for Australia,” Professor Mackey said.

About half of Australia’s forests have been cleared in the last 220 years and the carbon stocks in more than 50 per cent of the remaining unprotected forests have been degraded by land use activities such as logging. Professor Mackey said the research should alert Australian governments and international agencies of the urgent need to protect the carbon stored in natural forests as part of the suite of measures needed to solve the climate change problem.

“Protecting the carbon in Australia’s and the world’s natural forests is no longer an option – it is a necessity,” Professor Mackey said. “If natural forests continue to be cleared and degraded then the C0₂ released will significantly increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The carbon stored in natural forests is a larger and more reliable stock than the carbon stored in commercially logged forests and plantations.”

The research from the Fenner School of Environment and Society at ANU found that around 9.3 billion tonnes of carbon can be stored in the 14.5 million hectares of natural eucalypt forests in south-east Australia if they are left undisturbed. The carbon currently stored in these forests is equivalent to “avoided emissions” of 460 million tonnes of CO₂ per year for the next 100 years.

The Green Carbon research is online: http://epress.anu.edu.au/green_carbon_citation.html

The next round of United Nations climate change negotiations will take place in Accra, Ghana, from 21-27 August. The Accra Climate Change Talks will take forward work on a strengthened and effective international climate change deal under the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, as well as work on emission reduction rules and tools under the Kyoto Protocol. This is part of a negotiating process that will be concluded in Copenhagen at the end of 2009. Over a thousand participants are expected to attend the Accra meeting, which is the third major UNFCCC gathering this year.

The venue for the sessions is the Accra International Conference Center (AICC). A limited number of side events and exhibits focused on the Accra Climate Talks will take place at Accra, for which the on-line application process is now closed.

For papers and program go to:

http://unfccc.int/meetings/intersessional/accra/items/4437.phpANU Observers at this event:

Ms. Joanna Greenlees

Professor Brendan  Mackey

The climate and weather systems on Earth are controlled by the transport of heat around the globe. The oceans are of major importance in the climate system because they store and transport a vast amount of heat, thereby governing climate sensitivity and responses to changing forcing.The circulation of the global oceans is forced largely by the action of winds blowing over the sea surface and fluxes of heat and water through the sea surface. Accordingly, short-term climate response involves waters that can interact rapidly with the surface and that therefore tend to be situated at shallower depths. A crucial component for long-term climate response is the “overturning circulation”, which allows the bulk of the ocean depth to exchange heat with the atmosphere, via vertical mixing and deep sinking at high-latitudes of locally dense surface waters. Warming surface temperatures on Earth and accompanying increases in both the hydrological cycle and ice-melt are likely to reduce high-latitude dense water formation, leading to a slowing of the overturning circulation and potentially a positive climate feedback.

Figure 1 (below). Dye-release visualization of the overturning circulation in an idealized laboratory model before, and soon after, a surface heat flux change that shuts-down high-latitude sinking and prevents ventilation of the deeper waters at the surface. 

Our current research investigates the physics governing the overturning circulation and transport of heat to the deep oceans. We conduct laboratory and numerical experiments in which we isolate and examine the key processes. We have concentrated thus far on the overturning circulation supported by surface fluxes of heat and water, addressing questions such as how the circulation is modified when these fluxes change. Results show that the ensuing flow is extremely sensitive to changes in the surface fluxes, that the initial evolution can be dramatic and rapid (Figure 1), and that restoration of the deep circulation is very slow. We further find that a source of strong variability in the circulation is linked to wave modes excited by the high-latitude sinking motions (Figure 2). The implications for Earth’s climate can be assessed with the help of numerical coupled ocean-atmosphere models.

Figure 2 (left). Hovmöller plot of the vertical velocity along a horizontal section at mid-depth from an idealized numerical simulation. Time increases upwards; blue represents upwelling motion, green approximately no motion, and red downwelling motion. Regions of high latitude sinking are situated in this case at both the left and right hand ends of the horizontal section, and excite strong wave modes that are propagate towards ‘low latitudes’ at the centre of the section. These waves and their interactions appear to be responsible for much of the variability in the circulation.

Ross Griffiths, Graham Hughes, Andy Hogg, Melissa Coman, Kial Stewart

Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Group, Earth Physics, Research School of Earth Sciences

When it comes to accounting for and reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, the colour of carbon counts. REDD stands for “reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation”. About 20% of global emissions from human activity is from deforestation, with forest degradation accounting for possibly another 10%. This is a larger amount than emissions from the transportation sector. If this source of emissions causes 30% of the problem, then we need to be investing 30% of our efforts into solving it.The global carbon cycle links the four main pools – ocean, atmosphere, land, and the lithosphere. Carbon moves from one pool to another, staying in each pool for different periods of time. Humans are currently mining carbon from the lithosphere in the form of coal, oil, and gas. We then burn this fossil fuel for energy, which releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Through natural processes some of the carbon in the atmosphere is transferred to the land pool, where it is stored in plants and soil, and to the ocean pool. The carbon stored on land is absorbed from the atmosphere through the process of photosynthesis by plants – about half of the dry mass of plants (biomass) is carbon. The green coloured pigment (chlorophyll) in the leaves of plants traps the solar energy that drives photosynthesis and the production of biomass. This is why the biomass carbon stored in vegetation is referred to as “green carbon”, which is different from the “blue carbon” of atmospheric carbon dioxide, and the “grey carbon” of fossil fuel.

We are just beginning to understand the significance of green carbon in mitigating the climate change problem.

Green carbon research

Most carbon accounting is focused on tracking carbon stocks and flows from plantations or industrialized forests. Our research is focused on carbon storage in natural forest ecosystems. We are investigating how much carbon can be stored in natural forests when they are undisturbed by modern human land use activities, such as commercial logging. This research enables us to then identify the carbon value of a forest and its carbon sequestration potential – how much more carbon a forest can store if we allow it to grow back undisturbed by land use activities. Results to date indicate that our natural forests store significantly more carbon than has been acknowledged previously, and that national and international accounts may be under-valuing the carbon sequestration potential of these forests.

By the end of 2009 it is very likely that carbon will have a market value and that national and global cap and trade schemes will be in place. Because REDD is around 30% of human caused emissions, it is vital that green carbon be accounted for properly and valued. Our green carbon research is therefore directly relevant to the formulation of REDD policy, both nationally and for the ongoing international climate change treaty negotiations.

Publications

Mackey, B., Keith, H., Berry, S. and Lindenmayer D.B. (2008). Green Carbon: the role of natural forests in carbon storage. Part 1. A green carbon account of the eucalypt forests of south-eastern Australia. ANU ePress, Canberra.

Shearman, P.L., Bryan, J.E., Ash, J., Hunnam, P., Mackey, B. and Lokes, B. (2008). The state of the forests of Papua New Guinea. Mapping the extent and condition of forest cover and measuring the drivers of forest change in the period 1972-2002. University of Papua New Guinea; available on-line at http://gis.mortonblacketer.com.au/upngis/index.htm

Roxburgh, S.H., B. G. Mackey, C. Dean, L. Randall, A. Lee & J. Austin (2006) Organic carbon partitioning in soil and litter in subtropical woodlands and open forests: a case study from the Brigalow Belt, Queensland. The Rangeland Journal (28): 115–125

Roxburgh, S.H., Wood, S.W., Mackey, B.G., Woldendorp, G. & Gibbons, P. (2006) Assessing the carbon sequestration potential of managed forests: A case study from temperate Australia. Journal of Applied Ecology 43:1149-1159.

Contacts: Prof Brendan Mackey, Dr Heather Keith and Dr Sandy Berry

ANU WildCountry Research & Policy Hub, Fenner School of Environment & Society

For a truly intrepid scientific adventure, you need go no further than to venture to the remote Bimberi Wilderness a kilometres west of Canberra, where ancient snow gum and mountain plum pine flourish in rare fire refugia.  Up there, the climate is truly extreme.  And that climatic record is stored in growth rings of unburnt trees.  Defining questions are how to unlock that memory and, having done so, how to interpret the natural variability in climate to help us all plan for the future.

The drawing-board project presents many challenges, not least a mountain goat propensity to access the fire-free wilderness woodlands on the high Bindabella Range.  Other barriers to progress include the requisite skills to non-invasively sample trees, the need to find sufficient old growth material, and the capacity to painstakingly prepare for, analyse and interpret growth patterns.  Methodological issues such as “cross-dating” and forming “master chronologies”, daunting even for the initiated, need also to be meticulously checked and contended with. And then of course there is always that ever present and seemingly insurmountable barrier, how to fund such an endeavour.

But there is some encouraging news.  Fenner’s Matthew Brookhouse, has recently demonstrated that tree ring growth in snow gum can be directly correlated with instrumented stream flow.  Trees recently inspected predate the advent of stream gauging and mountain plum pine, though beset with growth anomalies, may well extend the record to way back pre-European settlement.

A real field laboratory: Below – Matthew Brookhouse measuring girth of old snow gum:

CCLP Director Tim Bonyhady said the centre would play a vital role in meeting the challenges of a fast-evolving sector.

“The ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy will be at the forefront of climate law,” he said. “For too long questions of climate change have been dominated by scientists and economists. But climate change also raises profound legal questions for all levels of government who need to address not just how we go about reducing our greenhouse emissions, but how we adapt to climate change. The Centre has been created to explore and research these issues,” he said.

Professor Bonyhady added that the ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy built on the University’s strength in meeting the challenges posed by climate change. “The ANU has been at the forefront of research and teaching of environmental law for the last 35 years. This Centre builds on that strength and reflects the gravity and significance of the challenges the world faces through climate change.”

Martijn Wilder, Head of Global Climate Change and Clean Energy at Baker & McKenzie, who will have an ongoing role with the CCLP, praised the collaboration between the University and the legal firm.

“We are delighted to enter this sponsorship with the CCLP. This initiative will affirm Australia’s growing role in the global initiative to tackle climate change. It will also play an important role in the development of climate law and policy, which underpins the development of carbon markets and measures to reduce global levels of greenhouse emissions,” he said.

Picture: Peter Garrat and ANU students