Will Europe face water crisis next summer?

Good Morning,

Water scarcity is one of the most significant climate change-induced threats. Two weeks ago, the UN held a Water conference introducing a Water Action agenda, a collection of all voluntary commitments to accelerate progress in the second halves of the Water Action Decade 2018-2028 and 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Regions in the global south – latest examples including Somalia, Argentina, and Tunisia – already suffer from severe droughts, but scarcity in water resources has started to threaten European countries too. The upcoming summer is expected to be exceptionally dry, particularly in the Southern and Continental parts of Europe.

Here are essential facts about the state of Europe's water resources:

• Last summer was the driest in 500 years; much of Europe is in the grip of a winter drought driven by climate breakdown. There are already deficits in groundwater reserves, and lack of precipitation further hinders preparing for the upcoming summer.

• The premature melting of Alpine glaciers. This year, the snow in the Alps melted already in winter, which predicts drought for the rest of the year. Typically, most melting happens in the spring – a crucial event to ensure sufficient groundwater reserves during the summer.

• Water use plans, restrictions. Spain has been in drought since January 2022, and the authorities have introduced laws restricting water use. Also, France has to cope with 40 % less water in upcoming years, and it has joined Germany in introducing a national water strategy. A fundamental question in water use planning is how will the scarce resource be divided between households, agriculture, and different industries.

• Higher prices. The emphasis of the French water strategy is saving and reusing water. For instance, the country plans to regulate water use in activities such as washing cars and filling swimming pools. If households consume water over a certain amount of cubic meters, they must pay more according to the extra-use.

Drought also affects the water-intensive nuclear power industry, which opposes water use regulations. Last summer, France had to shut down its reactors temporarily due to shortages in water supply – a similar trajectory will likely occur next summer.

Due to the impending water crises, new nuclear power plants will likely be constructed more by the seashore instead of the riverside. The interaction between droughts and CO2-free nuclear power illustrates the complex and unexpected interactions that climate change will bring about in the future.

References: The Guardian, Yle

Let's jump into this week's major headlines.

EU's Carbon Allowance (ETS) price development

UK's Carbon Allowance (ETS) price development

The Guardian | United Arab Emirates plans huge oil and gas expansion as it hosts UN climate summit this year. The CEO of the UAE’s national oil company, Adnoc, has been controversially appointed president of the UN’s Cop28 summit in December, which is seen as crucial with time running out to end the climate crisis. Just 10% of Adnoc’s expansion is compatible with the IEA’s scenario for the world to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050. The IEA said the 2050 goal requires no new oil and gas projects to be approved after 2021, but 90% of the oil and gas expansion being planned by Adnoc were advanced after this date and would have to stay in the ground to be compatible.

The Guardian | Water ban in drought-stricken Tunisia adds to growing crisis. Tunisia has introduced water rationing, cutting water supplies every night between 9 pm and 4 am, as the country suffers severe drought. The risk of unrest rises amid the fourth dry year, poor grain harvest, a weak economy, and likely food subsidy cuts.

CNN | Death toll over 30 after tornadoes rip through South and Midwest in the US, leaving communities in ruin. More than 50 tornado reports have been issued in at least seven states. The tornadoes have crushed homes and businesses, ripped roofs off buildings, splintered trees, and sent vehicles flying.

Reuters | UN to start taking deep-sea mining applications this July. The International Seabed Authority will start accepting applications in July from companies that want to mine the ocean's floor, a decision that came after the U.N. body spent the past two weeks debating standards for the new and controversial practice. The environmental NGO Greenpeace has condemned the decision, highlighting the risks that deep-sea mining poses to whales and marine wildlife.

Euronews | Private jet pollution more than doubles in Europe -Greenpeace report. The environmental group found that private jets emitted a total of 5.3 million tonnes of CO2 in the last three years, with the number of flights skyrocketing from nearly 119,000 in 2020 to 573,000 in 2022.

Bloomberg | Amsterdam Hub to Halt Night Flights, Ban Private Jets to Cut CO2. Schiphol Airport plans to stop late night flights and ban private jets to reduce noise and lower CO2 emissions; aircraft will no longer take off between midnight and 6 a.m. once the changes go into effect in the next two to three years.

Euronews | UK is ramping up domestic air travel while other European countries are banning it. The move aims to make flights more affordable for passengers and “bolster UK connectivity”, according to the government.

The Guardian | Cows in the UK could be given ‘methane blockers’ in their feed to cut climate emissions. Farmers welcomed the proposal, but green campaigners were sceptical, arguing that the move would not address the other major environmental harms resulting from the beef and dairy industries and showed a fixation on “techno fixes” rather than reducing consumption.

Yle | Finnish Parliamentary Elections 2023: the NCP became the nation's largest party, winning an additional ten seats in parliament. The Finns Party came second with an increase of seven seats, and the Social Democratic Party came third with three more MPs in the new assembly. Major compromises will be needed regardless of the combination of parties making up the next government.

Maaseudun tulevaisuus | Maintaining carbon sinks is not feasible with the recent pace of logging -Forest bioeconomy scientific panel. The panel stresses cost-efficiency when approaching climate and biodiversity targets and suggests that environmental aspects should have a larger role in commercial forestry.

The Guardian | Norway proposes a salmon tax. The country wants to raise taxes on its aquaculture industry, which could provide a model for how to better manage the marine environment. After fossil fuels, farmed salmon is the country’s largest source of national income, and a hugely lucrative one: in 2022, operating profit margins for Norway’s salmon farmers were estimated at 45%. The finance ministry has insisted that the controversial levy is designed to ensure that coastal communities receive more of the “value created by fish farming”.

WWF | Finland 'celebrated' the Overshoot day last Friday. By calculation, the Finnish consumption habits require four times more biological resources than the Earth can regenerate. Denmark's overshoot day was three days before Finland and Sweden consumed all the renewable resources on this week's Monday. Norway's overshoot day is not until next week.

Dagens Nyheter | Spruce bark beetles, climate change threaten forestry in Sweden. In 2018, began an insect outbreak that has killed over 31 million cubic meters of spruce thus far. Spruces that suffer from drought or other climate change-induced factors are especially vulnerable to pests. At the same time, the rising temperatures have increased the beetle populations.

HS | The city of Helsinki closed the Hanasaari coal power station last Friday. Shutting down the power plant will significantly reduce the city’s and the entire country’s carbon footprint.

Aktuell Hållbarhet | Nearly 1000 proposals for the climate – the municipality of Karlstad engaged its youth in climate discussion by establishing a student council. The council aims for children in municipal preschools and elementary schools to have an opportunity to influence the municipality's climate work.

STT | The number of Finnish green investments has decreased -The Finnish Economic Policy Council report. Also, the overall number of patent applications has been in the fall. The EPC report stresses the importance of societal preconditions for R&D.

Reuters | A global initiative outlines criteria for carbon offsets. The Integrity Council for the Voluntary Carbon Market (ICVCM) is an independent governance body that hopes to bring transparency to the $2 billion market, which has struggled for credibility. Their vision is a regulated-like market where buyers can easily identify and price carbon credits that meet consistently high-integrity standards.

Reuters | French lawmakers propose tax credits, subsidies for green industry. France could offer tax breaks and subsidies for producing climate friendly technologies in the country. The French government is concerned that its companies could fall irrevocably behind U.S. rivals, boosted by the Biden administration's $430 billion Inflation Reduction Act.

BBC | Plastic wet wipes ban planned in England to tackle pollution. The ban is part of a wider plan to improve water quality in England, where no river or waterway is considered clean, said the country's environment minister.

WWF | Fazer to continue its cooperation with WWF to promote sustainable food production. The collaboration aims to find sustainable solutions and concentrate on Fazer's impacts on biodiversity; one strategic aim is to increase the volume of plant-based products in the company's selection.

Tekniikka&Talous | Neste has processed over 3000 tons of liquefied plastic waste – a potential circular economy option for landfill or combustion plants. The company handles liquefied plastic waste in its industrial-scale test drives, aiming to develop chemical recycling and the circular economy of polymers.

Lignocellulosic biomass from agricultural waste to the circular economy. Industries are working to minimize their reliance on petrochemicals and petroleum-based industrial components and replace them with biobased, sustainable, and environmentally friendly alternatives due to the global warming emergency caused by the uncontrolled production of greenhouse gases. The agricultural waste provides large volumes of lignocellulosic biomass, a sustainable resource material to develop a wide portfolio of bioproducts. Recent developments in integrated biorefineries have enhanced the utilization of waste lignocellulose components to generate biofuels, platform chemicals, resins, bioplastics, additives, and other biobased materials for a variety of applications. An Aalto University review summarizes recent advancements in the processing of lignocellulosic biomass from agricultural waste. (Journal of Cleaner Production)

Biogenic factors explain soil carbon in paired urban and natural ecosystems worldwide. Urban greenspaces support multiple nature-based services, many of which depend on the amount of soil carbon (C). Yet, the environmental drivers of soil C and its sensitivity to warming are still poorly understood globally. Researchers used soil samples from 56 paired urban greenspaces and natural ecosystems worldwide and combine soil C concentration and size fractionation measures with metagenomics and warming incubations. Their findings show that surface soils in urban and natural ecosystems sustain similar C concentrations that follow comparable negative relationships with temperature. Plant productivity’s contribution to explaining soil C was higher in natural ecosystems, while in urban ecosystems, the soil microbial biomass had the greatest explanatory power. Moreover, the soil microbiome supported a faster C mineralization rate with experimental warming in urban greenspaces compared with natural ecosystems. Consequently, urban management strategies should consider the soil microbiome to maintain soil C and related ecosystem services. (Nature Climate Change)

AI could set a new bar for designing hurricane-resistant buildings. Equipped with 100 years of hurricane data and modern AI techniques, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have devised a new method of digitally simulating hurricanes. The results of a study published today in Artificial Intelligence for the Earth Systems demonstrate that the simulations can accurately represent the trajectory and wind speeds of a collection of actual storms. The authors suggest that simulating numerous realistic hurricanes with the new approach can help to develop improved guidelines for the design of buildings in hurricane-prone regions. (Science Daily)

Picture of the week

Finland's Overshoot Day was on March 31st, four months earlier than last year's global average.