Is 450 ppm (or less) politically possible? Part 2: The Solution
In this post I will lay out “the solution” to global warming, focusing primarily on the 14 “stabilization wedges.”
Part 1 argued that stabilizing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide at 450 ppm is not politically possible today, but that it is certainly achievable from an economic and technological perspective. It would require some 14 of Princeton’s “stabilization wedges” — strategies and/or technologies that over a period of a few decades each reduce global carbon emissions by one billion metric tons per year from projected levels (see technical paper here, less technical one here). The reason that we need twice as many wedges as Princeton’s Pacala and Socolow have said we need was explained in Part 1.
I agree with the IPCC, which concluded last year that “The range of stabilization levels assessed can be achieved by deployment of a portfolio of technologies that are currently available and those that are expected to be commercialised in coming decades.” The technologies they say can beat 450 ppm are here. Technology Review, one of the nation’s leading technology magazines, also argued in a cover story two years ago, “It’s Not Too Late,” that “Catastrophic climate change is not inevitable. We possess the technologies that could forestall global warming.”
I do believe only “one” solution exists in this sense — We must deploy every conceivable energy-efficient and low carbon technology that we have today as fast as we can. Princeton’s Pacala and Socolow proposed that this could be done over 50 years, but that is almost certainly too slow.
We’re at 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year — rising 3.3% per year — and we have to average below 18 billion tons a year for the entire century if we’re going to stabilize at 450 ppm. We need to peak around 2015 to 2020 at the latest, then drop at least 60% by 2050 to 15 billion tons (4 billion tons of carbon), and then go to near zero net carbon emissions by 2100.
That’s why a sober guy like IPCC head Rajendra Pachauri, said in November: “If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment.” Or as I told Technology Review, “The point is, whatever technology we’ve got now — that’s what we are stuck with to avoid catastrophic warming.”
If we could do the 14 wedges in four decades, we should be able to keep CO2 concentrations to under 450 ppm. If we could do them faster, concentrations could stay even lower. We’d probably need to do this by 2030 to have a shot at getting back to 350 this century. [And yes, like Princeton, I agree we need to do some R&D now to ensure a steady flow of technologies to make the even deeper emissions reductions needed in the second half of the century.]
I am not going to focus on the politics, policies, market factors, or mindset needed to achieve these 14 wedges. That will be the subject of Part 4. But, needless to say, none of this can happen without a serious price for carbon dioxide and a very aggressive technology deployment effort.
So here is the basic solution. I have thrown in a couple extra wedges since I have no doubt that everybody will find something objectionable in at least 2 of these wedges. This is what the entire planet must achieve:
- 1 wedge of vehicle efficiency — all cars 60 mpg, with no increase in miles traveled per vehicle.
- 1 of wind for power — one million large (2 MW peak) wind turbines
- 1 of wind for vehicles –another 2000 GW wind. Most cars must be plug-in hybrids or pure electric vehicles.
- 3 of concentrated solar thermal – ~5000 GW peak.
- 3 of efficiency — one each for buildings, industry, and cogeneration/heat-recovery for a total of 15 to 20 million GW-hrs.
- 1 of coal with carbon capture and storage — 800 GW of coal with CCS
- 1 of nuclear power — 700 GW plus 10 Yucca mountains for storage
- 1 of solar photovoltaics — 2000 GW peak [or less PV and some geothermal, tidal, and ocean thermal]
- 1 of cellulosic biofuels — using one-sixth of the world’s cropland [or less land if yields significantly increase or algae-to-biofuels proves commercial at large scale].
- 2 of forestry — End all tropical deforestation. Plant new trees over an area the size of the continental U.S.
- 1 of soils — Apply no-till farming to all existing croplands.
That should do the trick. And yes, the scale is staggering.
Why not more than 1 wedge of CCS? That one wedge represents a flow of CO2 into the ground equal to the current flow of oil out of the ground. It would require, by itself, re-creating the equivalent of the planet’s entire oil delivery infrastructure. I also think that CCS has practical issues that will limit its scale, not the least of which is that I doubt it will be among the cheaper solutions. But that is another blog post.
Why not more than 1 wedge of nuclear? Based on a post last year on the Keystone report, to do this by 2050 would require adding globally, an average of 17 plants each year, while building an average of 9 plants a year to replace those that will be retired, for a total of one nuclear plant every two weeks for four decades — plus 10 Yucca Mountains to store the waste. I also doubt it will be among the cheaper options. And the uranium supply and non-proliferation issues for even that scale of deployment are quite serious.
Note to all: Do I want to build all those nuclear plants. No. Do I think we could do it without all those nuclear plants. Probably. Therefore, should I be quoted as saying we “must” build all those nuclear plants, as the Drudge Report has, or even that I propose building all those plants? No. Do I think we will have to swallow a bunch of nuclear plants as part of the grand bargain to make this all possible and that other countries will build most of these? I have no doubt. So it stays in “the solution” for now. [Note to self: Are you beginning to sound like Donald Rumsfeld? Yes.]
This is not to say the two wind power wedges (4000 GW peak total) would be easy — we only built 20 GW last year. We would need to average 100 GW/year through 2050. But I do think it is ecologically and economically possible, as I think all the other wedges are, too.
But none of the wedges is easy. That’s why getting to 450 ppm is not yet politically possible. Not even close. As noted, part 4 will discuss the politics, policies, market factors, or mindset needed to achieve these 14 wedges.
Three more points: First, it bears repeating that the wedges are not analytically rigorous (as I explained in Part 1), but they are conceptually useful. We might need a few more or a few less.
Second, based on comments posted on this blog, it seemed to make more sense to present the total solution first before posting on each individual wedge in detail. But I do expect to blog in detail on each of these wedge in the coming months.
Third, if you don’t like one of those wedges, you need to find a replacement strategy. Other possibilities can be found here, but I think the ones above are the most plausible by far, which tells you how dubious some of Princeton’s other wedges are [– I’m talking about you, would-be hydrogen wedges]. Could a bunch of breakthrough technologies substitute for some of the above wedges? That is far more implausible, as I will discuss in Part 3.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:49 pm
Most importantly the solution will be composed of multiple solutions. All eggs in one basket is a loser.
April 22nd, 2008 at 4:59 pm
Can we have a wedge or wedges for non-CO2 issues like nitrous oxide & farming practices, methane (cows & maybe different rice strains), soot reduction, albedo changes in buildiings to reduce UHI (and hence air-conditioner load).
A friend of ours, a retired vice-chairman of a very large oil company and I were at dinner with him last week. He volunteered:
- efficiency is #1
- forget about hydrogen
albeit at much greater length.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:16 pm
This is a very apt way to put it, especially the idea that we need to do what we’re going to do now, with what we’ve got. I often find myself expanding on it during the Q and A after organizing speeches for 350.org. People say: ‘don’t we need a new economic system?’ ‘don’t we need to get a new nature-based spirituality?’ And I say: in the relevant time frame, we’re going to be using the tools provided by markets, and in this country by Christianity. They are perhaps sufficient, and we’ve got to put them quickly to use.
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
This post is ridiculously succinct and helpful. A fantastic summary piece of information. Will be passing out the link…
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Given the promise of solar thermal why not tack a few more wedges on?
April 22nd, 2008 at 5:38 pm
I should add that I propose trying to add to solar thermal, if at all possible, to try and relieve pressure specifically on: flattening miles driven and building so many nuclear plants - the most difficult goals, of many difficult goals, it seems to me.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:05 pm
“We’re at 30 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions a year — rising 3.3% per year — and we have to average below 18 billion tons a year for the entire century if we’re going to stabilize at 450 ppm. We need to peak around 2015 to 2020 at the latest, then drop at least 60% by 2050 (to 4 billion tons a year or less), and then go to near zero net carbon emissions by 2100.”
Wrong. We never have to go zero to stabilize CO2 levels, they will decay lower at zero emissions. In fact, since sinks absorb about 50% of emissions, any reduction lower than 50% would get us to minimal growth.
And what would be the point of going lower than status quo of 380ppm?
cooling may do more harm than good.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:16 pm
Why did you absolve the aviation industry from any need to change? How did something that very few people had ever done by 1950 (and that most people will never do today) become an unquestioned necessity by 2008?
See today’s Xian Science Monitor for an interesting story on the Swedes, green at home but jetting all over for vacations …
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:19 pm
“1 of nuclear power — 700 GW plus 10 Yucca mountains for storage”
This silliness again. Why 10- Yucca mountains, when nuclear used fuel is moslty kept onsite and is doing just fine? When Yucca isnt even open, let alone full? When used nuclear fuel is 95% actinides that are recyclable fuel? Keep 1 Yucca mountain and *recycle* the fuel to MOX. boom, problem solved and we can expand nuclear power generation by a factor of 20 on the *same* amount of uranium mined with status quo.
That means you can have 4-6 wedges of nuclear power.
2800 GW of nuclear energy. Over 50 years, it is only $50 billion/yr, doable, and it will cost much less (and use up much less space) than this:
3 of concentrated solar thermal – ~5000 GW peak.
It also way outcompetes coal+CCS economically.
even this “We would need to average 100 GW/year through 2050.” commitment on wind is ‘overblown’. 100,000 turbines or so built a year?
That alone will cost $200/billion a year or more.
All such options should be considered, by treated on an even-playing-field basis.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Ken,
I’ve figured that CSP/solar thermal electric might with sufficient transmission and electrification of transport and industry cover about 50% of emissions so 7 wedges in this format. However there are a number of different interdependencies that make attribution of GHG mitigations to single technologies difficult. That’s why I use the Renewable Electron Economy concept, which links the shift of energy supply with shifts in energy demand. I think though keeping a diversity of technologies in the mix, as Joe has done, is a more conservative option.
However many wedges you attribute to it, CSP with storage should be pushed to the front of the policy agenda if we are serious about phasing out coal plants.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Great post - a very useful clarification of the wedge idea.
One quick question (and one the applies to the Princeton work as well), what is the time-line of implementing a wedge? If we start on wedges in 2010, when does a wedge have to be fully in place by to be effective?
Sorry if I’m missing something.
April 22nd, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Ken + Michael — 5000 GW of CSP is staggering by itself. It certainly is more scalable than any other form of base load or load following power, as I’ve argued. When we get up to 50 GW/year, I’ll revisit this.
JMG: I haven’t left out aviation — some of the biofuels will no doubt be used by jets.
Patrick: I am simply using the Keystone analysis, which everyone on both sides of the debate tells me is the fairest analysis out there. You tell me where their assumptions are wrong. It is hard to see how nuclear could be the low-cost option. At current rates of construction and usage, the cost of the plants and the uranium have shot through the roof. I just don’t see how nuclear will complete with CSP or with wind for plug ins. “Recycling” as you put it has serious nonproliferation implications if we are going to build thousands of plants. Heck even hundreds more will be problematic.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:05 pm
I think it is key to realize that we start out on a program such as yours, starting immediately, but we continually adjust it based upon costs, successes, failures, new technology (if any), etc. The point in having a plan is that (1) it tells us what incentives, policies, infrastructure, and regulations are necessary; (2) it tells us how had it is to accomplish and motivates starting today rather than procrastinating.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:47 pm
Joe — There is no need to use even one additional hectare of agricultural cropland for biofuels. There are plenty of suitable plants which will grow nicely on soils too degraded for crops and in areas with too little precipitation to practice agriculture. For example, Jatrophra will grow on poor soils with little moisture.
The biofuels potential is much larger than the one wedge you assigned. Very much larger world-wide, even leaving out the improvements in algial production of biofuels.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Patrick M — We are currently killing corals by over-heating the oceans, not to mention the problems that ocean acidification is bringing. So we need to stablize emisions as rapidly as possible and then reduce the amount of carbon in the active carbon cycle as quickly as may be.
While that will take many decades, so there is plenty of time for research, discussion and policy-setting, here are two pieces of data, boht from the Swiss alpine glaciers:
(1) In 1850 CE, with CO2 at 288 ppm, the glaciers were still slowly advancing;
(2) By 1958 CE, with CO2 at 315 ppm, the glaciers were retreating at about 4 m/y.
So based on just this, somewhere in between these two values appears best to me.
April 22nd, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Oh, wait, my bad, I posted it to the other blog.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:25 pm
Michael — I didn’t delete that post. It’s in a different thread (here). I promise I will get to it. It took me longer to write this post than I thought — and my readers wanted this post up first. I will address some of your questions in Part 3. And then after Part 4, I may do a separate post on any unanswered questions.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:56 pm
“The point is, whatever technology we’ve got now — that’s what we are stuck with to avoid catastrophic warming.”
Joe, I don’t understand the reasoning behind this statement of yours. Granted, we must begin right away with everything we have in order to slow the additional release of greenhouse gases. But isn’t it reasonable to assume that new technologies may well be developed in the coming decades that could economically extract large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere?
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Joe,
I’ve got a question about these stabilization wedges.
You wrote in the post ‘And yes, the scale is staggering.’ It sure is, with a million 2MW wind turbines for power and another million for all those plug-in vehicles. And 5000 GW of concentrated solar thermal. But aren’t all those wind turbines and CSP plants just substitutes for other power plants, mostly what would be coal plants.
A few days ago you posted this;
http://climateprogress.org/ 2008/ 04/ 21/ time-gets-the-net-cost-of-climate-action-wrong-by-a-factor-of-twenty/
which mentioned that we don’t have to have to talk about absorbing 2 to 3 percent of GDP to low and non carbon energy, but just redirecting that 2 to 3 percent of GDP from high carbon energy sources.
To mention one million 2 MW wind turbines as one wedge, I say holy crap, that’s a lot of wind turbines. But isn’t that wedge just a substitute from putting in some hundreds or thousands of coal plants that will be burning millions of tons of coal. I think that the one million 2 MW wind turbines will look less staggering if it’s mentioned how many coal plants don’t have to be built. Because it seems that people are going to demand their energy, it would just be better if they were supplied with low and non carbon energy.
So if we were to calculate the cost of the one million 2 MW wind turbines wedge, we’d add up the cost of that minus the cost of all those coal plants and coal. Also then all the cars at 60 MPG would have to be minus all those oil refineries that wouldn’t have to be built because the fuel mileage was better.
I don’t remember a discussion on that in other articles I’ve read on stabilization wedges and I was wondering if I was wrong thinking that would be helpful. Because if people read just the one million wind turbines, they just might forget about all that coal and coal plants.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:31 am
With liquid-fluoride thorium reactors you could do a lot more than one wedge, and you wouldn’t need those Yucca Mountains.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:48 am
Joe- Your numbers don’t add up:
http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/ prometheus/ archives/ energy_policy/ 001406joe_romms_fuzzy_mat.html
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:21 am
Mike:
“new technologies may well be developed in the coming decades that could economically extract large amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere?”
Maybe, but while working 10 years in an R&D organization whose historical record for breakthroughs is pretty good, we had a mantra:
“Never schedule breakthroughs” because *we* couldn’t.
Some things we thought were, were not [bubble memories, photonic computing], while others were relatively minor when they first happened [transistors, modern PV cells, lasers]. A huge number of things were tried that didn’t work out, but of course, the trick was to manage an R&D portfolio the right way, with progressive commitment, rather than just throwing money at things. There were a few projects where people did the latter, and they were disasters.
Do you have something in mind? Needless to say, such technology would be one of the world’s most important breakthoughs this cenury, along with much-improved batteries.
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:56 am
The article clearly, yet *reluctantly*, accepts nuclear energy as a wedge.
In a way, this is the party line of the Nuclear Energy Institute and most pro-nuclear politicians, CEO’s, labor unions, etc etc.
I find this strange. If the advantages of nuclear power outway all other forms (debatable, obviously: economics, effects on carbon effluent, reliability, availability, etc etc) then I’m not sure why it is deemed to have only one, reluctant, “wedge” in the climate change solution model?
If the US built another 100 NPPs over and above the ones on line now, it would reduce *specifcally* over 1/5, and more like 1/4 of ALL the CO2 (not to mention scads of partulate) by being able to shut down KW-per-KW of coal. NO other non-CO2 emitting power source can make this claim. The cost would be less than we’ve spent on the war in Iraq fighting for someones elses oil. About 300 billion bucks. *Probably less* since they actually get cheaper as you build more of ‘em.
If we were to start, along with this scenerio to transition into the LFTRs that Kirk mentions, not only would costs plummet (because they use about 1/3 the material, fuel costs are almost non-existent and waste is about 1/35 the amount from current LWRs) we could go over to a completely thorium economy and no worry about wind turbines or closing off the deserts to mirror-farms. We could end ALL electrical generation caused CO2 emissions and start, with the LFTRs to produce non-carbon liquid fuels.
David Walters
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:42 am
Yeah, the thorium molten salt reactor does need more publicity. And it needs government research funding which it doesn’t have practically at all anywhere. It’s the young badly treated sibling in the nuclear family, a hugely talented genius shoved to the corner when the more brash bask in the limelight.
It has been demonstrated decades ago and is a solution tens to hundreds of times better and more sophisticated than existing nuclear power - and infinitely better than coal.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:51 am
Some background on how fluoride reactor technology lost out to what the AEC really wanted back in the 1960s: weapons-grade plutonium.
Of particular interest is a chapter titled “My Biggest Mistake.” Morgan was increasingly concerned about the newly developed liquid metal fast breeder reactor (LMFBR). He was convinced that the (liquid-fluoride thorium reactor [LFTR]), that had been developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), provided a safer and more acceptable means of producing nuclear power.
In July 1971, Morgan arranged to deliver a paper on the dangers of the LMFBR at an international meeting of radiation physicists. He intended to express his view that the LMFBR offered a relatively easy means of access to an atomic bomb and that he much preferred the (LFTR). “It was frightening to think of tons of plutonium as spent fuel from reactors being shipped through New York and other big cities to processing plants, then to fuel fabrication facilities, and finally back to LMFBRs all over the world.”
He pointed out that plutonium-239 served as the operating fuel in the LMFBR and would be bred in relatively large concentrations in the natural uranium, U-238. By means of a relatively simple procedure one could separate the plutonium and construct a low-level atomic bomb. The plutonium-239 produced by the LMFBR would not only serve as an incitement to terrorists, it also used plutonium, one of the greatest hazards of all radioactive materials.
(LFTR), using U-233, held much less appeal for terrorists since it is very difficult to produce. Also, it can be denatured and rendered unsuitable for use in bombs. For this and other reasons, he considered (LFTR) to be preferable.
Morgan sent 250 copies of his paper to the meeting chairman. But in his absence on vacation, the decision was made to destroy his 250 copies and substitute a revised version. He was instructed to say nothing about the superiority of the (LFTR) over the LMFBR. He was told that “the president has decided to allocate $30 million of extra money to expedite building a demonstration LMFBR. You are jeopardizing the welfare of the laboratory.” It was implied that if Morgan gave the original speech, hundreds of Oak Ridge jobs would be lost.
Morgan then states: “Here, I made the biggest mistake of my life. I reasoned that if I fought the issue and hundreds of people in Oak Ridge lost their jobs, I would be one of them–I would lose not only my job, but also the retirement benefits I had labored over a quarter of a century to obtain. I feared that powerful elements within ORNL management would destroy my reputation in the scientific community. . . . Red-faced, I bowed my head and described the risks of plutonium exposure, but without mentioning the (LFTR) or the LMFBR.” When I returned to ORNL, my fellow employees, disgusted with management, deplored the incident. W. S. Snyder, my assistant director, said it constituted censorship. Snyder was right. I should have stood my ground regardless of the consequences. Had I done so, perhaps the world would never have had reactors such as those at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island.“
There’s a reason we don’t have wedges of thorium available right now–a conscious, concerted effort to make it so.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:07 am
Roger Pielke Jr., your numbers do add up. How much silver did the Cato Institute drop in your lap to get you to publish in Regulation? Also, why do you think that they invited you to write for them and not somebody with more credibility like Jim Hansen or Michael Mann?
Just wondering. Regulation served a very important function for the tobacco industry in delaying any regulation on second hand smoke, and I’m wondering if the sponsor for their climate change articles might be Exxon Mobil.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:34 am
Well, as Roger Pielke Jr. himself admits, the numbers are sensitive to the rate at which you assume emissions would grow without any effort to reduce emissions, so let us ask Roger, where would we be if we adopted his lay back and enjoy it while praying to the technology fairy policies.
I might point out that the original technology fairy fan, Newt Gingrich, appears to have jilted the creature, or at least is not going out with her as much.
The facts are that even if you believe in technology fairies or ponies, the longer we delay on policies such as Joe Romm outlines, the more the fairy is going to have to deliver. There are serious procrastination penalties associated with non-action on climate change, and a large cliff that our grandchildren will fall off of.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:13 am
Roger — Thanks for catching my C vs CO2 error. I fixed it.
And thank you for your post. I probably should have elaborated on this issue already — so I’ll just do it in a new post, which will take me a few hours to put together.
As you’ll see, there actually isn’t a gap in my math — there is a gap in Socolow’s and Pacala’s math that most people (you included) miss. Stay tuned.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:51 am
Great post, Joe. I do believe we could eke out another wedge from transportation — it’s technologically possible to get to 100 mpg now with phevs; and between that, land use policies, and mass transit and I think we could get it. I also think there’s another to be had from efficiency … between CHP and building efficiency, the potential is certainly there, if we had the right set of policies.
I would also focus on the boreal forests as much or more as on the tropical forests — they hold more carbon, for starters.
But these comments are just noise … the real issue, as you’ve so admirably laid out, is to push on multiple (all?) fronts as hard as we can, recognizing that some things won’t pan out. And yes, BI, let’s do research, but let’s not use it as an excuse to do nothing now, and for god’s sake, let’s not bet the ranch — or the Earth — on it.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:58 am
But then again, I could be wrong. The IPCC case for attribution was an exercise in curve fitting. 450 ppm would then be “putting the cart before the horse”>
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:00 am
Kirk wrote, “With liquid-fluoride thorium reactors you could do a lot more than one wedge, and you wouldn’t need those Yucca Mountains.” The problem is that we don’t have a prototype LFTR (you might counter with MSRE, but note the “E” in its name and its small size), so it is premature to call this the solution. The idea is to proceed on a plan based upon deployable technology, and then add in new technology to the mix as it becomes deployable. Thus if the government builds a LFTR, and it then looks as good as you suggest, the mix would presumably change to reflect its strengths and weaknesses. However, to do nothing in the years until such a prototype exists would be sheer folly. We are adding 2 ppm to the atmosphere every year. We must start reducing that immediately.
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:37 am
Guys — This is a very important conversation. Thom, this kind of comment makes you, not Roger, look bad: “Roger Pielke Jr., your numbers do add up. How much silver did the Cato Institute drop in your lap to get you to publish in Regulation? Also, why do you think that they invited you to write for them and not somebody with more credibility like Jim Hansen or Michael Mann?”
Thom, Roger has never accepted money from any corporate interest. He is a university professor. He has long called not only for mitigation but also for immediate deployment of existing technologies. So please, disagree with him, but stop the personal attacks.
Same for you, Eli Rabett. This is disgusting: “Roger, where would we be if we adopted his lay back and enjoy it while praying to the technology fairy policies.” The phrase “lay back and enjoy it” is an allusion to rape.
Joe, respectfully, I’d ask you to call on your readers to keep the tone civil. That was my effort with my last long comment (under your post on Kristof). I’d say the tone is improving, slowly and steadily, and we’d all do well to prevent a backsliding here.
Sincerely,
Michael
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:38 am
just thought I would add this comment via Paul Krugman’s blog yesterday (via env-econ.net ) w.r.t. energy technology advances, and his experience researching that landscape for Bill Nordhaus back in 1973:
[[And the estimates — mainly from Bureau of Mines publications — were optimistic. Shale oil, coal gasification, and eventually the breeder reactor would satisfy our energy needs at not-too-high prices when the conventional oil ran out.
None of it happened. OK, Athabasca tar sands have finally become a significant oil source, but even there it’s much more expensive — and environmentally destructive — than anyone seemed to envision in the early 70s.
You might say that this is my answer to those who cheerfully assert that human ingenuity and technological progress will solve all our problems. For the last 35 years, progress on energy technologies has consistently fallen below expectations.
I’d actually suggest that this is true not just for energy but for our ability to manipulate the physical world in general: 2001 didn’t look much like (the movie) 2001, and in general material life has been relatively static. (How do the changes in the way we live between 1958 and 2008 compare with the changes between 1908 and 1958? I think the answer is obvious.)
But anyway, while the Limits to Growth stuff of the 1970s was a mess, the history of energy technology doesn’t support extreme optimism, either.]]
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2008/ 04/ 22/ limits-to-growth-and-related-stuff/
April 23rd, 2008 at 10:39 am
Kirk, in regard to “Some background on how fluoride reactor technology lost out” I have only a two word oxymoron to sum it up: Military Intelligence.
April 23rd, 2008 at 11:23 am
Earl, I certainly don’t propose a “do-nothing” strategy until LFTR technology comes (which may be never if political winds don’t shift) but on this thread we’re talking about “wedges”–huge chunks of CO2 reduction, and LFTR technology is extraordinarily promising to be one of more of these chunks.
Yes, I agree with you that the MSRE does not represent a prototype LFTR. Not even close actually. But what is really interesting about the MSRE is just how much the technology was advanced for what was essentially pocket-change for the AEC in the early 1960s. They took a revolutionary technology to the point where they demonstrated its safety and versatility for very little money.
I think that terrified the AEC, who saw how much LFTR technology threatened their plans to build weapons-grade-plutonium-fueled liquid-metal fast breeders, and until the heavy hand of Milton Shaw they moved to can Dr. Alvin Weinberg of ORNL, discredit the reactor research there, and terminate further work in fluoride reactors and thorium.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Kirk, thank you for the clarification. I don’t see any real disagreement then.
I cannot help matching the “pocket change” comment up with with the cost of decommissioning it (they may still be working on it, since years ago they didn’t expect to finish until 2009). One of the things I worry about is the decommissioning any nuclear reactor will end up being a tab picked up by the public. I very much doubt the funds supposedly set aside for this purpose will prove adequate.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:16 pm
I agree with Michael. People should refrain from speculative ad hominem attacks. Target the opposing argument, not your opponent.
April 23rd, 2008 at 2:36 pm
Michael, BI suggests that we need to invest (in R&D I think you mean) to make “clean energy” cheaper than “dirty energy”. However, this does not deal with the legacy of existing “dirty energy” infrastructure, which has the potential to bring ruin to Earth’s ecosystems without ever building a new “dirty energy” plant. I can see how cheap “clean energy” could eventually stop new “dirty energy” plants from being built, but it is much harder to see how it prevents sunk-cost “dirty energy” plants from being operated once they have been built. What is BI’s proposal to shut down “dirty energy”?
Next, how long do you project it will take for the investment you advocate to yield new clean energy cheaper than new dirty energy? How do we prevent new dirty energy from being built during this interregnum? What level do you project GHGs reaching by the time clean energy is clean enough to dethrone dirty energy through cost alone?
April 23rd, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Earl, I agree with you that the expense of “decommissioning” the MSRE (~$300M) is really crazy. A couple of things were really done stupidly that led to the trouble we’re in today, and they’re things that aren’t typical of what you might expect in a decommissioned LFTR in the future.
The biggest mistake they made when they shut MSRE down in 1969 was not to fluorinate the fuel to remove the uranium. They had done this previously (right before fueling MSRE with U-233) and it only took a few days. But when they shut down in 1969 they hoped that more AEC funding would be right around the corner, and at the time defueling the reactor didn’t seem like a good idea.
Well, we know now that the AEC was moving to kill the technology, which they finished doing by 1974. Without funding, the money wasn’t there to do anything, and all the expertise in fluoride reactors drifted away from ORNL. They reasoned that because the salt was chemically stable, things would be fine. Well, over time the decay of the fission products led the salt to get cooler and cooler until it finally froze in the drain tanks. Years passed and the decay of fission products led the salt to get cooler still. When uranium-bearing fluoride salt gets below 150C, free fluorine can actually stay as free fluorine rather than chemically recombining. And that’s not a good idea.
So radiation from the fuel caused radiolytic fluorine gas to be generated. That fluorine gas (F2) reacted with UF4 in the salt to form UF6, which is gaseous (and is the basis of uranium enrichment). That UF6 was now mobile enough to get out of the drain tank and move through the lines of the reactor. Where it accumulated and condensed was unknown, but in the 90s people began to realize (as the gas pressure went up in the lines) that fluorine gas and UF6 was in there.
Long story short, the remediation has been a mess because they’ve spent an enormous amount of time trying to find out where the UF6 is in the system. The whole reason it got out in the first place was because they let the fuel salt sit there for 20 years without doing anything. Thanks, Milt Shaw!
At any rate, any LFTR would be defueled easily at shutdown by removing uranium by fluorination. That would easily prevent a repeat of this problem, which took many years of neglect to materialize.
If we would simply take the $300M we’re spending on remediation and use it for fluoride reactor development, we would be much closer to LFTR technology readiness, and we could fold the whole remediation task into it. Last year I visited the MSRE and talked to some of the chemical engineers working there. Each of them told me that when they started working on the remediation project, they didn’t know about fluoride reactors and thought the MSRE was some dumb old reactor experiment gone awry. But after studying the design intensely, each of them told me that we should be restarting the MSRE rather than remediating it! They said, “this reactor is the future and no one even knows about it.”
April 23rd, 2008 at 4:11 pm
Michael Schellenberger can tell us how his strategy avoids procrastination penalties. Indeed had the world taken action in the 1980s when a scientific consensus had formed, the costs would be much lower than we confront today. As Oreskes points out, William Nierenberg put together a report featuring the economics of William Nordhaus, Gary Yohe and Thomas Schelling which essentially said that any problems could be taken care of later at lower cost. This strikes me very much along the same lines as you and the BI are selling.
The question further occurs, that since one cannot guarantee success of any research program what actions should we take now to limit emissions now and in the future.
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:17 pm
Michael Schellenberger, this is a very important conversation. That’s why it’s important for everyone to disclose their financial interests. When you attempt to deny that money has an impact on scientific outcomes….it doesn’t make you clever; it doesn’t make you look authoritative;
It makes you look like a guy suffering from historical scientific amnesia. I suggest you acquaint yourself with federal regulations covering disclosures of financial interest that regulate scientists who receiving funding from the NIH and NSF.
Otherwise, you’ll make yourself look like a dope.
Mr. Pielke, back to you. Please disclose how much money you were paid by Cato to write for Regulation. And please, pontificate on why they hired you to write for them and not someone like Jim Hansen.
April 24th, 2008 at 12:04 am
Thom: I never denied money had an impact on outcomes. I denied that Roger has taken money from interests that affected his science. And yes, it is science. He was the lead author with two other top notch scientists, including Tom Wigley, one of the most cited authors in the IPCC. If you have proof to the contrary, then present it. Otherwise, stop with your slanderous personal attacks.
Joe, again I would ask you to call on you readers to stop with the slander. If you want this to be a community, then there has to be some respect for civility.
Eli: Get your facts straight. Ted and I have consistently called for deployment of existing technologies, a price for carbon, and large sums of money for RD&D. If you’ve got some complaint with Ted’s uncle, take it up with him, not with me.
Earl: Thanks for your thoughtful questions. This discussion has been focused overwhelmingly on policy, and yet it is politics that will determine which policy options get implemented. Honestly, after today’s news in the Times about Europe turning back to coal, I felt pretty despairing. Whether you accept the numbers put forward by Romm or Pielke et al., it’s a pretty gargantuan task. While we are certain that a major government investment in RD&D, as well as deployment and procurement, is needed, I am less certain about your other questions. I’ll attempt to answer them, but the farther into the future, the more the uncertainty grows, so I offer that caveat.
It is conceivable that we will build enough CCS to constitute a single wedge, as Romm proposes, or far more, as others have suggested. Perhaps Keith and Lackner will succeed in driving down the price of air capture. I am becoming increasingly skeptical that humans will leave much if any coal in the ground, and thus see those two technologies as crucial.
I also think a new global compact is required, one focused around global development and energy technology innovation, primarily motivated by economic and national security concerns domestically, that results in both driving down the price of clean energy and establishing a price for carbon. I’m not optimistic about a global optimized carbon price; that seems rather utopian, or at least very, very distant. But if the G-8 could bring China and India into such a compact, and the developed world investment were somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 billion a year, I could see China and India embracing some kind of price for carbon, especially if a decent portion of the investment went into modernizing their energy infrastructures and thus creating jobs and increasing their energy security.
The key is that it be a win-win so that when Lou Dobbs goes on TV to complain about U.S. taxpayer money going to build energy infrastructure in India and China, most Americans roll their eyes because they support the core value proposition, not the demagogic Dobbs.
You asked about price. Tech innovation and adoption — think of the nonlinear s-curve — is notoriously unpredictable. We’ve never suggested “waiting for breakthroughs,” and we explictly criticize market fundamentalists, who suggest that “getting the incentives right” is all that matters.
Obviously, tech learnings come from doing, so getting the doing going as quickly as possible is imperative. I don’t have much confidence that a price on carbon will have that impact. I think the history of tech innovation shows that governments play a leading role, and that private firms follow, not the other way around.
We’ve been reluctant to make lists of wedges and policies or prices and suggest that the latter will necessarily lead to the former. And I don’t think we need to. What we need is a politics that mobilizes the public to support a large investment — larger, perhaps, than we suggested in our book — something on the order of $50 - $80 billion per year, starting immediately and continuing into the future, to scale up the new energy technologies and bring down their price as quickly as possible, not just here but also in other G-8 countries, in China and India, and eventually throughout the developing world.
April 24th, 2008 at 3:50 am
Well done Joe
This is some of the best discussion on the topic I’ve seen in … well just I’ve seen.
I do like the idea of LFTRs as a big wedge, and I certainly like any of the current generation of nuclear plants to any of the current generation of coal or gas plants, at least, in those countries where a sufficiently robust regulatory regime plus a grid is in place. CCS is simply inferior on almost every ground. If people are worried about storing nuclear waste, what should they make of storing liquified CO2 until the end of days? Are there anything like the storage reserves one would need to do this? Apparently, Australia alone turns out about 1 cubic km of CO2 (assuming the kind of pressure that would be used) every 2 years and 9 months, and yet, China is building an entire Australia-sized capacity every six months. Apparently, CCS reduces EROEI by about 20-25% and presumes a carbon cost of about $100 per tonne.
I do think sunk cost is an issue which will slow down the roll out of new technologies, particularly given the breakneck spped with which new coal-fired capacity and new ICE vehicles are being rolled out.
I also like the idea of using pumped sea water storage in concert with intermittent power sources (or even non-intermittent ones to replace spinning reserve). This could allow sources like wind and wave and tidal to operate as true baseload and in places where potable water was short, you could choose between stored power and potable water, thus saving you the cost of an energy hungry desal plant.
On biofuels, I think algae is the key. Let’s get going on that, bigtime.
Fran
April 24th, 2008 at 6:06 am
Patrick M Says:
“Wrong. We never have to go zero to stabilize CO2 levels, they will decay lower at zero emissions. In fact, since sinks absorb about 50% of emissions, any reduction lower than 50% would get us to minimal growth.”
Your assumption is mistaken, because it’s based on the sinks continuing to operate at 50%, but what if the sinks reach saturation? What if they start declining for any reason — e.g. ocean acidity, continuing UV through the thinned ozone layer, warming of the upper thermal ocean cline etc. What happens when warming accelerates decomposition on forest floors and when drying conditions change the composition of plants?
We are currently increasing CO2 at about 2.4PPM per annum and rising. The perturbation associated with that is going to be about for hundreds of years. We need to cut savagely and quick. 450 PPM or better yet 400 PPM by 2050 should be where we aim and declining to about 1850 levels by about 2150.
Interestingly, CH4 also went up this year for the first time since 1998 — that’s the sleeper in all this. What’s happening to that permafrost?
Patrick Says:
“And what would be the point of going lower than status quo of 380ppm?
cooling may do more harm than good.”
It might, but the margin for error would be nice and acid seas are a huge problem. At 280 PPM, humanity survived modestly well despite primitive technology. Today, we’d be a lot better off.
It’s also a lot easier to keep warm with minimal energy than fend off the heat.
Fran
April 24th, 2008 at 7:46 am
Michael, again. So that you will come to understand it. Again. The question was for Roger Pielke Jr. to reveal how much money he took from Cato. It makes you look awful to try and label such a request as “slanderous.”
Again, it shows that you still do not grasp the concept. Whether such money has affected Pielke Jr.s’ science is a completely different issue from whether or not he took the money.
Again, please acquaint yourself with federal regulations covering NIH and NSF grantees. You might also try reading a new book by David Michaels titled, “Doubt is Their Product.”
Roger Pielke Jr., how much money were you paid by Cato to write for Regulation?
April 24th, 2008 at 8:46 am
Vehicle efficiency
Agreed, with the addition of grams per CO2 equivalent as a further standard besides distance per dollars. 120 grams of CO2 equivalent per kilometer is a good start with 100 gCO2e being a better target sooner rather than later.
Wind power
Agreed, with an upgrading of the Grid to better handle more renewable energy, too.
Big Electric, Little ICE
Booyah! And, please tell me where could I find some affordable batteries to replace the dead ones in my electric car.
Solar thermoelectric
Excellent, but how does that get the crackers on board?
Efficiency
Yup, to include better mass transit and shipping those bananas by rail.
CCS
Yer momma
Nuclear power
Yer momma’s momma’s …n (where n = 15 generations) momma
Photo voltaics
Yes, and as with wind, we need to foster distributed power
Waste to energy
Maybe, it depends upon whether 3Es are met
End deforestation
Do it for the orang-utans
Back to the Soil
Funny, you don’t look like an edaphologist.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:07 am
Michael Schnellenberger: If you drill deeply enough in Roger Pielke Jr.’s writings you find that he is advocating mitigation (at least at the buzzword level) as well as adaptation. If you read newspaper and magazine reports of interviews he gives (and he gives a lot), you read that he advocates adaptation and maybe in the 23rd paragraph there is a word about mitigation, but usually with the caveat that it won’t do anything for your lifetime. Pin Roger down and he is sensible (well ok, he is a bit starry eyed about air capture). Put him in front of a microphone and you get adapt, adapt, adapt.
The same with you and Ted Nordhaus. You have had a lot of press. If you accept the premise, it is incumbent upon you to convey the urgency of the problem, that we will have to ameliorate (my new favorite word) damage from climate change and that includes mitigation, research and adaptation, and that adaptation only buys time and there is no guarantee on research.
Building a firewall against criticism in a footnote in an obscure journal (yeah I exaggerate, but how much) will not buy you credibility. Fundamentally, as Roger has long recognized, public awareness is built and manipulated through the mass media, and now the internet.
April 24th, 2008 at 10:12 am
Apologies for mis-spelling Michael Schellenberger’s name
April 24th, 2008 at 10:43 am
Thom,
Before you childishly demand that Pielke “come clean” let’s have all the sources of your income and even better, identify yourself beyond an anonymous screen name (most serious commenters here do either by full name or webpage link). Of course you wouldn’t ever ask Joe to reveal his compensation from the Center for American Progress, an advocacy group parallel to Cato. There’s a wonderful discussion on the way to a solution going on here. If you don’t have anything substantive to add, sit back and absorb. Reasoned debate among those who disagree is always informative.
April 24th, 2008 at 2:38 pm
jcwinnie, In case it helps, California’s passenger car GHG emission standard (which would apply to half of the US population if the White House stopped blocking it), calls for 205 gCO2e/mi by 2016 (this is 127 g/km). EVs in California already get about 120 gCO2e/mi (75 gCO2e/km), and that number improves every year as the grid improves. (My EV is closer to 0, if you count the PV on my roof.) I think this is the reason Joe is enthusiastic about EVs.
I’ve heard that LiFePO4 batteries from China cost about 500/kWh in hobbyist quantities. A123 says they see that price soon too (and I like what I hear from Bill Dube about A123’s qualify, safety, and performance).
April 24th, 2008 at 3:29 pm
Michael, thank you for your response. You said a number of things, but I don’t think you answered most of my questions. In case it helps, my questions come from your webpage only and the only purpose is clarification of your position (which in my mind is unclear based upon what I’ve read). They are unrelated to the discussion in these pages or outside sources. You mentioned CCS, but I don’t see the relevance to my questions. CCS will never be cheaper than non-CCS unless there is a price for carbon. Your response here suggested you did not think a price for carbon likely (”utopian or very distant”). That makes my question about old dirty energy all the more important.
Also, I never asked about breakthroughs. (You sort of responded as if I had.) I have deliberately avoided the word, and instead concentrated on the language on your webpage (under “Ideas”) about investing in clean energy to reduce its price. You said the same sort of thing in your response above (last paragraph).
Your stated goal, both on your webpage and your response is to “Bring the real price of clean energy down as quickly as possible.” Does “down” mean below the cost of dirty energy?
I believe you believe that this policy is necessary, but I would like you to answer whether you believe this policy is sufficient? If it is not sufficient, what other policies are necessary? Your last paragraph in your response above seems to suggest that R&D investment in cheap energy is sufficient, but I would like to be more sure that this is what you intend (much confusion has resulting from reading too much into tea leaves in this discussion). Let’s remove the uncertainty if possible.
How many years do you think the investment program on your webpage will take to make new clean energy cheaper than new dirty energy? (Not a firm number, just an educated estimate.)
What do you think the world should do about GHG between now and then? What level of GHG do you think Earth will experience in this timeframe?
Is the investment program on your webpage also targeted at reducing the cost of new clean energy to less than cost of old (paid-off) dirty energy? If so, how long is this likely to take? If not, does BI have a proposal to shut down existing dirty energy plants, since you suggest carbon pricing is unlikely? If we don’t shut down existing dirty energy plants, how do we prevent reaching disastrous GHG levels in the atmosphere?
April 24th, 2008 at 3:49 pm
Michael, one more clarification, if I may: when you suggest above investing 50 to 80 billion per year “to scale up the new energy technologies”, do you mean having the Federal government fund deployment of these technologies, or do you mean research and development? If a mixture, how much for deployment do you think is appropriate, and how much for R&D?
April 24th, 2008 at 10:46 pm
Earl Killian makes an excellent point. Is it possible to make the cost of non-fossil fuel energy less than that of fossil fuel energy. The second layer of this is, to do so, will we have to increase the cost of fossil fuel energy to include the externalities (carbon tax, emission trading regime, etc.)? I strongly suspect that in the short run it will be necessary to do so. I gather that Schellenberger and Ted Nordhaus don’t, but I don’t understand the basis of their optimism.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:44 am
joe, you said no wedge nits without replacements but if i say you’re double-booking reforestation, i’m a helpful fact-checker, right? providing an ecosystem service service? hansen’s yaleglobal paper said 350 came via 50 removal through geogardening and ag changes. so you can’t use a chunk of that to prevent the peak, too, methinks?
bunny et al, when pricing carbon globally, for generating adaptomitigational revenue, forget not historic carbon, for yea has this translated to GDP per capita and thus unto capability to pay-to-replace.
April 25th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Earl,
Thanks. That probably would be ABAT for the Chinese lithium iron phosphate. As to A123, I understand that they work better when you avoid running the motorcycle into a wall.
jc
April 25th, 2008 at 8:21 am
Hapa — good question. But I think we’ll need a technology to suck CO2 out of the air post-2050.
April 25th, 2008 at 10:53 am
need columns: “flora food” and “i think you should be more explicit here in step two.”
(have you read lester brown’s book?)
April 25th, 2008 at 12:56 pm
jcwinnie, Yes, crashing is a bad idea (but it was a minivan, not a wall, I think). There are about 3 Chinese manufacturers of LiFePO4 batteries. LiCo may be fixable as well (e.g. the addition of Mn seems to help). That would be nice, because I think LiCo is more like 270/kWh.
http://www.technologyreview.com/Energy/20524/?a=f
But of course this is too new to be in commercial LiIon batteries.
April 26th, 2008 at 12:48 am
What are the environmental impacts of wind and solar? I hear a lot of talk about how green they are because they are renewable. What about the space for solar panels or wind generators? Will land have to be cleared? If most are in the sea, will that have an effect on currents/marine life? Will forest have to be cut down to accomodate solar panels or wind mills?
just ?’s for thought. i am not sure of the answers
April 26th, 2008 at 4:07 pm
swc1983, as far as your marine life question, please see
http://www.ens.dk/ graphics/ Publikationer/ Havvindmoeller/ havvindmoellebog_nov_2006_skrm.pdf
CSP is typically located in the desert, and so little needs to be cut down. Desert is of course habitat too, so it is important to use as little as possible. NREL’s Fuel from the Sky report estimated 0.5% of the land in the areas they looked at could provide 2098 TWh per year of power. That is why efficiency is so important. Efficiency could reduce the U.S. power needs by over 40% (proven by states that have done it). The land use impacts are an important reason not to waste energy by storing it as hydrogen (that wastes a factor of 2-4 of the the energy).
Wind is typically located in open areas, or offshore. It can coexist with farming and grazing land, which are typically already cleared.
April 26th, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Sir, you completely leave out geothermal heat pumps, one of the fastest growing of the renewable energy technologies (or is it a conservation technology? Or an efficiency technology? No matter). Replacing electric resistance heating with geo would cut electricity by about 65% in those applications. Replacing gas and oil heat with geo and pairing it with hydro, PV, wind or (yes, I’m “sorry”) nuclear, would nearly eliminate GHG emissions from building heating and cooling, which is a large chunk of emissions.
Geothermal heat pumps are here, they are something every homeowner can use when designed and installed by a qualified designer and contractor, and they already deliver tremendous benefits to society every day. Please investigate!
April 26th, 2008 at 10:02 pm
I am a big advocate of geothermal heat pump. Have been for over a decade. I tend to see them as an efficiency strategy, but they could also be in the geothermal slice. I might give them more prominence in the future.
May 1st, 2008 at 8:33 pm
ok it took me a little backward work but now i can look at this more closely. can i stack them how they seem to me, by time?
THINGS that can be done quickly, overhaul-style, that would greatly bring down the curve:
- vehicle efficiency / wind for vehicles
- wind for power
- solar photovoltaics
- small solar thermal for space/water heat (lester estimates this at a slice; is it included in “efficiency”?)
- immed. air-tightening of building codes for rentals, renovations, new stock; anti-sprawl etc; also green strings
- get a grid-of-grids plan quick and install demand management quicker
- outlaw wasteful tech, don’t wait for pricing to get it
- focus cogeneration on facilities that require fossil fuel heat, move others straight to the clean grid
THINGS over the longer term:
- concentrated solar thermal
- efficiency
THINGS with vulnerabilities:
- nuclear power. this and river-hydro have a related problem.…
- coal with CCS. if there’s coal left standing by the time CCS is practical, we probly blew it.
- cellulosic biofuels (and later). this seems like another water problem. regardless, what do you think of burning most of the fiber instead of fermenting it?
thank you for helping me understand.…