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Trade in China is the reason for its quickly growing economy, but with the large amount of trade comes increased pollution.

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Article | Open

Nature Communications 8, Article number: 738 (2017)

doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00918-5

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Abstract

Recent studies show that international trade affects global distributions of air pollution and public health. Domestic interprovincial trade has similar effects within countries, but has not been comprehensively investigated previously. Here we link four models to evaluate the effects of both international exports and interprovincial trade on PM 2.5 pollution and public health across China. We show that 50-60% of China's air pollutant emissions in 2007 were associated with goods and services consumed outside of the provinces where they were produced. Of an estimated 1.10 million premature deaths caused by PM 2.5 pollution throughout China, nearly 19% (208,500 deaths) are attributable to international exports. In contrast, interprovincial trade leads to improved air quality in developed coastal provinces with a net effect of 78,500 avoided deaths nationwide. However, both international export and interprovincial trade exacerbate the health burdens of air pollution in China's less developed interior provinces. Our results reveal trade to be a critical but largely overlooked consideration in effective regional air quality planning for China.

Introduction

The Chinese economy has experienced rapid growth since the open door reform policy was adopted in 1978. A significant portion of the growth has been driven by exports, particularly after China became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001. In 2010, China became the world's second largest economy and the gross domestic product (GDP) reached US$5.88 trillion, of which 27% was contributed by merchandise exports1. As the world's largest exporter, China accounted for over 10% of world merchandise export value in 20092. Although global trade in principle benefits both trading nations in terms of GDP, it tends to outsource pollution to less developed nations by taking advantage of low-cost labor and energy as well as lax environmental enforcement to increase returns on capital3. Because China's economic boom has been fueled primarily by coal using less advanced technologies for production and emission control4, international exports have become an increasingly important factor driving China's air pollutant emissions in recent decades5.

China is a vast country with substantial disparities across provinces in terms of resource and energy endowments, economic development, population densities, and lifestyles, resulting in trade between provinces of goods with embodied pollution. In recent years, emissions grew rapidly in some interior provinces but stabilized or even decreased in many coastal regions6, partly because interior provinces export emission-intensive products (e.g., raw materials or energy) to support production and consumption of finished goods in coastal regions7, 8. At the same time, emissions in interior provinces can contribute to air pollution in coastal provinces through transport of both primary and secondary pollutants, the latter formed by chemical reactions of precursor gases in the air9. Provinces often cite this quandary in disputes about respective responsibilities in regional air quality planning in China. Note that the health effects of air pollution exposures are dominated by those due to fine particles (PM 2.5), which take many chemical forms and occur both as primary pollutants and secondary products of SO ₂, NO X, NH ₃, and other gases.

A number of studies have applied input−output models to analyze CO ₂ emissions embodied in international and Chinese interprovincial trade7, 10, 11. Application of these methods to study trade-related air pollution in China is an emerging field with important implications. Zhao et al.8 estimated that 15-23% of China's air pollutant emissions were related to exports for foreign consumption. Lin et al.12 investigated air pollution embodied in China's international trade and found its exports responsible for 23-34% of the concentrations of sulfate, 10-23% of black carbon, and 12-23% of CO over East China in 2006. Jiang et al.13 estimated that international exports caused 12% of the total mortality attributable to PM 2.5 across China in 2007. Zhang et al.14 proposed a comprehensive framework to differentiate the total mortality of ambient PM 2.5 according to the source emissions generated in local production, international exports, and international imports for various regions in the world. They indicated that consumption-based premature deaths due to PM 2.5 in China (835,110) are much lower than production-based ones (1,023,689). However, existing studies of trade-related air pollution in Chinese provinces are not linked with a global multi-regional input−output (MRIO) model, thus are less accurate in quantifying the impact of international trade, both generally and with regard to specific countries, on China's air pollution. Study of the impact of interprovincial trade on air pollution, moreover, is critical for designing regional air quality improvement plans in China, but has not yet been addressed in the literature. For a thorough quantitative understanding of the effects of trade on regional air pollution and public health across China, it is essential to integrate interprovincial and international trade into one MRIO model.

In this study, we calculate the extent to which international and interprovincial trade resulted in relocation of air pollutant emissions across 30 Chinese provinces (not including Tibet, Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan) and 40 other countries/regions in 2007, and we evaluate the subsequent effects on air quality and public health across China. We accomplish this by linking a global integrated MRIO model, an air pollutant emissions inventory, an atmospheric chemical transport model, and an exposure-response model. We show that nearly 208,500 premature deaths resulting from PM 2.5 pollution throughout China are attributable to international exports. Interprovincial trade has mixed environmental impacts across China. It led to improved air quality in developed coastal provinces and avoided an estimated 78,500 deaths nationwide in 2007. However, both international trade and interprovincial trade exacerbate the health burdens of air pollution in China's less developed interior provinces, where large quantities of emission-intensive goods are manufactured for direct consumption in the coastal provinces or exported indirectly in the form of raw materials used in the supply chain of exported finished goods.

Results

Impact of international exports

As illustrated in Fig. 1, emissions resulting from production of goods exported internationally from China contributed to degraded ambient air quality (Supplementary Fig. 1b), increasing health burdens over nearly all of China. It increased the estimated national population-weighted mean PM 2.5 concentration (PWM-PM 2.5) by nearly 20%, from 45.5 to 57.6 μg/m ³ in 2007. The estimated mortality associated with pollution embodied in international exports was 208,500 throughout China, with a 95% confidence interval (CI95) of 158,800-255,900 (Fig. 1a), 150% higher than the recorded Chinese traffic fatalities in the same year. The European Union, North America, and East Asia, the largest three importing regions for Chinese goods (at 24, 21, and 13% of total export value, respectively), were associated with an estimated 47,000, 45,100 and 27,100 premature deaths in China from PM 2.5 exposures in 2007, respectively (Fig. 1b-d).

Fig. 1

Premature deaths attributable to ambient PM 2.5 associated with air pollutant emissions embodied in international exports from China. Mortalities attributable to: a total international exports; b exports to Europe; c exports to North America; and d exports to East Asia

Very high emission intensity (i.e., emissions per unit of economic output) drives the health impacts attributable to pollution embodied in China's international exports. While in value terms China's imports (US$955 billion) in 2007 were ~ 80% of its exports (US$1.22 trillion) and had similar sector composition (Supplementary Fig. 2), emissions derived from international imports were far less than those from international exports (e.g., 30% for emissions of SO ₂, a key precursor gas of secondary PM 2.5) (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 3). This imbalance highlights the difference in emission intensities of exported and imported goods (Supplementary Table 1; note that missing data for a few sectors of countries other than China might increase the magnitude of the above-mentioned difference in air pollutant emissions). For example, the SO ₂ emission intensity of China's exports was as high as 5.4 g SO ₂ US$ −1 in 2007, 2.3 times that of imports. As a result, international export-related SO ₂ emissions reached 6.97 Mt, accounting for 23% of China's total production-based emissions. Again, these emissions were mainly associated with exports to the European Union (23%), North America (21%), and East Asia (12%) (Supplementary Fig. 4).

Fig. 2

Comparison of provincial air pollutant emissions from production and consumption perspectives. The production-based and consumption-based emissions of SO ₂ by province in 2007 are illustrated on top and bottom, respectively. Note that the two white fields for each province are identical as they represent the same quantity

Our results further demonstrate that the impacts of international exports of Chinese goods on air pollution and public health are unevenly distributed in China (Fig. 1a and Supplementary Fig. 1b). Thanks to an advantageous export structure and deployment of more advanced production and air pollution control technologies15, the coastal provinces, including Shanghai and Guangdong, were responsible for 40% of export values in 2007 but only 11% of China's total mortality associated with emissions embodied in international exports (~ 22,500 deaths). In contrast, exports from China's interior regions include primarily energy-intensive and emission-intensive products with lesser monetary values. Furthermore, the production of export goods often requires inputs of raw materials and energy forms produced by heavy industry (i.e., metals, mining, coke and refined petroleum, chemicals, non-metal mineral products, and coal-fired electricity), which are geographically concentrated in China's interior provinces7. These sources increased indirect export-related emissions (i.e., those arising from production of goods and services that are not directly exported from the country but used in the production of final export goods) from the interior provinces. Despite contributing only 19.0% of China's total export value, the interior provinces suffered much higher air pollution burdens from exports, e.g., 57.9% of related SO ₂ emissions. For interior regions with large populations (e.g., central China, home to 360 million people), the health burden associated with international exports can be quite high in some provinces including Henan (18,000 deaths), Hebei (15,600), and Anhui (13,300).

While the above emphasizes trade-derived air pollution and related health impacts in China, it is important to acknowledge that other countries suffer health impacts of air pollution from emissions embodied in exports to China. As reflected in the disparities of embodied emission intensities of exports vs. imports, however, the total environmental impacts resulting from imports to China will be considerably less than those resulting from its exports. It should also be noted that because international exports have at least partially replaced domestic consumption, our counterfactual scenarios excluding emissions embodied in exports might overestimate the health impact on China of its international exports. On the other hand, production for international export may also prompt diffusion of improved technologies to or within China, in which case its effect on the health impact within China might be underestimated.

Impact of interprovincial trade

Compared to air pollutant emissions from international trade, those embodied in trade between China's provinces were even greater in 2007 (Fig. 2 and Supplementary Fig. 3). These emissions were mainly driven by the concentration of consumption in coastal regions while production is concentrated in interior provinces through domestic supply chains (Supplementary Fig. 5). For example, over 60% of the consumption-based SO ₂ emissions in Beijing−Tianjin, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Pearl River Delta were generated outside of their boundaries, in other provinces. Interior provinces, where per capita GDP averages less than $3000 compared to $4400−$8700 in coastal regions, exhibit the largest difference in the emission intensity of exports and imports, resulting in nearly 75% of the interprovincial trade-related emissions. For example, in Guizhou, where the per capita GDP was only $969 in 2007, the SO ₂ emission intensity of interprovincial exports was 6.6 times that of imports from other provinces. Ratios over 2 exist in other less developed provinces, including Shanxi, Ningxia, and Inner Mongolia. Even for production of the same products, emission intensities of the interior provinces are usually higher than their coastal counterparts because of different energy structures and technology levels. The coal-fired electric power industry generates 58.4 g SO ₂ per US$ of electricity in Inner Mongolia, nearly twice that in Shanghai.

In order to evaluate the effects of interprovincial trade on ambient PM 2.5 concentrations (Supplementary Fig. 1c) and related health impacts across China (Fig. 3a), we counterfactually relocate interprovincial trade-related emissions to provinces based on consumption rather than production (scenario 3 in Supplementary Table 2). Comparison with the analogous results for the actual production-based emission distribution suggests that interprovincial trade reduced China's general PWM-PM 2.5 by 3.8 μg m −3 (6.9%), avoiding 78,500 (CI95: 59,700-96,200) deaths. This means that current interprovincial trade resulting from specialization and relocation of industries has potentially improved the resource utilization efficiency16, and therefore mitigated the adverse health impact attributable to ambient air pollution for China as a whole. The most developed, coastal regions and provinces gain the greatest air pollution health benefits from interprovincial trade, including Beijing (−43.2 μg m −3 in PWM-PM 2.5 and 8600 avoided deaths), the Yangtze River Delta (Zhejiang: −22.1 and −16,800; Shanghai: −58.7 and −16,400; Jiangsu: −26.1 and −26,000), and the Pearl River Delta (Guangdong: −12.7 and −20,200). Exacerbation of air pollution and health burdens, on the other hand, was suffered by interior provinces, such as Hebei (+6.0 μg m −3 in PWM-PM 2.5 and 3800 additional deaths), Henan (+9.3 and +9700), Guizhou (+6.2 and +3700).

Fig. 3

Effects of interprovincial trade on premature deaths attributable to ambient PM 2.5 across China. a geographical distribution of mortality, with blue and red/lavender/yellow indicating regions of avoided deaths (a benefit) and increased deaths (a disbenefit) from interprovincial trade, respectively; b increased (positive values) or avoided (negative values) mortality risk (deaths per million people) of provinces by economic development level, indicated by per capita disposable income of urban residents (RMB)

Effects of interprovincial trade on mortality risks associated with air pollution are inversely related to provincial per capita wealth (Fig. 3b), revealing an important inequity between coastal and interior provinces. Stated in more stark terms, some of the gains from economic development in China's coastal regions are likely at the expense of negative environmental and health impacts on interior regions (Fig. 3a). The relatively poor medical services in less developed interior provinces may worsen the adverse health impacts, potentially further offsetting the economic gains from interprovincial trade.

Note that mitigation of air pollution in coastal regions achieved by relocating emissions to interior provinces through interprovincial trade can be partially canceled by long-range atmospheric transport and chemistry. For instance, gaseous SO ₂ and NO X are less harmful but can be transformed into sulfate and nitrate PM 2.5 through secondary chemical processing noted above17, yielding longer atmospheric lifetimes and transport distances than those for primary PM 2.5. To the extent that prevailing winds transport pollution from China's interior provinces to coastal regions18, a function of seasonal meteorology, the latter can be affected by elevated PM 2.5 from the upwind pollutant sources. These complex effects are captured in our results by nested-grid GEOS-Chem modeling of atmospheric transport and chemistry.

Discussion

Both international and interprovincial trade have exacerbated air pollution and associated health burdens in China's interior provinces. Relatively high emission intensities of some industries in a number of less developed interior provinces of China may be a key factor driving the large emissions embodied in both international exports and interprovincial trade in China. Targeted shifts to cleaner energy sources and modernization of technology used by related industries of those interior provinces might alleviate the air pollution associated with Chinese trade. If the emission intensities of interprovincial exports from five interior provinces (Hebei, Henan, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, and Liaoning) were equal to levels of Shanghai, the total SO ₂ emissions embodied in China's interprovincial trade would have been reduced by 20.0% in 2007, an amount equivalent to the emissions of Canada (2.16 Mt). But existing environmental controls, including the Action Plan for Air Pollution Prevention and Control launched in 2013 to combat increasingly serious haze events in China, still focuses primarily on the developed coastal regions where the emission intensities are relatively low. In contrast, environmental regulations are looser for interior provinces (e.g., Henan and Hebei), where the emission intensities and health burdens of air pollution are relatively high. Even as the central government is seeking to reduce national inequities through economic development of China's interior provinces, air pollution control policies may encourage further relocation of heavy industries to those same provinces, aggravating local health burdens at the same time they improve them on a net national basis.

Our results show the complexity of regional air pollution issues, which need to be addressed by comprehensive consideration of entire production chains, atmospheric transport and chemistry, and population distributions. Since interprovincial trade between provinces generally improves the air quality in coastal provinces but degrades it in interior regions, policies should be designed to favor transfer of advanced technologies for production and emissions control from the coastal regions to the interior regions. Similarly, as Chinese industries generally emit more pollutants per unit output than their counterparts in developed countries, such domestic efforts are likely insufficient to mitigate total air pollutant emissions from a global perspective. In contrast to the global impact of greenhouse gas emissions, the health impacts of air pollution are mainly local or regional. International cooperation is critical to accelerate the diffusion of advanced technologies in manufacturing, non-fossil energy, and pollution control to and within China. Programs undertaken by multilateral development agencies (e.g., the World Bank) might provide one institutional mechanism for such technology transfer. If a global market in carbon allowances eventually emerges under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, it might also serve such aims as a co-benefit. Because fossil fuel combustion generally emits both CO ₂ and domestic air pollutants, in many cases low-cost carbon reductions in China's interior provinces effectively sold to developed nations would also help to improve the regional air quality in China.

Methods

Analytical framework of this study

We consider trade between 30 Chinese provinces and 40 other countries/regions in one integrated model, evaluating the footprint of embodied emissions. Building on this approach, we further quantify the impact of both international exports and interprovincial trade on premature deaths attributable to ambient PM 2.5 across China. Our analytical approach includes three major components (Supplementary Fig. 6). First, we track air pollutant emissions embodied in trade between Chinese provinces and other countries/regions using a global linked MRIO model, which connects China's provincial MRIO model with the World Input−Output Database (WIOD) ( http://www.wiod.org/new_site/home.htm). Second, we apply the nested-grid GEOS-Chem model ( http://geos-chem.org/) to estimate the spatial change ratios of ambient PM 2.5 concentrations induced by trade, which we then calibrate using satellite-derived PM 2.5 concentrations to estimate trade-related PM 2.5 exposures. Third, an integrated exposure-response (IER) model (Supplementary Fig. 7) is applied to examine the effects of trade on ambient PM 2.5-related mortality across China.

Evaluation of trade-embodied emissions

Calculation of the international and interprovincial trade-related emissions is based on an environmentally extended MRIO analysis of the interactions between different economic sectors and regions, multiplied by sector-specific emission intensities.

We developed a linked MRIO model (Supplementary Fig. 8) to analyze the interactions between different economic sectors and regions by integrating China's MRIO model with the WIOD (Supplementary Tables 3- 6) in this study. The key steps to create the linked MRIO model are to establish the intermediate delivery matrix (IDM) and final demand matrix (FDM) of China's provincial goods and services exported to other countries, and those of foreign goods and services exported to individual Chinese provinces. We estimate them based on the principle that the sum of the IDM and FDM of China's provincial goods and services exported to other countries is equal to the Chinese provincial export matrix, and the sum of those of foreign goods and services exported to individual Chinese provinces is equal to the provincial import matrix (see Supplementary Methods for the detailed process and data used for developing this linked MRIO). The linked MRIO model can be expressed as:

where X∗ is the total economic output matrix; A∗ is the matrix block of normalized matrix of intermediate coefficients in which the columns reflect the input from each sector in a region r required to produce one unit from each sector in region s; r and s represent the 70 regions (i.e., 30 Chinese provinces and 40 other countries/regions); I is the identity matrix; and ( I −  A∗ ) −1 is the Leontief inverse matrix.

Sector-specific emission intensities of air pollutants are calculated as total production-based emissions divided by total monetized outputs from the respective sectors. We employed the multi-resolution emission inventory for China (MEIC)19 and emissions database for global atmospheric research (EDGAR)20 to estimate the sector-specific emissions for Chinese provinces and other countries/regions, respectively. Due to the different classification of sectors between the emission inventories and the linked MRIO model, some of the sectors are combined or divided through a mapping process as shown in Supplementary Fig. 9 and Supplementary Table 7 (see Supplementary Methods for a detailed discussion). The environmentally extended linked MRIO model can be written as:

where E∗ is the air pollutant emissions (e.g., SO ₂, PM 2.5) embodied in the trade flow; F is a row vector of per unit output of emissions (i.e., emission intensity) for each sector in the 70 regions; F ^ is the diagonalization of F; d represents the 21 sectors in the linked MRIO.

Then, the emissions generated in one region (i.e., production-based emissions) can be quantitatively decomposed into the components related to consumption activities in that region as well as in other regions (Eq. 3). The emissions related to regional consumption (i.e., consumption-based emissions) can be decomposed into the components generated within the region's geographical boundary and those embodied in imports from outside of it, driven by the region's consumption activities (Eq. 4).

where, E p d r and E c d r denote emissions associated with the products produced and consumed in a region, respectively; and s1 and s2 represent the 30 Chinese provinces and 40 other countries/regions, respectively; E d r r represents the emissions of products produced and consumed locally in r; E d r s 1 and E d r s 2 represent emissions of products produced in r but consumed in other Chinese provinces or other countries/regions, respectively; E d s 1 r and E d s 2 r represent emissions of product consumed in region r but produced in other Chinese provinces or other countries/regions, respectively.

Such MRIO-based analyses have already been widely applied to calculate embodied carbon emissions10, 11, 21 associated with international trade. CO ₂ emissions have also been calculated based on our linked MRIO model, and the resulting emissions embodied in trade are generally consistent with Feng et al.7 (Supplementary Tables 3 and 4).

Assessment of trade's impact on ambient PM2.5 pollution

We defined six scenarios to analyze the impacts of interprovincial and international trade on air pollution across China (Supplementary Table 2). The production-based emissions (i.e., MEIC and EDGAR) serve as a baseline emission scenario (Scenario 1). Scenario 2 is designed to analyze the impact of global exports from China on the emissions of all provinces, by omitting from Scenario 1 the emissions embodied in international exports from relevant sectors of each Chinese province. Scenario 3 is designed to analyze the impact of interprovincial trade on the relocation of provincial emissions, by replacing in each province the emissions embodied in interprovincial exports in Scenario 1 by those embodied in interprovincial imports. Scenarios 4, 5, and 6 omit from Scenario 1 the emissions embodied in the exports to the US, Europe, and East Asia, respectively, for each province.

We applied the GEOS-Chem model (v10-01) to simulate the spatial change ratios of PM 2.5 concentrations attributable to individual activities (e.g., international export, interprovincial trade) across China at a resolution of 0.5° latitude × 0.667° longitude (a nominal resolution of ~ 50 km). The spatial change ratios between baseline PM 2.5 concentrations and the five alternative simulated results are considered as the impacts of various types of trade activities on PM 2.5 concentrations (Supplementary Fig. 1). The calculated spatial change ratios are then multiplied with satellite-retrieved PM 2.5 concentrations to calculate the individual trade-derived ambient PM 2.5 concentrations across China:

where A is the spatial change ratios of PM 2.5 concentrations attributable to trade; C mtotal represent the GEOS-Chem-modeled PM 2.5 concentrations using emissions under Scenario 1; C mnoTRE represent the GEOS-Chem-modeled PM 2.5 concentrations using emissions of Scenarios 2 ~ 6, respectively; C TRE are the ambient PM 2.5 concentrations induced by trade; C sattotal represent the satellite-retrieved total PM 2.5 concentrations; and C noTRE represent the PM 2.5 concentrations across China if we assume no trade.

The employed satellite-retrieved data have a high spatial resolution (10 × 10 km) and have been transformed into estimates of ground-level concentrations22. These data have already been extensively applied in previous studies including the global burden of disease (GBD) project23, 24. In order to reduce errors due to insufficient samples of satellite data, the average satellite-retrieved PM 2.5 concentrations over 3 years (2006-2008) were used to represent the annual mean concentrations for 2007. This approach helps to correct the potential model bias if the GEOS-Chem-calculated PM 2.5 concentrations are directly used for the baseline case, and improves the spatial resolution of our final model results. More descriptions of the GEOS-Chem simulation process and evaluation against observations are provided in Supplementary Methods.

Evaluation of the health impacts

We quantified the premature deaths attributable to trade-induced air pollution from four major causes of mortality, i.e., ischemic heart disease (IHD), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), stroke and lung cancer (LC), according to the GBD project:

where M is the premature deaths from a given disease attributable to ambient air pollution; AF is the attributable fraction of trade-driven PM 2.5 pollution; B is the incidence of the given health effect due to specific disease (e.g., deaths due to IHD per 1000 people), reported at the national level due to data limitations in China1; P is the exposed population; p i is the proportion of population in grid cell i, %; and RR(﻿ C) i is the relative risk of grid cell i.

As very limited epidemiologic research on the effects of long-term exposure to PM 2.5 has been conducted in China, the IER functions developed by Burnett et al.25 were employed to calculate RR( C﻿) for each grid cell in this study. The IER functions describe the C−R relationship throughout a wide range of ambient PM 2.5 concentrations (including the high levels observed in China) by integrating data from cohort studies of ambient air pollution, secondhand tobacco smoke, indoor burning of solid fuels, and active smoking. The four major causes of mortality share the same health impact function with different parameters, and can be expressed as:

where R﻿R( C) is the relative risk of a given PM 2.5 concentration C; C ₀ is the counterfactual PM 2.5 concentration below which there is no additional risk; and α, γ, and δ are parameters describing the overall shape of the exposure-response curve resulting from a stochastic fitting process25. For each health endpoint, we implemented the RR function as in Eq. 10 using parameters C ₀, α, γ, and δ derived from Monte Carlo simulations, leading to 1000 sets of exposure-response functions. Supplementary Fig. 7 shows the plots of the exposure-response curves for different diseases, and we adopted the upper and lower bounds in these plots to represent the 95% confidence intervals (CI95). Unless indicated otherwise, we based the values of premature deaths shown here on central estimates.

Since we are unable to specify where on the nonlinear IER curve a given trade-induced PM 2.5 concentration ( C TRE) occurs, we assumed an equal probability of C TRE throughout the distribution of concentrations, and the RR( C TR﻿E) is calculated using Eq. 11. Thus, the RR( C﻿TRE) of each grid cell can be calculated and then applied to quantify the impact of trade on premature deaths attributable to PM 2.5 exposures:

where N is the sampling number, set as 1000; i = 0, 1, 2,..., 998, 999; and α is the constant increment (Eq. 12) that divides C noTRE (Eq. 7) into equivalent intervals.

Premature deaths are calculated for each grid cell at a resolution of 10 × 10 km and are aggregated for each province. The population densities of China in 2007 at 1 × 1 km resolution developed and applied in our previous studies6 were re-gridded to match the 10 × 10 km resolution of the current study. It is worth noting that this research of the impact of trade on premature death attributable to ambient PM 2.5 across China is inherently multidisciplinary. The results should be interpreted with full consideration of the uncertainties associated with different parts of the framework.

Data availability

The data sets generated and/or analyzed during this study are available upon request from the corresponding authors.

Additional information

Publisher's note: Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by the National Key R&D Program of China (2016YFA0600204), National Natural Science Foundation of China (NNSFC) (41371528, 71433007, 71690244), Start-up fund of the Thousand Youth Talents Plan (61050600216), Collaborative Innovation Centre for Regional Environmental Quality and Volvo Group in a research project of the Research Center for Green Economy and Sustainable Development of Tsinghua University, the Harvard University Climate Change Solutions Fund supported by a gift from the Hanergy Corporation, and the Harvard Global Institute of Harvard University. The authors thank Christoph Keller from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences for helping to set-up the GEOS-Chem simulation and John Evans from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health for helping to evaluate the uncertainty of health impacts.

Author information

Affiliations

1. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, School of the Environment, Nanjing University, Nanjing, 210023, China

Haikun Wang

, Yanxia Zhang

, Weimo Zhu

& Jun Bi

2. John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

Haikun Wang

, Yanxu Zhang

, Chris P. Nielsen

& Michael B. McElroy

3. Department of Earth System Science, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 100084, China

Hongyan Zhao

, Xin Li

& Qiang Zhang

4. School of Environment and State Key Joint Laboratory of Environment Simulation and Pollution Control, Tsinghua University, Beijing, 10084, China

5. State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Sources and Control of Air Pollution Complex, Beijing, 100084, China

6. Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA

Contributions

H.W., X.L., and J.B. designed the study. H.W. led the study. Q.Z., H.Z., Xin. L. provided emissions data. Yanxia. Z. calculated emissions. Yanxu. Z. conducted GEOS-Chem simulations. H.W. and W.Z. performed health impact analysis. H.W., X.L., and Yanxia. Z. interpreted the data. H.W., X.L., C.P.N., and M.B.M. drew conclusions and wrote the paper with input from all co-authors.

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing financial interests.

Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Haikun Wang or Xi Lu or Jun Bi.

Electronic supplementary material

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Trade-driven relocation of air pollution and health impacts in China

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Altmetric: 7 More detail Article | Open Nature Communications 8, Article number: 738 (2017) doi:10.1038/s41467-017-00918-5 Download Citation Received: Accepted: Published: Recent studies show that international trade affects global distributions of air pollution and public health. Domestic interprovincial trade has similar effects within countries, but has not been comprehensively investigated previously.

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There are many pollutants in the air, carbon dioxide being the most abundant, list ways you can help increase the air quality.

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New study released by over 40 experts go over mortality rate from air pollution and what diseases it causes.

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Here's How Many People Die from Pollution Around the World

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Air pollution and water pollution affect many countries, especially China. Find out how many air pollution deaths occur around the world.

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Air pollution has always been related to environmental problems, but now is a major health issue. This topic has been reoccurring and seems to be at the top of every web search.

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PTI

NEW DELHI: Pollution should be seen as a serious health issue, rather than just as an environmental problem, according to experts who today called for immediate action to reduce the impact of pollution on people's well being.

In a briefing on the findings of the Lancet Commission on Pollution and Health held here today, researchers highlighted the huge economic burden and health costs that pollution poses for India as well as countries around the world.

"We tend to look at pollution as an environmental problem, rather than a health problem," said Karti Sandilya, one of the authors of the Lancet study.

The Commission had last month published a report which found that pollution caused over nine million deaths worldwide in 2015 - accounting for 16 per cent of the deaths worldwide.

The report found that India had the world's highest number of deaths due to air, water and other forms of pollution in 2015.

Pollution killed as many as 2.5 million people in India, highlighting that pollution disproportionately affects the poor.

Jairam Ramesh, Member of Parliament and former Minister of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, noted that the series of international studies published in the last few years, only serves to reinforce the high impact of environmental pollution on mortality and morbidity in India.

"The country wakes up only if something happens in Delhi," said Ramesh, who was also one of the authors of the Lancet study.

He emphasised on the need to look beyond New Delhi and recognise that air pollution and particulate matter is only one aspect of the issue.

The report found that 1.8 million deaths were due to water pollution, 1.1 million deaths were attributed to soil pollution. As many as 2.9 million deaths occurred due to indoor air pollution.

The study aims to dispel the myth that pollution is an inevitable consequence of development, said Mukesh Khare, from Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT) Delhi.

"I don't think India needs to pollute its way to development," added Ramesh.

The researchers lauded the governments effort to boost the use of solar energy and curb the growth of coal-based power plants.

Khare noted that pollution-linked diseases caused global welfare losses of USD 4.6 trillion or 6 per cent of global GDP.

The study also noted that pollution causes productivity losses, and can reduce the GDP by upto 2 per cent.

"It may not sound like a lot, but for lower income countries like India, this represents a huge loss," said William Suk, from the US National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences.

While welcoming more such research on health impact of pollution, Ramesh said that there is an urgent need to spend equal amount of time on finding and implementing remediation techniques to tackle all forms of pollution.

"Unfortunately, not just the government but even the common people are living in denial," said Arvind Kumar, a doctor at the Ganga Ram Hospital in New Delhi.

"I have seen a change in the colour of lungs over the last 30 years - turning from pink to black," said Kumar.

Kumar said that lungs of non-smokers in New Delhi have begun to resemble the lungs of regular smokers, and it is high time that appropriate policy changes are implemented.

(Catch all the Business News, Breaking News Events and Latest News Updates on The Economic Times.)

Download The Economic Times News App to get Daily Market Updates & Live Business News.

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Pollution a health issue, not just an environment problem: Experts

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Researchers highlighted the huge economic burden and health costs that pollution poses for India as well as countries around the world.

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As the Endangered Species Act grows older people are losing interest in it because it can increase certain costs.

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The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of a number of visionary statutes enacted in the 1970s that provide a foundation for the protection, restoration, and enhancement of the nation's natural resources and environment. Moreover, as the last line of defense for species of flora and fauna that face extinction, the ESA is unique and essential.

In his most recent book, Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life, E.O. Wilson-one of the world's leading naturalists, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, and scholar-highlighted the threat of accelerating species loss. Wilson wrote, "The variety of life-forms on Earth remains largely unknown to science. The species discovered and studied well enough to assess, notably the vertebrate animals and flowering plants, are declining in number at an accelerating rate-due almost entirely to human activity."

Despite the ESA's increasing importance, however, critics of the act are actively trying to change it, concerned that it causes undue delays, increases costs, and contributes to uncertainty in project development. A recent report by the U.S. Department of Commerce identified the ESA as a "statutory authority where regulatory processes may be harming energy independence and economic opportunity." Similarly, a Department of the Interior report claimed that "the time and expense associated with satisfying the interagency consultation requirements are unnecessarily burdensome." Thus far in the 115th Congress, policymakers have introduced 59 legislative measures that are intended to undermine the ESA-by directly amending it, by removing protections for specific species, by exempting certain agencies or activities from the ESA's requirements, or by nullifying biological opinions. In fact, the House Natural Resources Committee has reported five bills to reform the ESA that are awaiting passage by the full U.S. House of Representatives. Moreover, the Western Governors' Association (WGA) has made recommendations to modify the ESA further, including measures that could weaken the law's effectiveness.

This report examines several issues at the core of ESA critics' rationale for changing the law. While the report concludes that some improvements in the law's application may be warranted, the ESA has proven to be an effective tool for preventing the extinction and contributing to the recovery of native wildlife.

From the outset, the ESA was crafted to be a flexible statute. As a result, past administrations have used the ESA to develop innovative strategies and creative solutions to protect species, while permitting projects to move forward where impacts can be mitigated and harm to species can be minimized or even avoided. For instance, the successful state-federal effort to avoid the need to list the greater sage-grouse as threatened or endangered illustrates one of the ESA's most important elements-its emphasis on conserving ecosystems on which species depend to avoid the need to add species to the threatened or endangered list.

If Congress is looking to improve the ESA, a place to start would be to ensure that the agencies responsible for its implementation-the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) in the Department of the Interior and the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) in the Department of Commerce-have adequate funding. Providing the services with the funding that they require to carry out their duties is essential to ensure species recovery and to encourage the type of collaborative conservation efforts among federal, state, local, and private partners necessary to prevent the destruction of ecosystems. Such destruction can lead to species endangerment and ultimately to the need to invoke the ESA to prevent species from becoming threatened or endangered.

Opening the ESA to legislative changes in the current political environment, especially given increasing evidence of the accelerating loss of biodiversity, is not only unnecessary, but it also threatens the viability of the law itself. At its core, ESA is meant to prevent the extinction of species imperiled by loss of habitat caused by unchecked growth and development.

Two decades ago, Michael Bean, former principal deputy assistant secretary for Fish and Wildlife and Parks, U.S. Department of the Interior, and author of The Evolution of National Wildlife Law, characterized the conflict over the Endangered Species Act as a battle between "two camps." In congressional testimony regarding proposed legislation to amend the ESA in 1997, Bean stated:

Two camps have put two quite starkly different views of the Act before you. The environmental camp-my camp-has argued that the existing law must be strengthened, that it is not accomplishing its vitally important goal of conserving rare species as effectively as it must if it is to stave off a flood of extinctions. The other camp has argued that the existing law is unduly onerous for those whose activities it regulates, and must be made less so. Unable to choose between these two divergent views, Congress has done nothing.

More recently, Wyoming Gov. Matt Mead (R), serving as chair of the Western Governors' Association, launched the Species Conservation and Endangered Species Act Initiative in an effort to revisit provisions of the ESA. Gov. Mead explained the purpose of the initiative as follows:

When species are listed under the Endangered Species Act (ESA), the directive should be bigger than preventing extinction. It should be recovery and when a species is recovered it should be delisted so resources can be redirected to protect another species that is truly imperiled. The current implementation of the ESA often deters meaningful conservation efforts and divides, rather than unites people.

1. Require clear recovery goals for listed species, and actively pursue delisting of recovered species.

2. Increase the regulatory flexibility of the S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to review and make decisions on petitions to list or change the listing status of a species under the ESA.

3. Enhance the role of state governments in recovering species.

4. Ensure the use of sound science in ESA decisions.

5. Recognize that incentives and funding for conservation are essential.

6. Define the term "foreseeable future."

7. Make sure states are full partners in listing, critical habitat designations, recovery planning, and delisting decisions, particularly when modeling is used in analysis.

All these goals could be addressed administratively under the current ESA or are already being addressed through changes in policy and implementation using the flexibility that currently exists in the statute. The Fish and Wildlife Service continues to work to improve collaboration and coordination with the states on most if not all the issues raised by the WGA in regard to full ESA implementation. This collaboration is likely to continue under the current administration, provided that the administration recognizes the value of the state-federal partnership. Rather than amend the statute, Congress could be most helpful by fully funding efforts to implement the ESA, including providing resources to review the increasing number of listing petitions, to expand incentives for voluntary conservation measures to benefit at-risk species, and to develop and implement recovery plans fundamental to efforts to delist species.

The issues at the center of current efforts to amend the ESA essentially come down to four primary concerns: 1) that there is an inadequate focus on species recovery; 2) that there are significant delays in consultations for listed species; 3) that there is a lack of flexibility in the act's implementation; and 4) that states should play more of a role in ESA implementation.

Let's examine each of these rationales to assess the validity of ESA critics' claims and to illustrate why changes to the law are not necessary.

1. Inadequate focus on recovery

However, recovering species on the ESA list is only one purpose of the act. Measuring success only through the number of species delisted misses an important part of the story and does not consider whether the law is preventing the extinction of species, as it was designed to do. Through this lens, the ESA has been very successful. Scientists estimate that at least 227 threatened species would have become extinct without the ESA. The bald eagle, red wolf, and California condor, for example, would no longer exist if not for the ESA.

A clear impediment to delisting species is the accelerating number of species at risk of extinction, stagnant agency funding for ESA implementation in general, and inadequate funding for the implementation of recovery plans. As a result, funding and the number of personnel dedicated to the conservation of threatened and endangered species have steadily declined, while costs associated with the listing process, consultations, recovery plan development, and critical habitat designations continue to grow. In fact, species recovery efforts have been underfunded for decades.

From 1980 to 2014, the vast majority of listed species with recovery plans were underfunded-receiving less than 90 percent of the amount needed for recovery.

In fact, the amount of funding per species across all endangered species programs at the Fish and Wildlife Service has decreased since 2010.

This decline is the result of congressional failure to ensure that funding keeps apace with current ESA program needs, combined with the continued increase in the number of listed species. Since 2011, expenditures per-species to protect listed species has been reduced substantially, by approximately 25 percent not accounting for inflation.

Using the number of species recovered to measure the ESA's effectiveness while Congress continues to underfund recovery efforts amounts to setting the FWS and the National Marine Fisheries Service-and the ESA-up for failure. Given that the number of listed species continues to grow, even stable funding for ESA implementation will never permit the services to make significant progress in recovering listed species. Such funding will certainly not allow ESA to be implemented as Congress intended when it passed the statute in 1973 by a unanimous vote in the Senate and with only four dissenting votes in the House.

2. Perceived delays

One of the most common-and unsubstantiated-charges against the ESA is that it impedes planning and development by requiring lengthy consultations and costly modifications to projects to accommodate species. But a recent analysis of Section 7 consultations refutes this claim. Section 7 is the section of the ESA that requires project proponents to consult with the relevant federal agency regarding projects on federal lands that could potentially affect listed species and/or their habitat. The researchers and authors, Jacob Malcom and Ya-Wei (Jake) Li, analyzed all 88,290 consultations made by the FWS from January 2008 through April 2015. They found that:

In contrast to conventional wisdom about section 7 implementation, no project was stopped or extensively altered as a result of FWS finding jeopardy or adverse modification during this period. We also show that median consultation duration is far lower than the maximum allowed by the Act, and several factors drive variation in consultation duration. The results discredit many of the claims about the onerous nature of section 7.

As illustrated by Figure 4, of the 88,290 consultations recorded by the FWS from January 2008 through April 2015, only 7.7 percent of projects during this time period required formal consultation. And as illustrated by Figure 5, the median recorded time for informal consultations was 13 days, compared with 62 days for formal consultations-which are required when the service determines that the proposed action could result in jeopardy for a federally listed endangered species. While 20 percent of the formal consultations did exceed the FWS statutory limit of 135 days for formal consultations, the large majority of these were completed by a mutually agreed upon extension. As this study indicates, nearly 99 percent of all formal and informal consultations recorded by the FWS during this time frame were completed within established timelines. Clearly, the actual timelines for these FWS ESA consultations are very different from the gridlock some accuse the ESA of causing and challenge the assertions made by Trump administration officials that complying with the ESA is "unnecessarily burdensome."

3. Lack of flexibility

A common charge against the ESA is that it is inflexible and rigid and therefore unable to adapt to change. Yet previous administrations have made extensive efforts over many years to improve species conservation efforts through proactive, innovative, and voluntary measures.

While the language of the ESA is practically identical to what it was nearly 30 years ago in 1988-the last time that Congress significantly amended it-the administration of the law is now dramatically different. Unlike in the past, when landowners encountered strict prohibitions limiting their actions (see examples below), today, landowners can-and do-enter into a variety of novel conservation agreements. These tailored agreements are designed to keep declining species off the endangered list or to hasten the recovery of those already on the list, while also giving landowners a strong measure of much sought regulatory predictability.

Through such agreements, along with related policy initiatives and innovative regulatory efforts, ESA administrators have shown the act to be flexible, adaptable, and responsive to needs that arise. In fact, the use of this discretionary implementation authority has prompted some in the conservation community to argue that the ESA's authority has been exercised too broadly.

The next sections discuss some of the innovations developed to facilitate implementation of conservation practices on public and private lands under the ESA.

Habitat conservation plans and the 'no surprises' policy

When the ESA was enacted in 1973, it contained a sweeping prohibition against the "take" of any endangered wildlife species, a prohibition that the FWS and the NMFS interpreted to include habitat modification that could harm a protected animal. For very few activities-principally scientific research and actions to enhance the propagation or survival of a listed species-permits could be issued to allow otherwise prohibited taking. The result of this broad prohibition, and the narrow set of activities potentially exempted from it, was that many otherwise lawful activities could unintentionally conflict with the ESA with no mechanism available to secure an exemption from its prohibitions.

In 1982, Congress responded to this situation by authorizing permits that could exempt a nearly limitless category of activities from the act's take prohibition. As a result, anyone engaged in an otherwise lawful activity had a means of complying with the act by getting an incidental take permit. To secure such a permit, however, an applicant had to develop and commit to implement a habitat conservation plan that minimized and mitigated the adverse effects of the authorized taking to the maximum extent practicable.

Implementation of this statutory provision has been highly innovative. On its face, the provision seemed to contemplate permits for discrete projects undertaken at one site by an individual landowner. While often used for such projects, more creative use has been made by units of local government that have zoning or similar land use authority. Countywide habitat conservation plans in California, Texas, Utah, and elsewhere have made possible the issuance of a single permit that authorizes all development activities that are consistent with local zoning ordinances, as well as the integration of conservation and development over a period of many decades.

For local governments and local landowners to be able to rely on such permits, they needed assurance that a plan, once approved, would be stable and would not be revised each time new information surfaced about the needs of listed species or the impacts of permitted development on listed species. The FWS and the NMFS acknowledged the legitimacy of the need for permittee assurance by announcing a no surprises policy-that the services would not revisit permits and require additional mitigation in the face of unforeseen circumstances. That innovative assurance, though controversial at the time, has been highly successful at motivating both local governments and landowners to pursue habitat conservation plans and their associated incidental take permits. Those plans have made possible the establishment of thoughtfully designed systems of conservation reserves, while at the same time facilitating all manner of development activities.

Habitat conservation plans have also fostered a practice known as conservation banking. This practice grew out of a realization that conservation measures would need to offset the effects of foreseeable future development on listed species. Rather than wait to implement compensatory mitigation measures when development occurs, conservation banking permits mitigation ahead of development, thus providing development interests with a ready-made mitigation option. Significantly, conservation banking became a way for entrepreneurial landowners to turn rare species on their land into assets and a means of generating income, rather than liabilities. By investing in conservation of those species and generating mitigation credits that the FWS and the NMFS recognized, conservation bankers could generate income for themselves while providing development interests with a preapproved means of meeting their mitigation obligations. Through this innovative financing mechanism, scores of conservation banks have been established and used to protect habitat essential to species conservation.

Safe harbor agreements

Another challenge that the administrators of the ESA faced concerned the act's unintended consequences for landowners who voluntarily undertook beneficial management activities on their land. If those activities attracted an endangered species to their land or expanded the number or distribution of a species that was already present there, the likely result for landowners was new land use restrictions to avoid any taking of the affected species. Ironically, the one certain way to avoid entanglement in the ESA's regulatory restrictions was to manage one's land in a way that did not attract endangered species to it-a result that was contrary to the act's very purpose.

To resolve this dilemma, in the mid-1990s, the FWS aggressively promoted what are called safe harbor agreements. Landowners with a safe harbor agreement could implement beneficial management practices likely to attract or increase the presence of endangered species on their land. In return, the FWS assured them that no new or additional land use restrictions would be imposed because of the landowner's voluntary land management activities, be required to maintain habitat beyond its original, or baseline, condition. In essence, landowners with safe harbor agreements can "lay out the welcome mat" on their land for endangered species, secure in the knowledge that doing so will not limit the future use of that land. Landowners have responded favorably to this approach. For the red-cockaded woodpecker, the endangered species for which safe harbor agreements were first developed, there are now statewide agreements in eight states in which hundreds of forest landowners who collectively own hundreds of thousands of acres of forest participate.

Although safe harbor agreements were a novel idea, an amendment to the ESA was not required to bring them about. Instead, it only took the creativity to fashion an innovative application of a provision that had been part of the law since its inception in 1973. In authorizing safe harbor agreements and the permits that effectuate them, the FWS recognized that enabling private landowners to manage their land to attract or increase an endangered species would enhance the survival of those species. While the jury is still out for many safe harbor agreements, the agreements for the endangered red-cockaded woodpecker have resulted in demonstrable benefits. Red-cockaded woodpecker numbers have increased rangewide in response to recovery and management programs, from an estimated 4,694 active clusters in 1993 to 6,105 in 2006. On private lands, more than 40 percent of the known red-cockaded woodpeckers are benefiting from management approved by the FWS through memorandums of agreement, safe harbor agreements, and habitat conservation plans.

Candidate conservation agreements with assurances

The success of safe harbor agreements in incentivizing beneficial management for listed species led to the development of somewhat analogous agreements for so-called candidate species-seriously declining species formally recognized by the FWS as warranting proposed listing but lacking sufficient funds to do so. While landowners and others have no legal duty to protect or avoid harming candidate species, they often share a desire to keep candidate species from needing to be listed. However, a familiar dilemma can arise: If landowners, for example, seek to help conserve a candidate species on their land and that species nevertheless becomes a listed species, then landowners may face greater land use restrictions because of their earlier voluntary efforts, which helped preserve or expand a given population.

The administrative solution was the establishment of a new program that offered a candidate conservation agreement with assurances (CCAA). Landowners who enter into a CCAA agree to undertake specified conservation measures on their property for a candidate species. The assurance landowners get in return is that if the species is later listed, they will not be required to do more than already agreed to under their agreement. A variety of landowners have embraced CCAAs. Indeed, in instances such as the case of the Upper Missouri River population of the Arctic grayling, there have been enough landowners willing to enroll in CCAAs to persuade the FWS that these species did not in fact need to be listed as endangered or threatened species. CCAAs for the greater sage-grouse also contributed to the FWS' finding that this species did not need to be listed.

Tailored rules for threatened species

4. Expanded state role in protecting threatened and endangered wildlife

While the act requires federal collaboration with the states, many states believe that they should play a much greater role in determining what species should be given priority for ESA listing reviews; in determining if a species should be listed or delisted; and in designating critical habitat and developing recovery plans. This issue is central to the current efforts to amend the ESA, and should the states' role be significantly expanded, it would represent a fundamental shift in how wildlife and public lands are managed in the United States.

Partially in response to this new state effort, the FWS and the NMFS updated the ESA Cooperative Policy of 1994 to clarify further the role of the states in implementing the act. In February 2016, the services issued the Revised Interagency Cooperative Policy Regarding the Role of State Agencies in Endangered Species Act Activities. This updated policy further clarified implementation of Section 6 of the ESA and expanded measures to ensure federal collaboration with the states in prelisting conservation, listing, consultation, habitat conservation planning, and recovery activities.

On its face, this effort to expand the working relationship and information-sharing between the FWS, the NMFS, and the states is positive. In fact, many states lack the capacity-both staffing and funding-to engage in ESA activities and, historically, have invested significantly less money in the conservation of listed species. And while there may be additional incremental changes that could be made administratively to give states a greater role in listed species conservation, states' uneven and inconsistent funding for wildlife conservation is a significant impediment to expanding their role. One recent study compared federal and state spending on listed species conservation; on average, over the study's course, states combined spent slightly more than one-quarter of the amount-26 percent-of what the FWS spent on threatened and endangered species conservation. If the FWS and the NMFS were to step back and play a much-reduced role in implementing the conservation provisions of the ESA, the states could not fill the gap without substantial additional funding. At present, most states simply lack the financial resources to be able to step up and effectively replace the diminished federal investment in species conservation and recovery.

Case study: The greater sage-grouse conservation strategy

The successful effort to conserve the greater sage-grouse across its remaining 11-state range offers many lessons to inform future efforts to conserve fish and wildlife species long before they reach the threshold that requires listing as threatened or endangered under the ESA.

The greater sage-grouse conservation effort was comprehensive, coordinated, and collaborative, addressing the conservation needs of the sage-grouse on public and private lands through the combined effort of state and federal conservation agencies, private landowners, public land users, and other stakeholders. Early engagement among these partners built a level of trust and a means of communicating to ensure that the views and concerns of all parties were considered in developing the strategy.

The strategy was designed and implemented at the landscape level to address the habitat protection, restoration, and enhancement needs of the greater sage-grouse across its remaining range. In this regard, it was largely consistent with many of the findings of the Western Governors' Association Species Conservation and Endangered Species Act Initiative.

The foundation for the greater sage-grouse conservation strategy was the best available science generated by a team of sage-grouse experts from the states and the FWS that identified threats to the species and strategies for addressing them. Added scientific analysis was provided by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) to address specific questions or concerns that arose throughout the process of developing the overall sage-grouse conservation strategy. For example, the USGS conducted a literature review of the impacts of different types of disturbance and their distances from greater sage-grouse on the grouse's behavior and contributed extensively in developing the rangeland fire strategy to address this threat to the grouse in the Great Basin.

The strategy was developed through a collaborative effort led by the Sage-Grouse Task Force composed of representatives of the governors' offices and their fish and wildlife agency leads, as well as representatives of the various federal agencies involved in design and implementation of the sage-grouse conservation strategy. The state-federal partnership that produced the strategy demonstrated the capacity to coordinate and collaborate under the existing statute, as well as the benefits of doing so.

Through the efforts of the FWS and the Natural Resources Conservation Service, voluntary incentives and funding for conserving sage-grouse habitat were provided. The FWS worked with public land permittees and private land owners to develop candidate conservation agreements (CCAs) with grazing permittees on public lands and CCAAs that led to the enrollment of millions of acres of private grazing lands in Oregon, Montana, and Wyoming in conservation agreements both to protect and improve sage-grouse habitat and to assure landowners that their investments in conservation practices would be accepted should the species ultimately be listed. Through the Sage Grouse Initiative (SGI), the Natural Resources Conservation Service used science-based analysis to develop and implement conservation measures to protect and restore millions of acres of sagebrush habitat on private lands through voluntary means, with millions of dollars of financial assistance provided to implement specific conservation practices to benefit greater sage-grouse habitat.

Most importantly, by obtaining a decision from the FWS that listing the greater sage-grouse as threatened or endangered was not warranted as a result of the comprehensive sage-grouse conservation plan, the strategy achieved one of the principle objectives of the recently adopted WGA policy statement on species conservation and the ESA: to "support all reasonable management efforts to conserve species and preclude the need to list a species under the ESA [emphasis added]."

The evidence suggests that if adequately funded and effectively implemented, the Endangered Species Act can work to protect threatened and endangered species from extinction on public and private lands with minimal impacts to their economic uses.

The flexibility provided in the ESA has been used extensively to develop administrative policies, programs, and strategies to improve the act's implementation and address many of the concerns of the law's critics. In some instances-as illustrated by perceived, and unfounded, problems with FWS Section 7 consultations-the rhetoric does not square with reality. And despite political differences, state and federal wildlife managers have found ways to resolve major issues affecting the listing and delisting of species and, apart from the delisting of the gray wolf in Montana, have kept Congress from circumventing the ESA.

If one searches the text of the ESA for the terms "no surprises," "safe harbor agreement," "candidate conservation agreement with assurances," and "conservation banking," they are not there. Nevertheless, these and other innovative administrative conservation tools are part of the daily language of the ESA's implementation-all products of a serious effort by the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service to find innovative, workable responses to the challenges that have arisen in carrying out the law. These creative administrative policies have been possible, and they have worked, because the provisions of the ESA are not rigid and unbending but are instead flexible and capable of being adapted to the exigencies of the day. Most importantly, these innovative policies have not exhausted the universe of creative possibilities. Still others are likely-indeed, almost certain-to be found as the goal of conserving species at risk of extinction faces new challenges that require novel solutions.

The real impediments to implementing the ESA more effectively, and addressing specific substantiated concerns raised by ESA critics, appear to be inadequate resources-specifically, the lack of funding and people needed to implement the ESA; the accelerated pace of change across the nation's remaining wildlands that is causing a concurrent increase in proposed listings; and the continuing jurisdictional tension between the FWS and various states over who should be in charge when it comes to managing imperiled wildlife resources in particular states or regions of the country.

Ultimately, success in preventing the need to list species as threatened or endangered to avoid extinction relies on a commitment to early intervention to protect the habitats of species whose populations are in decline. More than four decades ago, the authors of the ESA made clear that conserving the ecosystems upon which species depend is a principal purpose of the act and the key to species' survival. Yet the penchant of the human species to procrastinate when it comes to addressing issues that might be difficult or controversial seems, with rare exception, to overrule better judgement and common sense and preclude conservation actions that might be initiated to prevent the need for listing a species under threat. As a result, species are often pushed to the brink of extinction before action is initiated, which limits options for conserving the species and incurs greater costs when doing so. The blame then falls on the ESA, when the true fault lies in our collective failure to recognize that "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure."

While other elements of the WGA policy statement may be controversial and of questionable utility in improving ESA implementation-particularly recommendations to amend the act at this time-clearly, a key to implementing the ESA successfully is initiating proactive actions to conserve a species and its habitat well in advance of reaching the point where habitat loss and declining species numbers necessitate invoking the statute. In this way, any sanctions associated with the take of a species or its habitat can be avoided, and any costs associated with required conservation measures, should jeopardy be found to occur, can be minimized and often mitigated. Simply put, the best way to reduce the cost of recovery and any impacts to private landowners and public land users in areas of habitat critical to a species' survival is to prevent the need to recover the species in the first place. Implementing proactive actions to conserve habitat or mitigate adverse actions that could lead to endangering a species is also the most effective way to ensure that states are full partners in conservation efforts, since-except for federal trust species and migratory birds-the relevant federal agencies traditionally play a limited role in the management of nonlisted species of wildlife on state and private lands. Wyoming's Core Area Strategy, which was adopted in 2008 to conserve greater sage-grouse habitat, and voluntary adoption of candidate conservation agreements and candidate conservation agreements with assurances by ranchers across the remaining range of the greater sage-grouse best illustrate this point.

Contrary to popular belief, the ESA is not rigid but malleable. With rare exception, the act is not the cause of long and costly project delays. More often, the ESA has been the catalyst for innovation and collaboration that has helped both species conservation and commerce.

As evidenced by the sage-grouse experience, with forethought and a commitment to habitat conservation, stakeholders can implement the ESA effectively by focusing proactively on conservation measures to protect, restore, and enhance the health of the ecosystem on which species depend. Moreover, by focusing on conservation of the ecosystem as opposed to an individual species in that ecosystem, the potential exists to reduce the need to list other species in that same ecosystem.

Tinkering with the ESA to avoid listings, to delist species legislatively, and to circumvent sound science and conservation in order to permit actions that may, in fact, adversely affect a threatened or endangered species is a slippery slope. Certainly, more funding for ESA implementation in general, and for habitat conservation and species recovery in particular, would be beneficial. But statutory changes in the ESA, particularly in the current political climate, are not needed and are more likely to endanger the ESA.

Jim Lyons is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, where he focuses on public land policy, natural resource conservation, and endangered species issues. Lyons has also been a lecturer and research scholar at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies since 2000.

The author would like to thank Michael Bean for his counsel and contributions to this report, specifically regarding measures adopted under the current ESA that demonstrate the flexibility of the act.

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Under Threat: The Endangered Species Act and the Plants and Wildlife It Protects - Center for American Progress

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The Endangered Species Act (ESA) is one of a number of visionary statutes enacted in the 1970s that provide a foundation for the protection, restoration, and enhancement of the nation's natural resources and environment. Moreover, as the last line of defense for species of flora and fauna that face extinction, the ESA is unique and essential.

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The world is starting the 6th mass extinction and Norway is working on teaching people the importance of biodiversity.

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Environment Live UN Environment Knowledge Repository Global Environment Outlook

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This scan will help give us a feel on where the world is on our Biodiversity and will gives use ways to improve it.

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it is already known that we are killing all biodiversity,  but now the loss of biodiversity is going to lead us to the global tipping point.

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Could biodiversity destruction lead to a global tipping point?

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We are destroying the world's biodiversity. Yet debate has erupted over just what this means for the planet - and us.

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Goes over the biodiversity scoring to see how much the diversity levels are decreasing from human activities.

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Biodiversity & Habitat | Environmental Performance Index

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Biodiversity underpins all ecosystem services that sustain our environment and power our economies. Natural habitats have witnessed considerable declines in biodiversity in recent decades. Today, many species are, however, at risk of extinction. The Biodiversity & Habitat issue category seeks evaluate a country's performance in habitat conservation and species protection.

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Sharp cost reductions and improved policy support are paving the way for continued growth in the renewable sector.

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Three countries are leading the renewable energy revolution

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China is dominating growth across the global renewable energy market, while India is expected to overtake the European Union, according to a new IEA report.

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A growing number of US cities and states have proposed or even passed legislation that would require producing all electricity from renewable energy sources.

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Mark Wilson | Getty

A growing number of US cities and states have proposed or even passed legislation that would require producing all electricity from renewable energy sources like solar and wind within a few decades.

That might sound like a great idea. But a growing body of evidence shows it's not.

It increasingly appears that insisting on 100 percent renewable sources-and disdaining others that don't produce greenhouse gases, such as nuclear power and fossil-fuel plants with carbon-capture technology-is wastefully expensive and needlessly difficult.

In the latest piece of evidence, a study published in Energy & Environmental Science determined that solar and wind energy alone could reliably meet about 80 percent of recent US annual electricity demand, but massive investments in energy storage and transmission would be needed to avoid major blackouts. Pushing to meet 100 percent of demand with these resources would require building a huge number of additional wind and solar farms-or expanding electricity storage to an extent that would be prohibitively expensive at current prices. Or some of both.

The basic problem is that the sun doesn't always shine and the wind doesn't always blow. The study analyzed 36 years' worth of hourly weather data and found there are gaps in renewable-energy production even on a continental scale.

Relying on these intermittent sources alone would requiring building many more solar and wind farms to produce excess energy during particularly sunny and windy periods, plus huge storage systems that can bank hours' or even weeks' worth of power (see " Serial Battery Entrepreneur's New Venture Tackles Clean Energy's Biggest Problem "). Another possibility is to build long-distance transmission routes that could ship the electricity around the country at just the moment it's needed.

Storage systems are incredibly expensive in the case of batteries-and geographically limited in the case of pumped hydroelectric, which requires a set of water reservoirs at varying heights (see " Why Bad Things Happen to Clean-Energy Startups"). Long-distance transmission lines are also pricey and can take decades to get approved and built (see " How to Get Wyoming Wind to California, and Cut 80% of US Carbon Emissions ").

Just getting to 80 percent of demand reliably with only wind and solar would require either a US-wide high-speed transmission system or 12 hours of electricity storage. A storage system of that size across the US would cost more than $2.5 trillion for a battery system.

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To meet all the nation's annual electricity needs with 99.97 percent reliability, utilities would have to build 12 hours of storage plus at least twice the amount of renewable-energy generation, the study found. Or businesses could deploy slightly more wind and solar coupled with more than a month's worth of storage.

The advantage over renewables of other clean options, like nuclear or natural gas with carbon capture, is that they can provide always-on power or, at least in the latter case, can quickly ramp up and down to meet fluctuating demand (see " Potential Carbon Capture Game Changer Nears Completion ").

"Policy makers would be well advised to consider the data and trade-offs that result from this type of data analysis before adopting policies or mandates for a 100% wind/solar grid," said Nathan Lewis, a chemist at the California Institute of Technology and coauthor of the study, in an e-mail.

Still, the fierce debate among scientists over the virtues of aiming for 100 percent renewables rages on. Most prominently, Mark Jacobson of Stanford has argued that states and nations can make that transition affordably. Other researchers have critiqued his work, notably in a paper published earlier this year in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Jacobson subsequently filed a libel lawsuit against the lead author and publisher, which he dropped last week (see " A Renewable-Energy Champion Is Suing His Scientific Critics ").

James Temple Senior Editor, Energy

I am the senior editor for energy at ... and columnist at the MIT Technology Review. I'm focused on renewable energy and the use of technology to combat climate change. Previously, I was a senior director at the Verge, deputy managing editor at Recode, More San Francisco Chronicle. When I'm not writing about energy and climate change, I'm often hiking with my dog or shooting video of California landscapes.

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Relying on renewables alone significantly inflates the cost of overhauling energy

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Mark Wilson | Getty A growing number of US cities and states have proposed or even passed legislation that would require producing all electricity from renewable energy sources like solar and wind within a few decades. That might sound like a great idea. But a growing body of evidence shows it's not.

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State governments now have goals or targets to meet to lessen the negative environmental impact that some energy resources produce.

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On this page:

Overview

Renewable energy is electricity generated by fuel sources that restore themselves over a short period of time and do not diminish. Although some renewable energy technologies have an impact on the environment, renewables are considered environmentally preferable to conventional sources and, when replacing fossil fuels, have significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

While states identify renewable technologies differently for the purposes of meeting state targets and goals, most include at minimum:

Solar (photovoltaic, solar thermal)

Wind

Geothermal

Biomass

Biogas (e.g., landfill gas/wastewater treatment digester gas)

Low-impact hydroelectricity

Options for using renewable energy include:

Generating renewable energy on-site using a system or device at the location where the power is used (e.g., PV panels on a state building, geothermal heat pumps, biomass-fueled combined heat and power).

Purchasing renewable energy through renewable energy certificates (RECs) - also known as green tags, green energy certificates, or tradable renewable certificates - that represent the technology and environmental attributes of electricity generated from renewable resources.

Purchasing renewable energy from an electric utility through a green pricing or green marketing program, where buyers pay a small premium in exchange for electricity generated locally from renewable energy resources.

Benefits of Renewable Energy

Environmental and economic benefits of adding renewable energy to a state portfolio can include:

Generating energy that produces no greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels and reduces some types of air pollution

Diversifying energy supply and reducing dependence on imported fuels

Creating economic development and jobs in manufacturing, installation, and more

Barriers to Renewable Energy

Price competitiveness is the most obvious barrier to renewable energy installations. In many cases, barriers to expanding renewable energy are regulatory and therefore within state control. Some examples include:

Utility Rate Structures

Unfavorable utility rate structures have been a perennial barrier to increased deployment of renewable energy technologies. Unless carefully monitored to encourage the development of distributed generation, rate structures can increase the cost of renewables (e.g., through stand-by rates, lack of net metering) or completely prohibit connection to the electrical grid.

Lack of Interconnection Standards

The absence of standard interconnection rules, or uniform procedures and technical requirements for connecting renewable energy systems to the electric utility's grid, can make it difficult, if not impossible, for renewable systems to connect to the electric utility's grid.

Barriers in Environmental Permitting

Large-scale renewable energy technologies are subject to all the necessary environmental permits of major industrial facilities. Renewable energy generation using new technologies can face permitting hurdles until permitting officials are familiar with the environmental effects of the generation processes.

Lack of Transmission

Many renewable resources are located in remote areas that lack ready or cost-effective access to transmission. States that have not established clear utility regulations that enable investments in transmission to be reimbursable (i.e., cost recovery), nor coordinated planning and permitting processes, slow the development of utility-scale renewable projects in their territory.

State Policies to Support Renewable Energy

The number of renewable energy installations across states varies widely, reflecting individual state or regional priorities, and not always due to resource or technical potential. For example, the top eight states ranked by the capacity of their installed solar power include states in the southwest and northeast (CA, NJ, AZ, MA, NY, NV, TX, PA) ) represent 99.5 percent of all solar PV installations, whereas nationally, the greatest potential for PV-generated electricity is within nine southwestern and western states (AZ, CA, CO, HI, NM, NV, TX, UT, WY).

States have adopted a number of policies to support greater investment in and adoption of renewable energy technologies.

Renewable Portfolio Standards (RPS) require electric utilities and other retail electric providers to provide a specified percentage or amount of customer electricity with eligible renewable resources. EPA has held multiple State Webinars on RPS. Policy details are available from EPA's Energy and Environment Guide to Action Chapter 5: Renewable Portfolio Standards.

Public Benefits Funds for Renewable Energy are a pool of resources used by states to invest in clean energy supply projects. Funds are typically created by levying a small charge on customers' electricity rates (i.e., a system benefits charge). Policy details are available from EPA's Energy & Environment Guide to Action Chapter 3: Funding and Financial Incentive Policies.

Output-Based Environmental Regulations establish emissions limits per unit of productive energy output of a process (i.e., electricity, thermal energy, or shaft power), with the goal of encouraging fuel conversion efficiency and renewable energy as air pollution control measures. Policy details are available from EPA's Energy and Environment Guide to Action Chapter 6: Policy Considerations for Combined Heat and Power: Policy Considerations for Combined Heat and Power.

Interconnection Standards are processes and technical requirements that delineate how electric utilities in a state will treat renewable energy sources that need to connect to the electric grid. The establishment of standard procedures can reduce uncertainty and delays that renewable energy systems can encounter when obtaining electric grid connection in states that have not established interconnection standards. Policy details are available from EPA's Energy and Environment Guide to Action Chapter 7: Electric Utility Policies. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) offers Model Interconnection Procedures Exit for utility regulators.

Net Metering enables residential or commercial customers who generate their own renewable electricity (e.g., solar photovoltaic panels) to receive compensation for the electricity they generate. Net metering rules require electric utilities in a state to ensure that customers' electric meters accurately track how much electricity is used on site or returned to the electric grid. When electricity generated on site is not used, it is returned to the grid; when on site generation is not sufficient to meet the customer's needs, the customer uses electricity from the grid. In effect, excess electricity is returned to the customer at a later time when they otherwise would have paid for it. The Interstate Renewable Energy Council (IREC) offers Model Net Metering Rules Exit.

Feed-In Tariffs encourage the development of renewable energy by obligating electric utilities to pay pre-established above-market rates for renewable power fed onto the grid. These tariffs, which may vary depending on the type of resource used, provide renewable generators with a set stream of income from their projects. Although common in Europe, in 2009, California, Hawaii, Vermont, and Washington were the first states in the U.S. to establish feed-in tariffs. Policy details are available from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory State Clean Energy Policies Analysis (SCEPA) Project: An Analysis of Renewable Energy Feed-in Tariffs in the United States.

Property Assessed Clean Energy (PACE) is a financing option that attaches the obligation to repay the cost of renewable energy installations or energy efficiency retrofits to a residential property rather than an individual borrower. This mechanism encourages property owners to invest in clean energy improvements even if the payback period is longer than the owner intends to keep the property. PACE NOW Exit maintains a list of states and local governments that allow PACE programs.

Financial Incentives-such as grants, loans, rebates, and tax credits-are provided in some states to encourage renewable energy development. The Database of State Incentives for Renewables and Efficiency Exit tracks the availability of incentives offered by state.

EPA Programs Supporting Renewable Energy

Green Power Partnership (GPP) is a voluntary program that supports the organizational procurement of green power by offering expert advice, technical support, tools, and resources. The Partnership works with hundreds of companies, colleges and universities, organizations, and local, state, and federal government agencies. GPP provides resources to states on how they can lead by example by purchasing green power for government operations.

Landfill Methane Outreach Program (LMOP) is a voluntary assistance and partnership program that promotes the use of landfill gas as a renewable, green energy source. By preventing emissions of methane through the development of landfill gas energy projects, LMOP helps businesses, states, energy providers, and communities protect the environment and build a sustainable future.

AgSTAR is a voluntary program that promotes the use of biogas recovery systems to reduce methane emissions from livestock waste.

RE-Powering America's Lands - EPA is encouraging renewable energy development on current and formerly contaminated land and mining sites. This initiative identifies the renewable energy potential of these sites and provides other useful resources for communities, developers, industry, state and local governments or anyone interested in reusing these sites for renewable energy development.

Tools and Resources

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State Renewable Energy Resources | US EPA

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On this page: Renewable energy is electricity generated by fuel sources that restore themselves over a short period of time and do not diminish. Although some renewable energy technologies have an impact on the environment, renewables are considered environmentally preferable to conventional sources and, when replacing fossil fuels, have significant potential to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

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Natural-gas power generation in the U.S. saw its biggest annual decline yet in 2017, while renewable energy resources grew.

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Natural-gas power generation in the U.S. saw its biggest annual decline yet in 2017, with net generation from the resource dropping 7.7 percent. Coal generation also fell, at a more modest 2.5 percent, marking the first time in a decade that both resources faced declines.

At the same time, data from the Energy Information Administration (EIA) showed net generation from utility-scale clean energy sources, excluding hydro, grew by 13.4 percent. Meanwhile, total U.S. net generation fell by 1.5 percent last year.

Just over 11 gigawatts of power generation was retired last year, including 6.3 gigawatts of coal and 4 gigawatts of natural gas -- mostly of steam turbines.

Despite these shifts, natural gas remains at the top of the U.S.' list as a fuel source. The country also added 9.3 gigawatts of natural-gas capacity in the last year -- mostly from combined-cycle units. But the current reign of natural gas comes alongside growing consideration of a gas-free future.

While environmentalists have long decried what many have called a "bridge fuel," utility commissions in forward-looking states are also now starting to strategize about how to leave natural gas behind.

"At some point soon, we'll be permitting the last gas plant in California," Robert B. Weisenmiller, chair of the California Energy Commission, recently told The Wall Street Journal.

A fight over a plant in Oxnard crystallizes much of California's tussle over natural gas. For years environmental justice and clean energy advocates lobbied against the natural-gas-fired Puente Power Plant, arguing it could be replaced with cleaner sources. In November NRG paused its application for the plant, signaling a symbolic suspension of the debate if not a complete end. In March NRG went further, announcing it would also close three of its existing natural gas plants in California by the first day of 2019.

In January, the California utility commission ruled that the state's largest utility, Pacific Gas & Electric, should procure energy storage or clean energy resources to replace three existing gas plants.

And it's not just California moving away from gas. Clean energy generation increased in all but nine states between 2016 and 2017, according to EIA data. In that same period, net generation from natural gas increased in just 12 states.

Arizona recently made an unprecedented move in placing a nine-month moratorium on any new gas plants larger than 150 megawatts. Instead of relying on gas, commissioners will now consider resource plans where clean energy accounts for a large percentage of generation.

In Michigan, a ballot measure would bump the state's share of clean energy to a minimum 30 percent (it doesn't have the support of utilities). The state's public service commission recently released a report that noted clean energy is getting closer to economic competitiveness with natural gas.

Separately, Michigan has experienced opposition to a new 1.1-gigawatt gas plant that advocates say could be replaced by a portfolio of resources including solar and wind.

A report last year from Minnesota researchers found that solar-plus-storage could beat out simple-cycle natural gas peaking plants by 2022.

Results like those are what spurred Shayle Kann, senior vice president of research and strategy at Energy Impact Partners, to declare, "I can't see a reason why we should ever build a gas peaker again in the U.S. after, say, 2025."

Many of these plans are forward-looking, in part because utilities move slowly, but also because natural gas still maintains an economic edge. Many states are still considering and building pipelines and gas plants. Other data coming out of the U.S. suggest the country won't be giving up on its No. 1 fuel just yet.

Instead, it's spreading it around the world.

In 2017 the U.S. exported more natural gas than it imported for the first time in 60 years, fueled by production that "increased significantly over the past decade," according to EIA.

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Natural Gas and Coal Generation Fell in 2017, While Renewable Energy Grew

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Natural gas power generation in the U.S. saw its biggest annual decline yet in 2017, with net generation from the resource dropping 7.7 percent. Coal generation also fell, at a more modest 2.5 percent, marking the first time in a decade that both resources faced declines.

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Illinois Commerce Commission finalized the state’s Long-Term Renewable Resource Procurement Plan , and will boost installation and access to renewable energy in the state.

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This week the Illinois Commerce Commission finalized the state's Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan, with tweaks that clean energy advocates say will boost installation and access to renewables in the state.

It also officially places Illinois in the upper echelons of state renewable energy procurement targets.

The Illinois Power Agency, the state's energy procurer, detailed a plan to acquire 25 percent of Illinois' energy from renewable sources by 2025, a requirement under the 2016 Future Energy Jobs Act. To meet that goal, the plan outlines the procurement of 666 megawatts of community and distributed solar. The text also lays out procurements for the state's utilities and discusses the implementation of its Solar for All Program, which is designed to make solar more accessible to low-income communities.

The final text of the Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan also includes several updates that clean energy advocates lobbied for.

The commission did away with spot procurements, where states purchase renewable energy credits on a yearly basis from existing generation. The Illinois Power Agency planned to purchase 37 million spot RECs over two years, more than double the 10 million spot RECs it's purchased for $65 million over the past nine years. Instead, Illinois indicated it would spend on forward-looking clean energy projects to reach its long-range goals.

"The legislation was written with the understanding it would take some time," said Christie Hicks, manager of clean energy regulatory implementation at the Environmental Defense Fund. "Meeting long-term goals takes priority over meeting annual goals."

Rather than focusing solely on large utilities, the final plan also includes municipal and rural electric cooperatives in its REC program - something utilities like ComEd had lobbied against because those companies don't have "public utility" status, meaning they aren't bound by the state's renewable portfolio standard and don't pay for its programs.

But the Illinois Power Agency argued that projects run by co-ops still benefit the entire state. Other groups, like the Environmental Law & Policy Center, agreed, saying rural and economically disadvantaged communities should have access to the same benefits even if not serviced by a regulated utility. The municipal and rural companies mostly serve central and southern Illinois, areas where the commission said it hopes to see project growth.

The final document also includes a change to compel in-state development of clean energy projects. While Illinois can purchase RECs from facilities in nearby states such as Michigan and Wisconsin, the state will assess whether these facilities meet the requirements of the program using a point system.

In its final version, the commission raised the point threshold required for out-of-state facilities to qualify. That offers in-state facilities the upper hand and should lead to fringe benefits like more jobs and cleaner air.

According to the Illinois Commerce Commission, the first procurements, which will include utility-scale wind and brownfield solar, will come this summer. The Illinois Power Agency said the plan should be revised in 2019, after it assesses progress on reaching state goals. But according to the state's utility watchdog, it's a clear move in the right direction.

"No question, there's a lot of work to do," said David Kolata, executive director at the Citizens Utility Board. "But Illinois now has an excellent opportunity to act on the promise of the Future Energy Jobs Act to make sure that everyone receives the benefits of the clean energy economy."

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Illinois Approves Path to 25% Renewable Energy by 2025

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This week the Illinois Commerce Commission finalized the state's Long-Term Renewable Resources Procurement Plan, with tweaks that clean energy advocates say will boost installation and access to renewables in the state. It also officially places Illinois in the upper echelons of state renewable energy procurement targets.

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In California: “water whiplash” – a rapid transition from very dry conditions to very wet conditions – is likely to increase with climate change.

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Today the journal Nature Climate Change published results of a groundbreaking paper that explores the changing character of precipitation extremes in California. The eye-opening results indicate that while overall precipitation levels will not change significantly in the next decades, the state has already entered a period of increased extreme precipitation events that will continue to present tremendous challenges to ensuring stable water supplies. My colleague Dr. Geeta Persad, Western States Senior Climate Scientist at UCS, reflects on the meaning of the results below.

***

The hills on the east side of the San Francisco Bay are a lush, perfect green at this time of year. I drink them in greedily during my daily commute to and from work. Especially because, like any Californian, I know that this greenness will leave with the wet season.

As climate change transforms the water landscape for our state, the greenery feels particularly precious. A new paper out of UCLA's Institute for Environment and Sustainability today suggests that volatility in California's water resources is only going to get worse. Its findings drove home for me how much smarter we need to get about managing climate change impacts on water in California.

Water whiplash

Climate change is not just a slow and steady trend affecting water conditions in our state. One of the key findings of the paper led by Dr. Daniel Swain, is that " precipitation whiplash " - a rapid transition from very dry conditions to very wet conditions - is likely to increase with climate change.

Why does this matter? This kind of whiplash is exactly what we've experienced over the last few years. We've transitioned from the worst drought in California's recorded history to two wet seasons that produced around $1 billion in flood-related damage and repairs. These projections could mean an increase in extreme wildfire risk and weakened, dried-out soil followed by extreme rainfall and runoff events-the perfect storm of ingredients to produce mudslides like the ones that devastated Montecito earlier this year.

Simulations in this new paper also indicate that, between now and 2060, almost the entire state has at least a 66.6% chance of experience a precipitation event like the one that created the 1862 California flood, which transformed the Central Valley into an inland lake. This means that in the next 40 years, our largest urban centers are more likely than not to experience unprecedented flood events that our modern water management systems and infrastructure have never before had to deal with.

Climate change means more than a change in averages

This paper is especially important because it quantifies climate change impacts on California precipitation-like precipitation whiplash and extremes-that really matter for water management. As long as we keep only planning for averages, we won't be managing many of the catastrophic risks that climate change creates for water management in California.

In Swain and his coauthors' simulations, the tripling of extreme precipitation risk, sharp increases in precipitation whiplash, and uptick in extreme dry seasons happen even while average precipitation barely changes. Plus, their projections show a strong shortening of the wet winter season and expansion of the dry summer season statewide. That could create a need for more water storage to bridge between the wet and dry seasons, even without a change in the total amount of water we get each year.

We have a very long way to go to adequately plan and build a safe and reliable water system for the reality of how climate change will impact our water resources and infrastructure. Studies like this one and others that have come out over the past several years highlight that we have to fundamentally transform how we think about the role of climate in water management in California. Climate change's influence on the character of California's water is complicated, but the more of that complexity we integrate into our decision-making, the more likely we are to develop management strategies that avoid the worst outcomes. Luckily, papers like this one show that we have the science to do so.

***

Geeta's reflections highlight the need to accelerate and intensify work that has recently begun in California. We are just at the beginning of figuring out how to manage water for changing climatic conditions. Since 2015, UCS has been highlighting the problems of how our current infrastructure is not built for increased drought and flooding in conjunction with more precipitation falling as rain rather than snow. We also have shown that climate change is highlighting the critical importance of increased groundwater management to meet our needs. The UCLA report's findings on the increase in extreme events further underscores the urgent need for change.

Our highly-engineered water systems in the western states is built for a seasonal regime that is fast disappearing. It is designed to store melting snowpack in the spring for farms and cities to use in the summer and fall. As in the drought of 2012-2016, we can no longer count on sufficient precipitation and snowpack to store sufficient water in dry years. Furthermore, during the last two wet years we found that our systems were in some cases inadequate to deal with some extreme events, most dramatically demonstrated by the near-failure of Oroville Dam in February 2017.

Rethinking how we build for a new normal of extremes

The need to change how we build and manage water infrastructure is only one example of how we need to think differently about the built environment now that dramatic changes from a warming world are taking hold. Yet few of the people who are responsible for how we build roads, dams, canals, bridges, and buildings know what to do with the science that is emerging. That is why UCS sponsored legislation in 2016, AB 2800 (Quirk) to bring scientists and engineers together to come up with recommendations (due to be released late this summer) on how science can better inform our building decisions.

Global warming is going to necessitate a wholesale re-thinking of how we approach building and maintaining our communities far into the future. Translating science to a form that can be used by engineers and architects is only one facet of the problem, however. It will require we rethink about everything from updating building codes and standards, to improving coordination between local, state, and federal levels of government, to approaching cost/benefit calculations of projects with climate change factors included, to fixing chronic underinvestment in disadvantaged communities so that they can better deal with future challenges.

A future of "whiplash" weather in California is but a microcosm, and a warning for much more uncertain and hazardous conditions as the world gets warmer. We are fortunate that science is improving our ability to forecast these changes, but we need policies and programs to make changes based on what we are learning. Time is very short: this is now a problem of our present, not our future.

Posted in: Global Warming Tags: California water

Support from UCS members make work like this possible. Will you join us? Help UCS advance independent science for a healthy environment and a safer world.

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California's Next Climate Change Challenge is Water Whiplash

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Today the journal Nature Climate Change published results of a groundbreaking paper that explores the changing character of precipitation extremes in California. The eye-opening results indicate that while overall precipitation levels will not change significantly in the next decades, the state has

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A new NASA-led study shows that climate change is likely to intensify extreme weather events known as atmospheric rivers across most of the world.

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Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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A new NASA-led study shows that climate change is likely to intensify extreme weather events known as atmospheric rivers across most of the globe by the end of this century, while slightly reducing their number.

The new study projects atmospheric rivers will be significantly longer and wider than the ones we observe today, leading to more frequent atmospheric river conditions in affected areas.

"The results project that in a scenario where greenhouse gas emissions continue at the current rate, there will be about 10 percent fewer atmospheric rivers globally by the end of the 21st century," said the study's lead author, Duane Waliser, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "However, because the findings project that the atmospheric rivers will be, on average, about 25 percent wider and longer, the global frequency of atmospheric river conditions -- like heavy rain and strong winds -- will actually increase by about 50 percent."

The results also show that the frequency of the most intense atmospheric river storms is projected to nearly double.

Atmospheric rivers are long, narrow jets of air that carry huge amounts of water vapor from the tropics to Earth's continents and polar regions. These "rivers in the sky" typically range from 250 to 375 miles (400 to 600 kilometers) wide and carry as much water -- in the form of water vapor -- as about 25 Mississippi Rivers. When an atmospheric river makes landfall, particularly against mountainous terrain (such as the Sierra Nevada and the Andes), it releases much of that water vapor in the form of rain or snow.

These storm systems are common -- on average, there are about 11 present on Earth at any time. In many areas of the globe, they bring much-needed precipitation and are an important contribution to annual freshwater supplies. However, stronger atmospheric rivers -- especially those that stall at landfall or that produce rain on top of snowpack -- can cause disastrous flooding.

Atmospheric rivers show up on satellite imagery, including in data from a series of actual atmospheric river storms that drenched the U.S. West Coast and caused severe flooding in early 2017.

The study

Climate change studies on atmospheric rivers to date have been mostly limited to two specific regions, the western United States and Europe. They have typically used different methodologies for identifying atmospheric rivers and different climate projection models -- meaning results from one are not quantitatively comparable to another.

The team sought to provide a more streamlined and global approach to evaluating the effects of climate change on atmospheric river storms.

The study relied on two resources -- a set of commonly used global climate model projections for the 21st century developed for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's latest assessment report, and a global atmospheric river detection algorithm that can be applied to climate model output. The algorithm, developed earlier by members of the study team, identifies atmospheric river events from every day of the model simulations, quantifying their length, width and how much water vapor they transport.

The team applied the atmospheric river detection algorithm to both actual observations and model simulations for the late 20 th century. Comparing the data showed that the models produced a relatively realistic representation of atmospheric rivers for the late 20 th century climate.

They then applied the algorithm to model projections of climate in the late 21 st century. In doing this, they were able to compare the frequency and characteristics of atmospheric rivers for the current climate with the projections for future climate.

The team also tested the algorithm with a different climate model scenario that assumed more conservative increases in the rate of greenhouse gas emissions. They found similar, though less drastic changes. Together, the consideration of the two climate scenarios indicates a direct link between the extent of warming and the frequency and severity of atmospheric river conditions.

What does this mean?

The significance of the study is two-fold.

First, "knowing the nature of how these atmospheric river events might change with future climate conditions allows for scientists, water managers, stakeholders and citizens living in atmospheric river-prone regions [e.g. western N. America, western S. America, S. Africa, New Zealand, western Europe] to consider the potential implications that might come with a change to these extreme precipitation events," said Vicky Espinoza, postdoctoral fellow at the University of California-Merced and first author of the study.

And secondly, the study and its approach provide a much-needed, uniform way to research atmospheric rivers on a global level -- illustrating a foundation to analyze and compare them that did not previously exist.

Limitations

Data across the models are generally consistent -- all support the projection that atmospheric river conditions are linked to warming and will increase in the future; however, co-author Marty Ralph of the University of California, San Diego, points out that there is still work to be done.

"While all the models project increases in the frequency of atmospheric river conditions, the results also illustrate uncertainties in the details of the climate projections of this key phenomenon," he said. "This highlights the need to better understand why the models' representations of atmospheric rivers vary."

The study, titled "Global Analysis of Climate Change Projection Effects on Atmospheric Rivers," was recently published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

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intergovernmental panel on climate change

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Climate change may lead to bigger atmospheric rivers - Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet

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A new NASA-led study shows that climate change is likely to intensify extreme weather events known as atmospheric rivers across most of the globe by the end of this century, while slightly reducing their number. The new study projects atmospheric rivers will be significantly longer and wider than the ones we observe today, leading to more frequent atmospheric river conditions in affected areas.

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A new study shows that record-breaking ocean heat pumped up Hurricane Harvey, contributing to catastrophic flooding because of global warming.

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Due to climate change the Rio Grande is drying up because temperature are abnormally high and there is no rain.

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LEMITAR, N.M. - Mario Rosales, who farms 365 acres along the Rio Grande, knows the river is in bad shape this year. It has already dried to a dusty ribbon of sand in some parts, and most of the water that does flow is diverted to irrigate crops, including Mr. Rosales's fields of wheat, oats, alfalfa and New Mexico's beloved chiles.

Because last winter's mountain snowpack was the second-lowest on record, even that irrigation water may run out at the end of July, three months earlier than usual. But Mr. Rosales isn't worried. He is sure that the summer thunderstorms, known here as the monsoon, will come.

"Sooner or later, we'll get the water," he said.

The monsoon rains he is counting on are notoriously unpredictable, however. So he and many of the other farmers who work 62,000 acres along 140 miles of the Rio Grande in central New Mexico may get by - or they may not.

"Nobody's got a whole lot of water," said David Gensler, the hydrologist for the Middle Rio Grande Conservancy District, whose job is to manage the river water that is delivered to Mr. Rosales and the others through diversion dams, canals and ditches. "If we use it up early in the season and don't get any rain further on, the whole thing's going to crash."

Parts of the state got some much-needed rain this week, which may help Mr. Gensler extend his irrigation water a bit. But whatever happens this spring and summer, the long-term outlook for the river is clouded by climate change.

The Rio Grande is a classic "feast or famine" river, with a dry year or two typically followed by a couple of wet years that allow for recovery. If warming temperatures brought on by greenhouse gas emissions make wet years less wet and dry years even drier, as scientists anticipate, year-to-year recovery will become more difficult.

"The effect of long-term warming is to make it harder to count on snowmelt runoff in wet times," said David S. Gutzler, a climate scientist at the University of New Mexico. "And it makes the dry times much harder than they used to be."

With spring runoff about one-sixth of average and more than 90 percent of New Mexico in severe to exceptional drought, conditions here are extreme. Even in wetter years long stretches of the riverbed eventually dry as water is diverted to farmers, but this year the drying began a couple of months earlier than usual. Some people are concerned that it may dry as far as Albuquerque, 75 miles north.

But the state of the Rio Grande reflects a broader trend in the West, where warming temperatures are reducing snowpack and river flows.

A study last year of the Colorado River, which provides water to 40 million people and is far bigger than the Rio Grande, found that flows from 2000 to 2014 were nearly 20 percent below the 20th century average, with about a third of the reduction attributable to human-caused warming. The study suggested that if climate change continued unabated, human-induced warming could eventually reduce Colorado flows by at least an additional one-third this century.

"Both of these rivers are poster children for what climate change is doing to the Southwest," said Jonathan T. Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan and an author of the Colorado study.

While both the Colorado and the Rio Grande are affected by warming, Dr. Overpeck said, the Rio Grande has also been hurt by declines in winter precipitation. "It's a one-two punch," he said.

Last year, though, was a wet one on the Rio Grande, with a strong snowpack in the winter of 2016-17 that allowed the conservancy district to store water in upstream reservoirs. Using that water now should help Mr. Gensler keep the irrigation taps turned for several months.

"In some ways I'm more concerned about 2019 than 2018," he said. "There's a possibility we're going to drain every drop this year, and go into next year with nothing."

Temperatures in the Southwest increased by nearly two degrees Fahrenheit (one degree Celsius) from 1901 to 2010, and some climate models forecast a total rise of six degrees or more by the end of this century. As elsewhere in the West, warmer temperatures in winter mean that more precipitation falls as rain rather than snow in the San Juan and Sangre de Cristo mountains that feed the Rio Grande.

Dr. Gutzler said spring temperatures have an impact, too, with warmer air causing more snow to turn to vapor and essentially disappear. A longer and warmer growing season also has an effect, Dr. Overpeck said, as plants take up more water, further reducing stream flows.

Running for nearly 1,900 miles, mostly through arid lands, the Rio Grande is one of the longest rivers in the United States. It is also one of the most managed, having been controlled by dams and other structures for most of the last century. But use of the river for irrigation dates back much further: For hundreds of years its water nourished the crops of native Puebloan people and Spanish colonizers.

In a typical year most water in the upper Rio Grande is diverted for irrigation. (Albuquerque, by far the state's largest city, gets its drinking water from groundwater wells and from a project that diverts water from the Colorado River basin through a tunnel under the Continental Divide.)

By law, some Rio Grande water must also be sent further downstream, to a reservoir that serves farmers in southern New Mexico and Texas. That section of the river, which forms the border with Mexico and empties into the Gulf of Mexico, has its own severe problems, and relies on a Mexican tributary for most of its water.

As the river dries, crews from the United States Fish and Wildlife Service spring into action, working to rescue the Rio Grande silvery minnow, a federally protected endangered species that used to thrive along the full length of the river but now is found only in the upper reaches.

Crews have been rescuing the small fish most springs and summers for about 20 years, running nets through pools that remain as the river dries up and delivering the fish to wetter areas upstream.

Normally the crews would start this work in June, said Thomas P. Archdeacon, a Fish and Wildlife biologist who heads the minnow rescue operation. This year, he said, they made their first rescue on April 2 and have moved northward as stretches of the river dried up.

"I look at it as an umbrella species," he said of the minnow. "Because it has these federal protections, it's protecting basically everything along the river." The Rio Grande is still lined with willows, Russian olive and other vegetation along its banks, and together with the irrigated farmland forms a long, narrow oasis amid an otherwise parched brown landscape.

But much of the riverbed itself is as dry as a bone.

Mr. Archdeacon had driven an all-terrain vehicle up the sandy riverbed from the town of San Antonio, reaching a spot about three miles north where the flowing river petered out into damp sand. This was what remained of the water allowed through a dam in San Acacia, about 20 miles to the north, the rest being diverted for irrigation.

Mr. Rosales will be benefiting from that diverted water, and if the monsoon rains come he may well produce a plentiful crop of chiles in late summer and fall for his wife, Linda, to roast and sell at a nearby produce stand.

"We've got a lot of faith," he said. "We've always worked on faith."

Others may not have to hope for rain. Chris Sichler, who farms 650 acres near San Antonio, has wells to pump groundwater onto his fields should the irrigation canals dry up and the rains not materialize. "I'm droughtproof," he said. "When we plant in the spring we don't even take into consideration how much snowpack or surface water there's going to be."

North of Albuquerque, Derrick J. Lente, a member of the Sandia Pueblo, cultivates 150 acres, some of which is pasturage for cows that he raises. Under water laws, farmers in the pueblos would be among the last to lose water.

His ancestors have farmed in this region for hundreds of years, through wet times and dry. But Mr. Lente, who is also a state legislator, recognizes that there is long-term trouble ahead. His father and uncles, who have been farming far longer than him, have seen changes.

"This is the worst they've seen it in their lives," he said. "The times are changing to where it's hotter."

Mr. Lente does not have irrigation wells on his farm, but he has made improvements to conserve water, lining some of his irrigation ditches and replacing another with a tunnel.

"I never built it with the idea we won't ever have water," he said. "I don't want to think of that time, I really don't. We'd have to make some hard decisions."

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In a Warming West, the Rio Grande Is Drying Up

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LEMITAR, N.M. - Mario Rosales, who farms 365 acres along the Rio Grande, knows the river is in bad shape this year. It has already dried to a dusty ribbon of sand in some parts, and most of the water that does flow is diverted to irrigate crops, including Mr. Rosales's fields of wheat, oats, alfalfa and New Mexico's beloved chiles.

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Some ice stays frozen year-round, lasting for many years before melting, but this winter, the region hit a record low for ice older than five years.

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Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march

Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march

Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march

Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march

Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march

Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march

In the Arctic Ocean, some ice stays frozen year-round, lasting for many years before melting. But this winter, the region hit a record low for ice older than five years.

This, along with a near-record low for sea ice over all, supports predictions that by midcentury there will be no more ice in the Arctic Ocean in summer.

As darker, heat-absorbing water replaces reflective ice, it hastens warming in the region. Older ice is generally thicker than newer ice and thus more resilient to heat. But as the old ice disappears, the newer ice left behind is more vulnerable to rising temperatures.

"First-year ice grows through winter and then to up to a maximum, which is usually around in March," said Mark A. Tschudi, a research associate at the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research at the University of Colorado, Boulder. "As summer onsets, the ice starts to melt back."

Some of the new ice melts each summer, but some of it lingers to grow thicker over the following winter, forming second-year ice. The next summer, some of that second-year ice survives, then grows even thicker and more resilient the next winter, creating what is known as multiyear ice. Some ice used to last more than a decade.

Percentage of Arctic Ice in Early March

Percentage of Arctic Ice

in Early March

Percentage of Arctic Ice in Early March

Today, Arctic sea ice is mostly first-year ice. While the oldest ice has always melted when currents pushed it south into warmer waters, now more of the multiyear ice is melting within the Arctic Ocean, leaving more open water in its wake.

This is especially bad for animals like narwhals, the so-called unicorns of the sea, that use sea ice to avoid predators like killer whales. As the sea ice disappears, killer whales spend more time in narwhal waters, eating the narwhals and driving them from the richest feeding grounds.

"I've been on record saying that it may be 2030 that we could see a seasonally ice-free Arctic Ocean," said Mark Serreze, director of the National Snow and Ice Data Center. "Some people have said that that's too aggressive, that we're looking at maybe sometime in the 2040s. But we are definitely on track to lose that summer sea ice cover. Honestly, I don't think there's any going back at this point."

Sources: National Snow and Ice Data Center and the Colorado Center for Astrodynamics Research.

Note: Early March is defined as the ninth week of each year, which is a commonly used yearly interval for evaluating Arctic ice attributes.

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In the Arctic, the Old Ice Is Disappearing

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Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march Sea Ice EXTENT in EARLY march In the Arctic Ocean, some ice stays frozen year-round, lasting for many years before melting.

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