We like to burn things

We like to burn things

In preparation for teaching this term, I have been thinking of the big ticket items in climate change since I last taught in April 2012. I will start with a very old quotation. I am reading The Travels of Marco Polo. Book II describes the Court of Kublai Khan and there is a chapter “Concerning the Black Stone Dug in Cathay Used for Fuel.” It starts

“Throughout this province there is found a sort of black stone, which they dig out of the mountains, where it runs in veins. When lighted it burns like charcoal and retains the fire much better than wood …”

This was written in about 1300.

Last year I wrote a blog All the Oil we Want.

In the middle of November 2012, there were many press stories that talked about the growing production of oil and natural gas in the United States (for example). The news stores followed a press release from the International Energy Agency (press release: North America leads shift in global energy balance, IEA says in latest World Energy Outlook).

This press release was for the World Energy Outlook 2012 (Executive Summary). The gist of the report is that there have been fundamental changes in the production of oil and natural gas in the United States. The changes have come from the successes of unconventional methods of releasing oil and gas from reservoirs that were previously felt to be too costly to exploit. One of the core technologies used to release these stores of fossil energy is hydraulic fracturing or fracking. This report goes on to say that the U.S. will out produce Saudi Arabia in the mid-2020s and that the U.S. is on its way to being energy independent by 2035.

I had several fast reactions to this report. My first was imagining the geopolitical landscape if the U.S. did not have deep energy roots in the Middle East, and indeed, in all parts of the world. Then I imagined other countries expressing their energy-related interests throughout the world. I also felt that this prediction will have profound effects on how we think about climate, climate change and ultimately, on the Earth’s climate.

Beyond the happy headline of U.S. energy fortunes, the report talks about the rapidly growing energy demands in China, India and the Middle East. It then discusses that we are “failing to put the global energy system onto a more sustainable path.” Much, nearly half, of the world’s growth in energy consumption in the past decade has used coal. Looking forward, coal remains central to energy use in China and India. Coal has many negative environmental consequences, including high carbon dioxide emissions. In market-driven energy policy, if the cost of coal remains competitive, then it is difficult to imagine coal being displaced from this central position.

If we have the U.S., and presumably other nations, generating oil and gas from unconventional sources of tightly held fuel, then this practice generates a new array of environmental consequences. Sticking to the subject of climate change, some of these sources of oil have very high carbon emissions. Also we introduce new challenges in the management of methane, a highly potent greenhouse gas. Therefore, this good news for energy independence is bad news for the world’s climate.

World Energy Outlook 2012 does point out that renewable sources of energy are establishing themselves as an important part of the energy portfolio. Current projections are that by 2015, renewable energy will be the second largest source of electric power, and by 2035 renewables become comparable to coal. Note that is comparable to coal, not displacing coal, and this 2035-world has far more energy production than today. Again, with regard to climate change, the report states that subsidies for exploiting fossil fuels are six times as high as subsidies for renewable energies. Therefore, current energy policy does not suggest high priority to addressing climate change through low-carbon energy.

The International Energy Agency report also discusses the continuing unfolding of the role of nuclear energy following the destruction of the Fukushima nuclear power plant in the 2011 (see also, Earthquakes and Climate Change). A salient point from the report is, again, the apparent decreasing role of nuclear energy in displacing fossil fuels. Further, if nuclear will be having a decreasing role, then the role of renewable energy must increase at the intersection of climate and energy policy.

I will bring it back to the World 4 degrees warmer. In 2011 the International Energy Agency in its World Energy Outlook 2011 stated that the emissions path we were on was headed to a World 6 degrees warmer. In the 2012 report it is stated

“Successive editions of this report have shown that the climate goal of limiting warming to 2 °C is becoming more difficult and more costly with each year that passes. Our 450 Scenario examines the actions necessary to achieve this goal and finds that almost four-fifths of the CO2 emissions allowable by 2035 are already locked-in by existing power plants, factories, buildings, etc. If action to reduce CO2 emissions is not taken before 2017, all the allowable CO2 emissions would be locked-in by energy infrastructure existing at that time.” (That would be a goal of limiting carbon dioxide concentrations to 450 parts per million.)

If there is a path to near-term, dramatic reductions of greenhouse gases it is anchored on efficiency. The International Energy Agency has developed a strategy it calls the Efficient World Scenario. This “scenario is, rather, based on a bottom-up analysis of currently available technologies and practices and considers incremental changes to the level of energy efficiency deployed.” Like the Pacala and Socolow’s Stabilization Wedges, the proposed efficiency approach demonstrates that we do have the wherewithal to make a difference. The difference is the opportunity to develop energy-producing technologies that do not contribute to the accumulation of more carbon dioxide.

I paint here a known picture. It is crystal clear that we cannot address our energy challenges and expect to automatically address our climate issues. Short-term energy and economic issues will always trump climate change. We have here a technological development that by all indications makes global warming worse. We have great challenges in finding safe, secure sources of energy. Our easiest approaches to the energy security problem make the climate change problem worse. We cannot solve the climate change problem with fossil fuels – remember it is the accumulation of carbon dioxide, not the instantaneous emission of carbon dioxide that matters. All that is emitted stays with us for a very long time. Therefore, new technology that makes it possible to exploit unconventional oil and gas, which might make the U.S. energy independent, puts multiple stresses into the effort to address climate change. We have ingrained behavior and practice that continue to reward exploitation of fossil fuels more aggressively than renewable energy. Though the World Bank analysis comes to the conclusion that “a 4 degree Celsius warmer world must be avoided,” we have no energy policy, we have no climate policy, and hence, there is little indication that we will take steps to avoid that World.

In early December 2013 I was on a flight sitting next to a man who drives trucks in the Bakken Shale Oil Fields of North Dakota. In North Dakota they target, primarily, oil extraction. The man told me that they were mostly burning off the methane. He was thriving, growing a business. He was caring for his family and looking to the future. A curious statement he made was that the only problem was that all of money up there was coming from other countries. This just brings home our immediate energy future. We have made the exploitation of fossil fuels as cheap as apparently it was in the year 1300, when Marco Polo wrote of coal in China. We have beaten peak oil. The World wants these fossil fuels to run its economies. We want the jobs to run our economy. We cannot deny our drive to live comfortable lives, our drive for security. The ease of fossil fuels will keep their use growing. The reality is that our “built-in” climate change needs to accommodate the increment that will come from the emissions that cannot be denied.

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A note on comments to the blogs: The discussion and information that I see in the comments on this blog in the past year have, for the most part, been amazing. I get the occasional note about trolls and denialists. I realize the frustration that some feel, but that is part of life. And compared to some places, it’s pretty productive at WU. The lists of documents, the links to articles, it is quite a resource. I have tried to figure out if the blog comments could be put into tumblr or some place, but as with many things, I am not smart enough. Hope you keep it up in 2014. Thanks.