This article originally appeared on The Climate Examiner. 

British Columbia now has sufficient detailed information about the height, frequency and direction of its coastal waves to start developing and testing wave energy converters in the ocean, according to a new report.

Quantifying the amount of energy contained in waves as they propagate — or more simply, the ‘wave energy transport’ — is more complex and intricate than assessing the energy contained in wind, tidal or solar resources. In general, these energy sources can be described using a single variable; air speed, water speed and incoming solar irradiation, respectively. In contrast, wave energy transport is multi-dimensional and depends on a variety of factors.

As a result, while industry and policy-makers were aware that British Columbia has one of the best wave energy resource potentials in the world, up to now, this understanding had been based on very broad-strokes analyses. Moving beyond the global scale and understanding the spatial distribution of the wave resource, especially near-shore, is a critical step in the development of wave energy converters — the large (up to 120m in length) mechanical devices that transform wave energy into electricity.

Scientists have mapped the true potential of wave energy off the B.C. coast for the first time: https://t.co/jYpVYjNnmA @PICSCanada #climate

— DeSmog Canada (@DeSmogCanada) May 19, 2017

Researchers with the University of Victoria’s West Coast Wave Initiative developed a computer model of the B.C. coastline from the Columbia River in the south, up to Haida Gwaii in the north, and combined this with years of data from wave measurement buoys. This two-pronged approach allowed them to develop the most high-resolution wave resource assessment yet available for British Columbia, and to reveal several ideal locations for wave energy development.

Their findings together with a comprehensive plain language introduction to the concept of wave power, how wave-energy converters work, and the opportunities and challenges of this energy resource, are described in a new full-colour Wave Energy Primer recently published by PICS.

Waves arriving on B.C. shores are the result of storms occurring across the vast Pacific Ocean. This makes wave energy highly predictable for power system managers compared to other variable renewable energy sources, such as wind or solar. The West Coast Wave Initiatve has found on average, a four-hour wave forecast features just a 15 per cent margin of error, while wind and solar in the Pacific North West are closer to 77 per cent and 86 per cent, respectively.

This significantly greater forecastability means that while wave energy, like wind and solar, is intermittent, the requirements for grid back-up power source to make up for this intermittency would be significantly lower.

Other advantages uncovered by the University of Victoria team include seasonal timing, whereby the biggest (and most energetic) storms occur in winter when energy demand is highest.

Researchers from the PICS 2060 Integrated Energy Pathways project also found that the integration of a 500 MW wave energy farm has the potential to reduce Vancouver Island’s dependency on annual electrical transmission from the Lower Mainland by up to 11 per cent, and reduce peak winter demand by up to 15 per cent.

The Wave Primer also spells out other challenges facing the industry, including the high cost per unit of energy compared to other renewables, biofouling and operating in a hostile ocean environment.

Image: John Lemieux via Flickr

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This is a guest post by Cam Fenton, Canadian tar sands organizer with 350.org.

Last week the Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions released a report criticizing the fossil fuel divestment movement. While the report came as a surprise, the arguments didn’t, especially given that they were based more on building a straw man to support the report’s conclusions than actually understanding the movement.

At best the report fails to accurately reflect the demands and the theory of change of fossil fuel divestment movement, and at worst it fails to understand the true role and power of organizing, action and social movements.

The report gets a lot wrong and a little bit right, but most of its problems are undercut by three assumptions at the core of its argument – assumptions which seem to have been cherry-picked by the authors to support their own conclusions rather than reflecting those articulated by the movement. In fact the divestment movement has only ever been founded on one assumption that “if it’s morally wrong to wreck the climate, it’s wrong to profit from that wreckage.”

The movement has been helped along by financial developments related the carbon bubble, the advent of reinvestment as a strategy and a slew of others. Still the core demand of the divestment movement remains for public institutions to divest from the top 200 fossil fuel companies.

Three faulty assumptions about divestment

1. The first “assumption” the movement is charged with is that divestment alone will keep carbon underground. Will one institution divesting do this? No, but dozens of public institutions refusing to do business with the world’s biggest fossil fuel giants will help build the political and moral will for governments and others institutions to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

Take New Jersey based utility company NRG for example. NRG built itself on coal and in late in 2014 announced that it was seeking to cut 90 per cent of its carbon emissions because they “don’t relish the idea that year after year we’re going to be graduating a couple million kids from college…that come out of college with a distaste or disdain for companies like mine.”

This one single shift, a direct result of the divestment movement, will keep three billion metric tons of carbon in the ground.

Energy Information Agency map showing retired coal plants in the U.S. 

This is just one example from a campaign that an Oxford University study found to be the fastest growing divestment movement in history. The same study, which looked at past divestment efforts found that “in every case [they] reviewed, divestment campaigns were successful in lobbying for restrictive legislation.”

In other words, that while divestment may not itself leave carbon in the ground, it’s a tactic that will play an integral role in forcing policy change to do just that.

2. PICS’s second assumption is that one can simply replace high carbon investments with low carbon alternatives. This is not a demand of the UBC divestment campaign, which the report uses as its case study. UBC’s campaign recognizes the divestment is not simple, which is why UBC campaigners are demanding first a freeze of new investments, then a five year divestment phase.

Even with this, many divested institutions have chosen to move faster and in doing so are driving fundamental shifts in the investment market. Investment managers like Canada’s Genus Capital are already managing tens of millions in fossil fuel free funds because their clients asked them to replace high carbon investments with low carbon ones. The Divest/Invest coalition the report cites is driving a new wave of impact investment into climate solutions alongside grassroots reinvestment efforts supporting frontline impacted communities to develop and build resilient climate solutions.

Banks worldwide are rolling out fossil fuel free investment options because of popular demand (in part driven by the divestment movement). This undermines another of the report’s objections – the lack of easily divested options. The divestment movement is overcoming the very barriers the PICS authors claim to impede its success.

3. Finally, and falsely, the authors assert that the primary goal of divestment is to protect investors from the risk of the carbon bubble. Divestment is about organizing, building power and about bankrupting the reputation of the fossil fuel industry in order to revoke its political and social power.

That said, when the top 200 fossil fuel companies were taken out of Standard & Poor’s S&P 500 and tested back over 10 years, it showed that the divested portfolio outperformed by an average of 30 basis points.

Does this mean that divesting protects from the carbon bubble entirely? No, but it does point out that divesting from fossil fuels reducing an investor’s exposure to the volatility of the fossil fuel market, something the carbon bubble is sure to exacerbate.

Of course, that’s just a bonus.

Getting divestment all wrong

So why did they get things so wrong?

The main reasons is probably that report demonstrates a near complete lack of understanding of social movements. While the report pays lip-service to the symbolic power of divestment, it shuffles it to the side failing to grasp that throughout history people powered social change has routinely been won through symbolic action.

Take the Civil Rights Movement as an example. The overwhelming majority of campaigns were symbolic – were they to boycott buses, sit-in at lunch counters or take freedom rides across state lines. No one expected any campaign alone to achieve the visionary goal of ending racial oppression in the United States, but understood that with each campaign won the movement got one step further on the path to victory.

Even in past divestment movements it was never the goal of campus divestment to bankrupt the South African Apartheid regime, but rather to morally bankrupt it in the eyes of the public to pave the way for greater change.

Representatives from the University of Waterloo's divestment movement at the People's Climate March in New York City. Photo by Zack Embree.

Divestment organizers recognize that this campaign is just one piece of a greater whole, another thing the report fails to grasp.

Student divestment organizers believe so fervently that divestment alone is not enough than many spend hours working in other parts of the climate movement. They engage in electoral strategies, they support frontline communities, they intervene at international climate negotiations, they fight infrastructure projects near their homes and work to build renewable energy. Students organize iconic mass civil disobedience actions, like the student led XL Dissent action.

Last September student divestment organizers recruited over 50,000 of their peers to march in New York City at the Peoples Climate March. In fact, the only people who seem to think that divestment exists in a bubble are the movement’s detractors.

The bottom-line is: if the strategies the PICS report outlines were going to work in a market and a political system controlled by the fossil fuel industry they would have already.

Ignoring this fact is like trying to play checkers while your opponent is using a chess board. The game has been stacked against us and so we need to change the rules. To do that we have to take on cultural, political and economic power of the fossil fuel industry through organizing, mass action and campaigning. The fossil fuel divestment movement is one part of a climate movement that is finally doing just that and emerging with people power leading ahead of policy pontification.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the globe are organizing and fighting for divestment because we need to rapidly and fundamentally change our energy system – and that’s something only a movement can do.

This article originally appeared on gofossilfree.org.

Image Credit: Zack Embree

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Pressure is mounting on the University of Victoria Foundation’s board to rid itself of investments in fossil fuel related stocks, but, for now, the board is continuing to gather information and is sticking with the investing approach it fine-tuned last year.

Divestment supporters turned out in force Monday evening for a forum on climate change and divestment, organized by UVic and Pacific Institute for Climate Solutions, with speakers ranging from Suncor Energy Inc. vice-president Steve Douglas to Malkolm Boothroyd, a spokesman for Divest UVic, and wild applause for those in favour of immediate divestment showed where the sympathies lay.

If it’s wrong to wreck the Earth’s climate, it is wrong to invest in fossil fuels, Boothroyd said.

“Responsibility means leaving those fossil fuels in the ground. We can’t have it both ways. UVic has got to make a decision and I believe it is UVic’s responsibility to divest from fossil fuels,” he said to a standing ovation from some of the audience.

For panel member Crystal Lameman of the Beaver Lake Cree Nation, the basic question comes down to taking any possible action, including divestment, to stop problems caused by “extreme resource extraction” in the Alberta oil sands.

“If you breathe the air and drink the water, this is about you,” she said.

But supporters of divestment already have it both ways as petroleum products are in everything from lipstick and Lycra to cell phones and paint said Douglas, emphasizing that divestment does not solve climate change. He argued 90 per cent of oil reserves on the planet are controlled by governments so reducing investments in the small percentage of private companies will not help.

The conundrum is that there is no doubt that climate change is real and burning fossil fuels is one of the culprits, but fossil fuels are essential to modern life, he said.

“How do you reconcile those two ideas?” he asked.

“How do we transition our energy system to meet the energy needs of the future in a climate challenged world? … We have to transition in a way that doesn’t dislocate our economy and our social system.”

Last year, UVic professors and other groups demanded that all new investment in companies whose primary interests are fossil fuel extraction, processing and transportation should be frozen and that the administration should initiate a three-year divestment plan.

However, the University of Victoria Foundation, which manages the $370-million endowment fund – used for scholarships, bursaries and research –  wrote to the university’s board of governors in September saying that it would maintain its current responsible investment policies that incorporate environmental, social and governance considerations. As part of the Foundation’s efforts to explore direct involvement in organizations that promote responsible investing, the board voted to become a signatory to the United Nations Principals for Responsible Investment.

Last September $39-million of the endowment fund, or about 10.5 per cent of its assets, were invested in energy sector stocks.

The lack of action is infuriating some of the UVic students, who were gathering names on a petition Monday evening.

“I don’t think the university students are going to stand for anything less than divestment,” said Ida Jorgenson.

“I think this is an issue that is not going to go away. In the end they are going to have to confront it.”

The divestment movement is taking root at universities throughout North America, with active campaigns at about 30 Canadian universities including Simon Fraser University and the University of B.C, where faculty is currently voting on whether to ask the board of governors to change its policy on responsible investment.

However, while some herald it as a positive step to address climate change, others believe it is misguided.

The moral high ground is in climate solutions, not in the drop in the bucket represented by university divestment, said Cary Krosinsky, a Yale University lecturer and co-founder of the Carbon Tracker Initiative.

“If we are serious about (addressing climate change) we need a global initiative. We need a really big action. Divestment doesn’t even come close,” he said.

However, divestment does not necessarily mean a loss for the endowment fund and portfolios that have divested from fossil fuels performed well during the last year, he said.

But for panelist and Vancouver Sun columnist Stephen Hume, the issue is trying to address climate change in a polarized environment.

“Among the delusions is that there’s a them and us. There is no them, only us,” he said.

“This isn’t a theatre. It’s a canoe and we are all in that canoe and we had better start paddling in the same direction or we’re going to tip over and we are all going to drown,” he said.

That means the involvement of government, said Hume, exhorting students to get out and vote.

The theme was picked up by PICS executive director Thomas Pedersen, who challenged the audience to take action on climate change by voting.

“Make this an issue of key political importance in the federal election,” he said.

Image Credit: Daily Collegian via Flickr

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