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One low-carbon form of energy that could play a significant role in reducing planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions is biomass, which can be converted to biofuels, bioelectricity and bioheat. Just how significant that role will be in the coming decades will depend largely on bioenergy’s cost-competitiveness and policies designed to incentivize bioenergy use. A key determinant of bioenergy’s share of the energy market is the price of crude oil. On first glance, it seems intuitive that the higher the oil price, the more opportunity for bioenergy to break through.

Can Big Oil make way for biofuels?
The energy and CO2 emissions impact of renewable energy development in China

China has adopted targets for developing renewable electricity that would require expansion on an unprecedented scale. During the period from 2010 to 2020, we find that current renewable electricity targets result in significant additional renewable energy installation and a reduction in cumulative CO2 emissions of 1.8% relative to a No Policy baseline. After 2020, the role of renewables is sensitive to both economic growth and technology cost assumptions. Importantly, we find that the CO2 emissions reductions due to increased renewables are offset in each year by emissions increases in non-covered sectors through 2050. We consider sensitivity to renewable electricity cost after 2020 and find that if cost falls due to policy or other reasons, renewable electricity share increases and results in slightly higher economic growth through 2050. However, regardless of the cost assumption, projected CO2 emissions reductions are very modest under a policy that only targets the supply side in the electricity sector. A policy approach that covers all sectors and allows flexibility to reduce CO2 at lowest cost – such as an emissions trading system – will prevent this emissions leakage and ensure targeted reductions in CO2 emissions are achieved over the long term.

Approaches to Assessing Climate Change Impacts on Agriculture: An Overview of the Debate

There are three main approaches to assessing the multiple impacts of climate change on agriculture. In this symposium, leading proponents of each approach discuss their methods, uses, and findings. This introductory article provides an overview of these approaches and discusses the main sources of debate in the literature on climate change impacts on agriculture: the weather vs. climate dichotomy, the explanatory variables included in the analysis, the impact measures analyzed, impact projections, and adaptation.

Characterization of the wind power resource in Europe and its intermittency

Wind power is assessed over Europe, with a special care given to the quantification of intermittency. Using the methodology developed in Gunturu and Schlosser, the MERRA boundary flux data was used to compute wind power density profiles over Europe. Besides of the analysis of capacity factor, other metrics have been designed to further quantify the availability and reliability of this resource and the extent to which wind-power intermittency is coincident across Europe. The presented analysis leads to the conclusion that wind-proponents’ favourite statement, “wind always blows somewhere”, may not be so true.

Emulating maize yields from global gridded crop models using statistical estimates

This study estimates statistical models emulating maize yield responses to changes in temperature and precipitation simulated by global gridded crop models. We use the unique and newly released Inter-Sectoral Impact Model Intercomparison Project Fast Track ensemble of global gridded crop model simulations to build a panel of annual maize yields simulations from five crop models and corresponding monthly weather variables for over a century. This dataset is then used to estimate statistical relationship between yields and weather variables for each crop model. The statistical models are able to closely replicate both in- and out-of-sample maize yields projected by the crop models. This study therefore provides simple tools to predict gridded changes in maize yields due to climate change at the global level. By emulating crop yields for several models, the tools will be useful for climate change impact assessments and facilitate evaluation of crop model uncertainty.

The mercury game: evaluating a negotiation simulation that teaches students about science-policy interactions

Environmental negotiations and policy decisions take place at the science-policy interface. While this is well known within academic literature, it is often difficult to convey how science and policy interact to students in environmental studies and sciences courses. We argue that negotiation simulations, as an experiential learning tool, are one effective way to teach students about how science and policy interact in decision-making. We developed a negotiation simulation, called the mercury game, based on the global mercury treaty negotiations. To evaluate the game, we conducted surveys before and after the game was played in university classrooms across North America. For science students, the simulation communicates how politics and economics affect environmental negotiations. For environmental studies and public policy students, the mercury simulation demonstrates how scientific uncertainty can affect decision-making. Using the mercury game as an educational tool allows students to learn about complex interactions between science and society and develop communication skills.

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