Some energy, carbon and $$$ factoids (updated with a withdrawal due to my errors in the original)

[muriel_volestrangler]

17. Can you be more specific about the data you're using?

For instance, is the world GDP you've got from the World Bank at official exchange rates, or purchasing power parity? It makes a lot of difference - "In 2011, the GWP totalled approximately US$79.39 trillion in terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), while the per capita GWP was approximately US$11,900". Given the large difference, which figure do you think is more appropriate to use for a carbon price, and why?

Also, I'm unclear how you have converted a world CO2 emission figure of, say, 34,033 million tonnes for 2011 (from the BP statistical review) to a figure of about "12.2 tonnes" (ie the highest CO2 emissions we've had) in your 3rd graph. You're dividing by something, but I can't see what. I presume you divide world GDP by the same figure as well - but we need to check (and I'd ask why you divide by it, without explaining, when that makes all your source figures unclear). And I'm pretty sure that, however you arrived at it, your 2nd graph should be labelled in watts, not milliwatts. With world power consumption on the order of 15 TW, and GWP in today's dollars also of the order of tens of trillions, the GDP to watt ratio should be of the order of one to one, not 3 to 1000. If it were watts, it would actually fit with 1 GW being matched with $3.125 billion, as you suggest in your text.

However, I'd question your assertion that "bringing a 1 GW power station on line will add about $3.125 Billion to the global GDP each year it operates". Correlation is not causation. And to say that this therefore shows the 'true value' of CO2 is even more of a leap. CO2 has not been in the minds of many of those who decided the type and amount of energy consumption of the world for 50 or so years. The CO2 intensity of primary energy has been largely flat mainly because of geopolitical and geographical considerations of what fuels are available to whom. The only effort to decrease CO2 production, Kyoto, only applies to a subset of the world, and even then there are coincidences that have to be taken into account, such as the availability of natural gas and the political desire to use it, or oil, or coal, or nuclear for non-climate-related reasons.