Carbon costs and benefits of France’s biomass energy production targets

Background

Concern about climate change has motivated France to reduce its reliance on fossil fuel by setting targets for increased biomass-based renewable energy production. This study quantifies the carbon costs and benefits for the French forestry sector in meeting these targets. A forest growth and harvest simulator was developed for French forests using recent forest inventory data, and the wood-use chain was reconstructed from national wood product statistics. We then projected wood production, bioenergy production, and carbon balance for three realistic intensification scenarios and a business-as-usual scenario. These intensification scenarios targeted either overstocked, harvest-delayed or currently actively managed stands.

Results

All three intensification strategies produced 11.6–12.4 million tonnes of oil equivalent per year of wood-based energy by 2026, which corresponds to the target assigned to French wood-energy to meet the EU 2020 renewable energy target. Sustaining this level past 2026 will be challenging, let alone further increasing it. Although energy production targets can be reached, the management intensification required will degrade the near-term carbon balance of the forestry sector, compared to continuing present-day management. Even for the best-performing intensification strategy, i.e., reducing the harvest diameter of actively managed stands, the carbon benefits would only become apparent after 2040. The carbon balance of a strategy putting abandoned forests back into production would only break even by 2055; the carbon balance from increasing thinning in managed but untended stands would not break even within the studied time periods, i.e. 2015–2045 and 2046–2100. Owing to the temporal dynamics in the components of the carbon balance, i.e., the biomass stock in the forest, the carbon stock in wood products, and substitution benefits, the merit order of the examined strategies varies over time.

Conclusions

No single solution was found to improve the carbon balance of the forestry sector by 2040 in a way that also met energy targets. We therefore searched for the intensification scenario that produces energy at the lowest carbon cost. Reducing rotation time of actively managed stands is slightly more efficient than targeting harvest-delayed stands, but in both cases, each unit of energy produced has a carbon cost that only turns into a benefit between 2060 and 2080.

     

Flood-prone area mapping using machine learning techniques: a case study of Quang Binh province,Vietnam

Natural Hazards - Vietnam’s central coastal region is the most vulnerable and always at flood risk, severely affecting people’s livelihoods and socio-economic development. In...     

Perceived fairness and public acceptability of carbon pricing: a review of the literature

While carbon pricing is widely seen as a crucial element of climate policy and has been implemented in many countries, it also has met with strong resistance. We provide a comprehensive overview of public perceptions of the fairness of carbon pricing and how these affect policy acceptability. To this end, we review evidence from empirical studies on how individuals judge personal, distributional and procedural aspects of carbon taxes and cap-and-trade. In addition, we examine preferences for particular redistributive and other uses of revenues generated by carbon pricing and their role in instrument acceptability. Our results indicate a high concern over distributional effects, particularly in relation to policy impacts on poor people, in turn reducing policy acceptability. In addition, people show little trust in the capacities of governments to put the revenues of carbon pricing to good use. Somewhat surprisingly, most studies do not indicate clear public preferences for using revenues to ensure fairer policy outcomes, notably by reducing its regressive effects. Instead, many people prefer using revenues for ‘environmental projects’ of various kinds. We end by providing recommendations for improving public acceptability of carbon pricing. One suggestion to increase policy acceptability is combining the redistribution of revenue to vulnerable groups with the funding for environmental projects, such as on renewable energy.

Key policy insights

• If people perceive carbon pricing instruments as fair, this increases policy acceptability and support.

• People’s satisfaction with information provided by the government about the policy instrument increases acceptability.

• While people express high concern over uneven distribution of the policy burden, they often prefer using carbon pricing revenues for environmental projects instead of compensation for inequitable outcomes.

• Recent studies find that people’s preferences shift to using revenues for making policy fairer if they better understand the functioning of carbon pricing, notably that relatively high prices of CO₂-intensive goods and services reduce their consumption.

• Combining the redistribution of revenue to support both vulnerable groups and environmental projects, such as on renewable energy, seems to most increase policy acceptability.

     

Lead contamination of small cetaceans in European waters--the use of stable isotopes for identifying the sources of lead exposure

Lead concentrations and isotopic composition have been measured in bone and teeth of small cetaceans belonging to three species (Delphinus delphis, Phocoena phocoena and Stenella coeruleoalba), to evaluate the toxicological risk and to determine sources of lead in the European waters. Lead concentrations, far lower than threshold value inducing toxic effects in human, were higher in teeth than in bones, but highly correlated between the two tissues (r=0.92, p<0.001). Large variations of 206Pb/207Pb values in bone tissue showed that cetaceans must be submitted to various atmospheric influences. No geographical differences appeared which is consistent with studies on their distribution indicating seasonal movements between Brittany waters and the Bay of Biscay. The negative correlation between 206Pb/207Pb ratios and age of the individuals reflected the decrease in the production of alkyl lead in Europe, i.e., the increasing use of unleaded gasoline.     

Geological and geophysical studies of the Agoudal impact structure (Central High Atlas,Morocco): New evidence for crater size and age

Since the discovery of shatter cones (SCs) near the village of Agoudal (Morocco, Central High Atlas Mountains) in 2013, the absence of one or several associated circular structures led to speculation about the age of the impact event, the number, and the size of the impact crater or craters. Additional constraints on the crater size, age, and erosion rates are obtained here from geological, structural, and geophysical mapping and from cosmogenic nuclide data. Our geological maps of the Agoudal impact site at the scales of 1:30,000 (6 km²) and 1:15,000 (2.25 km²) include all known occurrences of SCs in target rocks, breccias, and vertical to overturned strata. Considering that strata surrounding the impact site are subhorizontal, we argue that disturbed strata are related to the impact event. Three types of breccias have been observed. Two of them (br1‐2 and br2) could be produced by erosion–sedimentation–consolidation processes, with no evidence for impact breccias, while breccia (br1) might be impact related. The most probable center of the structure is estimated at 31°59′13.73?N, 5°30′55.14?W using the concentric deviation method applied to the orientation of strata over the disturbed area. Despite the absence of a morphological expression, the ground magnetic and electromagnetic surveys reveal anomalies spatially associated with disturbed strata and SC occurrences. The geophysical data, the structural observations, and the area of occurrence of SCs in target rocks are all consistent with an original size of 1.4–4.2 km in diameter. Cosmogenic nuclide data (³⁶Cl) constrain the local erosion rates between 220 ± 22 m Ma^?1 and 430 ± 43 m Ma^?1. These erosion rates may remove the topographic expression of such a crater and its ejecta in a time period of about 0.3–1.9 Ma. This age is older than the Agoudal iron meteorite age (105 ± 40 kyr). This new age constraint excludes the possibility of a genetic relationship between the Agoudal iron meteorite fall and the formation of the Agoudal impact site. A chronolgy chart including the Atlas orogeny, the alternation of sedimentation and erosion periods, and the meteoritic impacts is presented based on all obtained and combined data.     

Barred Spirals,Double Galaxies and massive Halos1

It is shown that there is no significant dependence of the frequency with which barred spirals occur on environment. Therefore, the difference between normal and barred spirals must be largely due to initial conditions. The excess of early type galaxie (in particular ellipticals and SO's) among the statistically selected binary samples is probably caused by a contamination by cluster members and will therefore result in a systematic overestimate of the masses of binary galaxies. The large fraction of multiple first-ranked galaxies found in rich clusters of BAUTZ -MORGAN type I is surprising in view of tidal effects and dynamical friction, which should lead to the destruction of such massive binary systems on a time scale much shorter than the age of the Universe.     

Experimental investigation of water impact on axisymmetric bodies

The results of an elaborate experimental investigation on bottom slamming of axisymmetric objects are presented. Drop tests have been performed on a hemisphere and two conical shapes with different deadrise angles. The test setup is designed so as to prevent small rotations of the test objects which cause scatter in the measurement data. The pressure distribution and evolution as well as the body motion parameters are measured during impact. By means of a high speed camera the water uprise is visualized and the wetting factor is determined for the cones. The results are compared with a three-dimensional asymptotic theory for axisymmetric rigid bodies with constant entry velocity. The ratio between the registered peak pressures and the asymptotic theory are in accordance with comparable experiments in the literature. The asymptotic theory, however, is found to be quite conservative, since the measured peak pressure levels appear to be approximately 50% to 75% of the theoretical levels.     

A protocol for classifying ecologically relevant marine zones,a statistical approach

Mapping ecologically relevant zones in the marine environment has become increasingly important. Biological data are however often scarce and alternatives are being sought in optimal classifications of abiotic variables. The concept of ‘marine landscapes’ is based on a hierarchical classification of geological, hydrographic and other physical data. This approach is however subject to many assumptions and subjective decisions.