No Carbon Nation

pathways to sustainable energy

narration and interview clips

version 16

March 2016

© 2014 - 2016 Peter Sircom Bromley604-733-2760 pbsky@telus.net

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Title: This is Not a Movie presents

Title: a series of factual statements

photo John Tyndall 1861

graphic/quote: an almost inappreciable admixture of any of the hydrocarbon vapours… produce great effects on the terrestrial rays…and corresponding changes of climate.

photo Svante Arrhenius 1908

graphic/quote: … any doubling of the precentage of carbon dioxide in the ari wojuld raise the temperature of the earth's surface by 4 degrees

photo James Hansen 1988

graphic/quote:…the greenhouse effect has been detected, and it is changing our climate now

Obama speech 2013 Barack Obama: Now we know that no single weather event is caused soley by climate change. Droughts and fires and floods, they go back to ancient times. But we also know that in a world that is warmer than it used to be, all weather events are affected by a warming planet.

Jim Yong Kim interview 2013

devastation in the Philippines

Jim Yong Kim: Fundamentally what's happening is that the earth is processing water differently than it did before, and so the number of extreme weather events will increase. Now Typhoon Haiyan was the most severe storm to ever hit the Philippeans. You know we talk about category five events like this as once in a lifetime events, but two occurred in the same region in a single month. We simply have to stop talking about them as once and a lifetime events and get serious about tackling the root causes of this increased intensity and frequency.

Main Title: No Carbon Nationpathways to sustainable energy

Cristo Redentor statue, electric tram, woman on tram, pedestrians

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Shanghai barge on river, market scenes, oranges, fish

VO 1.5) All nations have one purpose in common: to meet the needs of their citizens in every way possible.

To meet those needs, growing populations worldwide lay waste to thousands of square kilometers of natural habitat every year.

Sydney opera house

car crossing bridge & driving through countryside

home / kitchen appliances

skytrain

mother and child leaving skytrain car

ferry

Growing populations require goods and services. And delivering those goods and services requires energy. Lots of it. Total world enegy demand is currently about 15 trillion watts.

The earth is the primary provider of land, raw material and energy. But it is now understood that the way those resources are being used is changing the composition of the atmosphere and oceans.

Jeffrey Sachs interview clip Jeffrey Sachs: The planet is feeling the weight of 30 plus billion tons of carbon dioxide emittted each year and that number keeps rising. And until we not only stop the rise but significantly lower the amount of emissions, we’re going to be, at a planetary scale in massive jeopardy.

And so it’s not good enough to say we’re going to be a bit more energy efficient or a little bit less carbon intensive. We have to do the global arithmatic to say we’re getting on a trajectory in which economic growth continues but carbon emissions don’t merely slow down in their increase or level off but actually decrease. And when you look at what that entails, it means deep technological change the world over.

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Part 1: energy in the context of the United Nations

flags at UN building

pie chart

deforestation

agriculture

fossil fuel combustion

VO: 6.1) Technological change is one item on the agenda of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The convention's over-arching purpose is to end emissions of all greenhouse gases that pose a danger to the planet's atmosphere.

Some of those gases come from disturbances of the biosphere, such as deforestation, decomposition of waste, and certain agriculture practices. There are emissions of industrial chemicals containing flourine. The remaining emissions come from carbon dioxide produced by fossil fuel combustion. (www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/File:Greenhouse_Gas_by_Sector_png)

delegates at COP 19

installing solar panels

VO: 6.2) The Convention's first landmark agreement was the Kyoto Protocol, signed in 1997, when thirty seven developed nations commited to emission reductions / of a certain amount / over a certain period of time. It was left up to each nation to figure out how to achieve those reductions. Developing nations, including large emitters such as China and India, did not set reduction targets.

In 2015, the Kyoto Protocol was superceded by the Paris Agreement – a framework that includes developing nations. The Paris Agreement saw 188 nations submit emission reduction goals for the year 2030.

However, when added up, those national goals fall short the science.

Jacqueline McGlade Simply on their own … current policies will … take us, if they are fully implemented, on to a trajectory somewhere between 3 and 3.5 degrees...We need to be in net zero emissions at least by the second half of this century. So the 2030 destination, so to speak, is the first stop. We need to do more and continue to do more to stay on track.

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coal fired power plant

cap & trade animation

coal mining, pan to wind turbine

To keep the international community on track, the Paris Agreement expects individual nations to accellerate their efforts, with the aim of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees.

But there are limits to the UN's ability to support those efforts. There are no financial penalties for non-compliance, and one of its key development mechanisms – an emissions trading system – has lost 95 per cent of its market value since 2008

stock exchange

solar panels on Asain Development Bank roof, Manila

nepal village life with turbines and solar panels.

typhoon devastation

However, the Paris Agreement does enhance ongoing international programs to make clean energy accessible in developing countries, and to assist nations who are most impacted by climate change. (www.trust.org/

item/20131009083550-k2cr5)

International climate negotiations are based on consensus, a diplomatic principle which has tested the patience of the international community.

Chairperson: We observed that the parties made some steps forward towards each others position. However these steps were not sufficient to bridge the existing divergence of views.

COP meetings And as a diplomatic affair, climate negotiations are one step removed from practical action. But after two decades, the UN process has achieved clarity about where practical action comes from.

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Paul Polman Unilever

Nigel Topping

I personally think it is unfair to ask the politicians alone to solve these problems. As you see with many of the examples, we need business. In the developing markets alone, business is 60 percent of the GDP. It's ninety percent of the job creation. How can we expect politicians alone to solve it if the business community is not stepping up. And indeed the business community is stepping up. I believe more than anybody else that with all the work that we've done over the last few years, that we are indeed at a tipping point.

We've heard from businesses, we've heard from investors, we've heard from cities, and we've heard from states and regions a growing coaltion who are already in action, who are already setting bold ambitious targets to get below two degrees.

mountainous rural scenes, CU cow

corporate logos http://www.onegreenplanet.org/animalsandnature/7-companies-working-to-end-deforestation/

The Paris Agreement's core achievement was getting all the world's governments to push in the same direction – thereby sending an economic signal around the world.

The signal is felt by grass roots organizations already promoting sustainable land use in developing countries

By an increasing number of corporations committed to sustainable practices.

By a growing network of cities which have set goals for energy efficiency and clean energy.

ocean oil derrick

car on freeway

And by industries in every sector which have begun transforming the energy systems that drive the world economy – which is a bit like changing a car engine on the fly.

And the transformation of those energy systems is based on a reassessment of the primary energy used for those systems.

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Super: primary energy

oil pumpjack

coal mine

boats, stationary power generator, freeway, gas stove

VO 1.6) Over eighty percent of the world’s primary energy now comes from fossilized organic compounds – crude oil, natural gas and coal.

While there are emissions from mining and processing, burning fossil fuels has the most impact.

Close up pumpjack

car fuelling, ferry

subtitle: 500 years later 20% remains

VO 1.7) Burning one tonne of fuel produces about three tons of carbon dioxide. Over time, much of that CO2 is absorbed by the oceans and the land, but a good part of it stays in the atmosphere.

turning off tap in sink

Angel Gurria interview clip

CO2 accumulation means that to avoid dangerous climate change / emissions will have to not just slow down / but stop – and as soon as possible

Angel Gurria: The main message is that we have to prepare to have zero emissions coming from burning fossil fuels in the second half of the century. And for that we need to put a price on emissions, put a price on carbon. For that we need to reduce and eventually eliminate the subsidies for the production and the consumption of fossil fuels.

Grand Coulee hydro dam exteriors

VO 1.7) So the world economy has begun transitioning to primary energy which has limited impact on the atmosphere. The total energy available from such sources could power the world many times over. And there are many ways to harness that energy.

Graphic super: Waterhydro dams, wave energy

Graphic super: Windsailboat

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Walgreen vertical axis turbines.

Pine Tree wind farm

Subtite: could meet 10x world energy demand

Joe Davis They don't look very big, but they're 225 feet in the air. What they call the nacelle which is the top box with the blades on it weighs 150 tonnes. As you notice, they did a lot of civil work here cutting the roads and the paths, and putting that all together.

If you find that your wind farm is full power 50% of the time, that's a really good wind farm.

Graphic super: solar

Adelanto power station

Super: could meet 20x world energy demand

Roy Snyder: It does take an awful lot of real estate. We have10 megawatts here at Adelanto on just a little over 40 acres of the converter station property. The area was the home of some thirty joshua trees which we transplanted and irrigating in hopes that they will survive.

This is the point where ther solar power to the main transmission system, where it is transformed from 4160 volts to 500,000 volts.

Graphic super: Geothermal

world map of geothermal hot spots

Super: good for electricity generation where magma is near the surface

Monte Morrison: What we have at this site is one of the main production wells for the facility. It produces hot water from about a thousand meters underground, where the pump is operating in a very hostile atmosphere at 330 degrees farenheit and producing that water at about 900 gallons a minute to the surface.

That heat is used to vaporize pentane to drive the turbine which turns the generator to make the electricity.

Graphic super: Geoexchange

subtitle: can reduce HVAC demand by over 50%

Constant ground temperatures just below the surface can be harnessed with heat exchange technology. Cold buildings can be heated. Hot buildings can be cooled.

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Graphic super: biofuel

bales of agricultural residue, waste wood, grasses, bio-refinery, biodiesel fuelling, algae

Interview clip: Cynthia Warner

Super: could meet world demand for jet fuel

VO 1.12) While some years away from full scale production, algae is by far the most productive biomass feedstock.

Cynthia Warner: This system is something that actually produces green crude from algae, end to end. So in other words we start with the farming where we actually grow the algae, and then we harvest it, and then we convert it into green crude which can be used as fuel in our fuel tanks.

Graphic super: Nuclear

Animation

Dominion power plant exteriors and interiors

VO 1.13) There are several ways to harness nuclear energy, most of them improvements on the methods used today. A conventional power plant extracts only about 5 percent of the energy from uranium fuel, leaving the rest as waste that has a radioactive lifespan of tens of thousands of years. To avoid catastrophic failure, operating systems are rigorously maintained.

graphic of PRISM reactor

Subtitle: Uranium and thorium could meet world demand for thousands of years

One alternate system in development uses 99 percent of the energy in its fuel, and can burn wasted fuel from older reactors. Another system in development uses thorium dissolved in molten salt. Like other new designs, it produces waste that is safe to handle after 500 years. In a power failure, a freeze plug thaws, draining the fuel, shutting down the reactor without human intervention.

Graphic super: Solar towers

graphic of downdraft tower

VO 1.9a) This experimental 50 kw plant in Spain operated for 8 years, A 200 megawatt version is planned for the state of Arizona.

Graphic super: Ocean thermal

OTEC animation

Subtitle: could meet 2x world energy demandwww.oceanenergycouncil.com/index.php/Tidal-Energy/Tidal-Energy.html

VO 1.10) Vast amounts of solar energy are captured by the tropical oceans. Heat exchange systems can harness that energy by using a twenty degree temperature difference between surface waters, and deep waters, to drive a turnbine.

The technology is decades away from large scale deployment. And the environmental impacts are not fully known.

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Part 2: dynamics of change in the energy space

fuel cell electric buses

small steam engine, thin film solar manufacturing

David Victor interview clip

David Victor: Energy now has become an extremely innovative space. Frankly this was a very dull industry.You kind of knew what the technologies were, and the job was just to keep scaling them up. And now we have all kinds of new ideas.

Some involve scaling up old technologies. Some involve radically new ways of for example, very small modular nuclear reactors, a lot of exciting stuff in renewable energy and storage which links to renewable energy so that you can have a reliable supply of electricity. Some people looking at capturing the carbon dioxide pollution directly from the air putting it under ground.

David Victor interview clip Almost everywhere you look you see in the early stages of these technologies not just pure or private Eureka moments by a smart guy in the shower or a smart woman in the shower who comes up with a new idea and the next day they have a new technology, but you see a combination of Eureka, hard work, and then a whole array of policy instruments that help people manage risk and bring the technologies across of the valley of death into the commercial marketplace.

Lafarge cement plant, car ferry, hospital, grid transformer

VO 1.14) And not only the commercial marketplace but in every sector, across the world economy: in heavy Industry, transportation, buildings, and the largest source of carbon dioxide emissions over all, electric power generation.

on wire, Mica Dam, power generator, kitchen,

power management centre

generator, household

VO 2.1) Electric grids are called the world’s largest machines. Generators on one end countless gadgets on the other, all connected by millions of kilometers of wire.

To obey the laws of physics, grid operators must maintain a balance between electric generation and electric load.

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Don Sievertson: Our load is pretty consistent. Essentially in the middle of the night, it will bottom out around around 3 in the morning and then it curves up a peaks out around 15 hundred. So we know the shape pretty much, we just don’t how high or how steep.

Alberta legislature,

relay station, hydro dam

VO 2.2) In modern economies, grid operators are monopolies, so they are regulated, and in some jurisdictions, they have a legal obligation to be reliable.

Don Sievertson: Our overall charge is to make sure we can cover the projected loads on any given day, and have adequate generation and transmission resources to meet those needs, with adequate reserves.

hydro dam

grid management interior

coal mine

coal being loaded on conveyor

VO 2.2) Grid operators generate their own electricity or buy it from independent producers. It all adds up to minute-by-minute management of the amount of electricity generated in the system.

VO 2.3) Primary energy harnessed for the grid has always been the cheapest available, and has had good baseload capacity, meaning steady power 24/7. Low cost and reliability made the grid what it is today.

hydro dam, nuclear animation, hydro turbine CU

And coal, running water, and nuclear energy emerged as the main sources of primary energy for the grid. All three sources are highly concentrated.

turbine, homes This hydro electric turbine can generate 500 megawatts, enough to power about 300 thousand homes.

coal mine

aerials of coal fired plants

VO 2.5) But around the world, coal has become the dominant source of energy for the grid. And in recent times it has also been the fastest growing source of energy, due largely to economic expansion in China and India.

Coal fired plants are typically built close large coal deposits, and near good supplies of water. Like nuclear plants and gas fired plants, facilities this size can use hundreds of millions of litres of water a day for plant operations including cooling. Coal plants must dispose of ash which contains concentrations of naturally occuring metals such as arsenic, uranium and cadmium.

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coal plant aerials

wind turbines

time lapse wind turbine construction

solar troughs

wind turbine blade being transported by truck

VO 2.6) But it is the carbon dioxide emissions of coal which have put electricity generation at a turning point.

Progressive governments on every continent are mandating a shift to low-carbon energy.

VO 2.6a) The specifics are different for every jurisdiction. But the commonality is that new energy systems must be designed, approved, built and integrated with old systems.

VO 2.6) California is one example. Like other dry regions, it has a huge solar energy endowment. And it has plenty of geothermal and wind energy. All of which is more than enough to meet all electricity demand. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power is one of several dozen electric utilities in the State.

Mike Webster interview clip Mike Webster: Our customers bear the cost for this transition. The long term pay off, though, is by transitioning into different forms of energy, like renewables, it is a hedge against what could happen, in the future, so volitile natural gas costs... Of course by getting off coal we won't be exposed to volatile coal prices.

Pine Tree solar construction

transmission aerials

VO 2.6) And so the utility is undergoing fundamental change. And new generation facilities are only part of the cost.

Mike Webster interview clip

transmission construction

wind turbines

Mike Webster: We do need to build some transmission so we can get into solar rich areas of the Owens Valley, of the Mojave area. Mojave is very near the Tehachepis so there's additional wind resource in that area. And at some point transmission down in Imperial Irrigation District which is very very rich in geothermal resources. So there will be some very strategic transmission lines built to renewable areas.

roadside panels

gas turbine, Haines gas plant

VO 2.6) Energy coming from wind and solar must be stabilized. The near term solution is to install quick start natural gas turbines.

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Haines generation plant

CharLi Dong interview clip

CharLi Dong: Again, Pete, I'm looking towards the south right now. This is where the steam turbines and generators are located... At any time when the renewables become unavailable, we can count on six of these units to come on line, which can start from cold to 100 megawatts in ten minutes. And they have unlimited start and stop cycles, which is a remarkable breakthrough. And the department is able to take advantage of that feature to help the conversion of our energy portfolio to more productive use of renewables.

wide shot of Pine Tree solar farm

Mike Webster interview clip

Flow batteries

VO 2.6) Stabiliization is improved by using geographic diversity.

Mike Webster: If it's not windy in the Columbia River Gorge, it may be windy in the Tehachapis, and using geographic diversity helps stabilize tbe volatility of the renewables. Solar works exactly the same way.

VO 2.6) With with wind and solar becoming a dominant source of energy in California, energy storage technologies, such as large scale flow batteries will improve stabilization even further. In 2013 such devices were mandated for the California grid, and will add to older technologies already in place.

Mike Webster interview clip Mike Webster: Now DWP is blessed because we built, in the 70s the Castaic pumped storage system. So what we can do is store energy by pumping water up the hill. And then we can release that water at other times in the day. This is likle a 12 hundred megawatt battery.

changing incandescent bulb to fluorescent bulb

Mike Webster interview clip

electric vehicles

VO 2.6) Transition also involves managing the use of power.

Mike Webster: Lets look at energy efficiency. Lets figure out how much we can reduce our load so we don't need to replace all of that coal powered power plant.

For example, electric vehicles are one of those things that we have to plan for. Instead of charging them during the peak of the day, are there ways we can charge during night time, so we don't have increased loads and we offset that.

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solar panels of rooftops and sides of buildings

Mike Webster: Also, electrification of industrial processes is another area where we may find significant load increases.

VO 2.6) Transitioning to solar energy in particular means that a lot of generation can be distributed throughout the grid. So new systems and rules need to be set up.

rooftop solar

Mike Webster interview clip

Mike Webster: We are launching a 150 megawatt feed in tariff program where a customer may have a rooftop, like a large warehouse. Load's very small, large roof. So it might make sense for th9em to put solar on that large roof, and we will purchase that energy over twenty years as part of our renewables program.

And then we also have our renewables incentive program. There are customers who have a rooftop and just want to provide their own electricity. So they build a solar plant behind the meter and offset the requirements for us to supply them.

And lastly, one of the... most important, is to make sure or system is reliable. We have an aging infrastructure. We have power poles that are over a hundred years old and they're supposed to last about sixty years. So we need to invest in our infrastructure so that it's sound for the next hundred years.

Boundary Dam

animation of Carbon Capture plant

carbon storage animation

VO 2.8) Grid operators in other jurisdictions have similar transition issues. However, their options for zero carbon energy can be very different.

A utility manager with a state of the art coal plant, or natural gas plant, would likely see capturing carbon dioxide as a way forward. Captured CO2 can, in some parts of the world, be permanently buried deep underground where geologic pressure keeps it in a liquid state and where cap rock prevents migration to the surface.

night time freeway The process is not new. For decades, CO2 has been pumped underground to force oil out of otherwise depleted oil fields. The procedure means more CO2 emissions later when the oil is used as fuel.

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Compostiilla Spain CCS plant(also algae fixation www.endesa.com)

Keephills

VO 2.9) For coal fired power plants, the low carbon solution is permanent storage without oil recovery.However, the procedure requires energy – which could use up to 30 percent of a power plant’s output. Carbon capture and storage -- or CCS -- works in sedementary formations, such as found in western North America.

Eric Beynan interview clip

Keephills

aerial of oil field

Eric Beynon: So when you put CCS on the back of a coal plant, you’re getting 90 percent or more of the CO2 emissions associated with that coal plant. At the same time we are sitting on top of what’s called the Western Canada Sedimenary Basin. Which is one of the largest basins that’s amenable to CO2 storage anywhere in the world. We also know alot about it. From a hundred years of oil and gas exploration in the region, we know how it works. The potential there is enough to store over 200 years of all of Canada’s industrial emissions.

Compostiilla Spain CCS plant

Haines gas fired generation plant

VO 2.10) Without a substantial world price on carbon, CCS is not likely to happen at the scale needed. There are other non-fossil choices depending on the types of primary energy available in a given area.

waste wood

biogas plant

garbage collection

waste to energy plant

In some regions, a limited amount of power can be derived from biomass. Wood waste from logging operations and sawmills. Biogas from food scraps and yard waste. Municipal waste can be burned, but the plastics in it are made from petroleum, so emissions can equal those from burning natural gas.

aerial of nuclear plant

Super: $10 billion

animation of model nuclear plant

modular graphicshttp://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2014/05/the-time-for-wind-and-solar-energy-is-now?cmpid=SolarNL-Saturday-May3-2014

VO 2.16) A nuclear power plant can be built almost anywhere, but fears about safety make new facilities a hard sell. Not all power producers can afford the construction costs.

Safer designs are in development. And so are less expensive modular designs that can be built in factories and shipped by rail. They're small enough to replace the guts of a coal plant. They're scaleable. Impeccable quality control in the factory would be necessary.

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Hydro electric dams

Columbia river scenes

Geothermal plant

VO 2.11) In developed nations which have water resources, most rivers are already heavily exploited. In North America, the Columbia River system supports over 40 large and small hydro electric dams.

And, as in many jurisdictions, there is public resistance to more habitat destruction and flooding

Geothermal energy is only available in certain geographical regions and even then often requires a lot of investment up front to find productive geology.

Monte Morrison interview clip Monte Morrison: Geothermal resources must have three very unique and specific characteristics. The first is ancient volcanics that are close to the surface. The second is groundwater adjacent to that heat source that can be heated to superheated levels. And the third item that's needed are fractures or porosity that allow you to move that hot water to the surface...even with all this technology and the advances made in the last ten years, it is still difficult to hit a geothermal well every time.

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plant connection to grid

solar panels

wind turbine

VO 2.11a) Over all, there are plenty of zero carbon electricity solutions, each with specific challenges to implementation. Most are more expensive than fossil fuels. So the main concern is finding the least costly alternatives. In 2013, wind became cheaper than coal in Australia and the US.

domestic rooftop solar

industrial park wind

installing solar panels

VO 2.13) While utilities are busy integrating new sources of energy into the grid, there is an additional challenge. Renewable energy, and solar technologies in particular are disrupting the grid’s business model. They lend themselves to distributed power: power generated on private rooftops, in industrial parks, close to where the power is used. Places other than at a large central power plant. Opening the door to private power generation.

Paul Rai interview clip Paul Rai : When we come here, first thing we do is we install these standoffs. On top of those is a racking system. Right. The panels go up with these clamps on the sides. Then we wire it in.

This meter here is a smart meter. So what he does is during the day, he’s selling power back to the grid, right? He’s been doing this for the last few years which results in him not paying for power

Home solar power equipment in basement

VO 2.13) A new line of business, solar leasing, makes all this affordable. It allows homeowners to have equipment installed by a third party with little or no upfront costs. The savings on electric bills of course cut into the revenues of utility companies.

crow on wire VO 2.14) So in the face of disruptive business models, and expensive new technologie, progressive grid operators are reinventing themselves while making day to day life appear normal.

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Subtitle: homes and buildings

downtown cityscape, natural gas meter connection, insulated water heater, interior of net zero building

VO 3.1) Buildings and industries that now use fossil energy, will likely do so until such systems wear out, or until synthetic fuel is available.

Until then, CO2 emissions are reduced through energy efficiency. And the supplimentary use of zero carbon primary energy.

interior of net zero building

Solar thermal panels

geoexchange footage

VO 3.2) Solar, geo-exchange and wind are essentially free primary energy sources, so upfront installation costs are recovered in long-term energy savings.

culturel centre interior VO 3.3) This cultural centre in Copenhagen was renovated to maximize use of natural light. A combination of features has reduced energy consumption by 60 percent.

Karsten Duer interview clip

culturel centre interior

Karsten Duer: The main idea behind the design of the building is to have secondary rooms such as this hallway facing north while activity rooms are facing south bringing lots of daylight and passive solar energy into the rooms.

This is a very energy-efficient building design, and as a matter of fact the use of roof windows is the most energy-efficient way of bringing high levels of light into buildings. In this building it has been combined with a large use of natural ventilation which ensures a good indoor climate and a healthy environment for the people who are using the building.

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interiors of demonstration home

Sverre Simonsen interview clip

VO 3.3) For new construction, a combination of such design elements can add up to a carbon neutral building, such as this demonstration home in Denmark.

Sverre Simonsen: We can register on our screen how much we are consuming each day. I think we have an average consumption of 10 kilowatt hours per day, but we can also see that our solar cells and our solar heating system is producing a surplus of energy. On a sunny day we are producing four to five times as much energy as we consume. We have started a journey as a family, doing something, a common project, and we a learning how we a spending our resources and how we are influenencing the climate.

Olympic village

district heating plant

VO 3.4) For a cluster of buildings, district heating increases efficiency by connecting those buildings to a single heat energy source. Any kind of energy source can be used. This system in British Columbia extracts heat from municipal sewage. And the system supplies about 70% of annual heat demand for a new housing development.

Hospital gas heating exhause stacks

Denmark window plant

Asian Development Bank rooftop solar

VO 3.4a ) Waste heat can come from conventional sources. Steam produced by this electricy generation plant in Massachusetts has heated nearby buildings since 1949. This plant in Germany burns sawdust from its own manufacturing process to produce hot water and provide heat for its buildings and various plant processes.

And where buildings require electricity, many building owners, large and small, are producing their own.

steel mill exteriors and interiors VO 3.5) The same dynamics are being played out in the heavy industrial sector, where emissions come from burning fossil fuels to produce electricity, and heat for production processes.

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steel mill exteriors and interiors

illustrations of alternate steel making processes

http://www.ulcos.org/en/about_ulcos/home.php

In Europe, a consortium of major steel companies, engineering firms, and universities is working to reduce the CO2 emissions of steel making by at least 50 percent.

Alternate manufacturing processes have been proposed, including the use of electrolysis in the iron ore reduction process.

LaFarge cement plant

limestone quary and transportation

cement mill

coal

VO 3.6) Over half of the emissions from Portland cement manufacturing come from processing limestone to produce clinker, a basic component of cement. Substituting other raw materials such as fly ash can lower emissions.

The remaining emissions come from burning fuel to create the high temperatures needed in the production process – typically coal or natural gas.

industrial biofuel processing

SunCoal process

coal

VO 3.7) So heavy industries which require heat energy are beginning to use carbon-neutral biofuels.

A German company is developing hydrothermal carbonisation a process which converts biomass into a synthetic fuel similar to coal.

Commercialization of such alternatives takes time, so heavy industries, such as steel and cement manufacturing, are looking at carbon reduction strategies that, for now, include fossil fuels.

Eric Beynan interview clip Eric Beynon: In my mind there are three buckets that the world has to reduce CO2 emissions. There’s one on using less energy, so that can be demand side management, energy efficiency... essentially just using less energy. The second is creating new energy forms. And that’s renewables, it’s nuclear, it’s geothermal, those energy forms with a lower CO2 footprint.

The third one is to continue to use fossil fuels – we’re not going to be able to change over night – but cleaning them up. And that’s where CCS comes in. It’s that tool that we can use, apply it to our existing energy base, and reduce the CO2 impact of it.

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Subtitle: transportation

Aircraft landing VO 4.1) In the transportation sector, zero carbon energy means changing propulsion systems. It has happened before, and it is happening again. Along with certain health benefits.

Aircraft landing

oil refinery

CU of jet engine

boats, trains, cars, airplanes

VO 4.2) For air tranport, the specialized design requirements of modern aircraft limit the propulsion options. Jet engines could be modified to burn hydrogen, but there's no way to store hydrogen in the wings of a conventional aircraft.

Super efficient, hybrid designs will help, but they are at the concept stage.

Using solar power is possible, but for now only for a single pilot. So the way forward for large passenger aircraft is some sort of carbon neutral fuel.

Antonio De Palmas interview Antonio De Palmas: OK, we believe that the key for reducing emissions in aviation is the technology. The first one is developing and delivering more efficient aircraft. The second area is getting more operational efficiency which comes with modernize ATM (air traffic management) systems. And the third one is arguably the most important is about changing the fuel. We’re talking about sustainable aviation biofuels.

commercial passenger jets

Falcon 20 flight

VO 4.4) Blends of up to 50 percent biofuels were certified for commercial jets in 2011. In 2012, this was the first civilian aircraft to fly on 100% biofuel.

The jet’s engines did not have to be modified.

Randy Babbitt interview clip Randy Babbit: I watched kerosene being made from algae. They can be complete replacements and burn just as if it was typical petrochemical kerosene.

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US Airforce footage

biofuel feedstocks

airliner in flight

DOE algae footage

fighter jets in formation

VO 4.5) Current research and development aims to make bio-fuels cheap enough to replace the 250 billion litres of fossil fuel the airline industry uses every year. This means building a reliable fuel supply chain worldwide based on various feedstocks from different geographical regions. Algae, the most productive feedstock by far, could supply all the fuel required with a grow area of about 70,000 square km.

VO 4.6) Sustainable biofuel production would mean no negative impact on biodiversity or food production.

The advantages of low carbon propulsion systems are well understood by the military.

Ray Mabus interview clip Ray Mabus: We're going to be using American produced energy that will create jobs in the United States, will create a far more secure source of energy for us, and will make us better environmental stewards because we will be contributing less to climate change, and burning much cleaner fuel.

Maersk container ship

Russian icebreakers

Savannah archival

US Navy submarines

VO 4.7) The shipping industry is increasing energy efficiency with larger ships, and improved hull design, and is looking to other energy sources to achieve zero emissions.

There is renewed interest in nuclear power, which been used on Russian ice-breakers since 1959. From 1962 to 1970, the Savannah, an American merchant ship, served as a demonstration project. She had a range of 300,000 nautical miles. Today, most nuclear ships are either navy submarines or aircraft carriers.

Maltese Falcon yacht

SkySail photos

VO 4.8) Wind power is getting a boost with computer controlled sails like the ones on this 88 meter luxury yacht.

These kites, deployed from a ship’s bow, are commercially available now and can reduce average fuel consumption by up to 15%.

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BC ferry

electric train

Long haul CN train

VO 4.9) For short haul shipping, electric power is an easy fit. A small ferry could carry hydrogen fuel, or carry batteries that use a fast charger while in port.

And electric power is the likely future for rail transportation. In addition to overhead wires, electric locomotives could use hydrogen fuel cells. For the long haul, extra hydrogen could be brought along for the ride.

electric racing car

Mark Delucchi interview clip

VO 4.10) And the advantages of electricity are most obvious in the automotive sector. An electric motor is three times more efficient than a gas engine.

Mark Delucchi: They have almost instantaneously available low end torque. They’re long lasting, they’re efficient, they’re quiet, they’re easy to use. So this means you can have more different kinds of transportation options, that can be made relatively easy. You can have big vehicles, small vehicles, little mopeds...

fuel cell illustration

hydrogen fuel station

plug in battery illustration

plugging in electric car

EV on the road

VO 4.10) Two technical advances have made electric power practical in today’s automobiles. One is vast improvement in the hydrogen fuel cell. Hydrogen fuel is stored in a high pressure tank.

The other advancement is the high capacity lithium ion battery which stores electricity from the grid.

Electric vehicles, powered either by fuel cells or batteries currently have a range of up to 400 km.

Ethanol gas station

Mary Beth Stanek interview clip

giant switchgrass

flexfuel buick CU

car on the road

85% Ethanol sign

VO 4.11) While electric vehicles gain market share, emissions from conventional car engines can be reduced.

Mary Beth Stanek: As we move into electrification, there are still some options that are going to have a big effect on our economy. And that's advance biofuels.

VO 4.11) Ethanol, made from a variety of sources, is used in flex fuel vehicles in Brazil, the US and Europe. Either blended with gasoline or straight up.

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wind turbine

eGas animation

eGas car on the road

VO 4.12) Low carbon fuel can also be made with renewable energy. Electric power is used for to produce hydrogen through electrolysis. The hydrogen is then combined with carbon dioxide from an industrial source. The car thinks it’s running on natural gas.

But in the automotive sector, the supply of bio fuel will never meed demand.

Prius taxis

Volt driving on the street

Volt dashboard & interior

Patrick Wang interview clip

plugging in car CU

interior of car while driving

VO 4.14) So, to navigate the road to electrification, automakers rolled out a transitional vehicle which works with the old and new systems: the gas-electric hybrid.

VO 4.15) In one configuration, a battery powers an electric motor for short trips, which account for most vehicle usage.

Patrick Wang: I can drive almost every day on electricity only. I don't need to use gas except when I go vist my parents down in the South Bay, which is about 60 miles away. And even then, I don't need to use very much gas.

So I get the benefits of an electric car most of the time, and then just using a little bit of gas when I need it.

car crash tests

urban shots of electric car

development staff working at GM

VO 4.15) As in other sectors, energy transition is expected to occur while maintaining standards of safety, performance and reliability.

Shiny surfaces and smooth operation are the result of instensive and sophisticated design methods.

Eric Gassenfeit interiew clip

banks of computers

interior & dashboard of EV

Eric Gassenfeit: Behind me in this room are ten thousand processors, some of which are water cooled, because of the heat they generate, which solve millions of equations millions of times a second to simulate new vehicle development like the batteries or the electric motors or the software controls that are in the Volt.

This is what it takes to develop the new propulsion strategy in just a few years rather than is several decades

driver hand and EV dashboard

EV charging station

VO 4.16) So, with reliable electric propulsion now in place, the next big step is building fuelling infrastructure.

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Graphic super: electric infrastructure

street scene EV plug in station

driver unplugging vehicle and drives off.

For battery electric vehicles, the backbone of distribution is already provided by the grid. So charging machines can turn up almost anywhere.

EV pulls up to HI Speed charging station

Sean Allan interview clip

car enters batter switch station, switches battery and drives off.

parking garage in building

installing wall battery charger

High speed charging stations are more elaborate.

Sean Allan: And so the fastest way to charge this vehicle is with a machine like this. This is a DC fast charger. So it takes DC energy and feeds it directly to the battery. This allow you to charge up the car in about 25 to 30 minutes.

The vehicle and the station actually talk to each other via CAN-BUS which is a car machine language.

VO 4.17) Swapping a battery is even faster. A system like this one takes less than two minutes. Meanwhile, electric infrastructure will be extended to countless residential units worldwide.

Gary Kissel interview clip Gary Kissel: On the wall here we have a 240 volt charge station. This device has to be professionally installed. It too comes with the standard plug to charge the vehicle and can charge the car in about four hours.

power lines with car passing through frame

CU battery connector in hand

CU gasoline fill up

EV on an urban street

VO 4.17) Charging vehicles from the grid will not require the equivalent power needed for a gasoline vehicle. Electric propulsion requires less energy.

And battery charging options are flexible.

CU plugging into charging station

charging day and night animation

EV with solar powered charging stations

VO 4.18) They can be recharged during periods of low electrical demand. Vehicle batteries could even be used to store power for the grid. In jurisdictions that use a lot of renewable energy, they would supply electricity when the wind isn’t blowing or the sun isn’t shining. The process would be reversed to charge the car. Or, the grid could be bypassed altogether.

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BC legislature

charging station

Sean Allan interview clip

VO 4.19 ) However in some jurisdictions, regulations that would allow such developments need to catch up to the technical know-how.

Sean Allan: This is not a new game. And electricians all around the world are familiar with installing this kind of equipment. The new thing is the charging station itself. So the trick is how do you get the electric cables or the electrical supply from inside to all the way outside in the parking lot.

Graphic super: hydrogen infrastructure

F cell vehicle in China

crowd looks at vehicle

EV driver comment clip

vehicle crosses bridge

VO 4.19 ) Infrastructure for Electric Vehicles using hydrogen fuel cels is taking a different path.

EV driver: We go around the world my friend.

hydrogen storage

biodiesel plant, wind turbine, solar plant, geothermal plant

car pulls into fuelling station

VO 4.19 ) There are several ways to produce hydrogen fuel from low carbon sources, for example as a biproduct of biodiesel production, or with electrolysis, using green electricity. There are at several ways to then transport the hydrogen.

power cube

Sean Allen interview clip

connects hose to tank

hydrogen tanker truck

pipelines

laboratory electrolysis photo

Sean Allen: So this is an example of a power cube. A power cube is a way of delivering and moving hydrogen. So this is something that could be picked up by a truck and delivered to the site of a hydrogen refuelling station. So contained inside the power cube is a group of cylinders. And so we have a receptical and nozzel combination, and this little quick-connect is all that’s necessary to connect the hydrogen station.

VO 4.19 ) Specialized tanker trucks do the job, and so do pipelines. Fuel transport is practically eliminated when hydrogen is produced by electrolysis.

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Mark Delucchi interview clip

hydrogen fuelling station

Mark Delucchi: You can distribute the electricity itself all the way to the end-use centres and then have little decentralized hydrogen production facilities, because electrolysis is relatively easy to do, it’s not a big huge industrial process. For example you don’t need a lot of space and a lot of industrial equipment.

VO 4.19 ) Equipment for final delivery to the customer has safety in mind.

Sean Allen interview clip Sean Allen: There’s actually codes and standards which dictate the way the piping should be built, the way ballards and protection systems should be built, the way emergency shutdown systems should be built, so there’s an emergency shutoff button right here. This particular system also has this little infrared camera and in the event that there would be a fire, this photo eye will shut down the entire installation.

Sean Allen interview clip

vent stack

Sean Allen: Ths station can refuel vehicles at both 10 thousand psi and 5 thousand psi. And so when you disconnect the nozzle, there’s a little pshuuu wooshing sound as that gas is vented. And rather than venting it right at the receptacle nozzle, they vent it at a vent stack away from the user. And so hydrogen is 14 times lighter than air, so if you do have a leak, the hydrogen gas dissipates quite quickly.

motorist filling car with gas Sean Allen: This is much safer than gasoline. Gasoline is both a flamable liquid and a flamable gas, because you can have gasoline vapours, and gasoline vapours are actually heavier than air, so they sink. Gasoline car fires are so common that it doesn’t really make the news anymore when there’s a car fire.

Fuel cell vehicle on the road

electric vehicle on road

electric vehicles in winter

VO 4.21 ) So while the automotive industry has made an almost seamless transition to electric propulsion, electric vehicle buyers are adjusting their expectations as fuelling infrastructure catches up.

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plugging in electric car

Paul Gustavsson interview clip

EV on winter urban roadway

interior of EV

EV on winter road

Paul Gustavsson: The families have been postively surprised that the car has fit so easily into their everyday life, and the driving range of a hundred or a hundred and fifty kilometers has not been perceived at all to be a restriction. They just plan for it.

We have seen that the electric car fits into the life of a modern family and it meets the transport needs. The technology works and we can really see that it's a solid base for the future.

Subtitle: removing CO2 from the atmosphere

cleared land

burning forest stumps

tractors plowing land

cattle grazing

forest pan up

VO 7.1 ) While low carbon alternatives are taking hold in all sectors of the world economy, the momentum of current practices may still push greenhouse gas accumulations past a dangerous threshold.

However, those accumulations can be gradually reduced in two ways. First, by restoring the biosphere's function as a carbon sink, through such practices as soil conservation and reforestation. This has the potential of reducing atmospheric CO2 by some 50 ppm. (ref: Terrestial_Carbon_Sink_Rattan_Lal.pdf)

aerial of prairie oil fields

DAC unit - animation

VO 7.2 ) Secondly, carbon dioxide can be removed from the atmosphere with direct air capture technology.

large DAC facility - animation Unlike carbon capture on coal plants, large direct air capture facilities could remove CO2 from the air faster than it is produced.

animation continued

Geoff Holmes interview clip

Geoff Holmes: With air capture, like I said you're capturing from this big, essentially infinite source of CO2 in the atmosphere, so there not really a technical limit on how much CO2 you can capture per year. The limit is more social, or economic in terms of how many of these plants people are willing to permit and build and invest in.

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traffic Washington DC

aircraft landing

woman at filling station kiosk

oil refinery

VO 7.3 ) Direct air capture is suited to capturing CO2 from transportation. And it could reduce emissions that have accumulated since the industrial revolution. Like CO2 captured from the stacks of an industrial plant, it can be buried. Or used to make products such as synthetic fuel for transportation, or synthetic limestone for cement manufacturing. (Skyonic CO2 mineralization process and algae fixation www.endesa.com)

Direct air capture plants would also have certain advantages.

Geoff Holmes interview clip Geoff Holmes: The capture can be done anywhere. CO2 is well mixed in the atmosphere, so a tonne captured or removed from the atmsphere in China is just as good as a tonne captured and removed in the Sahara. And you get to co-locate with either good storage sites for the CO2 or places where there is an industrial demand for that product.

So we get this fixed, uniform abatement cost, that allows us to put a sort of worst case cap on how much it costs to reduce economy wide emissions. And one of the real big advantages of air capture is we think we can make this cost effective and economically viable in today's market. And by so doing we can start building and learning our way through this technology and bringing further down in cost and further up in scale, so it's tooled up when we really do get serious about climate policy, and we really do start to need more of these type of technologies.

Subtitle: 4 pathways

wind farm sunset VO 5.1) The centrepiece of any serious climate policy is transitioning to low carbon energy systems. And that involves four parallel stategies.

thermostat, assembling offshore wind turbine

power line tower against sun and cloudys

One, decrease energy demand. This reduces emissions, and reduces the need for new energy infrastructure.

Two, end CO2 emissions from electric power generation in whatever way works.

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Lake Shasta hydro dam

Stirling solar dishes

coal mine dragline

Interview clip: Mark Jaccard

Mark Jaccard: Some parts of the world have fossil fuels, and have a lot of good underground storage for burying CO2. Some parts of the world have wonderful hydropower resources, some have solar resources. And it’s going to be, look, you guys, you have an endowment that’s valuable. If we can figure out a way to get that to zero emissions, then, let’s do that or we’ll do renewables, we’ll do whichever one we can do fastest and cheapest, and that gives the best benefit to our jurisdiction.

Electric mini bus, urban rail VO 5.1) Three, switch to zero-carbon propulsion in all modes of transportation.

exterior - Graymont lime plant, Alberta

And four, where heat is required for buildings and heavy industry, switch to low carbon fuel systems and manufacturing processes.

The technologies needed to implement these strategies are available now.

Algae energy researc lab technician

Keephills coal plant

freeway traffic

VO 5.2) But several factors determine the speed at which those technologies are adopted.

Competition: for certain industries, low carbon technologies are costly. So adopting them would mean losing business in a competitive international marketplace which is only beginning to recognize the economic costs of climate change.

Turnover rates: Large industrial facilities have a life span of 50 years or more. Many people keep their cars for 10 to 20 years.

BCIT solar panel installation

car pulling up to hydrogen fuelling station.

Speed of construction, such as retrofits, upgrades, and building infrastructure for electric vehicles.

And the time it takes for institutions and individuals to change their behavior.

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John Robinson Interview clip John Robinson: In my experience the barriers to sustainability are never technical. There are lots of technical solutions, many of them are off the shelf. They are almost never economic, although they are always expressed in economic language, and always look like their economic, but when you peel back the onion a few layers, you discover almost invariably that the problems are institutional.

Net zero carbon building, UBC

exterior, interior, exterior CU

I'll give you an example. To build a deeply green building, you'll often in many ways be violating building codes, because the building codes were designed in an era when sustainability wasn't a factor. And so the alternatives may be available, and they may even be cheaper, but we can't implement them, they can't be approved.

John Robinson Interview clip I'll give you another example. We have at UBC some fairly strong sustainability policies. Our staff at the operational level, know about those policies. One of them said to us a few weeks ago at a workshop, "If a hundred horsepower motor goes down, my obligation is to the people in the building. To get it up as fast as possible. So, I'm going to buy the exact same motor that I had before.

I know there's better ones. I know there's more energy efficient ones. But they would take longer, I'd have to go out and find new vendors, I don't know if I trust the new vendors. It might take longer to get it delivered. It wouldn't fit exactly in the hole left by the old one.

And then I don't know if it's going to work as well, because we've never used them before.

Meanwhile, while all this is going on, people in the building are screaming at me because whatever it is that broke down isn't working. So he said, "Of course I'm going to buy the same one, even if I know there's something better if I spent the time to go out and study it, and even if I know it would be better to have a different that used less energy...that's not how I'm judged. That's not my performance evaluation. So multiply that by a million times.

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building cranes

worker carrying pipes

worker standing in bare concrete structure

worker installing insulation

So that's the difficulty. We're in path dependent systems. Our institutions and our ways of acting are based on rules that have been codified and built into the sytem.

And unless we address those barriers, it's not enough to simply find the technically better solution.

installing refridgerator

John Robinson Interview clip

We've got to make sure the people who have to prove it, and install it, and run it and operate it are rewarded for making more sustainable choices.

steam locomotive

world war II manufacturing

nuclear power plants

Alberta Legislature though trees

VO 5.2) Old rules that have been built into the system are slow to change – one reason why previous energy transitions have taken about 50 years.

But to avoid a dangerous warming of the atmosphere, the transition to zero carbon energy must happen as soon as possible. This requires strong intervention – which has happened before.

In the 1970s, France transitioned to nuclear power in response to the Arab oil embargo. The country's carbon emissions dropped by two percent per year. These were major one-time interventions, but governments can accelerate actions that are used on a regular basis.

Subtitle: government interventions

fountain, Alberta Legislature

animation of innovation chain

VO 5.3a) A government committed to rapid energy transition will intensify its key role in the so-called innovation chain – the development process by which technologies reach the marketplace

Governments role is to invest tax revenue in the early stages, often in partnership with industry. Industry investment increases as the innovation nears the commercialization stage.

thin film manufacturing

solar panel array CU and wide

Innovation in green energy often means bringing down the cost of existing technologies so they can compete with cheap fossil fuels.

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DOE NREL scientist in lab

scientist goes to desk, works with equipment

arpa-e logo

still of organic flow battery

inactive wind turbines

logos of research partners

Together, the governments of the world's major economies spend roughly $15 billion annually on such research and development efforts -- often in cooperation. The US spends the most by far.

One federal program advances new technologies such as this high performance organic flow battery that could stabilize electricity from wind and solar. It is being developed at Harvard University, with a private sector partner, and with support from public agencies in the US and Netherlands.

staff NREL

CU of fuel cell

hydrogen storage

FCEV vehicle

list of government programs

Many nations maintain national laboratories dedicated to such work. This project focuses on hydrogen fuel cells.

When an innovation has reached the commercializtion stage, governments can use regulatory or financial tools to ensure that the new idea is adopted.

grid station, southern California

RPSs & FITs map of the world

residential roof top solar panels

Sarnia solar farm aerials

wind turbines, Goldendale wide shot

wind turbine CU

VO 5.3) A combination of tools may be used to green the grid, for example.

Among the most widely used is the Feed In Tariff. It guarantees grid access to any electricity supplier, larage or small, and pays prices that allow for reasonable profit.

Another tool is sometimes called a Renewable Portfolio Standard. It's a quota system where the percentage of renewable energy used in the grid is set by legislation, and rises over time.

Mike Webster interview clip

California state legislature

Mike Webster: We are growing the amount of renewables that contribute to our energy supply. We hit 20 percent in 2010, we’re growing that to 25 percent in 2016 and 33 percent in 2020.

VO 5.3) In 2014, the mandate was increased again. Additional legislation has put restrictions on fossil energy.

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Mike Webster: We have a couple of state laws. We have SB1368 which requires us to not invest in coal plants in the future and to work towards replacing those plants when those contracts expire, and we have a couple of power plants that we need to replace. But also have AB32 which is the greenhouse gas emission reduction law which has a declining cap over time.

domestic electric meter VO 5.3) All such interventions allow for increases in electricity rates.

Mark Jaccard interview clip Mark Jaccard: What it means, though, is that we are basically subsidizing electricity from these renewable sources, and everybody’s contributing by paying a little bit more in their tarrif. But again, we have to remember that fossil fuels, if we’re burning coal or natural gas, and are not being charged an emissions charge like a carbon tax, then they’re using the atmosphere as a free waste receptacle, and that’s the biggest subsidy of all.

Subtitle: a price on carbon

tandem trailer truck and industrial site, Oregon

traffic lights, W. Broadway

dome of Alberta Legislature

VO 5.4 ) A price signal is a proven regulatory tool that guides an economy toward a desired outcome. And a price on carbon emissions is regarded as a policy cornerstone.

Chris Davies interview clip Chris Davies : Most of the big engineering companies recognize that we need to develop low carbon technolgies. In order to do that we have to put a price on carbon, create the right incentive. If there's no price, there's no incentive, wer're not going to develop these new technologies.

Chris Bataille interview clip

pedestrians and cars

cars and pedestrians at intersection

Chris Bataille: A carbon tax is designed to incent people to seek alternatives, and to do it in a way that works best for them.

So instead of putting on a regulation that you have to drive an electric car, or you have to turn your lights off, you can chose to continue driving a gasoline car but you're going to have to pay a penalty to it.

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People looking at electric vehicles on display

CU of electric vehicle

interior of EV

Now looking across the economy, if the price gets strong enough, you'll bring your emissions down to your target levels. With a strong carbon tax in place, next time a consumer goes to buy a refridgerator or a car, they consider that in their decision, and perhaps it may make a difference between buying a gasoline car, a hybrid car, or maybe an electric car

Say you make those extra investments up front in a device that's going to last 20 - 30 years, it could end up paying itself back in 5 - 10 years and then you're making money after that.

wide shot - Keephills coal fired electric generation plant

VO 5.4) The same general principle applies to industrial users of fossil fuel.

Coal fired electric generation plant

Chris Bataille interview clip

TransAlta wind turbines

CU turbine

Chris Bataille: So say you're TransAlta, the next time you go and build an electricity generation station in Alberta, given a sufficiently strong carbon tax, perhaps instead of building a coal plant you might build a coal plant with carbon capture and storage, or you might mix into your system some more wind thereby producing the same amount of electricity -- it might cost a bit more -- but the emissions might be 1/2 or 1/4 of what they might be otherwise.

Shell upgrader plant,

Fort Saskatchewan

Chris Bataille interview clip

Lafarge cement plant

VO 5.4) A carbon tax of at least $50 / tonne, and rising to $100 or more is considered the level needed to drive energy transition in large industries. But such rates need to be phased in.

Chris Bataille: You don't tomorrow announce a hundred dollars a tonne, because that’s just not fair to firms and consumers who have invested large sums of capital in existing equipment. What you do is send a long-term signal that you will be pricing carbon and that price is going to increase through time.

street scene: lady hands money to a panhandler

pedestrians at crosswalk

bus passes by

And then if you have equity issues in your society, at the bottom end you get a credit. Right? So everybody pays the same carbon tax, but then you use your own domestic tax system to provide benefits for poor people who need natural gas for the furnaces, or what have you.

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Alberta Legislature grounds VO 5.4) Governments can design a carbon price system in any number of ways, including making them revenue neutral by lowering other taxes. Or the money can be used to kickstart energy transition.

Bob Savage Interview clip

Shell Canada research lab

Bob Savage : One of the options that we have looked at is actually taking a portion of the penalty or compliance that industry pays for their emissions today and pooling that into what we would call a technology fund, which is sort of a tipping point for a lot of companies in terms of taking a risk, or piloting a new technology.

Shell Canada research lab

CCS animation

A good example of that is carbon capture and storage. Our government has put up two billion dollars to partner with industry to develop and deploy pilot projects at the sort of scale we need to really determine whether carbon capture and storage is a viable option for us long term.

Chris Bataille Interview clip Chris Bataille: Another way that applies a carbon price is a cap and trade system, where you create so many effectively licenses to emit emissions. There’s only so many in the economy, and we buy and sell them with each other.

European Parliament exterior

European Parliament interior

members of EU Parliament

VO 5.4) The cap and trade system of the European Union, is similar to the one used by the United Nations. Cap and trade systems leave the price of carbon vulnerable to policy manipulation and financial opportunism, part of the reason why the price has remained low at about 5 Euros a tonne.

Chris Bataille Interview clip

pedestrians and traffic

Chris Bataille: In a perfect system, with no transaction costs, no lawyers (laughs), a carbon price, and cap and trade system should arrive at roughly the same price.

A carbon tax is by far the simplest and easiest to administer. And BC actually did it very effectively. It was just tacked onto our excise tax system, and there was no fuss, no muss.

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Flags of the United Nations

Port of Los Angeles

VO 5.4) So to be truly effective, carbon pricing has to be a global policy so as to avoid putting any nation at a competitive disadvantage.

Chris Bataille: Very few jurisdictions are going to go ahead of anybody else. It's got to be seen as a level playing field. The US will not do anything until China does something, and China won't do anything unless the US does something.

Chris Bataille Interview clip Chris Bataille: So the two of them probably have to agree on some very low level to start with say $5 - $10 a tonne. And then mutually work upwards from that. Otherwise, what you end up having to do is if you want to build a carbon restriction regime in your own country, and you don't want your businesses unfairly penalized, you do have to erect border tariffs with other nations. Some of those are more or less legal under the WTO trade restrictions.

Subtitle: private sector interventions

photo Nicholas Stern 2006

graphic/quote: Climate change is the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen. – The Stern Reveiw.

Alberta Legislature dome with offic building in foreground.

Vestas factory

VO 5.5 ) While governments set the stage for energy transition, the resources required for transition are largely in the hands of the private sector.

Vestas nacelle in factory

Vestas nacelle in operation

Frankfurt stock exchange

subtitle US$36 trillion

taping air ducts

thin film manufacturing

And according to the International Energy Agency, the world economy needs to invest about $48 trillion in energy transition over the next 2 decades. http://www.iea.org/newsroomandevents/pressreleases/2014/june/

name,72035,en.html

A significant part of that investment could be avoided through energy efficiency, and by diverting business as usual spending toward energy alternatives that are already available.

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Juri Troy interview clip

Energy Efficiency Trade Show

CU model house

Juri Troy: We managed to make a building that is able to produce more energy in thirty years than it was taking to construct it and to run the house and to produce all the products and materials that we were using.

Connie Hedegaard interview clip

CU model house

Connie Hedegaard: By showing the good solutions, delivering the good solutions, and by diseminating the best practices, I think that's where we need the industry engage even more, jsut like you're doing at an event like this. Because there are so many good solutions out there but they are not always very much known.

London banking district

Logos of major development banks

coal train

solar plant, India

VO 5.6 ) And there are ways to guide investment toward energy transition. Changing lending policies is one of them. Some major institutions are phasing out support of new coal-fired electricity generation projects in favor of low carbon alternatives.

residential rooftop solar

baseboard heater

man installing solar panels on home rooftop

Asian Development Bank solar roof

VO 5.7 ) And when the cost advantages of clean energy, energy efficiency and energy self-reliance are pointed out, business decisions favour clean energy.

London street scene

pages from CDP report

Paul Simpson interview clip

This is the finding of CDP, a non profit organization in the UK, which reports information volunteered by governments and larger companies who see the advantages of a low carbon economy.

Paul Simpson: Companies are reporting that they are seeing fast paybacks on returns in investments in their emissions reductions activities. Sixty percent of companies report such paybacks over three years.

For investors, they can use the report to assess which companies are likely to be the winners and losers from climate change and the transition to a low carbon economy, and to use the information to help guide more sustainable investment decisions.

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page from CDP report

Keephills coal fired electricity

5.7 VO ) However, stronger interventions are needed to reduce large industrial emissions, especially in the electricity generation sector.

Bird Landing wind farm

vintage bond posters

5.8 VO ) A high price on carbon – or regulations restricting carbon pollution – would do the job. But in the absence of such policy, there is a work-around. Large pools of capital can be shifted using a financial instrument that's been around for generations.

Sean Kidney interview clip Sean Kidney: In World War One, we issued war bonds in the US and the UK to finance the war. Actually it was an idea that came out of the US Civil War, where the North issued bonds and arm twisted the banks to buy them, to finance things. The South didn’t do that. The North managed to finance their way out of it using bonds.The sewers of London, in the threat of a cholera epidemic, doctors finally realized what was causing this epidemic, sewers were built in a short amount of time, and entirely financed by bonds.

Frankfurt Exchange

Sarnia solar farm aerial

worker walkng through Sarnia solar farm

Pine Tree solar farm construction

5.8 VO ) And so bonds are seen as robust tool for raising the large amounts of money needed for rapid energy transition, especially in the electric sector.

That's because grid operators do not usually have the financial resources for rapid system expansion. With bonds, they could build one project, get their money back with a bond issue, then start another.

Sean Kidney interview clip Sean Kidney: So what it means is they can take a smaller pool of money and they can recyle it faster and faster and faster. At the moment, they've got a small pool of money, and they have to do it slowly, and as their projects get up to speed, they can maybe raise some more equity – it takes much much longer

Let's say someone like Walmart issues a green bond to put solar on their rooftops, which they can do, and they're beginning to do. Now if they find that bond buyers really like this sort of stuff, Oh, we could do more of that. That's really easy to earn money for.

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Concentrated solar tower plant The truth of the matter is bonds are primarily a refinancing instument. When the project's built, and it's sitting there in the desert earning money, then it's perfect to sell to a pension fund, because they want something that sits there and earns money for 20 years so they can make sure they can pay your pension fund when the time comes.

Fransfurt stock exchange..

page from IEA report to Clean Energy Ministerial

graphic title:

"Availability of capital does not appear to be a major obstacle to funding the energy technology revolution." IEA

5.8 VO ) Pension funds are part of the global bond market. Total assets are over $95 trillion.

According to the international Energy Agency, redirecting those assets would provide plenty of capital for clean energy transition. This assessment was presented to major governments in 2013.

Subtitle: going forward

container port activity exteriors 5.9 VO ) Long ignored as a bi-product of the world economy, greenhouse gas emissions are now regarded as a serious liability by progressive governments and businesses alike.

And at some point that liability will be translated into an effective carbon price.

forest in mountainous terrain

aerials of typhoon devastation

meetings at COP 19

COP 19 panel presentation

This could boost economic incentives to preserve and restore the world's forests as carbon sinks. The devastating impact of fossil fuels would be contained, opening the door to a wealth of real solutions.

But to be effective, carbon prices and other economic levers require ambitious international cooperation. Otherwise, they can fail.

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Simon Upton sound bite Simon Upton: We've been doing a bit of parallel horizontal work looking at the experience of countries trying to impose carbon taxes. Now they have exactly the same distributional consequences as subsidy removal. You're changing the playing field. And one would have to say that the experience of countries differs enormously. There are case of absolutely clean – protested against but clean take-off – and there's processes of meltdown.

graphic: A message from the PM

5.9 VO ) But concerns over meltdown of the climate are overtaking any concerns about economic meltdown.

Mindy Lubber Mindy Lubber: The collective will from all corners of the world to tackle this issue is palpable. Unlike anything we've seen before. The leaders of the financial community, from Goldman Sachs to Levi-Strauss are here with us today making clear committments and calling for policy changes that will be enduring. It is not just words, it is actions.

National flags, UN Major US banks, six of the banks, join with us to call for strong policy in Paris, as well as pulling out of carbon intensive investment. We saw City[Bank] put a $ 100 billion on the table for a clean energy future, and Bank of America $125 billion. And we stood with apparel companies from Levi-Strauss to Eileen Fisher whose CEOs are now on the record saying they will hold themselves accountable for addressing climate, and they will support climate policies in ways they never have before.

Mindy Lubber

COP 19 meetings

Mindy Lubber: And global food companies, ten CEOs stood with us two weeks ago, calling for action in Paris that has very specific details around the price on carbon and moving forward.

Put simply, if governments can provide billions of financing, and deliver an ambitious final agreement, it will send the right market signals, and we will then see investors and business unlock the very real trillions of dollars a year we need to build a sustainable economy.

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5.9 VO ) And those in a position to build a sustainable economy know that it is a tall order, and there's no silver bullet.

David G. Victor interview clip There are literally a million different things in any modern economy that need to happen to make big reductions in emissions over a 30, 40, 50 year period which is the time scale that’s relevant here.

One thing governments can do is send a clear price signal. And as a compliment to prices, we need sometimes direct regulation as well. We need information schemes, because sometimes companies don't change from one kind of technology to another kind of technology because they just don't know.

That's especially true for households. People who run households are busy, they've got kids, they don't have time to go off and do full dissertation on evey new technology that becomes available. And so one of the things we've learned is that if government wants new technology to be diffused into the marketplace more rapidly, it can help provide information, direct incentives and subsidies in some cases, and so on, and so it's that whole suite of policies, where prices are at the centre, but there are complimentary policies as well that really ultimately change behavior.

Subtitle: key take aways

James Hansen interview clip James Hansen: Well the fundamental difficulty is that fossil fuels are presently the cheapest energy. But they're cheapest only because they don't pay for their cost to society. So we should put a tax, a fee, on fossil fuels.

And frankly we should distribute that money to the public uniformly so the people who burn less than average amount of fossil fuels would actually get more in the dividend than they would pay in increased energy prices.

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And in that way we could move toward clean energies, because clean energies and energy efficiency could then compete with the fossil fuels and we would gradually move off of fossil fuels to the clean energies of the future. Which we're going to have to do anyhow at some point. Fossil fuels are finite.

Graphic: James Branch Cabell

John Robinson interview clip

John Robinson: There's a famous definition of the difference between an optimist and pessimist. James Branch Cabell once said that the optimist thinks we live in the best of all possible worlds and the pessimist fears this is true. [laughs] And so, in that sense I'd admit to being a pessimist. You know this isn't the world we want. What we have now, it better not be the best of all possible worlds because we've got to make it better. And so in that sense, tha's a legitimate fear, but I don't think that should paralyze us.

Restore natural carbon sinks Energy Efficiency Zero Carbon Electric Grid Biofuels and Electricity for Heavy Industry Electric Propulsion and Carbon Neutral Fuels in Transportation

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