Climate Climate & Energy

G8 nations agree to cut emissions 50 percent by 2050 (sort of)

At this year’s Group of Eight meeting in Japan, the world’s richest nations more or less agreed to cut greenhouse-gas emissions 50 percent by 2050. While the agreement is notable since it means President Bush has budged ever-so-slightly on the climate issue, the group’s statement on the cuts is little more than a carefully worded […]

No easy explanation for continued price increases in the oil markets

At the end of last year I predicted that the price of oil would go down; so far I have been terribly wrong. My prediction, shared by many other economists and energy experts, was premised on a reasonable assumption: Since the world was headed for an economic slowdown, brought about the housing bubble and the financial crisis, global demand for energy would likely moderate, putting downward pressure on prices. While it was a sensible prediction, I am happy that no one took me up on my bet.

So what happened?

CCS: Environmental whack-a-mole

Carbon capture and sequestration gets heralded as a great way to lower CO2 emissions and keep burning coal. Unfortuantely, it also kills the efficiency of the coal plant, meaning that every other environmental externality associated with coal-fired generation -- from mountaintop removal to power plant siting -- is exacerbated by CCS. Planet Ark puts it succinctly:

The process called carbon capture and sequestration requires as much as 20 percent of the electricity a power plant generates.

That essentially means that for every five coal plants using the technology, a sixth would be required just to power the capture and burial of carbon dioxide produced.

Costs for utilities rise faster than politically palatable rate changes can keep up

This is one for the "Things No One is Talking About But Should" file.

Greenwire has this report ($ub. req'd) from Standard & Poor's noting that the credit risk of our utilities depends in large part on their ability to recover rising fuel costs, and this ability is diminished due to the fact that:

High fuel costs translate directly to higher customer rates, but instituting constant and often significant increases is politically and socially unpalatable.

This gets it half right.

Venture capitalist John Doerr shares four lessons on climate change

I don’t know how it is that I’ve never seen this John Doerr talk from TED, but I’m glad I finally did:

Is a consumer choice necessarily the best choice?

Jim Manzi, climate change voice of non-denialist conservatives, writes: But consider this at a common-sense level: you are forcing people, through rationing, to use something like 80% less of a substance that they choose to use because they believe that it creates net economic utility (prior to externalities) as compared to any available alternative. There […]

Pray harder!

My petroleum god, why hast thou forsaken me?

Chemical in flat-screen TVs is worsening climate change

If you didn’t feel guilty about your TV habits already, here’s a new reason: a chemical used in making flat-screen televisions has been found to be a potent greenhouse gas, 17,000 times stronger than carbon dioxide. In a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, atmospheric chemist Michael Prather called nitrogen trifluoride, or NF3, […]

Drought conditions in West and Southwest inspire new fireworks bans

Global warming threatens our White Chistmases with winter heatwaves. And our Halloweens with poor pumpkin crops. And our Arbor Days with record wildfires. And our immoral myopia threatens Father's Day. At this rate, the only holiday left will be the gas tax holiday -- for oil companies!

But I digress. Last year, Independence Day fireworks fizzled out for many thanks to ever worsening droughts. And MSNBC reports the droughts have done it again this year:

Authorities scared of setting off wildfires in drought conditions have imposed new bans on fireworks displays across a swath of the West and the Southwest.

Drilling offshore vs. fuel efficiency

Over at CEPR, Dean Baker makes a somewhat cutesy but still quite illustrative comparison: the barrels of oil per day we could get by 2027 through offshore drilling (when production rate will max out) vs. the oil savings we would have gotten per day if we’d continued ramping up the CAFE standard at roughly the […]