If we want to stabilize atmospheric CO2 at 450 ppm around 2050 -- the minimum necessary, which still might carry major impacts -- we need to achieve at least 2 percent average annual net reductions in emissions, globally, starting in two years. Not only do the near term emissions reductions matter the most, but it will get easier, not harder, as we go along. Solar PV and solar thermal are likely to become cheaper than new coal plants in a decade or so. They will also probably become cheaper than wind around the same time, and together these resources will make it possible to eliminate about three quarters of fossil generation.
It may be possible to exceed the 2 percent rate. But the only way to know that is to achieve 2 percent first. Nothing weaker than 2 percent is particularly worth talking about, and anything stronger is very hard to achieve. Also, any strategy to reduce CO2 emissions must address ongoing growth. While there are many reasons to believe the rate of new growth will change, as it has done historically, it is at present about 1.5 percent per year. Thus a 2 percent annual net reduction in today's world means a 3.5 percent gross reduction.
This series discusses the implications of this goal for the U.S. electric industry.
Based on available response technologies, it is clear that a steady annual rate of emissions reductions is more practical than any alternative. Our ability to respond to global warming is constrained by the rate at which we build things. We can make every new residential and commercial building a zero energy building, but we can't build them at twice the normal rate. We can build renewable technologies, but we can't expect to build manufacturing facilities to replace the entire nation's electric supply in five or ten years -- that will result in a huge investment in factories that will become idle in five or ten years. It is true that solving global warming is serious enough that we ought not be bound by conventional economic perspectives, but it is not true that we can create a national consensus to do the massively dramatic stuff faster than we can get the ball rolling with conventional fiscal prudence. First things first.
Efficiency potential is large enough to permit net reductions today. It's hard to measure a negawatt, but not impossible to make good estimates of the real efficiency potential. By one informed account [PDF], energy efficiency has been responsible for 77 percent of all new energy resources added to the U.S. economy since 1970. Even a simplistic approach, dividing energy consumption by Gross Domestic Product, suggests that efficiency has produced half of all new energy resources since then.
Utility or end-use efficiency programs are being run in three states, at about 2 percent of load displacement per year. Since the nation's electric consumption grows at something less than 1.5 percent per year, these programs have the potential to eliminate all new growth, but not to cause a net reduction of 2 percent per year. However, by aggressively pursuing waste energy through technologies like combined heat and power (capturing waste heat from industrial processes and generating electricity, or alternately, capturing the waste heat from electric generation and using it to displace fossil fuel used for heat or process steam), it is a simple matter to identify a strategy which could cause 2 percent net reductions in electric sector emissions within a couple of years.
Many people argue that efficiency reduces energy costs and therefore increases consumption. The principle is real, but a much smaller factor than would be required to overcome the ongoing global shift in energy prices in 2008. In the 1980s, the full implementation of the U.S. CAFE standards coincided with a global glut of energy production caused by massive investment in new production facilities. This led some people to believe that efficiency caused low prices and therefore increased consumption, but it is unrealistic to expect a repeat of those circumstances.
---
If we take an economic dispatch approach to solving climate change -- meaning we do the cheap stuff most aggressively and first -- it is unlikely we will ever need nuclear power or carbon sequestration. A number of reports have produced carbon free resource graphs like the one below from TVA [PDF]:
This particular graph assigns an unrealistically low cost to new nuclear power plants (it is probably pretty on-target for repowering existing nukes, particularly the TVA nukes). It also grossly underestimates potential for carbon reduction from building shell insulation and heat transfer modifications, which have the potential to eliminate about half of all CO2 in the U.S. using cost-effective means in this sector alone.
Rarely mentioned is the fact that if we increase spending on low-cost resources to the levels presently justified by the current economic benefits of those resources, we will increase the availability and reduce the cost of those resources. If we invest like we ought to in solutions beneath the line, we may never need those above the line.
This is particularly true in light of the likely cost paths of solar photovoltaics and solar thermal on one side, and coal, nuclear, post-combustion carbon sequestration, and natural gas on the other. New wind is already marginally cheaper than new coal, but wind may have a hard time reducing price substantially in the future. Solar PV and thermal have much potential to reduce cost, and the other resources are all likely to be come even more expensive.
We need to move aggressively on the cheapest options, and they are almost all efficiency.
Wind:
Last year, the renewable industry added only about 20 percent of new growth. Wind exceeded 1 percent of total U.S. electric generation in 2007, but that is the output of several decades' worth of wind construction. Even if you assume wind will grow at 35 percent per year, it will still be the better part of a decade before wind is large enough to offset new growth. We need this, of course, but wind will slam into a wall when it is no longer replacing new consumption, but instead being compared to the cost of displacement of electricity from existing coal plants.
There has been much glib discussion of massive increases in transmission capacity to allow wind service. But a comprehensive solution to global warming in the electric sector is likely to require a strong enough efficiency response that transmission resources for wind are not a core issue for several decades. Transmission capacity is expensive and will knock wind out of the running in situations where the wind resources are not reasonably local. Just as a 20-40 percent premium for nuclear power or carbon sequestration makes a vast array of efficiency alternatives available, and a better deal, so does adding new wind plus a long distance transmission line.
Perhaps the lesson here is that the whole climate response is so complex that we can't expect to envision it well or properly until we have started with the low hanging fruit.
Electric cars and wind:
One of the muted joys of being an efficiency advocate is the frequency with which one is proven right. The biofuels mess was predictable, just as the current price of gas was predictable in 1982 when the Reagan administration tried to roll back CAFE standards and successfully blocked the NHTSA's legal responsibility to increase the standards in response to the cost-effectiveness of the efficiency gains. There are no meaningful renewable alternatives to petroleum or natural gas, unless the electric car proves viable. Synfuels may not fly in the long run, but they seem to have some economic justification, and therefore present a massive potential increase in CO2.
The electric car is potentially less CO2-intensive than gasoline, even using 100 percent coal to fuel it, but there is another aspect: If you recognize that electricity is far cheaper than gasoline for an equivalent distance driven, it suggests a possible solution for the moment when wind development runs into the economic hurdle of displacing much cheaper coal in existing power plants.
Fueling an electric car is so much cheaper than fueling a gasoline car that it should be possible to build a subsidy for wind turbines into the price of an electric car without the buyer being aware -- unless the manufacturer chooses to make it a marketing tool. A reasonable estimate of the cost of wind capacity to fuel an electric car is $425/year. This is just an estimate, without reference to any specific wind turbine or electric car. Using plug power would cost less (perhaps $360) at today's average rates, but plug power includes generation resources which were amortized decades ago.
An electric car owner would use plug power, but would not need to pay the entire cost of a new wind turbine to ensure that the entire fuel resource used by his or her car was offset by renewable resources. Rather, the manufacturer of the electric car could include a fee in the price of the car which would subsidize the construction of new wind turbines. Adding this new subsidy to the existing federal tax credit would make a very attractive offer to utilities considering new wind resources, at a small fraction of the full cost of the new wind.
This is not just a gratuitous marketing scheme -- it is the best suggestion I have heard to date to keep the wind industry moving ahead at the point that we stop building wind to meet new growth in electric consumption, and start trying to build it in the face of net reductions in electricity consumption and/or CO2 emissions.
‘Copenhagen Diagnosis’ offers a grim update to the IPCC’s climate science
Making buildings more efficient: rationalizing retrofit markets
Comments
View as Flat
stevenearlsalmony Posted 4:58 am
28 Jul 2008
Based upon what we can see now, and understand from so many discussions in the Gristmill Blog, would it be correct to say unequivocally what is unspeakable: that an increasing food supply for the human species is the essential factor producing the recent skyrocketing increase of absolute global human population numbers?
Until this relationship is seen (ie, food is the independent variable and human population numbers is the dependent variable), and its implications understood and accepted, the human community cannot respond ably to the global challenges that are looming ominously on the far horizon, I believe. The family of humanity will continue its necessary but insufficient projects at "symptom mitigation" of the global threats without ever taking hold of what is actually causing our difficulties and threatening our very existence. We can identify the problem. We are it.
If the skyrocketing growth of human numbers worldwide is THE number one problem to be confronted by the human community in our time, then ideas for humanely reducing human population numbers makes good sense, I suppose.
To have continuously denied the seminal work of Thomas Malthus and to have castigated the great scientists who have extended his thinking and improved our understanding; to have adamantly demanded that the relationship between food and human population numbers be seen conversely, will be acknowledged as the greatest failure of human perception in human history. At least to me, the implications of this potentially catastrophic perceptual error (ie, human population numbers is the independent variable and food supply the dependent variable) appear to be profound and could have something to do with the existence of the culturally derived functional insanity in the thinking of the leaders of the global political economy and their manipulation of many minions in the mass media who are mainstreaming this primary misperception and other related mistaken impressions to people everywhere.
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilitysoutheast.org/index.php
Permalink
Bob Wallace Posted 5:32 am
28 Jul 2008
Please quit spamming threads with your personal agenda.
Re-read #1.
Permalink
Gar Lipow Posted 6:09 am
28 Jul 2008
Also it is not just cars where a major source of efficiency gain is the substitution of electricity for fossil fuels. One of the big efficiency gains possible is the switch from trucking to train for most freight. Now in terms of energy use, diesel trains are already so efficient that electrifying them gives you a very small gain for a very big expense. But the key is our current train system could not handle a massive switching from truck to rail. And electrification of around 20% of our routes is a necessary part of the upgrade that would let freight rail handle much of what is currently handled by long haul trucking.
In addition, there is a lot of potential for reduction of industrial consumption that involves substituting of electricity for direct fueling. (Think of Electric Arc Furnaces via Basic Oxygen Furnaces for handling scrap metal. And even in processing raw iron ore, it turns out that EAF (with coal or charcoal used to add carbon) can produce steel with slightly fewer emissions even if the electricity is coal powered. If the electricity is solar or wind you get a huge emissions reductions. And yes this comes in addition to reducing material intensity to cut steel use drastically, and after we use various ways of producing steel in shapes closer to what final uses will be to greatly reduce scrap in manufacturing. The fastest way to reduce all emissions (not just electricity emissions) is massive efficiency increases, combined with electrification, combined with renewable generation of that electricity.
Incidentally electric cars are currently more expensive than coventional autos. I don't think that would be true once we start real mass production, but I would delay putting a tax on electric cars to finance a grid until that mass production happens. Why not put a $500 tax on any car or light truck that gets under 35 mpg instead? That would finance a whole lot of wind and grid upgrades, and discourage something we want less of besides.
In terms of not needing grid upgrade - yeah if the wind and solar industry continue to grow at their current rates we won't need major grid upgrades to handle them for 20 years (though we need significant grid upgrades now that have nothing to do with renewables - we have simply neglected our transmission, distribution and power management infrastructure).
What we need scientifically is:
A small absolute drop in emisisons in the next five years
A larger one in the next ten
a 90% drop in the next 20
a 95% drop in the next 30
followed by phasing the remain 5% out and beginning negative emissions (removing more than we emit) by 2050.
Yes we need massive efficiency increases, but need massive renewables too. We need to harvest all the fruit, not just the low hanging fruit, because the storm is coming. And we can afford to that: efficiency and renewables combined will cost a lot compared to some magical "free" source, but save money compared to continued fossil fuel use. (I understand that massive renewable deployment combined with massive efficiency increases costs much more than efficiency increases alone, especially when you look at the incremental cost. But the side effects of continued fossil fuel use are great enough that we come out way ahead doing both.)
Permalink
Sean Casten Posted 6:52 am
28 Jul 2008
Permalink
Jonas Posted 9:07 am
28 Jul 2008
Trials by Dr Van Zwieten in Autralia have shown 5 to 10-fold reductions in N2O emissions as a result of biochar amendments - N2O being a very potent GHG - as well as significant reductions in methane.
See BeyondZeroEmission's interview with Van Zwieten.
In the integrated pyrolysis-and-gasification technology for producing biochar, carbon-negative electricity is produced, actively removing CO2 from the atmosphere. The technology is low-cost and soon to breakthrough.
On many similar charts as the one produced by TVA, biochar ranks amongst the options with a potential negative CO2 abatement cost, depending on the location, soil type and the nature of the field residues. It also has a very, very large CO2-reduction potential because of its negative emissions. (According to a first assessment, the biochar economy can mitigate all yearly, global emissions, and withdraw CO2 from the atmosphere, taking us steadily back to pre-industrial levels, if need be.)
See Lehmann C. et al. Terrestrial Carbon Sequestration with Biochar: A Preliminary Assessment of its Global Potential, American Geophysical Union, 2007 Fall Meeting.
So CCS coupled to biomass, as a negative emissions energy system, might have a huge potential, but it is simply too costly to be implemented anywhere soon on a large scale. Biochar is much safer, easier to implement, much less costly and has an equally large potential to sequester carbon.
The concept is rather new, though, so it might take a while for it to pop up in the debate.
But I would certainly rank it amongst the most promising of the energy efficiency options, and as an energy efficiency strategy, not merely as a negative emissions energy system; after all, fertilizers, irrigation and farming's use of fossil fuels contribute in a rather large way to wasting energy and to GHG emissions. Biochar offers a tremendous opportunity to make farming far more efficient and sustainable.
Permalink
timbuktu Posted 9:27 am
28 Jul 2008
Permalink
timbuktu Posted 9:29 am
28 Jul 2008
Permalink
GreyFlcn Posted 9:38 pm
28 Jul 2008
Perhaps at the top of that list, we should make a habit of first saying Efficiency.
i.e. "Efficiency First".
Since usually it's just an afterthought.
Efficiency, Baseload Solar Thermal, Solar Photovoltaics, Geothermal, Wind, and Hydropower
-David Ahlport
Permalink
vakibs Posted 11:13 pm
28 Jul 2008
and Nuclear power... (in that order)
If we don't manage to eliminate fossil fuel usage by all the items in your list put together, it is time we consider nuclear.
Demand for coal is growing, and this should be stopped ASAP. It is scary how several people shut their eyes and pretend nothing is happening.
Some scary numbers : The world-wide total of active coal plants is over 50,000 and rising. The International Energy Agency (IEA) estimates that fossil fuels will account for 85% of the energy market by 2030.
We have 200 years worth of coal rotting in the mines below, and god help us if even half of this gets thrown into the air as CO2.
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 1:10 am
29 Jul 2008
All electric cars are a long way off. Plug in hybrids will hit the market in a year or two.
The above concept would work for them as well. I also think it would work much better if such a subsidy were used as a marketing tool.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 1:56 am
29 Jul 2008
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 3:44 am
29 Jul 2008
I called VW, that owns Audi now, and asked about a plgun hybrid drivetrain like this for a carbon fiber hypercar version of the "Bug". "No plans for a plugin hybrid for the US", was the answer.
I pointed out that baby boomers would flock to these. The equivalent electric HP to the old 70s Bug would be fine. About 40 hp.
Whover builds these, or if Audi sells them here, will have to take over the car market in a few years. Just like Toyota is doing now with high mileage and hybrid vehicles. But remember this, car travel is around only 10% of GHG.
Peterbilt has a hybrid semi tractor, maybe they will go plugin someday? Buses could use these drivetrains too.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
Biodiversivist Posted 4:03 am
29 Jul 2008
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 4:09 am
29 Jul 2008
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 4:14 am
29 Jul 2008
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 4:28 am
29 Jul 2008
I think subtle hints at certification problems might be enough to get the message to other automakers about possible trade restrictions. Are those batteries safe? That sort of thing.
Remember the Tucker assault on the big three? Imagine how threated GM and the others feel now? Administration political appointees are no doubt pushing agendas anti-plugin along the foreign car certification buraeucracy.
We can hope bio-d is right, that in a few years plugin hybrids will be for sale here. At reasonable cost? Hmmm, another question. I'm hoping for conversions.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 5:30 am
29 Jul 2008
Permalink
amazingdrx Posted 6:03 am
29 Jul 2008
If fact I think they guard against greenies rising in the party ranks. Even though we do volunteer. I have found it best to donate and volunteer and not talk up environment too much.
My global warming sign on my bike, in the July 4th parade, was a point of nervousness for them, too radical. I skipped it this year.
http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin
Permalink
Jon Rynn Posted 6:12 am
29 Jul 2008
Permalink
solar greg Posted 7:20 am
29 Jul 2008
An you might take it another step and store "cold" from winter in a separate trench.
What I usually hear is that it's expensive because of the trenches or wells. I don't think it should be that expensive.
Permalink
Paleocon Posted 7:48 am
29 Jul 2008
On the subject of "too many people", I agree whole heartedly and support the idea that only animals should donate to:
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population
"...a 90 percent chance that the US has contributed .2 degrees F of temperature increase in the last 50 years..." The IPCC Consensus in perspective
Permalink