Is 450 ppm (or less) politically possible? Part 2: The Solution

[RedEarth]

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 4 billion tons a year or less), and then go to near zero net carbon emissions by 2100.

more.........

http://climateprogress.org/2008/04/22/is-450-ppm-or-less-politically-possible-part-2-the-solution/

[kristopher]

1. Very good review of what must be done.

I believe this, in its general form, is a firmly accepted consensus in the energy policy community. Every politician out there at every above county government, is getting the same advice from their analysts.

[GliderGuider]

2. Those 15 wedges

* 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
* 1 of cellulosic biofuels — using one-sixth of the world’s cropland .
* 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.

Writing like this is primarily useful for demonstrating just how how monumentally tight a corner humanity has backed itself into. All this effort and treasure is to be spent alleviating just one of the half-dozen or so intersecting problems humanity is facing. Not to mention that James Hansen is now saying that even stabilizing CO2 at 450 ppm won't be enough.

We will need to implement these 15 wedges while at the same time coping with a destabilized economic system, shrinking fossil fuel supplies, and rocketing fuel and food prices. It's not just scale and lack of political will that's going to put speed bumps in front of this grand humanitarian project.

Is it any wonder that people like me say we need to start thinking a little further outside the box? IMO it would be an easier project to lay the groundwork for a complete transformation of human culture than to try and keep 9 billion people happily chugging along in this caricature of a post-carbon technotopia.

[GliderGuider]

3. I just took a SWAG at the costs

It looks to me like a wedge would cost about $3 trillion to $5 trillion in today's dollars (using a large wind turbine cost of $1500/KW as a baseline). Some would cost more (PV, for example) and some such as CSP might cost less.

Some costs are hard to quantify -- what is the economic impact of losing 16% of the world's crop land, completely reforesting the USA, converting ALL global agriculture to no-till or building and operating 10 Yucca Flats? Anyway, let's say a wedge costs $4 trillion on average.

That's $60 trillion, or one year's worth of the entire planet's GDP, for 15 wedges. That would be spent over 40 years, but the simple average of 1.5% of the planetary GDP per year doesn't tell the whole story. We really need to load it up at the front end, both to ensure we need our CO2 target and to build up the manufacturing infrastructure we don't yet have. Let's say we start at $6 trillion per year -- 10% of the planetary GDP and ramp down gradually from there.

Now added to that will be the cost of the climate-change driven migrations that will be ramping up over the next two decades, and the cost of replacing the fossil fuels we lose to Peak Oil. Romm doesn't count oil depletion into any of his scenarios, he doesn't think it's that big a deal. He's wrong.

My sense is that the rising cost of oil as it depletes will drive up the cost of all industrial activity. How much is anyone's guess. Mine is that every 1% of depletion will increase industrial costs by 2%, given the panic premium and the costs of system breakdowns. So if oil depletes by 3% per year globally, we'll see industrial costs rise by 6% a year. I think we'll see decline rates higher than that, but l don't want to scare the horses, so 6% per year is enough. That means that over the 40-year lifespan of this undertaking, oil depletion could drive costs up by about 10 times. The fact that we're front-loading the activity helps, as we get more of it done before the loss of oil really screws us over. Instead of going up by a factor of 10 the costs might only rise by a factor of 4.

I can see this endeavour costing us 10% to 15% of our planetary GDP every year for the next 40 years. That's going to severely depress the parts of the economy that aren't involved in The Project (because the world doesn't turn a 15% profit margin overall), and that in turn will tend to increase the cost of The Project. And that's not counting in the costs of climate-change driven migrations or the loss of 16% of our farmland to fuel production.

I don't see any way that people would put up with such deliberate impoverishment even for a decade let alone 40 years. This seems to be the very worst kind of pie in the sky.

Any comments or criticisms?

[kristopher]

6. Yes, I have a criticism.

First, you have no basis for the claim that we will not be able to meed demand for petroleum over the transition period except your faith based projections. Your claims of impending crisis are very clearly a misinterpretation of the realities of world market economics as they apply to this commodity.

Second, while the dedication of resources is huge (and that only begins to capture the reality), where is the accounting of benefits that flow from this increased economic activity directed at stabilizing not only CO2 emissions, but actually stabilizing the energy supply also. Did the public works projects of the depression help or hurt the people over time? Massive public works projects are nothing new. The scale of production directed at weapons manufacture during the second world war is an equivalent model for the challenge.

[The2ndWheel]

4. You would think that would make sense

"IMO it would be an easier project to lay the groundwork for a complete transformation of human culture than to try and keep 9 billion people happily chugging along in this caricature of a post-carbon technotopia."

It does takes a hell of a lot of energy to keep it together. It's no wonder we'll all just a little crazy. We want everything, but don't want to pay the price for anything. We want instant global communication, but don't want outsourcing and the loss of community. Well, if place no longer enters into any equation, then we have to pay for that action.

If there was a destination, then maybe it would be worth the effort. However, even if there were a destination, we still couldn't stop when we got there, because I think we would still exist in physical reality. So what exactly are we doing? Running towards a finish line that isn't there, and we're in a real hurry to cross it.

[RedEarth]

5. Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 2.5: The fuzzy math of the stabilization wedges

Is 450 ppm politically possible? Part 2.5: The fuzzy math of the stabilization wedges


I’d like to thank (!) Roger Pielke for his post, “Joe Romm’s Fuzzy Math.” Not because his analysis is correct — it isn’t. Not because of the tone — he says my climate solution is “fantastically delusional,” which better not be the case or our children and the next 50 generations are screwed. No, I’m thanking him because explaining why he isn’t correct will illuminate two key points in the climate solutions debate:

Princeton’s Socolow and Pacala make an important but surprising assumption in their wedges analysis (here) that few people realize. Anyone who wants to come up with their own 14 wedges (as opposed to accepting my solution laid out in Part 2), must understand what they did.
When you understand what Princeton did, then you’ll understand why Pielke’s critique is fundamentally wrong, and then I think you can understand at a more intuitive level why his Nature article is wrong, too.
THE WEDGES’ FUZZY MATH

Let’s start with what looks to be a major analytical mistake in the Princeton analysis. Recall that one wedge is a climate strategy that is ramped up to ultimately save 1 billion tons of carbon a year or 1 GtC/year.

If you look at the original paper (here), they identify a typical wedge (#9 on their list) as “Nuclear power for coal power.” That “would require 700 GW of nuclear power with the same 90% capacity factor assumed for the coal plants,”

But wait, you say, everybody knows a typical coal plant has a carbon intensity of 290 kilograms per Megawatt-hour. Princeton itself tell us on page 9 of the online Supplemental material (available here with subscription), much of which is now on their website, wedge by wedge, here. As they explain in the “efficient baseload coal plant” wedge (here), citing the IEA’s World Energy Outlook, 2002:

http://climateprogress.org/2008/04/23/is-450-ppm-politically-possible-part-25-the-fuzzy-math-of-the-stabilization-wedges/#more-2716

[Exodus 3-14]

7. '385' is Tipping Point!!!!!!!

If you have read what James Hansen said only a few weeks back, we are literally sitting upon our Tipping Point of CO2 levels right now('385' ppm).
He said 10 weeks ago that we had to get down to '350' immediately, but people aren't paying attention.

'Climate Run-Away' is presently underway, and as I've been saying, 'Eco-System Collapse' is without a doubt 'Man-Made'.

This is one sick and tragic situation, and sadly there really is a plan to reduce/thin the Global Human Herd to 'correct' matters. That will not work, in fact that will hasten our demise(something I know about Kabbalah and the nature of the Cosmos).
The only answer is to get our 'CO2'levels down to '333' ppm no later than Nov. 13th 2008.

Believe me or not, I am a 'Messenger'.