“Emily, Emily, Emily. He wrote wedges, not wedgies.”

“oh… Never mind.”

“Aunt Emily, Aunt Emily, I found it. I found it on the Internet. How to give a Princeton wedgie. See, first you…”

“That’s nice, dear. Tell me about on our way home.”

“Did you get him to sign his book for me?”

“No, dear, Doctor Romm is a busy man. But, I did find out something about him… Did you know he wears lifts in his shoes?”

“No!”

“Yes. And, I think they are odor eaters because he kept going on about carbon. Now tell me what you learned on the Internet today…”

So, can you re-calculate what 10 wedges means in terms that every world citizen knows what he must DO? Like: move into a modest city apartment, eat meat once a month, and walk to work?

Or how about getting the political scientists involved to say what it will take to generate the political will to come up with 10 wedges? Like: Three more Katrinas, or ten million more full-time volunteers, or 50 million more single-issue Green voters?

Let’s get specific.

The problem with convincing people that global warming heating is going to make things FUBAR is that it is extremely nuanced - to the point where even many with a science background can’t extend their understanding beyond their own narrow fields and therefore deny the problem.

Those that do have the understanding say to everyone else “bad things are coming, you better stop burning coal and here are some alternatives” the rest think “FUJIA (F**k you Jack, I’m alright) no bad things here I’ll keep doing what I want, thanks.”

I can’t see any real action beyond the usual hand waving until there are a series of mega disasters. You talk about a WWII effort - but that won’t happen until bombs start dropping.

What is happening now is creeping normalcy. It gets a little bit hotter or a little bit drier or flooding slowly increases in frequency, whatever. Folks just get used to it forget that is was cooler and wetter in the past.

The majority of people won’t understand the implications of sustained drought until water doesn’t come out of the tap - to make the analogy, this is a bomb landing in their back yard and it might spark real action.

Elbarto — If the majority of the worlds’ population read this blog, I’d write for them. By 2020, I think, a large fraction of Americans will know ppm and feedbacks and other things I write about. This blog if for people who want to get ahead of the curve.

You may be right that it will take one or more catastrophes to get the change we need. Sadly, however, world can’t wait for that.

BUT– as I said to you, Joe, and to everyone else at one of your public talks six months ago, we have no reason to believe that 450 ppm will yield a stable climate. In fact, what reason do we have to believe that 350 ppm will yield a stable climate? The only half-way relevant data we have on a stable climate is that 280 ppm correlated over a very long period of time with a relatively stable climate.

Joe - Yes, you are being practical by talking about 450 ppm — “practical” as a compromise between reality and what people might be able to hear. Talking about 350 ppm and what it will take to get there will freak people out — the people who will still be reading. But, do you do those of us in your loyal following a favor by writing as though 450 ppm is a worthwhile goal? You’ve written about Hansen in a respectful way. I tend to pay close attention to what he writes and says. He is braver than most scientists. I know you read his Env Research Letters article “Scientific reticence and sea level rise” where he says most scientists are afraid to publish research results that might scare people. I don’t think Hansen would encourage us to believe that 450 ppm will give us a stable climate.

Run, don’t walk, to the nearest exit. The calamity is upon us.

Wedges are a nice way to visualize. You have properly identified a fundamental flaw in the assumptions - the 1.5% annual Carbon emissions growth rate rather than the current 3% rate. So, let’s get serious. We are in big trouble. When those who read your blog start criticizing the wedges concept, I can only wonder where the lifeboats are. I can’t find any on this ship, but I do have my PVs running my meter backwards when the sun shines. No meat for me. But my air travel erases all my good behavior and puts me right there on the deck counting deck chairs. Mea culpa.

I love solar — it is so attractive, but…. There are real limits.

Wind is likely to provide three to five times as much electricity as solar, according to several authoritative sources I have read lately. Check out Dan Kammen’s 2006 article in Scientific American, (Kammen, D. M. (2006) “The Rise of Renewable Energy”, Scientific American, September. 82 - 91).

He shows growth in wind that greatly overshadows the potential of PV solar. He puts global generating capacity of solar power at 5,000 megawatts at a top efficiency of experimental solar cells at 37 percent [more than twice current efficiency — my comment, not Kammen’s] and a cost per kilowatt-hour of solar power of 20 to 25 cents.

Compare this to his numbers for wind at 60,000 megawatts global generating capacity of wind power; 0.5 percent Fraction of U.S. electricity
produced by wind turbines; and, 1 .9 cents tax credit for wind power, per kilowatt-hour of electricity. He writes that America has enormous wind
energy resources, enough to generate as much as 11 trillion kilowatt-hours of electricity each year. Some of the best locations for wind turbines are the Great Plains states, the Great Lakes and the mountain ridges of the
Rockies and the Appalachians.

If you can’t find the Sci Am article, look at this one, Renewable Energy Policy Network for the 21st Century. Renewables 2007 - Global Status Report. Ren21, Feb 2008. See publication., available at http://rael.berkeley.edu/ files/ 2008/ Re2007_Global_Status_Report.pdf.

Joe,
Is it possible to express the reduction of a gigaton of carbon as a given amount of generating capacity?

Hal: I think we need to stay below 450 this century, then go back to 350 by 2150. Hansen’s analysis does not say that won’t do the job.

the simplest (not precise) way to

[express the reduction of a gigaton of carbon as a given amount of generating capacity]

is to use data from the EPA Quarterly emissions report which provides total kwhr generated and CO2 emissios from that unit in 2007.

By dividing 2007 totals, I got 1.82 lb CO2/kwhr.

Using a 90 percent on-line factor, that approximated 139,383 MW of fossil-fired generating capacity emitting about a gigaton of CO2.

Anyone having a simpler route to get a number, have at it.

John McCormick

I usually use the rule of thumb that the U.S. electric grid is about 0.6 metric tons of CO2/megaWatt-hour (that is the equivalent of one large, 30% efficient gas-fired plant).

100% coal is about double that. The California grid is about half that.

This is old, from DOE — but I can’t find a more recent one.
http://tonto.eia.doe.gov/ ftproot/ environment/ e-supdoc-u.pdf

This is a great EPA brochure with every conversion you could want:
http://www.epa.gov/appdstar/pdf/brochure.pdf

“Average CO2 Emissions Factor (all sources): 1,392 lbs/MWh (1,515 lbs/MWh, delivered)”

We must aggressively work to increase the energy efficiency of the economy as an explicit first priority. Bottom line, efficiency is cheaper, the energy density of renewable systems demands a more efficient energy infrastructure, and there is more technical potential than the Princeton wedges imply.

This has real world implications. For example, with efficiency we can cut carbon significantly right now at low or no cost; and we can reduce the amount of new renewable infrastructure we build in the future. But because we make efficiency “one solution among many,” we under-invest in efficiency based R&D and we overstate costs of achieving a given policy goal.

The wedges make a neat organizing tool, but without some explicit policy priorities, they do as much to misinform as the do to inform.

“the solar PV potential is finite, not infinite. you can’t keep growing it exponentially — even with vast improvements in conversion efficiency, the growth you describe cannot be projected indefinitely”

I’d be careful making assertions that are so strongly significant, even based on the analysis of a known expert. Serious work is beginning all around and there are lots of experts and perspectives. A more recent SciAm article, for example, contained a solar call to arms.

I was working off a very old version of the wedges which the Princeton boys gave a long, long, time ago. I see now they’ve updated it.

In the words of Emily Latella: Never mind,

You can see the EPA’s own analysis of average emission factors at the Power Profiler site by putting in any zip code in the country. It will give you the AVERAGE ANNUAL emissions for that zip code and the national AVERAGE ANNUAL emissions. I emphasize AVERAGE ANNUAL because this number is rough and does not reflect time and weather-dependent variations in the inventory of plants on-line at various times of day, week, and year. lt lists the national average CO2 emissions as 1363 lbs/MWh. It lists the CO2 emissions for my (California) zip code as 879 lbs/MWh. California plants do not include any coal, but the Western Region interconnected grid (WERC) does, so when CA imports electricity, it may be higher than when all CA electricity comes from within the state.

A valuable source of additional (more accurate) emissions factors for building related emissions (70% of U.S. electric consumption and ~40% of carbon emissions) is the NREL report Source Energy and Emission Factors for Energy Use in Buildings by M. Deru and P. Torcellini, NREL Technical Report 550-38617, June 2007.

to ldgussin: can you give me the exact reference for the SciAm article you mentioned. And, is a “call to arms” the same as saying solar can do it all? If you take the solar energy that falls on certain portion of the land area and multiply it times a certain conversion efficiency, you get an estimate of the maximum potential generation. I have seen several of these kinds of estimates and been shocked at how low the potential is since I once believed it was far greater, large enough to supply all U.S. electric needs. It is far short of that if one takes a practical amount of the total land area, say 1/4 of Nevada, and uses a fairly high (by today’s standards) conversion efficiency.

For a much more realistic look at solar, take a look at Science 22 July 2005: Vol. 309. no. 5734, pp. 548 - 551 — Is It Time to Shoot for the Sun? by Robert Service. It gives a very realistic view of the potential for solar to meet future energy needs.

A Solar Grand Plan: By 2050 solar power could end U.S. dependence on foreign oil and slash greenhouse gas emissions

http://www.sciam.com/ article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

And for a sense of the renewable R&D work scaling up:

http://nrg.caltech.edu/

My point is to support arguments and references about renewables, but not, when the stakes are so high, generalized assertions.

450 ppm is silliness. We are in serious ecological overshoot NOW. That is right now services the environment provided like food, water and a predictable growing season are going bye-bye.

At this point we really are just all doing a big “hang-out and wait” and tabling a few science projects for disinterested passerby until the die-off starts and it occurs to the elites that they too could be included.

Until then this runaway train is going to keep on accelerating.

That’s why I added the NREl reference. Be very careful using eGRID numbers as there is a lot of variability that is only revealed by very detailed examination of the database. I did that and found things that didn’t make sense. I spoke with a number of authorities and have learned of the various sources of errors or distortion. Never the less, it is a compilation of every power plant in the country.

Anyone can use them to grow new plants, and because of this re-use, the Gaia’s Tribute containers do not go into landfills. They would instead be used to grow new plants/seedlings/trees, that could reverse global impact. Great for kids to get involved and learn how to make a difference! As the bottles degrade over time, the compacting process begins, too. Also, there’s an instant reversal and creation of carbon credits by the simple use of this product.

A very large potential for fundraising exists by use of the Gaia’s Tribute containers. There is a great potential for distribution of this system 408.476.3750 or e-mail to mdcnet1@gmail.com.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Sincerely,

Mike Carrieri, CEO
Gaia’s Tribute
mdcnet1@gmail.com
408.476.3750

One of your earlier discussants made an important point when he alluded to the difficulty in getting people to change their behavior. One of the best ways of doing this is through simple social pressure. Let people know what idiots you think they are for buying huge SUVs and wall-sized plasma TVs. When you see someone through away something that is recyclable, sigh loudly, go and retrieve it, and put it in the cloth bag you carry around to be put into a recycling bin later. When you are in a grocery store, go and stand in front of the bottled water and loudly proclaim — “Good God! Don’t people know that these things are made from petroleum? Better to buy a water filter and drink tap water.”

Be a pain in the ass! It seems to be the only thing that works with most people.

Lets not go down this path.

Herschel Specter

The real problem is that the hype is wrong. The models that predicted ‘worst case’ scenarios have been proven wrong by latest satellite measurements and studies of precipation systems. Sea level rise is not accelerating. Temperature rises are not matching models. And the models that use water vapor feedback are gradually getting disproven by data. Just one example:
http://www.uah.edu/News/newsread.php?newsID=875
Tropical cloud cover is a negative feedback in the climate system:
“All leading climate models forecast that as the atmosphere warms there should be an increase in high altitude cirrus clouds, which would amplify any warming caused by manmade greenhouse gases,” he said. “That amplification is a positive feedback. What we found in month-to-month fluctuations of the tropical climate system was a strongly negative feedback. As the tropical atmosphere warms, cirrus clouds decrease. That allows more infrared heat to escape from the atmosphere to outer space.”

Recent cooling trends dont disprove global warming, but they should at least make those hyping Global Warming to take notice: Natural climate change is real and the truth is almost surely not as bad as the hype pretends. Dont assume every weather event is due to man. Dont believe the lie that the ’science is done’, its still learning. In the end, things are not even close to FUBAR, unless we destroy the environment or economy in a chimerical quest to end global warming.

Correct.

“The majority of people won’t understand the implications of sustained drought ” Models that show global warming show overall increases in precipitation. Higher CO2 levels allow plants to grow with less water requirements, ie they are more drought tolerant.

The key issues are SCALABILITY and COST PER WEDGE. We didnt get that number, but some thoughts:

1. Wind - great, but its well-known reliability issue that precludes wind from being more than 10-20% of the grid. In Texas they are finding out the truth, wind exists and people exist but they arent close to eachother. A lot of cost to build the grid. More cost to keep the grid stable with variable wind power. You need peaker plants (nat gas?) and/or capacitive power (hydro?) to buffer it.
2. A single solar wedge costs $14 *trillion* ?!? Cant afford it. (Paul K)
Solar PV will come down in price, but even then, solar simply will never be cost-competitive for large scale. Useful for off-grid, remote, some rooftops (maybe) maybe even 3rd world.
This leaves aside the obvious issues of siting for solar and the fact that it will work in some locales (AZ) fine but not others (British Columbia) so well.
3. Nuclear - any wind or solar subsidy would go 10 to 50 times farther in CO2 reductions if applied to nuclear, as the level of subsidy / GW rated is much less and the generation / rated GW is higher than any alternative.
4. the “10 Yucca Mountains” is silly. We can have recycling of used nuclear fuel. Arent we for recycling in other areas, why not used fuel, which is 95% reusable? Do that and you still need only one small repository, and it doesnt even need to geological long-term safe. In other words, disposal is a non-issue, and if you think its enough to derail an AGW solution, then AGW must not be a serious problem to you.

As of right now, today, nuclear is 20% of generation in the US, and 70% in France and close to that in South Korea. In short, there are countries where nuclear is a viable 70% baseload generation solution. There are no countries where any other non-fossil and non-hydro solution gets close to that. Points #1 and #2 tell you that wind and solar wont cut it to even get to 1 wedge, but even if they do, they wont scale beyond it.

Yet when nuclear is raise, we get the scaremongering like this: “(3 nuclear plants built each week for 50 years)” … well, guess what … ANY wedge has those huge scale issues. How many thousands and thousands of wind turbines is a mere 13GW rated? well, that is only a dozen large nuclear plants, but is 13,000 or so wind turbines, consuming thousands of acres and requiring billions in transmission infrastructure to be useful. (For Texas, about $6 billion in such infrastructure on top of the turbine cost).

400 nuclear power plants, or 20/year for 40 years is doable for the US, and they would pay for themselves as with current costs nuclear is actually the cheapest form of energy to generate. Siting is easy - just let any existing site quadruple capacity. BTW the blog earlier states “And the power isn’t cheap: 8.3 to 11.1 cents per kilo-watt hour.” This is clearly false. The actual costs are much lower in the 4-5 cents/KWh range.

Double nuclear again, to about 800 GW rated for the US, and you will have made electricity fossil-fuel free (almost - 75% nuclear 10% wind 10% hydro+solar, 5% nat gas), and displaced most of the transportation energy (with plug-in hybrids) - All it requires is 800 nuclear power plants of 1GW+ each, at a US subsidy cost of under $100 billion *total* (over 40 years, so it is tiny really!), and a move towards wind/solar for 20% of generation.
End result is a reduction of US emissions by 80%, reduction in oil fuel use by 2/3rds.

If a single wedge does this … “requiring one-sixth of the world cropland.” … one has to notice that nuclear energy, with small land footprint, no emissions, is a more benign and less intrusive answer.

It may be that environmentalists will pose the greatest threat to the environment by opposing the one real solution to Global Warming - nuclear power.

http://tomnelson.blogspot.com/ 2008/ 05/ campaign-to-sue-al-gore-support.html

The article and commenters both failed to mention the labor force required to put in so many nuclear plants. Granted, many other technologies need high numbers, but there’s just not that large of a workforce that satisfies all the requirements. First, they have to be nuclear engineer level intelligence. Second they have to be trustable and stable. Third, they have to not compete with each other for the salaries and hiring bonuses that will be inevitable from such a buildup. The current buildup in 2 lousy pipelines across the midwest has driven pipe welders’ salaries into the stratosphere. One friend of mine is making $20,000/month to weld steel! I rather doubt he’s certified for anything nuclear.

Another issue is the construction skills. As everyone knows, when you embark on a massive buildup in anything, corners get cut in the name of saving a buck. Since no one would willingly allow this, it either won’t happen or it will tremendously impact price.

Fuel may be only a small part of the whole nuclear cost, so it’s price independent, but everything else that goes into a plant is inflating at higher than inflation rates now… and we haven’t even turned on the nuclear spiggot yet. Disregarding fuel’s price, who’s to say that the world competition won’t make the fuel scarce at any price?

Comparing nuclear subsidies, in any form, to any single renewable (which SHOULD BE done) or to the entire renewables basket is a joke. Let’s go back and compare nuclear’s 1st commercial year to CSP’s or let’s compare CSP’s 50th year to nuclear today when they’ve each had the same development time. To see why our plants are estimated at $0.10/kwh while the rest of the world is BUILDING CSP below the $0.06/kwh (expecting it to trend down for a long time), look only to the strings attached to the subsidies.

On CSP land use, when well-to-plug land/mwh is considered, CSP uses less land than coal, wind and even nuclear. Did someone forget to add in the mines and storage and all their externalties? CSP plants are fully recyclable and can be designed with no water cooling. Try either of those tricks with nuclear. ..or maybe the time the land is unavailable after the plant closes doesn’t count. Also consider the PERMANENT aquifer contamination of in-situ mining before you suggest it as the only other mining method to reduce land use.

Nuclear can increase it’s scale but CSP cannot? For nuclear to do this, it had to be underscaled in the first place and now be allowed to surpass limits that were deemed unsafe in earlier times. Let’s not suddenly start using 30-40 year old equipment to 120% of the levels they have been time-tested to. CSP is easily scalable on any scale because it’s a more modular technology.

Transmission costs are greater for CSP than nuclear? This is completely dependant on the two sites being compared. Nuclear may be more concentrated in one area so only one ‘link’ needs to be ran, but that same concentration means a guaranteed overload on any existing line. This means a new line is needed for most all new plants. CSP, on the other hand, is usually less dense (typ. 100mw to 900mw per site) and can be sited to spread the load between different lines. Also, remember this concentration applies to the security of the transmission leg as well. What happens to grid stability when someone throws a logchain over the substation feeding a 4+ GW plant?

CSP has yet another benefit over nuclear. While it is hardly maturing yet, it is proven to be economically scalable to dual land uses like parking lots or the commercial, industrial and even the residential level. When they become more accepted, we’ll see that they offer domestic heat as a free waste byproduct. This effectively doubles their contribution for the cost of a heat exchanger. This option has the potential alone to contribute more than a full wedge as merely a spinoff.

I think I’d vote for leaving nuclear in the basket while we concentrate on other forms of energy. I wouldn’t want to end up like France which relies on Denmark to use their excess juice at nighttime because they don’t want to turn their nukes up and down twice a day to follow peak.