Dr. Rupert Pritzl: Das „grüne Lobbynetzwerk“ verfolgt eigene Interessen
[…] Klimapolitische Akteure wollen die Gesellschaft nach ihren Vorstellungen, Werten und Zielen gestalten, dazu versuchen sie, die Lobbyaktivitäten in der Energie- und Klimapolitik auszuweiten. Sie verfolgen drei Strategien: Politische Akteure wollen Einkommenserzielungsmöglichkeit für bestimmte Gruppen schaffen und gegen politische Unterstützung tauschen. In der kleinteiligen EEG-Förderung können Politiker ökonomische Renten den gewünschten Gruppen mundgerecht zuteilen. Die privilegierten Gruppen entwickeln große Eigendynamik, indem sie weitere staatliche Eingriffe oder Sondervorteile fordern, was eine Interventionsspirale in Gang setzt. Politiker wollen durch Kommunikation politisch mobilisieren. Die bisher ökonomisch orientierte Interessenpolitik wird durch eine moralische Wertepolitik ersetzt.
Fritz Söllner legt in seinem gerade erschienenen Buch „Die Moralapostel“ anschaulich dar, wie gesinnungsethische Vorstellungen („Deutschland als Klima-Vorreiter“) zur Verfolgung der eigenen Zwecke instrumentalisiert und Sachfragen zu moralischen Fragen umgedeutet werden. Dies führt unweigerlich zur Zielverabsolutierung („Klimaschutz als höchstes Ziel“) und Mittelverabsolutierung („all electric-society“) ohne Berücksichtigung der Systemzusammenhänge sowie zur Negierung einer Kosten-Nutzen-Abwägung, weshalb eine CO₂-Bepreisung kategorisch abgelehnt wird.
Weiterlesen im Merkur.
+++
für englische Texte: Oben rechts auf der Webseite „Übersetzen ins Deutsche“ klicken,
Nanyang Technological University:
Cool paint coatings help pedestrians feel up to 1.5°C cooler in urban setting, field study finds
A real-world study by researchers at NTU Singapore has shown that the use of cool paint coatings in cities can help pedestrians feel up to 1.5°C cooler, making the urban area more comfortable for work and play. The study is published in Sustainable Cities and Society.
Cool paint coatings contain additives that reflect the sun’s heat to reduce surface heat absorption and emission. They have been touted as one way to cool down the urban area and mitigate the urban heat island (UHI) effect, a phenomenon in which urban areas experience warmer temperatures than their outlying surroundings.
To date, most studies of cool paint coatings have been either simulation-based or tested in scaled-down models, and understanding of its application in real-world scenarios is limited.
Now, NTU researchers have conducted a first of its kind real-world study in the tropics to comprehensively evaluate how well cool paint coatings work in reducing city heat.
The team coated the roofs, walls, and road pavements of an industrial area in Singapore and found that by comparison with an adjacent uncoated area, the coated environment was up to 2°C cooler in the afternoon, with pedestrian thermal comfort level improving by up to 1.5°C, measured using the Universal Thermal Climate Index—a common international standard for human outdoor temperature sensation that takes into account temperature, relative humidity, thermal radiation, and wind speed.
Lead author Dr. E V S Kiran Kumar Donthu, who completed the work as a Research Fellow at Energy Research Institute at NTU (ERIAN), said, „Our study provides evidence that cool paint coatings reduce heat build-up and contribute to the cooling of the urban environment.
„This is a minimally intrusive solution for urban cooling that has an immediate effect, compared to other options that often require major urban redevelopment to deploy. Moreover, by reducing the amount of heat absorbed in urban structures, we also reduce heat load in buildings, consequently reducing indoor air-conditioning energy consumption.“
Lead investigator, Associate Professor Wan Man Pun at the NTU School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering (MAE), said, „Findings from the study are not just relevant for cities in Singapore where it is hot all year round, but for other urban areas around the world too. With global warming, people will increasingly look for ways to stay cool. Our study validates how cool paint coatings can be a strategy to reduce the urban heat island effect in future.“
The study supports the NTU 2025 strategic plan, which seeks to address humanity’s grand challenges on sustainability and accelerate the translation of research discoveries into innovations that mitigate human impact on the environment.
Real-world experiments in ’street canyons‘
To carry out their real-world experiments, the NTU researchers selected four rectangular buildings that created two parallel „street canyons“—narrow streets flanked by buildings—in an industrial estate west of Singapore managed by JTC Corporation.
One canyon, or „cool canyon“ was coated with cool paints on the roofs, walls, and road pavement, while the other (conventional) canyon remained as it was as a „control“ for the experiment.
Using environmental sensors, the NTU team monitored the conditions in the two canyons over two months, which included air movement, surface and air temperature, humidity, and radiation, to see how well the cool paint coatings worked in reducing city heat.
The researchers found that during a 24-hour cycle, the cool canyon saw up to a 30% reduction in heat released from the built-up surfaces, resulting in the air temperature in the cool canyon being cooler than the conventional canyon by up to 2°C during the hottest time of the day, at around 4pm. As a result, pedestrians in the cool canyon can feel up to 1.5°C cooler.
The NTU research team also found that air temperature in the cool canyon was lowered because less heat was absorbed by and stored in the building walls, roofs, and roads, and which would subsequently have been released to either heat up the surrounding air or the building’s interior.
Compared to conventional roofs, the roofs with the cool paint coating reflected 50% more sunlight and absorbed up to 40% less heat as a result, during the hottest time of a sunny day. The coated walls also prevented most of the heat from entering the industrial buildings.
Co-author, Assistant Professor Ng Bing Feng at the NTU School of MAE, said, „Our study showed that cool paint coating on the road significantly helped lower the hottest temperatures in the cool canyon, confirming that cool paint coating can be a promising way to make urban areas cooler and more comfortable, especially during hot weather. We hope findings from our study will encourage more urban planners to adopt cool paint coatings on more built-up surfaces, on a large scale.“
In future research, the NTU team will focus on how the cool paint coating holds up over time in the same experiment location.
Paper: E. V. S. Kiran Kumar Donthu et al, Dynamics of cool surface performance on urban microclimate: A full-scale experimental study in Singapore, Sustainable Cities and Society (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.scs.2024.105218
+++
Australian National University:
Forest regeneration projects failing to offset carbon emissions
Forest regeneration projects that have received tens of millions of carbon credits and dominate Australia’s carbon offset scheme have had negligible impact on woody vegetation cover and carbon sequestration, new research from The Australian National University (ANU) has found.
The research was undertaken in collaboration with Haizea Analytics, University of New South Wales (UNSW) and the University of Queensland, and analyzed 182 human-induced regeneration (HIR) projects. The findings are published in Communications Earth & Environment.
HIR projects are the world’s fifth largest nature-based offset type by credit issuances, and the largest when projects involving avoided emissions are excluded.
The analyzed projects are mostly located in dry outback areas in Queensland, New South Wales and Western Australia, and are being credited for regenerating native forests in areas that are largely uncleared.
The projects do not involve any tree planting. They are mainly claiming to regenerate native forests from soil seed stock, and suppressed seedlings, by reducing livestock and feral animal numbers.
The researchers say the projects have been controversial because decades of scientific research in Australia’s rangelands suggests grazing by livestock and feral animals generally does not have a material negative impact on woody vegetation cover.
The study assessed if woody vegetation cover increased in the ‚credited areas‘ of the projects, where even-aged forests are supposed to be regenerating, and analyzed whether the trends in woody cover in the credited areas were materially different from those in comparison areas adjoining the project boundaries.
Professor Andrew Macintosh, from ANU, said the results suggest the projects have been „substantially over-credited and are largely failing.“
„The projects in the study received more than 27 million credits over the period of analysis and most of them claim regeneration started around 2010 to 2014,“ he said.
„Due to this, their effects on woody vegetation cover should be very clear. But the data suggests tree cover has barely increased at all and, in many cases, it has gone backwards.
„Almost 80% of the projects experienced negative or negligible change in tree cover over the study period.
„The proportion of the total credited area, 3.4 million hectares, with woody cover increased by a mere 0.8% over this time.
„Forest cover—areas where the crowns of the trees cover is equal to or more than 20% of the area—increased by only 3.6%, while sparse woody cover—areas where the crowns of the trees cover between 5% and 19%—decreased by 2.8%.“
ANU Professor Don Butler, who led the statistical analysis in the study, said, „Not only were the changes in forest and sparse woody cover small, but they largely mirrored changes in the adjacent comparison areas, outside the projects.
„The results suggest the observed changes in woody vegetation cover are predominantly attributable to factors other than the project activities, most likely rainfall.“
The researchers say that a key problem with HIR projects is that sequestration is modeled, not directly measured. In addition, the model assumes even-aged forest regeneration is occurring across the entirety of the credited areas, regardless of what is happening on the ground.
Dr. Megan Evans from UNSW Canberra said, „HIR projects are credited on the basis that even-aged forest is regenerating across the entirety of the credited area and that, within approximately 10 to 15 years of when regeneration is modeled to have commenced, all of the credited area will have forest cover.
„The modest gain in woody cover observed within credited areas, and small effect of project registration on forest cover change, suggest this is unlikely to occur.
„The projects have largely failed to regenerate native forests and the evidence suggests things are unlikely to improve.
„Where carbon credits are issued to projects that do not sequester as much carbon as they are supposed to, it makes climate change worse. Credits from low integrity projects facilitate increases in emissions but the increases are not offset by reductions elsewhere.“
Professor David Eldridge from UNSW Syndey, who has spent years researching vegetation dynamics in the Australian outback, said, „The findings of the study should come as no surprise. They align perfectly with what decades of research in Australia’s rangelands suggests would occur.“
The researchers argue the findings highlight the practical limitations of offsets and the potential for offset schemes to credit abatement that is non-existent, non-additional and impermanent.
Paper: Andrew Macintosh et al, Australian human-induced native forest regeneration carbon offset projects have limited impact on changes in woody vegetation cover and carbon removals, Communications Earth & Environment (2024). DOI: 10.1038/s43247-024-01313-x
+++
Hinweis in eigener Sache: Der Versand unseres täglichen Newsletters wird gerade umgestellt. Wir hoffen, dass die Mails ab Montag (22.7.2024) wieder verschickt werden können