Climate Climate & Energy

Existing technology is faster and far more practical than hypothetical new inventions

This post will explain why some sort of massive government Apollo program or Manhattan project to develop new breakthrough technologies is not a priority component of the effort to stabilize at 450 ppm.

Put more quantitatively, the question is, what are the chances that multiple (4 to 8+) carbon-free technologies that do not exist today can each deliver the equivalent of 350 gigawatts baseload power (about 2.8 billion megawatt-hours a year) and/or 160 billion gallons of gasoline cost-effectively by 2050? (Note: that is about half of a stabilization wedge.) For the record, the U.S. consumed about 3.7 billion mwh in 2005 and about 140 billion gallons of motor gasoline.

Put that way, the answer to the question is painfully obvious: "two chances -- slim and none." Indeed, I have repeatedly challenged readers and listeners over the years to name even a single technology breakthrough with such an impact in the past three decades, after the huge surge in energy funding that followed the energy shocks of the 1970s. Nobody has ever named one that has even come close.

Yet somehow the government is not just going to invent one TILT (Terrific Imaginary Low-carbon Technology) in the next few years, we are going to invent several TILTs. Seriously. Hot fusion? No. Cold fusion? As if. Space solar power? Come on, how could that ever compete with CSP? Hydrogen? It ain't even an energy source, and after billions of dollars of public and private research in the past 15 years -- including several years running of being the single biggest focus of the DOE office on climate solutions I once ran -- it still has actually no chance whatsoever of delivering a major cost-effective climate solution by mid century (see "This just in: Hydrogen fuel cell cars are still dead").

I don't know why the breakthrough crowd can't see the obvious, so I will elaborate here. I will also discuss a major study that explains why deployment programs are so much more important than R&D at this point. Let's keep this simple:

Output-based carbon regulations ignore critical types of efficiency

"Output-based standards" are getting credit around here as a politically impractical but sensible proposal. David described them as "relentlessly efficient."

I'm sure relentless efficiency was the intent, but in fact it is very much a way of picking winners, of rewarding one particular type of efficiency at expense of others. The idea is that within industries, a standard will be set for maximum emissions per useful BTU delivered. So if you are heating tomatoes as part of making tomato paste, the standard would apply to your emissions per BTU used to raise the temperature of a tomato. The problem is that while this rewards delivering those BTUs more efficiently, it does not reward heating the tomatoes less, perhaps by substituting a filtering process for some of the heating.

When I brought this up in comments, Sean argued that the second method still rewards by lowering fuel bills. But then, so does the first. If delivering BTUs more efficiently needs an incentive over and above fuel saving, then so does finding a way to use fewer BTUs in the first place.

Next decade could be cooler than expected, says study

Natural shifts in ocean circulation may trump human-caused warming over the next decade, causing global temperatures to cool slightly, says new research published in the journal Nature. But hang on to your pessimism: “Just to make things clear, we are not stating that anthropogenic climate change won’t be as bad as previously thought” over the […]

Reason #689,251 oil sands suck

Killing ducks?! Come on now.

Perpetual montion does not work any better in economics than it does in technology

In David Roberts' post on the carbon policy dilemma, David defines an "efficient" carbon policy as follows:

First, in a given sector, you set up a system that transfers capital directly from those over-emitting to those reducing emissions, in an agnostic fashion -- that is, preferencing no particular set of technologies or practices. A ton of CO2 ought to be worth the same no matter how it is emitted or prevented, and there should be no net loss of capital in the sector (as there would be if the feds took the revenue and spent it on other things). Second, you remove existing regulatory barriers to that capital flow. As long as capital continues flowing from emitters to savers, you've got a perpetual economic motion machine.

My guess is the use of a perpetual motion machine as a metaphor was a message from David's subconscious, because it is impossible to set up a mechanism where the transfer "to" is as efficient and automatic as the transfer "from."

Colbert on ethanol and the energy war

Coal and agrofuels win the subsidy sweepstakes

Via the WSJ energy blog, follow the money:

Since 1999, federal energy subsidies have more than doubled-from $8.2 billion to $16.6 billion in 2007. Who gets the most?

'Renewables' landed $4.8 billion last year, but that includes $3.25 billion for ethanol and other biofuels.

Coal and cleaner-burning "refined" coal took home $3.3 billion, while the nuclear power industry got $1.3 billion.

In all, about 40% of the energy subsidy pie went toward electricity production; the rest for things like alternative fuels and energy conservation.

More here.

A non-technical piece on climate science

The nation's top climate scientist, James Hansen, has just published a general-audience article, "Tipping Point" [PDF], in State of the Wild 2008-2009 from Island Press. It is well worth sending to folks who don't like all the math. His key points:

We are at the tipping point because the climate state includes large, ready positive feedbacks provided by the Arctic sea ice, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and much of Greenland's ice.

...

Prior major warmings in Earth's history, the most recent occurring 55 million years ago ... resulted in the extinction of half or more of the species then on the planet.

...

In my view, special interests have undue sway with our governments and have effectively promoted minimalist actions and growth in fossil fuels, rather than making the scale of investments necessary.

You might also like this figure on "cumulative fossil fuel carbon dioxide emissions by different countries as a percent of global total" --

If biofuels are sustainable, we should be able to show it

A friend recently sent me a one-page press release from an ethanol lobby group that purported to debunk "myths" of biofuels. Our ensuing discussion helped me clarify why even people who once were excited and optimistic about biofuels (like me) are now so opposed to production subsidies (as opposed to R&D).

My friend asked (paraphrasing), "If not biofuels, then what?" and noted that what we're doing now -- "squeezing oil out of rocks" -- is not exactly good for the planet.

For me, the bottom line is simply this:

Ethanol is no more a renewable fuel than hydrogen is.

Rather, ethanol is a way for us to consume natural gas, diesel oil, and coal (not to mention a huge volume of water and vast acreage of cropland) to make motor fuels. All this is on top of serious problems raised by studies about land diversion for carbon emissions and food availability.

It's important to remember that fossil fuels are biofuels (fuels made from once-living matter), so using that term alone isn't helpful.

Notable quotable

“So I hope that this film will help others to connect the dots the way it helped Tipper and me to connect the dots on the relationship between mountaintop removal — which is a crime and ought to be treated as a crime — and the results of burning it without regard to the future, […]